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On 5 continents. (Dave Brandt)

And I want to say something that might be uncomfortable.

The athletes coming up right now are not weaker than the ones I coached 20 years ago.

They are more overwhelmed.

There is a difference.

And this week everything I read. Everything I watched. Everything I studied.

👉 Kept pointing me back to that one distinction.

Let's get into it.

I want to be honest.

I picked this book up expecting to agree with everything in it.

I am a mental performance coach.

Anxiety in athletes is something I deal with every single week.

But chapter 3 hit me differently than I expected.

📱 THIS IS NOT WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS ABOUT

Haidt is not just making the argument that phones are bad for teenagers.

He is making a more specific argument than that.

He is saying that an entire generation has been raised without the experiences that build resilience.

Unsupervised play.

Boredom.

The kind of low stakes failure that teaches you how to get back up.

And in its place?

A phone.

Always there.

Always stimulating.

Always filling the gap before the discomfort can do its job.

And I keep thinking about what I see on the field.

The 15 year old who cannot stay present between pitches.

The 16 year old whose first instinct after an error is to look for a reaction.

The 17 year old who is brilliant in practice and somewhere else entirely when it matters.

💥 I used to put that entirely on mental preparation.

Reading Haidt I am starting to wonder if it starts way before they ever step on a field.

If what I am seeing on Saturday afternoon.

Is the result of a nervous system that has never been given the space to just sit with itself.

That is not a character flaw.

That is an environment problem.

And I do not have a clean answer for it yet.

But it is changing how I see the athletes in front of me.

I did not know much about Judit Polgár before I watched this.

I knew the name.

I knew she was considered one of the greatest chess players of all time.

What I did not know was how much of her career she spent being told what she could not do.

♟️ SHE DIDN'T ARGUE WITH THEM

The chess world had already decided where the ceiling was for female players.

It was not a conversation.

It was just accepted.

And what got me watching this documentary was not the wins.

It was what she did with the doubt.

She did not campaign against it.

She did not wait for the environment to change.

👉 She just prepared.

Every day.

Move after move.

Year after year.

And let her results make the argument.

I find that more useful than anything I could say in a locker room.

Because the athletes I worry about most right now are not the ones who lack talent.

They are the ones waiting for something outside themselves to change before they commit to the work.

Waiting for the coach to believe in them more.

Waiting for the opportunity to feel right.

Waiting for permission.

⚡ Judit Polgár did not wait for any of that.

She just showed up.

And when she finally sat across from Kasparov.

The greatest player in the world.

Someone who had publicly doubted her.

She competed with everything she had.

Not perfectly.

But completely.

👉 That is the only answer I know to a world full of people who have already decided what you cannot do.

Not words.

Not arguments.

Just showing up prepared.

Every single time.

This is not an easy book to sit with.

It is dense.

It is detailed.

Most people stop reading the Bible somewhere around here.

📖 But something caught me this week that I cannot shake.

The instructions in Leviticus are not asking the Israelites how they feel.

They are not asking them to get inspired first.

They are not waiting for the right moment.

God is telling them —

Here is what you do.

Here is how you show up.

Here is the standard.

Now do it.

⚡ Whether you feel like it or not.

And what strikes me about that.

Is how countercultural it is right now.

Because everything in the world these athletes are growing up in is feeling based.

If it feels good share it.

If it feels hard avoid it.

If it does not feel right wait until it does.

And Leviticus is saying the complete opposite.

You do not wait until you feel ready.

🔑 You show up.

And showing up is what gets you ready.

I keep thinking about how many athletes I have coached who were waiting to feel confident before they committed to the preparation.

When it actually works the other way around.

You commit to the preparation.

And the confidence follows.

A talent development program for the Austrian National Pathway.

Players 12 to 18.

🇦🇹 I have been working on this for a while.

And sitting down to write it this week.

I keep coming back to the same question.

What do you build for a generation that Haidt says is drowning in noise and anxiety?

What does a development program actually need to give a 14 year old athlete right now?

Not just technically.

Not just physically.

But as a human being who is growing up in the loudest most distracting environment in history.

And I keep coming back to what I saw in Judit Polgár.

And what I read in Leviticus.

👉 You give them somewhere to show up to.

A standard that does not move.

A program that does not care how they feel that day.

That just asks them to come prepared.

Do the work.

And trust the process.

That is what I am trying to build.

Not a highlight factory.

⚡ A place where 12 to 18 year olds learn what it actually feels like to show up for something.

Consistently.

Over time.

Regardless of how loud everything else gets.

Haidt says an entire generation is anxious.

Not because they are weak.

Because the environment they grew up in never gave them the space to find out how strong they actually are.

Judit Polgár found out.

Not because someone believed in her.

📖 Because she showed up anyway.

Leviticus does not ask the Israelites how they feel about the work.

It just tells them to do it.

And I am sitting here writing a development curriculum.

For young athletes in Austria.

Who deserve exactly that.

👉 Not more inspiration.

Not more noise.

Just a place to show up to.

A standard to reach for.

And the space to find out what they are actually made of.

⚡ The world is not getting quieter.

But an athlete who knows how to show up.

Regardless of the noise.

Is not waiting for it to.

Stay with it. ⚾

If this hit — share it with one coach or parent who needs it this week. ⚾