Since school started back up, we’ve had several meetings for softball where we introduced different staff members, planned our semester, and just got everything in order for the year. One of those meetings was with our amazing strength coach in our weight room to discuss our goals for the year and shed a little light on why we do what we do for weight lifting. My strength coach always has a metaphor or phrase ready for different things in the weight room, and one of those phrases really stuck with me at this meeting. He started with conflict and asked us if we thought the word conflict was positive or negative. Of course, we thought of it as negative. Well, that was the wrong answer.

My coach talked about how we should look at conflict as something we can learn from. “Without conflict, there is no change. Without change, there is no adaptation. Without adaptation, there is no improvement.” He then explained that we are constantly working to get better, so why not look at conflict as a domino effect that gets us there? Allow conflict to bring change. Allow those changes to help us adapt. By learning to adapt, we get better.

I don’t know about you, but I never recognized the lines between conflict, change, adaptation, and improvement. I know I’ve touched on the concept of looking at difficult things as life lessons before, but the way he broke it down really helped me understand the ins and outs of this concept. By sharing this different perspective, I hope it helps you all gain a better understanding as well.