Last night a long message came through on my phone. It was from one of my old athletes in the UK. A long complaint, his words, about feeling like people do not believe in him. He felt the system was not helping him chase his goals, and that he was doing it all alone.

A very relatable feeling.

Sadly, I took him over from another coach and did not stay long enough to help him fully learn what I wanted to teach him. That one stays with me.

In my last few years as a coach I have become more and more focused on teaching athletes how to deal with the anti-natural. Spending the first sessions on bravery. On learning how to fall backwards. On sitting with the unknown.

Gymnastics is a sport built entirely on anti-natural movement. Your body is not designed to jump backwards onto your hands. And I started noticing that the athletes who spent real time learning to be comfortable with discomfort early on had a much higher ceiling later.

I saw the same thing in climbing. When you teach kids to fall and trust the rope, really trust it, they start attempting things that would terrify most people. Not because they are reckless, but because their comfort zone has been stretched in the right direction.

So I started building that in from the beginning. Expanding the comfort zone first. Then pairing it with something else: teaching athletes to chase what genuinely interests them, and showing them that the things they dislike are usually the things that will make them better at what they love.

When you combine those two things, you start building people who are genuinely resilient. People who go for it. And it is so much easier to build when they are young.

But for everyone already on the path, the question is the same.

Are you building the mindset that is going to help you break through what is standing in front of you?

And if not, here is one place to start: find someone on the same wavelength. Someone willing to push through it with you.

Do you have that person? The one who jumps into the dare, or challenges you to face the unknown?