What does cheerleading have to do with your success?  Well before I tell you let me take you back for a moment.  If you have read my blog for any length of time, you are well aware of the love and pride I have for my daughters.    As a parent and a father I try so hard to instill in my girls all the learnings I have gathered over the years – in the sincere hopes that they may avoid some of the pitfalls of my past through me.  This is sage advice about becomeing successful that I learned and have offered to you and my clients over the years – find someone that has successfully traveled the path you want to travel and learn from them, either directly or indirectly.

But as a parent I am ever concerned about just how deeply the life lessons I am sharing are being absorbed, until I read this essay my daughter wrote a couple years back.  I want to share it with for a couple reasons.

1. It embodies everything I believe will make her (and YOU) successful in whatever path or goal she (or you) chooses
2. Because while I have been trying to teach her, she taught me and in turn I would like to pass some of her sage wisdom on to you.

Oh and did I mention she was only 12 when she wrote this?
Read and enjoy as you learn just what Cheerleading has to do with your success in life, your success in business and yes even your success in your relationships.

Think Successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s Top Motivated Coaches & Author of Success Atlas Programs

The following is by Shandi’rae Brinkmann

Glitz. Glitter. Glam. That’s the part you see, the show we put on. What you don’t see is what we go through to put that two minute and thirty second performance onto that stage. The long, hard, grueling practices, going over the routine what seems like millions of times. The bumps and bruises received while trying to perfect every stunt. There is a lot more to competitive cheerleading than meets the eye, but in the end, all of that is worth it. To me, the worst part is the feeling of doubt and the nervousness that fill your head right before you step onto the enormous stage, under the lights and the pressure of perfection feeling like the world on your shoulders.

“You’ve done this before, calm down, you will do fine,” I keep telling myself that, but somehow it doesn’t seem to help. There are three teams in front of us still waiting to perform, that means we have about eight minutes before we go on.

“Girls,” Coach Christina calls to us, “Come over here, we need to say our prayer” I gather my thoughts and linger over to where Coach Christina and the rest of the team had formed a circle. Christina begins, “Dear lord, please take all of these unneeded nerves away from my girls, and help them do their best and remain safe on the stage tonight. Lord, help us hit all of our stunts and stick all of our tumbling, and most of all have fun!” in unison the team says, “Amen.”

I return to the team line up, breathing deeply, and going over all the counts in my head.

“Chill, you’re going to psych yourself out if you don’t calm down. We have done this how many times at practice? We got this, you have nothing to worry about,” Justin reassures me.

“Ugh, I know, I know, I’m just extremely nervous. I mean, look out there, there are so many people, and the it’s so loud it feels like my heart beat is actually beginning to get in sync with the beat of the music. I can feel the pounding bass drum in my stomach, almost like butterflies, but worse, oh so much worse,” I ramble on about all the things that I really shouldn’t be thinking about.

“Just breathe, we got this girl” Justin says as we hear them call the next team to the stage. This meant I only had about five minutes to get myself together. I could tell I wasn’t the only one nervous, for fear seemed to be struck across many of the athlete’s faces awaiting their turn on the stage. All of a sudden bells, horns, and loud cheers filled the auditorium, as a team ran back through the streamers, returning backstage after their performance. This made things even worse. I kept thinking about how good they must have done to receive a reaction like that; we couldn’t possibly be able match up. With the worries of failure consuming my thoughts the fact that we were next had become like a fan blowing in an empty room, quite and unnoticed, that was until the announcer loudly and quite obnoxiously said “Please welcome to the stage Aero Dynamic Elite All-Stars!” Reality hit me like a bolder falling from a cliff I seemed to have lost my breath as nerves over took me. Our fate relied on the moments about to occur, who knew that two minutes and thirty seconds could be so important.

The fog machine comes on and as I step out through the streamers onto the stage suddenly nothing else exist, it’s just me and my team. All the fear and anxiety disappear. As I make sure I’m in the right spot I smile at Justin before lowering my head standing set and waiting the music.

“There is nothing to worry about, I belong here,” I thought to myself seconds before the music started.

“Five, six, seven, eight!” the team yells simultaneously to assure we start on the same count. One, two three, four, I grab Justin’s wrists setting for a basket, using all of my strength; I throw Alyssa into the air. The basket is perfection, without time to take in what was happening I move to the corner and have to do a round-off into four back handsprings, and sticking a perfect landing. So far so good, moving on to the stunt I begin to count out loud again to make sure my group on time. Set one, two, dip three, four, and on five six Sarah is in the air hitting a perfect scale. Finishing the stunt we cradle, set out and move to our cheer formation. We all flash a cute smile to the crowd and begin yelling the rhyming words of our cheer to the rhythm of the music. Squeezing every muscle in my body with each motion, trying to be as sharp as possible, I finish the cheer and move to the second stunt. My bases are set, but something seems wrong… they were facing the wrong way! Trying to fix the situation as quickly as possible and trying to avoid unwanted attention being drawn to their mistake, I grab Sarah’s shoulders and position her the correct way. Thankfully, Lexi and Whitney followed my lead, but I hadn’t done it quickly enough, we end up setting a half a count late. I regained control of the stunt to be sure to cradle and set out on the right count.

“Now comes the hardest part,” I thought to myself.

Arriving at my spot for the pyramid, I knelt down and securely grabbed Lexi’s ankle. Neither one of my bases were necessarily strong, so I knew I had to do most of the work. We dip, and using every ounce of energy in me, I push up on Lexi’s leg and drove the stunt to a full extension.

“Yes!” we hit that part, “stay tight Lexi,” I scream right before we dip for the cradle into flat back. Sure enough, Lexi doesn’t stay tight enough and I had to push myself twice as hard to reload her into a scale.

“Please, Briana and Whitney, come through for me and try to get this stunt to hit” I thought to myself as we dipped for the reload. Hitting it almost perfectly, the largest smile my lips were capable of appeared on my face. We cradled and set out, then moved to our positions for the jumps, my favorite. I hit a high-V with a wide grin still on my face, and then swing my arms beginning my double toe touch. Turning to the side I began to do the hurdler jump into a pike jump. As my feet return to the ground, I turn to the crowd and wink right before going into a standing double back handspring step out onto knee. Landing in perfect correspondence with Meagan and Justin, we all stand and begin the dance. Every muscle in my body ached, but that didn’t matter, I had to push myself to stay tight and finish perfectly. We finally reach the last eight counts and I smiled in relief as I grabbed onto Meagan’s arm and hit the ending pose.

The thunderous sound of clapping and cheering filled the area as we ran off stage. I honestly couldn’t believe what had just happened. Once we returned backstage, we went over to the television to watch our play back. While viewing it, I tried to find every mistake or out of place step that they could have deducted points for. I was pretty pleased with our performance. As the video finished we all started looking at each other and all at once started jumping around, screaming and hugging each other.

“I’m so proud of you! You girls did amazing out there!” Coach Christina says, “Now, let’s go see your parents.”

As we ran around the edge of the stage, the patiently waiting family and friends come into view; I ran straight to my mom. I end up with her arms around me, and she has tears streaming down her face. I look up at her not understanding why she is crying.

“Mom, what wrong?” I asked.

“If you only knew how proud of you I am right now, you did so amazing up there! Your dad is waiting right there, you should go talk to him” she ends her sentence with a reassuring smile. As I turn to find my dad, there he is standing right behind me with a white rose clasped in his out stretched hand.  As I take the rose joy seemed to fill every part of me. Just receiving that single rose meant the world to me, it reminded me that everything I went through, and everything my team went through, was well worth it.

Before I had gotten onto the stage, I didn’t believe that I could accomplish the task that lied ahead front of me.  I was so terrified of failure that I almost gave up my dreams and passion for cheerleading all together. Going out there on that stage and proving to everyone, and more importantly to myself that I could do it meant an indescribable amount to me. At that point it didn’t matter what place we got, or how big our trophy was, because in our mind giving it everything we had, was enough to make us feel as if we had become the grand champions.