The first time I grabbed the rim of a basketball hoop was one of my proudest moments in the 17 years of

life I have lived. It was in the summer of 2020. I stayed home playing video games with friends or going
out to play basketball for hours every single day. I was having fun, but I had a feeling that I was missing
something important, it felt like I wasn't doing anything that would help me become better. Then one
day when I went to play basketball with my friends, one of them was trying to jump as high as they
could and grab the rim. After watching him try many times and fail, I tried to do it myself. We tried
repeatedly until our legs couldn't bear to jump another time. I was starting to get frustrated and
decided it was time to go home, but on the walk back to my house all I could think about was how
impossible it seemed to be able to grab the rim at my height and how cool it would be if I was able to do
it. I wanted to prove myself right and show myself that I was capable of doing things I could only imagine
doing. I wanted to see for myself if it really was possible. So, I decided to research how to exercise to
jump higher. At first, I was intimidated with the amount of videos and knowledge that was being
presented to me but after hours of researching, watching, and reading things about slow twitch muscles,
fast twitch muscles, tendons and more. I realized that I had no clue how to research things properly and
how to take away key points from articles and videos. This forced me to learn ways to help myself
understand and take notes on the important parts of articles and videos. I taught myself how to create
an effective and realistic training schedule, how to keep track of what you're eating and its importance
to my body and recovery. I realized that this was something I liked to do, and I was passionate about it. I
followed the training schedule and meal prep for around 2 months consistently. For those first 2 months
I saw absolutely no progress and thought I was wasting my time. However, I didn't stop. What I also
realized was that I wasn't very good at managing my time in order to do these things. I was playing video
games until late and waking up in the afternoon to play basketball, then come back home to do it all
over again. I realized that this was holding me back both physically and mentally from the goal I was
trying to pursue. So, I cleared all my distractions and decided to return to work. After a couple of weeks,
I went back to play basketball with my friends except for this time, I was able to grab the rim. After I
realized what I did I was jumping up and down from joy. Not from the joy of grabbing the rim infront of
my friends or because its really cool to grab the rim but because of the fact that I showed my self I was
able to do something that I didn't really believe could be done. The lessons I learned from this summer
and the journey I took to be able to grab the rim still help me out to this day. I used the same strategies
and methods I used to not get distracted and manage my time well to set goals and accomplish them. A
recent example is that I went from being excited that I could grab the rim, to consistently being able to
dunk a basketball.