Do you ever feel a little bit like a duck, where on the surface, you're cool, calm, and collected, just floating across the water? And underneath, what you don't want people to see, is that you're actually really struggling? ‍For a long time, I thought that success meant perfection. I thought that successful people looked like the ones I saw on billboards and posters - smiling, winning and achieving. I thought that if I was struggling, that I clearly wasn't going the right way. So I hid my struggles, pushed them down and just kept swimming.

Parents with teenage athletes - this one is for you! I sat down with my mum Leone, and we discussed the challenges raising my brother and I, both elite athletes, when we were at high school. Here's what she said!

Warning: Very emotional story to follow. I thought hard about sharing this. It’s a subject that is very personal to me, and I’m shit scared that other people are reading this. But if it can help others going through any type of pain, then it’s worth it. Pain. Pain is a funny word. Pain is something that generally we all try to avoid. We find ways to ease the pain, to soften it, to pad it with something. We find distractions to take us away from the moment of pain so we don’t have to feel the full impact. I thought I was pretty good at dealing with pain, being an athlete and all. We learn how to push through. Our coach’s favourite saying is “be comfortable with being uncomfortable”. We run harder, we don’t make excuses, we walk it off when we get hit with a hockey ball. I thought I had a high pain threshold, until 2013 came and hit me like a freight train.

It’s funny how I wrote the topic for this blog idea quite a while before I actually sat down and wrote it, where at this moment, I’m sitting here literally having launched a support programme called 'All About Balance' to help high performing young women at high school BALANCE their sport, life and school. *Note: Read to the end to learn more about my 6 week e-course for high school girls that I've launched and I am currently taking applications for, or if you don't want to keep reading, click here to learn more and apply! (If I were you, I'd keep reading!)

I went on a leadership retreat in October last year. One conversations really stuck with me, which made me make a huge life change. They asked us, “what have you been putting off because you’re scared, or nervous, or think you’re not ready for?” I’d like to think I’m a go-getter, that I constantly challenge and push myself. So I was surprised when I started writing a list of things that I had been putting off because I thought that I wasn’t ready, that I needed to get more experience, that I wasn’t good enough etc.

I thought this topic is quite timely to talk about, because at the time of writing this, I am mentally and physically recovering from a 6-2 loss to USA who we play again today. Pressure is something that we all experience, in every aspect of our lives. The intensity of the pressure depends on how invested you are in what it is you are doing, how important you think it is, how much you care, and how much you deeply want something.

WHY? It’s a question that I think it completely undervalued, and it is a question that I try to ask myself on a regular basis.