Have you ever loved something so much that — while you’re in it — the rest of the world ceases to exist. It’s an experience of being fully immersed, also known as the flow state. This was my experience growing up playing hockey in a rural town where there wasn’t much else to do.

I started playing from a very young age and hockey quickly became my first love. It felt like my safe space — full of peace and joy where nothing bad could happen.

Like every young Canadian hockey player, I had dreams that were going to take me far. The only thing that could hold me back was fear.

The Seed of Doubt

This fantasy quickly turned into my nightmare. Starting with the seeds of doubt that were planted at the age of 11.

“I’m not good enough.”

This was the message that perpetually swirled around in my head. The voice significantly overpowered anything and everything.

But how was it created? Where did it come from?

Only one season prior, I had all the confidence in the world. What changed?

It started with authority figures that I looked up to in my life. As a kid, I was very impressionable, and learned abundantly and quickly from those around me.

Being a student of the game, I needed help reflecting on what was going well and what I could work on to get better. Instead, those who were most influential to me continuously highlighted all the things I did wrong, as well as everything I wasn’t doing or doing well enough. This wore on me.

Self-Doubt Fueled a Chase for Perfection

This inadvertently created a standard or expectation that was unrealistic — a perfectionist mindset.

Eventually, the “I’m not good enough” became my default self-talk — my inner voice. So in addition to the consistent external criticism of my performances, I became my own worst critic.

Everything I did, good or bad, that voice in my head found a way to criticize me and find something insufficient about my performance. I could do hundreds of things right but my focus was only on the things I did wrong, even if it was only one.

Perfection became the expectation, which is ironic because perfection doesn’t exist in sport. So when perfection wasn’t achieved and my performance wasn’t up to the standards I expected of myself, I would pick apart my performance. I was ruthless with myself and wouldn’t stop until I was demoralized and left feeling ashamed and humiliated with my performance.

Not a very good model for success, is it?

The Vulnerability of Sports

It’s very clear to see now that my confidence was completely shattered. Given that my entire identity was being a hockey player, I suffered outside of hockey as well. Well-being and performance have a bi-directional relationship with one another. This means that mental health and mindset both have significant influence on each other.

I was stuck in a never-ending feedback loop: self-deprecating thoughts, feeling inadequate, unworthy, and scared, performing poorly, leading to more self-doubt and fear, all of which confirmed that the voice in my head was right — I wasn’t good enough.

I was afraid of being trapped in the loop through shortcomings and mistakes, so inevitably I played timid, scared, and in constant fear of making mistakes. This didn’t do me any favours, and made things even worse because I wasn’t performing even close to my potential.

Cue the feedback loop once again. The more it happened, the further stuck I became in the cycle — this is a classic negative reinforcement loop — which I had no clue I was in at the time.

The hockey rink became something that crippled me inside. A place where I felt most vulnerable to the exposure of the weakest parts of myself. A terror I had never experienced before. It was like walking into the spotlight on a stage by myself, knowing that thousands of people watching were about to watch me make a fool of myself, and that horrible sense of not feeling like I was enough. This dynamic and fear ruled my experience of playing the game I loved for the next 7 years.

My Fire Was Gone

When you sustain the experience I described over a number of years, it’s more than enough to wear you down to the point where you no longer enjoy it. My love for the game had been completely taken away from me, and I blamed the game for it instead of all the things and people that contributed to the place I was in mentally, including myself. But how are you supposed to understand that as a kid when your only job should be to love the game and enjoy the experience.

Mixing in adversity, setbacks, and disappointment in myself, and the dreams that I felt the game had robbed me of, I decided to part ways with it after my 18-year-old season, only my second in junior with two years left of eligibility to play. From my perspective, the game had given me everything and then took it all away, and I was done with it.

In a way, it was freeing. I was no longer prisoner to my own critical self-talk, at least in the rink anyways. The voice had grown enough that it infected all other parts of my life, but on the ice it was the worst.

Finally, I felt like I could do what I wanted to do and make my own choices — for me. I felt liberated. I decided to move out and go to University, and then I found out the University had a hockey team.

I reflected on my journey and whether it was something I was even slightly interested in — of course, I was. So I decided to try out, but with no expectations, no pressure, no overthinking.

As you can probably guess, it felt different. It felt like I had autonomy and freedom to make my own choices. I didn’t choose to play for anyone else but myself, and that was empowering.

Once I realized it was my choice to play and that I didn’t need to, nor did I have any expectations of myself or from others, it freed me from all the voices of doubt, perfectionism, and fear.

I felt like I did when I was a kid, reconnecting with the love and joy for the game, and that made all the difference. I was a new me — the rebirth of a new player.

Like a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes

After walking on to the University of Victoria Vikes men’s hockey team, I refound my passion. My love for the game was reignited and everything came rushing back to me — my skills, my emotion, my desire, all of it.

I played there for 5 years before playing two seasons of professional hockey in Sweden, something both myself and others had written me off for. I never could have imagined after that last year of junior that I would one day be playing pro in Europe. I had fulfilled my dreams just in a different way than I pictured, and that was okay.

Don’t get me wrong, it was nothing to brag about but I was proud. I had been through so much adversity and learned so much through all of it, including how much strength and resilience I had. The challenges I went through helped me grow in ways I never thought possible. I can only imagine what my experience would have been like if I had someone to help me through those tough times.

My experiences have led me to believe that while winning and success are great, we learn the most about ourselves, and about life in general, through our suffering. It is only through suffering that we can begin to truly appreciate our life, have gratitude, and find our purpose.

This brings me to where I am now, where I can provide a space for athletes to talk about and work through their struggles and setbacks. I am so extremely passionate about this work because I know what it is like to suffer alone and in silence, and having someone there to connect and empathize with you is so powerful.

With my educational background and training, as well as my personal experiences in sport, I found myself able to bring both of my passions together to give others the support I never had. It was then that I found a new purpose.

My job now is to empower others to reach their goals and dreams by acknowledging their challenges, embracing their strengths, and finding their own inner resilience. I guide them to develop and utilize strategies, tools, and techniques that can enhance their performance and overall well-being. The transformative nature of this work is not only beneficial for sport, but also for navigating the challenges of life.