Month: December 2021 Page 1 of 2

The end of the year is the time that we step back and take stock of what we’re thankful for. No matter whether you celebrate with a big meal of special New Year’s delicacies, curled up on the couch with your loved ones watching sports, heading out to run a 5K, or maybe even doing some easygoing stick fencing fun in the backyard, the theme is always the same – we look back on the year and think about what we have accomplished and who we are. For us, that means thinking about how fencing has helped us.

There are lots of reasons that we find gratitude to be essential, but chief among them is the way that gratitude helps us to be happier ourselves as well as making the people around us happier too. The end of the year puts a welcome laser focus on gratitude, encouraging us to stop and think about what makes life wonderful.

Fencing gives us lots of things to be thankful for, and this year we wanted to go deeper into how we’re grateful for the spirit of fencing. It’s more than just competition or physical activity. 

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Taking stock of where we’ve been this year is a normal part of life as the year turns. It’s as natural as making New Year’s resolutions. The problem is, we all know that those resolutions don’t usually get very far into the future, falling away by February. 

I propose an alternative, one that’s rooted in a growth mindset and that we can apply well to fencing. Rather than thinking about resolutions for you to change your fencing habits in the new year, instead take a realistic inventory of the last year. Looking back is sometimes the best way to look forward!

Finding opportunities is important

This is a great tool, even though it can be challenging to look at both the good and the bad over the last year. Our intuition is often to look ahead, to just barrel forward and get on with it. However, looking backwards slightly can let you see opportunities that you didn’t know were there. 

There are two ways to find opportunities by reflecting on the last year:

• Pivot from mistakes
• Build on successes

Both of these are happy and encouraging options. We’ve said this many times before – you can learn more from failure than you can from success. It’s much more challenging to look at our failures than it is to look at our successes. We cringe at the thought of the hard things that we did, the points when we did not live up to our expectations. 

The question we must always ask is this one – why didn’t we live up to those expectations? We have to remove the judgement from our reaction here, because that only leads to emotional turmoil. Failure doesn’t mean you are a bad fencer, it just means that you need to come at whatever that option is in a different way. Better tools mean better outcomes. 

As you go through the following five areas, look at your fencing through the lens of opportunity rather than failures and steps up rather than finished accomplishments. You can write these down in your fencing journal or put it all into a spreadsheet. 

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High school is a whole different world. It’s the bridge between childhood and adulthood, the moment when you are figuring out what direction you want to take and how you’ll become independent for the first time. The reality of high school is almost never what we imagine it will be, and the reality of fencing in high school has its own set of unique challenges and rewards. 

Whether you’re a competitive fencer looking for a college program, want to make it to international competitions, or want to simply enjoy fencing with your club as a teenager, you’ll find that fencing in high school will support your goals and your growth.  

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