You thought that quitting swim team would improve your mental health, but you still put pressure on yourself for everything in life. Despite not having the same pressures as before to succeed, you’re as stressed and worn out and critical of yourself as ever. But now that you’ve lost the external pressures to take action and perform at your best—you feel trashed, and you throw yourself pity parties for the lack of effort. 

Swimming… you despise it. The only reason you want to swim again is to excel at something—anything again. However, your motivation to swim turned into a one track mind where your only purpose was to win heat after heat, race after race, and meet after meet. You let swim hold up your entire identity, so that after you quit, your identity crumbled away. Who are you even? Without being the girl that’s good at swim, that is. 

Now, I know you can ignore your mental health, go back to swim, and practice strenuously every day in hopes of performing at your highest standards. I know you can, and you know you can. We both know you can do it. I know, you have the mental and physical capacity. And I know you want to accomplish everything you’ve imagined in this world. I know you can if you want to. You know you can if you want to. I know you can, and you know you can. 

But you don’t have to prove to yourself that you’re a capable individual through swimming accomplishments. Your life doesn’t need to revolve around swim, and your identity should not come from your ability to win. You’re good at swimming, but if you don’t like the sport, quitting was the right decision. Don’t look back on it, don’t regret it, and don’t go back. 

So why is your mental health just as bad? You thought you could escape those thoughts of worthlessness by quitting swim—but oh no, that mindset stays. The constant criticism and whispers of worthlessness stay even when you’re not at swim. Why won’t they disappear? That mindset carries. It carries and creeps into other parts of your life, and thoughts of worthlessness haunt you—originally from swim, now haunt you in your day-to-day life. Your toxic mentality doesn’t go away with swim, and the longer you ignore it, the longer you carry the baggage of self-hatred and worthlessness with you. 

Stop mentally drowning yourself. It’s an overdose of poison and hatred. Stop over-thinking every single thing you do. It drains you. Stop judging yourself for every decision you make. It’s unrealistic; you can’t expect perfection. Stop critiquing yourself for living your life. It’s not your job to tear you down. 

You’ve heard advice like this, that you need to improve your mental health in order to achieve success. You’ve already heard countless stories similar to this, stories where people claim that shifting their motivations to follow internal desires of happiness is the key to their success. You think they’re all just stupid stories. Because prioritizing mental health means healing the poison wretched deep within your soul, and you’re not ready for that yet. You cringe. You don’t want to hear it again. You don’t want to believe the lies with the fairytale ending. You don’t want to change, to put in the effort, and shift to a positive mentality… but why stay the same? 

If at the end of the day, after your entire life, you’ve seen all that you’ve built and accomplished—and all of it was just to prove yourself you could, to prove everyone else you could, all from external pressure, all from a place of insecurity and pain and fear and negativity that you could do things they never imagined; if all that you built came from a place of self-lack—how do you feel about that? Really. Compare it to doing things in your life that you enjoy:positive things, little moments of joy that bring you happiness. Nothing happens if you don’t want to change. You can stay the same—if you don’t take the time or effort to change. You make your own decisions. You make your own choices. You make your own life. Just understand that, no matter what, you will never be perfect—so accept your imperfections. And they’re not imperfections, they’re just characteristics that make you shine more. 

Because you are enough, just the way you are. No matter the time, the place, your feelings, or decisions; just as yourself, you are enough. Because self-acceptance is the only way to combat that feeling of worthlessness and despair, not comparison. You have worth, so just let your worth shine upon the world. You don’t have to chase after trophies and medals to prove your worth—just accept yourself. And create the love.