99.8% of athletes don't make it professionally

Hey, how you doing? Alex here. Thanks for joining me. And I didn't make today's video to discourage you from dreaming big or dreaming to play in the mlb. In fact, I think it's very important for you to dream big. And I wouldn't have made it where I made it if I didn't dream big in high school. But I also think it's very important to kind of detach yourself from the situation, in our case, the game of baseball or whatever. Maybe you play a different sport, any game, detach yourself from it and take a bird's eye view of like, all that's going on. And this will actually help you. This should help you not be so stressed out about your statistics, your metrics, your recruiting process, because we can be almost so consumed with that stuff in our performance that we get wrapped up in it and we play poorly because of it, rather than, hey, it's a lot bigger than the game of baseball or in any sport that you're playing. There's so much more to it than that. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that. What I do for a living is help high school athletes go through this process and help them reach the college ranks and continue to play as long as they possibly can. But also what I do for a living and what, frankly, I get more gratitude from is again, helping high school athletes realize that it's much more than the game of baseball. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today. So hopefully you get something from this video. And if you do, please smash that like, button that thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out a weekly video on the recruiting process and how to just get better on and off the field. All right, let's get into it. So many high school athletes, and I was one of these high school athletes can be so hyper focused on the game of baseball and again, can be focused on your statistics, your metrics, the recruiting process, that it's really hindering your performance and you're focused on the wrong things and focusing on other things that might not be so obvious can really help your performance. And it's not just high school athletes either, it's parents too, that can be pushing athletes as well to this. But again, zooming out and seeing the big picture of, hey, it's more than just this game and understanding you're not going to play this game forever. Nobody does. And for 99.8% of us, it's going to be definitely after college or most of us. I think it's around 92% of after high school. Okay, and what should we be focusing on and what does this game offer that it gives you an opportunity to really build as a person that's going to help you be successful in life because you're going to have such a longer life after baseball, whether you play, whether you play in college or professionally. The life expectancy of a professional athlete, by the way, is two years. Okay? So the small percentage, very, very, very, very, very small percentage of athletes that do make it professionally, and this is minor leagues, by the way, is a two year life expectancy. Okay? So you might have heard me say this on my channel before, but it's not a four year plan from a college standpoint and it's a 40 year plan because again, all you're going to become a professional in something, right? You're going to become a professional and this is your career in something and what the game can give you if you allow it to and if you focus on it is going to help you succeed in life. Like in, on your, in your profession and at home with eventually your family, hopefully, if you decide to have a family. So what are some of these things? What are some of these things? The first one is that this game gives you and most sports give you, is character building. Again, if you allow it to, right? If you can pay attention to what baseball does, how is it building your character? Are you paying attention to your character and are you building your character as a teammate and etc. From there? Your values and principles as an athlete, as a student athlete to be, make you into the person that you ultimately want to be. Right? The next thing is failure building, right? The game of baseball is we are pros at failing, especially hitters and even pitchers and infielders with the errors and the walks and the era. We fail a lot and if we're not good at failure, we're not good from learning from failure. We're not going to last very long or it's going to be a bad situation on the team and you're not going to really propel yourself to the next level because again, if you can fail fast and fail forward of like when you do fail and have a positive attitude towards it, of letting it motivate you rather than pulling it down and you know, the athlete that throws their helmet and punches the wall, breaks their hand and all of this stuff, you know, that's the stuff that you want to stay away from. And again, you can, I understand, you can get upset and you don't Want to fail. But this game is failure in life, right? You're gonna make a lot of mix. You make mistakes now, whether you like it or not. I make mistakes all the time that I'm trying to learn from and I'm trying to build and that I failed and I'm trying to get better. Well, that's the game of baseball and what it can bring to you. The next one is team building. Working together as a team to a common goal, a championship. And playing, playing together, helping your teammates out and going through this, being coachable. Whether you like your coach or not, it's important that you learn how to work with a coach that you might not like to, because I hate to break it to you. And you're going to come across a lot of people that you don't like, that you need to learn how to navigate that situation and learn how to deal with certain personalities. Again, you don't have to surround yourself with all these, all the people. And there's always going to be one or two guys on your team that you just don't like. There was always one or two guys on my team that I just didn't like. But hey, I'm going to put the team in front of them whether I like them or not. And again, go for the goal, doing what's right for the team on and off the field. So being a college athlete, being a high school athlete, being peer pressured into situations again, more off the field that, hey, this is not a good situation. This can screw a lot of things up for me and for the team. You put the team ahead of you. So being a team, being a team leader, being a team builder and putting again, the team in front of you is huge. And you learn this in the game of baseball and you learn this in all the sports. But you can carry this over into your life. When you work for a business or you create your own business and you have employees, this is huge. Being a team person again, a team builder and a team leader. And speaking of leadership, as you go into high school, whether you're a junior or senior, you're naturally going to go into that leadership role whether you're a captain or not, or whether you realize it or not, or whether you like it or not, you are a leader, especially to freshmen and sophomore. When you become a senior, they're looking up to you because they have no idea. They're deer in the headlights. Like, I'm in high school right now. I'm just trying to figure this stuff out. I'm on this Team, team. These guys are really good. It's kind of the same thing in college as well, but high school definitely, because there's so much stimulation, there's so much things going on. But they're looking to the seniors of like what to be done and you need to mold yourself. Those, those years of being that character and values and principles, putting the team first, learning how to fail, that is leadership. And leadership doesn't mean rah rah. It's leading by example. Stuff that you know, how you carry yourself, how you conduct yourself on and off the field goes such a long way in leadership and getting respect, frankly. Alright, we got two more. The next one is relationship building. This is huge. Especially after baseball and getting into your career, having relationships and having networks. Well, you build relationships on the team or you should be building relationships on the team. I mean, I have literally like, it's, I call it a brotherhood. Guys that I played with in college that I still talk to, that I go to weddings, I'm going to a wedding this weekend. I mean it's just all these things that we went through in college, not only for the game, but again, all of those experiences in the team environment and we looked after each other, we got in arguments maybe at times and things like that. But again, we put the team ahead of ourselves. There's so many beautiful things that come from this sport and this game in relationships is a huge one. All these are big, but relationships that you can carry the rest of your life, that you can call a friend if you need something or checking on people and having kids. I'm at that stage where a lot of my buddies are having kids, I have kids. And it's a beautiful thing getting together and seeing our kids kind of grow up together. So the relationship side of it, building relationships and learning how to mold those relationships is a beautiful thing and something that you can work on. And lastly, the experiences that you get, this is the stuff that you're going to remember. Yes, you're going to remember some things on the field, but you're going to remember more things off the field. Like I remember more of the locker room, the talk, the banter, all the things that we did off the field to get together, the bus drives, you know, and having fun on the bus rides and doing wild things that maybe sometimes we shouldn't have been doing. All right. But again, it's that experience that we loved and that, that brought that relationship together and the life skills as well. From those experiences of dealing with all these things, of all the character building the failure, building the leadership, building the team, building. All of these things can just mold you into a person. If you're working on it and you're aware of it, guys, this is the whole point of it, being aware. Detaching yourself as you notice that I'm not talking anything about statistics or metrics or your physicality or anything like that. This stuff is so important. And then if you're focused on, you work on these things, right? You're building all of these. I've just said building. After each one of these, you're building, you're working on that. And if you work on that, I promise you, you're gonna become a better athlete. You're gonna be able to focus on more of the important stuff. That's gonna kind of relax you a little bit because I'm here to tell you too, nobody's gonna remember what you hit. Nobody's your batting average. Nobody's gonna remember your era. Nobody's gonna remember any of that stuff that I can't even tell you what I hit. In college, frankly, I know I was very average, but I couldn't. Somebody asked you, like, what was your batting average? I couldn't tell you. I really couldn't. I can't even remember it. Nobody else is going to remember it, but more people are going to remember. For who you are, that is super, super important. How you carried yourself, how you were as a leader, etc. From there. So focus on these things, guys, and I promise you, you're going to get better on the field and you're going to have a better perspective than most high school athletes. I hope you enjoyed this video. Please smash that, like, button. Subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.