Want, Can, and the Space Between

Well hello world. Happy start of spring season to all of the parents and coaches and athletes out there administrators. Gearing up for the first day of spring practices. That's what I've been working on for the past few weeks is getting ready. We kick off our track and field season. Today this afternoon we have practice and I got a text from my daughter this morning is kind of what kicked off this line of thought and something I've been thinking about for a while and working on. Because she wanted to tell me that she wasn't going to play soccer. Not for her high school team she's been playing since she was probably four years old, three or four years old, she's 17. She may have played her last soccer game last weekend. You never know. It was a big part of her life, of my life, of our life for a long time, but she decided and did some reflection on it and she doesn't really want to play for high school anymore and instead she's going to play flag football. Because they now have a flag football team at her high school, which is awesome. I'm very excited for her and I'm excited that she has the voice and the confidence to tell me what she really wants to do, what she wants to do. And this recording today, this podcast, whatever you want to call it, is primarily a story about an understanding of the differences between want, can and there's like the space between. And this is a question that I return to over and over again with my work as a coach and just with young people in general. As a kid, I ask it as a coach, I ask it as a parent and sometimes I ask it of myself, do you want to be the best that you can be or do you want to be the best you want to be? I'm going to say it again, do you want to be the best? You can be or do you want to be the best you want to be? Because at first glance, this question sounds almost identical, but it's not. You know, and many people don't hear any distinction at all, but personally over time, I have learned that there is a difference. It might be small in language, but it is large in consequence. And it sits at the center of a lot of these tensions that we experience in our families, in our teams, growth, performance, relationships. You know, I coach track, I coached cross country, I work with athletes whose bodies and minds are still changing, whose confidence goes up, it goes down, who don't really know who they are yet, their identities are still under construction. I also have my own two daughters. And in both settings, I see the same pattern repeat. Adults, me, coaches often speak in terms of what's the potential while young people live in these terms of desire. And when those two things aren't aligned or worse, when we assume they are the same, there's misunderstanding. Being the best that you want to be is rooted in their own agency, their own will. It reflects what that individual person is willing to choose today. It answers, you could have, okay, so questions that you might ask yourself about it. It's like, how hard do I want to work? What matters most to me right now? What am I willing to give up? Want? What do I want? It's shaped by confidence. It's shaped by social pressure, shaped by fear, exhaustion, curiosity, internal ambition, self-belief. It changes. It's fluid. As they get older and as they develop, there'll be nuances and adjustments. I think there is honesty and want. It is not lazy. And it is not something noble just because it sounds modest. It's just real. Simply it is real. Being the best you can be, however, that points in a different direction. Can is about capacity. It's suggest that there is something possible beyond current preference. Something that it might require discomfort, deeper self-discipline, and you're gonna have to reorder your priorities. You may miss some things. You know, often the limits that we attach or are attached to can, they are not biological and they are not intellectual. It's not. It is psychological because they come from these assumptions we've made about ourselves long before we tested them, right? Like, well, I can't do that. Or this person can. Even though we don't know if that's true. And as a coach, sometimes I actually, and as a parent, I guess, I well, not I guess it is, I sometimes see that an athlete's or I see what an athlete's can is before they do. I can see it. I've had enough. We've had enough experience. I've done this for a long enough time that I know what it can look like to be great before they are. You know, I see it in the way they respond when the pace picks up unexpectedly and they've got to keep up and they can. In the moments where they don't quit when conditions are bad, I've seen this year on the cross-country team how they rise to a challenge that they didn't really think they were asking for, but they met it anyway. And from the outside potential, it looks, it can look obvious, right? I'll look how genetically gifted that person looks. But from the inside, from that young person's perspective, or that teammate, or that son or daughter, it can feel like an abstraction. It can be intimidating. And here's the other thing. It can feel unwanted. And this is where some of that tension begins. Myself as a parent, as a coach, I often want young people to be the best they can be. And my desire for them to be the best they can be comes from love and from care. Not because of control. Like, I don't want to control them. I just want them to, I truly feel like it is an altruistic motivation for them to be the best. But that doesn't always work. You know, I tell them all the time, you don't want to look back and regret something and wonder what they could have done, but they didn't try. Or they left it unexplored. We don't want fear and self-doubt to dictate what the shape of their life is going to look like. And we've lived it already. And we don't want them to make that mistake. But young people, they don't always share that goal. They may never or at least not yet. They might see it and see this world and trying to balance lots of things, enjoyment, social belonging, or maybe they're just trying to survive in a pretty demanding world or the pressures that they're already putting on themselves. And neither of those, the want or the can is wrong. But when we pretend that they are the same, it creates problems, it creates this friction. And I know this explicitly from my own experience and my own life when I was young, that what makes this even harder and makes it more complicated is that young people, I was, I still can be, are deeply motivated by a desire not to disappoint. They don't state what they want. They perform or do what they believe is expected. They say the right things to us. They tell us what I want to hear. They nod. They comply. But compliance is not commitment. And over time, that mismatch, that gap, it becomes exhausting for you as the parent, as the coach, as the teacher. And it becomes exhausting for them. They feel pressure. They feel anxiety. They feel stress. The parent, the coach, feels frustrated and confused. Everything seems like one step off. There's no, that's not synchronic, there's no synchronicity. But no one has said anything. No one has named it. There is a mismatch in communications. There isn't there is I would say there is an exception to this in some ways that sometimes a young person genuinely does not know yet what they can be or maybe they were told they can't be something because potential it's not always self-evident and often it's it's revealed through exposure to something right try new things maybe play flagfootball instead of soccer she'll still be getting consistent training we still expose them to some sort of structured challenge and then on their own they experience this pushing past what's once felt like a barrier in those moments it's my job as a coach not to impose who I want them to be or demand an outcome but to create these conditions for opportunities or to discover who they want to be or who they can be and so instead what I want to say is you don't have to choose this forever but you should see what's here you should know it's there's an offshoot that I give kids when I'm mentoring which is learn what you don't want to do and when you handle this discovery with care it expands these choices rather than narrowing them opportunity is open a young person a young athlete understands that or I guess should say who understands what their capacity is is better equipped to understand how they can use it and how much do they want to use or if they want to and so then that decision becomes informed rather than assumed and it gives them some a sense of ownership and I think this work this coaching parenting leadership the real work is in clarity and communication and I think they're they kind of go hand in hand you want them to be clear about expectations we want clarity about what is the desire we want clarity and communication between the difference between encouragement and and projecting what we want on them being the best is or well being the best you can be is not some moral obligation being the best you want to be is not some sort of failure we continually run into trouble only when we confuse these two things or we substitute one for the other without talking about it sitting down and respecting each other and giving each other space and kindness and understanding so when young people understand the difference between wanting to do something and what they can do they gain that own personal freedom that out their own agency and when adults get it when I get it as a coach I get patience I feel like I'm not so rushed that we got to figure it out today we don't and when we both me as the coach as the dad as a leader are willing to speak honestly and forthrightly about where what I believe and what they believe and where we both are it strengthens our relationship it strengthens that bond it gives both both partners trust in each other their effort takes on a new meaning and then they can actually grow there's and in that space we talked about at the beginning between who someone is and who they might become no longer is something that we're trying to fix but is a something real that we can respect I love it good luck out there starting your seasons I love this so much peace