Emotions of a Whirlwind

December has been an absolute whirlwind.

We have had our highest frequency of games with a game basically every 3 days.

9 games in December even with the “break” for Christmas.

Add in my in-laws visiting us/Europe in general for the first time, there has been very little down time.

It really has been go, go, go the whole month.

I don’t think I realized how much its taken a toll on me until I had my first quiet moment today in what feels like a few weeks.

Lots of emotions to reflect on and ideas to unpack from this hectic month…

Let’s get into it.

Why I Do This:

This week’s “why I do this” section is a little different. I’m not going to comment on each message, but instead I’ll just share 3-4 from the Atypical community that fanned my motivational fire.

This is impact.

This is what I want from this.

Thoughts From This Week

Frustration as Fuel

Your journey will have inevitable moments of struggle and difficulty that will lead to frustration.

I had one of these exact moments after our game against Manresa. During this game, I had multiple plays that were just slightly incorrect or mistimed and it led to a poor performance. The frustrating part was I felt like I didn’t play “bad”, but instead just barely missed simple things. For me, often times “close” is more frustrating than just downright “bad”.

When things go awry and not our way, it is completely normal to get frustrated.

Frustration is not a negative emotion. All emotions can have a time, place, and use if we allow them to.

Personally, I have never believed in the idea of telling a person or player to not feel an emotion.

The more we try to suppress certain emotions, the more they will unconsciously manifest in other areas of our lives.

All emotions deserve their time and space to process and then eventually dissipate.

Strong emotions such as frustration can be very powerful.

Frustration if harnessed can spur us to action, to change, and be a huge source of motivation.

Is it lasting? No. Can it still serve a purpose? You bet.

Frustration is there for a reason.

Identify what it is trying to grow in yourself especially in moments where we feel stuck or stagnant.

This is exactly what I did after the Manresa game.

Okay, this Manresa game was more so the final straw of frustration because I had already been frustrated with my performance during the whole Basketball Champions League. I knew I had more to give and a higher level of performance.

I channeled all this built up frustration into not just the last game of our Basketball Champions League, but the whole week leading up to it.

I did not allow myself to cut one corner.

I turned the frustration into a relentless focus on the process.

It does not always happen this way, but this added focus materialized immediately into my performance with a career night in the last game of the Basketball Champions League.

I am someone who really feels emotions and can often get caught up in them.

So for me, frustration is an incredible weapon but not in the exact moment I am experiencing it.

It’s best reflected on not in the heat of the moment. When I am in the middle of my frustration, it is incredibly hard for me to harness it into something productive.

Not everyone is like me, you’ve probably heard of a player or played with a person that plays better angry.

If that’s you, then go right on ahead and use that shit to dominate.

If it consumes you a bit too much, then still use it, but maybe at a later time when you have some space.

What I am trying to get at is this:

Stop labeling emotions as “good” or “bad”, but instead reflect on how they can serve you.

Maturity is allowing yourself to feel fully, but in a way that prioritizes your development as a human.

Study your frustration until you can harness it as fuel.

How To Have Motivation

It would be incredible if every single day I could wake up feeling motivated and driven.

Life simply does not work like that.

Those super successful people you look up to do not have some extra motivation that you do not.

The difference is that they have mastered the art of still having a “good” day or “good” game even when they feel like trash.

Are you capable of making the choice to get it done despite how you feel?

I have a super simple trick that helps me when I am struggling with motivation.

I start to search with an intention to become motivated.

Motivation can be found in the simplest of things, actions, ideas, people, literally anything.

The pure act of searching with intention always leads to some sort of end finding.

The decision to search ends up being the decision to “be motivated”.

I turn my “motivation” into a choice, a straightforward decision on the energy I will live my life with.

There is an unlimited well of energy inside of us.

What dictates the ebbs and flows of that energy is how much we choose to release, to show and to share.

Choose the maximum. Choose your best. Choose to be motivated.

Sometimes it’s harder than others to find that motivation. My game against Povoa before the Christmas break was a great example of this scenario. Christmas break was right around the corner, we were heavy favorites, and the road trip was terrible.

But, as a pro, when the circumstances does not promote motivation, it is your job to be proactive in cultivating an environment that does.

An example of cultivating a motivational environment looks like this:

I know that when I get on social media too early in my day that my motivation and inspiration is zapped. When my energy feels off, my simple change is to leave my phone plugged in next to my bed until I’m ready to leave the house.

This physically separates me from something that takes my energy.

Doing this gives me more space and time to gather my energy and my thoughts without outside noise disrupting the process.

Identify what zaps your energy and how to lessen its impact.

Search for something to trigger your inspiration with the intention that anything can serve that purpose.

These two actions are tricks to hack your motivation and ultimately tricks to be consistent.

Atypical Principle #8

Get Back Up

In this vlog, I take you on a my last road trip of 2024 up to the north of Portugal to a town called Povoa.

What started as a game day lacking motivation, ended with a bloody trip to the hospital and a wild story.

The principle that I want to leave you with is this:

Unexpected, bad shit is going to happen, and it sucks.

But, guess what?

This stuff cannot be the end of the road.

You have so much more to give and to offer.

You owe it to yourself to bounce back, probLem solve, and be there for the people that need you and that you care about.

Being Atypical is not about who you are when life is easy, but rather who you are when life gets messy and downright shitty.

I won’t stop fighting for the life I want, the people I care about, and the impact I want to have on this world.

I hope that inspires you to do the same.

I’ll Leave You With This:

People love sports because it mirrors the human experience.

The drama, the competition, and the emotion keeps us glued to our seats as fans or addicted to our craft as athletes.

We need to be okay feeling these emotions and understanding that it is all part of the beauty of things.

Don’t run from emotion, run towards it.

Embrace it, harness it, and allow it to move you to life changing action.

The Atypical Life is full of emotion yet directed by self-reflection.

You can choose this life if you are willing to fully feel, and fully investigate what you are feeling.

Love you guys…

Trey