I stood there, shaking. I was staring at what looked like an impossible task, I felt as if I was staring at my downfall, staring at my most hated event; the pommel horse. As an all-around competitive gymnast, I was supposed to be good at all 6 events, however, I wasn’t. As I stood there watching some of the other competitors, all I could think and feel was that I wouldn’t be able to do what they are doing and that I was already going to fail. In my mind I only thought and why shouldn’t I, it’s my worst event. “It’s okay if I don’t do well” I kept trying to convince myself that I should follow that. However, this was SEASAC. One of Asia’s biggest gymnastics events of the year and as much as I tried to convince myself otherwise, I needed to do well. Two days of competition: one focused on individual scores, and the other on the team scores. By participating in countless events over the years, I became fairly confident in competing. However, the pommel horse was the one I dreaded the most. Unlike my other events, I never enjoyed competing on the pommel horse. I hated it in training, let alone in competition. It came as no surprise that on day one I failed on the pommel and achieved my worst score.…show more content… I was embarrassed that I had made fool of myself in front of everyone. I couldn’t let them see that. I pretended to walk it off as if it didn’t mean anything to me. That’s when my coach pulled me over. He said, “Matthew I’m disappointed in you”. I didn’t want to do that. “I could tell that you were already going to fail on the pommel horse just by the way you approached it”. Initially confused, I went back home and thought it through. I realized that I had approached the pommel horse in a negative close-minded way and that that would need to change. With a negative outlook, there was no way I would’ve been able to compete to the best of my
