The Ripple Effect Of Uplifting Others

My first love started with hate from all sides.

"There might be better kinds of sports out there for you. Maybe."

"You're too short."

"Your career will be over after the under 19 league. Enjoy it while it lasts."

Many things brought me joy as a child and teenager growing up. Be it reading, stories, video games, and traveling. But nothing even came close to American Football.

The love erupted when I put on shoulder pads and a helmet for the first time. That was at the age of 14, when I was playing for the u19-team of my local club.

But it wasn't easy beginnings. Because of the…noble girth of my body at the time, I was put on the offensive line. Yet playing at 14 years old against 19-year-olds, especially at such a physique-heavy position, was like putting David against Goliath without a slingshot, the help of god nor plot armor.

I didn't see the field in my first year in the u19 league. In my second year, that all changed. Against all odds, I was the starting center, and I loved it.

But it wouldn't last.

I was always undersized, even at the u19-level. Playing in the adult class – for the so called First Team – would be, no pun intended, a whole different ball game. People around me started saying that I would maybe become an okay-ish backup. Probably, though, I'd never see the field.

During my second-to-last year in the u19, the hate had reached its peak. Yet my coach at the time believed in me.

"You will have to change positions away from the line, but you will become a great linebacker", he assured me.

Because of this statement, I gave playing for the First Team a try.

Fatal mistake.

The club fumbled with the choice of the new head coach. Saying he didn't believe in me would be saying the Falcons didn't blow a lead in you-know-what-game. To make things worse, the team was full of toxic players. On paper, we didn't have bad personnel, but we just weren't a team.

I never told anyone this, but I almost quit after my first season playing for the first team. All the magic and wonder the game had were gone after joining the "real team". To make things worse, the final decision if I'd see the field or not wasn't my own. If the coach didn't like me, as it was the case with the coach during my first year in the adult class, I was bound to warm the bench.

But then fate and luck decided to high five each other.

The next year, after everybody had written off our team and all the toxic team members had left, the coach that won us the European championship two years prior came back and took over the team.

From the first meeting with him onward, I knew it was going to be different. He was the second person who told me I could play for this team as a starter. The vision of how he would use me as a player lit an inferno of hope and motivation in me.

I renewed my weight room subscription and trained at least six days a week. I was hellbent on controlling the one variable I could: my effort.

The results showed when practice officially started: I had lost about 15 kilograms of fat and gained a lot of muscle and strength.

When I saw the depth chart for our first game, I knew the transformation was completed: I went from overweight backup on the defensive line to starting middle linebacker.

Playing against the Wroclaw Panthers in their home stadium (yours truly wore the jersey number four). Source: Wroclaw Panthers

Only because two people believed in me. In other words, they lifted me up to break limits that never existed in the first place.

That alone deserves a standing ovation for these two coaches. But what happened next was truly extraordinary:

Because of their belief in me, I also started lifting up my teammates.

And then, the most miraculous thing became reality: our team started to uplift each other.

From a team everybody thought was doomed to lose every single game and go down a league, we became the Swiss champions.

But my experience of negativity during my short tenure as an American Football player is not even the tip of the iceberg. The tendency of other people to push somebody else down isn't reserved for athletics. It can be found in any endeavor. We don't conquer each other anymore (in most cases), yet kicking each other on the way down seems to be a human tendency that transcends the ages.

Yet one enabler of human flourishing is found in the complete opposite behavior: uplifting someone else.

Uplifting others has a ripple effect. The greatest force in the universe might not be interest after all, but being good to a fellow human being. Think about it! If I uplift someone, this person may go home with a jolly attitude, which then will spill over to their family members. Then their family members go out to meet some friends, and because they were touched by the good vibes, they spread them throughout their friend group.

"Maybe", the doubters will retaliate, "but there's no guarantee this will happen!"

There's also no guarantee I'm going to wake up alive tomorrow. But I'm going to take my chances on that one.

The world has enough bullies and doubters. Make uplifting others your default. Do for your fellow human beings what my two coaches did for me: help them break the limits others set for them and make them unleash their potential. For some, you will make their day. For others, you might even make their month. Yet there are people out there where this spark of positivity will change the trajectory of their entire life into a positive direction. Then, they will uplift others, until the ripple effect reaches escape velocity. Then there's no limit to what we can accomplish together. Just like when the dream of a 14-year-old came true, proving all the doubters wrong, because two people had the heart to believe in him.