Dena Tyson’s Blog: Solve This Riddle… What in Our Life Can Be Our “Greatest Helper or Heaviest Burden?” The Answer is Inside!

Dena Tyson is a former All-American at the University of Washington and today is a successful Corona Angels head coach at the 18U and 16U levels who has helped dozens of players develop and advance to the collegiate level to play softball.

In today’s blog, she doesn’t address the topic until after presenting a poem on the subject that asks the question: what can “place the world at your feet” or, if allowed, “destroy you.”

Dena is the daughter of legendary Corona Angels head coach Marty Tyson and competed at the University of Washington from 2002 to 2007.

She was part of Husky teams that made the Women’s College World Series three times (2003, ’04 and ’07) and as a senior for Washington in 2007 was a 1^st Team All-American and was a selection to the World Series All-Tournament Team.

Be sure to check out her previous blogs too including Being a Team Player, How to Deal With Failure, How to Deal With Riding the Bench, How to Pick the Right College, How to Balance Life as a Student Athlete, What Are The Qualities of an All-American?, To My Unverballed Seniors and It’s Not Just About You.

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This week is going to be a little different.

I am going to leave you with a nugget that I shared with my softball girls at our EM program.  We talk about the mental side of the game every Thursday and this was the riddle I gave them the first day.

See if you know what it is talking about without skipping to the bottom:

It’s about Habits and how we control them!

As a coach, I see so many girls still doing the same things they did last season: not hustling, making excuses, talking back to coaches, etc…

If left unchanged, these are the habits that will stay with you throughout your life!

What I want our young players to know is that your habits are bigger than softball.

Someday, when you are done playing this game, your work ethic isn’t going to change just because you get a job in the real world.

If you don’t mind your habits, you will continue to make excuses when things go wrong.  You won’t be able to control what comes out of your mouth when you need to, like when your boss is saying something important.

I will ask you the same question I asked my girls: which line in the poem hits home to you?

Mine is:

“Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me and I will destroy you.”

Until the last season of my career I was easy on my habits and it showed.  When I created a regimen and was mindful of my habits, they truly placed the world at my feet!

Think about your habits… are they helping or hindering you?

— Dena Tyson