Who believes in you?

Sometimes you just need someone to believe in you.

Let’s take the example of George. George just finished kindergarten and is hoping to swim across the pool all by himself like the big kids. But George sinks (mostly because George forgets to kick). Every day, George comes to swim practice and works with Coach AJ. Coach AJ tells him he knows he can do it, George is not so confident. AJ consistently reminds him about using his big arms, putting his face down, and most of all kicking so he doesn’t sink.

This isn’t from a children’s book, this is the experience of one of the little swimmers that my son has been coaching for the nast few weeks in preparation for the summer swim league, and this is the picture that George’s mom sent me on the night before his first swim meet. They had been talking about what needed to happen for George to be successful and George drew this picture to remind himself. He could’ve chosen all sorts of details in his picture, but he chose to draw Coach AJ (including his curly hair).

Let this picture be a reminder that you never know what you’re small active encouragement means to someone else. Sometimes we just need someone else to believe in us so we can believe in ourselves.