Out of the Park Achievement
By Matt Campbell
I’m the proudest Dad in the world right now. My 15 year old daughter Mackenzie just hit a HOMERUN. Her first ever. And a real one. Not an in-the-park one. You know the ones from little league where if you just run fast enough or the other team makes enough throwing errors you can get around to home before a play is made. Mac is so fast she has countless numbers of those on her resume.
No, I'm talking about the kind that every kid dreams of. The over-the-fence, out of the park, towering, bomb of a shot launched without a doubt to straight away centerfield. The kind where in your fantasies it happens almost in slow motion and, after hitting it, you hear the entire crowd cheering as they jump to their feet in awe. Where your whole team comes sprinting out of the dugout jumping up and down, waiting to greet you the second you cross home plate. What a feeling right?
Well it’s what I imagine it's like anyway. I wouldn’t know myself. I never hit one over. But it's what it looked like on this particular Sunday.
For the accomplishment itself any parent would feel the way I do when your child succeeds in something. Now I happen to have a little more background information that allows me a greater understanding of what this moment means to her and consequently my pride in her and my charge to you. It’s not the hit itself. It's the satisfaction for her of the results of a very honest reflection she had with herself and the decisions she made to work toward a goal. That's the real thing that matters. That’s what defines the accomplishment. When you have to work towards something then the achievement itself is not that one moment but the culmination of hours and hours, possibly weeks or years of work that people often don’t know went into it.
In Mackenzie’s case she has played softball for 8 years. More than half her life at this point. She is an extraordinarily gifted athlete and a consummate teammate. However in one particular area of the game, batting, her natural ability has started to give way to the increasing level of skill around her and her inability to rely on talent alone.
To say it more directly, her batting was not good. It was bad. Other areas of her game were great and she regularly received attention and praise for that, but for the better part of the past year her batting had lost power and her lack of refinement in technique was showing up and often in the worst moments. My heart would break for her when she would inevitably be the one up to bat in critical moments with runners on, two outs and usually needing a run or more to win. And she would pop up or strike out. Third out, inning over, game over, tournament over. I’d watch her deal with the loss and wrestle with the internal struggle. But about two months ago something shifted.
Mac had a moment, I can’t really identify when it was, but she described to me that it became so hard to go into a game with such a lack of confidence that she was losing some of the fun of something that had brought her so much joy up to this point. She described feeling this intense pressure in certain moments when the game was on the line to make something happen but knowing each time that she was already defeated before she got in the batters box. She reflected honestly and admitted her need for help, her desire to work on things and to do it the right way. That meant all in, not half way. And if she was going to do it, why put forth only partial effort or take short cuts.
She first asked me for help. (That was the joy of my whole life to be able to do for my very own daughter what I am so passionate about doing for others- but that's my story, this is hers). I began working with her, as a Movement Redefined client, appointments booked on my schedule every week. We established a goal and worked specifically on the areas where her body was losing power and not moving efficiently. Her mom and I helped her get sessions with the best batting coach in the area, investing significantly to get the highest level of instruction she could get. She even met with a dietician to make sure her diet was supporting her efforts.
Then there was her own practice. I'd come home some afternoons to find she had taken her tee and bat out in the field to work on specific elements her coach gave her to improve on. She was taking ownership and I was seeing the change happen. Her confidence, her strength, and the satisfaction in herself were showing. The outcome, for all the Atomic Habits readers out there, would be the lagging measure of those habits.
So going back to this particular Sunday again. Her team was in the championship game and they were rolling. They had the energy, the momentum and the belief. When Mac stepped up to the plate her whole body looked different to me. She was at ease, grounded and as confident as I've ever seen her. When that ball left her bat there was nothing left to the imagination. You just know the look and the sound of it. It's unmistakable. And when she rounded first as that ball flew over the fence I saw in my child something I’ll never forget. The pure joy, the exhilaration and the pride.
Now my pride, being a father witnessing such an achievement is not about the homerun. That was a reasonable outcome for the compounding effect of all her effort and work. I’m so proud of her for her growth as a person over these last months. Her self-reflection, her acknowledgment of her own imperfect need to improve, understanding her “why” and submitting herself to the help of others. For the hours and hours she has put into her improvement. And those are the lasting traits she’ll take with her. Long after the dust settles on home plate.
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