How to separate yourself BEYOND talent (college recruiting)

Hey, team Alex here. Thanks for joining me. I'm excited to be talking to you about how to separate yourself, you or your son beyond talent. And if you're a parent watching this, please feel free to share this with your son or anybody that you feel might get value from this video here. This one is near and dear to my heart. I'm going to explain a little bit about this and might be the most important video that I've done up to this point about anything as far as recruiting process and just how to improve on and off the field. But if you're new to this channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division 1 college baseball coach, scout and recruiter and I'm excited to be sharing with you every week because I put out a video every week on how to get better on and off the field. So if you get anything from this video, please smash that like button that thumbs up here and subscribe to my channel because again, I put out a weekly video. So let's talk a little bit about just my story and my background and where I came from. And I went on and played college at the Division 1 level and had a successful career there. But in high school, as you can see, I had a long way to go. I had to improve my talent, I had to improve my skills. And when I say skill in this video, I mean talent. And when I mean when I say talent, I mean skills because I going to use those words interchangeably today in the video. But as you can see, I was a catcher and I was not very fast and never really became very fast. Strength definitely was not my strong suit and I improved. I had to improve in all these areas from my pop time to my arm velocity. And again, this is, this is catching. But I had again, a long way to go and I, I knew I had to improve my skill, I had to improve my talent because there is a baseline to play at the next level. Where I know most of us are trying to play at the next level. Who's watching this video. And we do have to have a certain skill level again to reach the college level. The college ranks. The good thing about it, there's all different skill sets at the next level. So there's Division 1, there's Division 2, there's Division 3, there's NAI and JUCO. And there's all different tiers of talent and skills that really can be met for a large number of high school kids that play in high school. But there can be helpful tools and things that you can be doing and choices you can be making to help yourself go beyond talent. Because I was never the most talented player on my team. Whether that was in high school, college, summer team, fall team, I was never and still to this day, the things that I do, that groups I get involved with, I'm never the most skilled. I just kind of know that about myself. But I can perform really, really good. I can perform really, really good without being the most talented player or person. As I'm older now because of a number of different reasons which we're going to go today, that's going to separate yourself beyond talent. So let's dive into the next slide here. And I want to make this point, just what separates success versus non success are the choices you make. Talent is not enough. So talent will only get you so far. I'm sure that you all probably know or have known people or athletes that are super talented at whatever they do, but they never really accomplish what you thought they were going to accomplish or maybe what they should have accomplished. So just imagine that you are a talented athlete and then you're able to make positive and smart choices going through this. The sky's the limit for you. Sky's the limit for you. So I love this quote, it's from Tony Robbins and it's, it's in the moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. And I put in parentheses choice. Because a decision is a choice. You're making a decision, you're making a choice. And I just love that because you can make a decision and it changes the trajectory of your life. And this can apply for anything in life, but of course the game of baseball as well. So what choices are we making? We should be asking ourselves on a daily basis. And the things that we're going to cover today in today's video are choices. You have the choice to do this. It does not require talent. Now if you choose to do these things, it's only going to improve your talent, enhance your talent and separate yourself beyond talent. So let's dive into that today. The first one that I want to cover that a lot of guys that you know play up above what their talent shows and again a little background I didn't really tell you much about me is I'm five seven, so I'm a, I'm a shorter guy and I made it to division one level. I was a three time captain which I was very fortunate about that was voted on my peers which means my players that, you know, my, the guys around my team voted me as captain. Three time captain in college I was actually a captain captain and it's my sophomore year and we're going to get into that maybe how I got to that level and got to that, you know, vote if you will and. But the first one I want to have talk about is self awareness and situational awareness. Are you aware of what you're doing? Are you aware of what you need to be improving on? Are you aware of the situations that you're putting yourself in or not putting yourself in? I don't mean this in a really a negative connotation as situational awareness, although it definitely applies to that. But are you putting yourself in situations that's going to help you, right? Are you going to certain events or conferences or trainings that's going to improve you or are you not? And then of course on the other side is are you putting yourself in situations that are going to hurt you and are you aware of it? Maybe you don't mean to or put yourself in a situation but you're situationally aware that you get yourself out the same thing again with self awareness. What are you doing to your body? How are you training? What are you doing? And again, understanding that where you need to improve the next thing is preparation and or practice. Okay? Proper preparation, okay? Will help you not have poor performance. Okay? Proper preparation is key to success. So what helped me get to the level that I got to at the Division one was my preparation, okay? Of course, self awareness and preparation based off my self awareness and practicing and being prepared for practice, being for games, being prepared for leadership moments when I could visualize myself where I needed to either speak up or at least display myself in a certain way. The next thing is discipline. Staying disciplined to my preparation, staying disciplined to my practice on a daily basis, weekly basis. You're not going to be perfect. I'm not perfect. I wasn't perfect. But I when I fell off or I missed a day, I got right back on it. This is where a lot of guys at the high school level do not one prepare enough and do not stay disciplined enough. They get distracted. Guys can get distracted too easily and focus is one of these points that I'm going to be covering here. It's coming up here. But focus is such an important quality today on top of your discipline that again will separate yourself beyond talent because again guys can get everybody I do can get distracted so easily. There's so many distractions in the world today, especially with the thing in our pocket, our cell phones. There's so many notifications that are coming on that if you can have a focus and if you can flip a switch and be locked in, whether that's at practice, in the classroom, what you're doing on your own and understanding a focus on internally, a focus externally, again, situationally, if you can do that, you are going to separate yourself way above and play up above your talent. That's what I was able to do. And a lot of guys that I've seen at the college level that quote unquote shouldn't have been there because they just didn't meet, but were able to compete and perform at a high level without having extraordinary talent. Is the focus, definitely. Okay, perseverance. So you can have these disciplines and focus and preparation, but you're going to run into difficulties. You're not going to succeed all the time. You're going to fail. You're going to fail at practice, you're going to have situations that you're not happy with yourself and you're going to again fail. But are you able to persevere? So, so you could have all these great qualities, focus, discipline and preparation. But if you hit a difficulty and you just quit, hey, you're not going to make it. You're not going to help yourself and go beyond talent. So you have to learn how to persevere through difficulties and keep moving forward, right? When you get knocked down, you get up and you keep going. If you can do that, you can stay consistent with all the things above and perfect. Persevere through the hard times. I guarantee you, you will be successful. Okay? You will be successful. No doubt about it. Make an adjustment. So if you can't. So this is the thing too. If you persevere, right? But you keep making the same mistakes and you keep getting up, man, God bless you. But you got to make adjustments, right? You got to make adjustments. You got to understand this goes back to self awareness. What is not working? Where do you need to improve? What is stagnant in the sense of it's not improving? Like maybe you keep striking out on a certain pitch or a curveball and you haven't really been working on a curveball. Well, you make that adjustment, you work on your curveball, right? Or you know, again, it could be a pitching situation, right? That you are, you're missing up and into a right handed pitcher. You're a right handed throw and you're missing up and in. Well, you're persevering. You keep getting out there and you keep fighting, but you keep making the same mistake. You're not making adjustment Right. You're flying open, you're not staying closed as you go through and down your lane to help you get out over that front leg to hit that away pitch there. So making adjustments as you go through this and then keep showing up as most successful. People that are, again, successful do all these things, but are not the most talented at what they do. There's, at whatever level you're at, there's always going to be somebody better than you, more talented, but that doesn't mean that you're not successful. But you keep showing up. You keep showing up every single day. You stay consistent with your work, you stay disciplined with your preparation and you, you analyze the situations, you're aware of what's going on so you can make adjustments and then when things get hard, you can prepare, persevere through that. And then of course, character and care for the team. So of course I'm talking about baseball here, but you can apply this to anything in life, whether you're young, you're middle aged or adult, all these things apply your character. What are your values? Do you care about the team? How's your leadership? Do you care about your teammates and helping them actually improve? And if there's somebody ahead of you that is playing? So I had an All American ahead of me when I got to Jacksonville University. He was unbelievable. He's super talented. He ended up getting hurt. And by the way, when I was sitting the bench, I was rooting for that guy because I cared about the team and people feed off of that. They realized that, hey, you know, you actually care for the team to win, because I truly did. I wanted my team to win and I wanted the best guy out there. So. And he was the best guy. There was no doubt about it now. And I had to work on all these things that we talked about to get to that ultimate. And as I mentioned, sophomore year, I became a captain and played and started. So it was, it's a journey. It's a journey to all of this. But having character with this and caring for actually your team or caring about what you're doing or whatever you're doing, whether it's on the field or off the field, what are you doing it for? And doing it for that reason, people can see that and people can be super passionate about that and want to help you. Right? Coaches will want to help you if you, you're truly genuine about wanting to win and help the team any way you can. So I hope there's something that you got from this. If you do again, smash that like button and subscribe. And please let. Let me know that if there's anything that you do that really helps you separate yourself beyond on talent, please let me know. Love to hear from you, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Have a good day. Take care. Bye.