AAGS 2021

35 So how am I going to survive here? Well, what would I be able to do that the other players won’t be able to do? What is going to set me apart from the rest of the players, for the coach to play you, for the GM to pick me and give me a contract? I identified that this is consistency, this being ready every day was something that was difficult to do, not all the players were able to do. Everybody is able to play a good game. Everybody is able to have a good month, everybody is able to have a good year when you arrive to play the NBA, everybody starts. So eventually everything aligns and you have this great game or this great month or this great season, but I quickly identified that the guys that do that consistently: game after game, season after season, year after year, there were not that many. It was because it was hard to do. I found there that there was an opportunity. There was an opportunity for me to be that person or to try to be that person. That could be something that separates me from the rest. That could be the value that I could provide to the coach or the team, for them to pick me. Quickly after that, I realized why people were not doing this. It’s not fun. It’s not comforting. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of discipline; it takes a lot of not doing a whole bunch of things that are fun. I talked tomyself at that time and I figured you have to find a way to feel comfortable in these uncomfortable things. It’s not going to be fun. It’s not going to be pretty. It’s not going to be easy. If you don’t like it, it’s going to be a problem. And at the end of the day, I think for basketball players, and I believe this could be very similar to many sports games. The people who feel comfortable in this uncomfortable zone, those are the ones to get to the best places. How do you manage emotions when you compete? Eaton: Honestly, when things are going really well, I don’t try to manage them. I love this contrast because I’m learning from Luis, obviously, basketball and track and field are quite different. And when Luis was talking about being ready every day, I was thinking, man, that’s just a totally different mental approach. For me personally, in track and field, it’s kind of like you have the exact date and time four years from now, where do you need to be your absolute best. And just preparing for that moment is interesting. Then once you get there and you do have success, I feel like your four years or however long it’s taken you to get there, the preparation and the work, kind of come out. I remember in Rio, every good attempt that I had, I was screaming at the top of my lungs. Those kinds of energies inspire me, inspire the fans, and inspire my next performances. When things are going good, it’s like you celebrate it. And then you kind of get back to work. The problem in track and field is when things are going bad. I remember in 2011, it was before the Olympic games in 2012, but it was one of my very first major competitions at the world championships. I was having horrible performances. One after the other. Decathlon’s ten events and I think I had like eight terrible ones and I just kept going down this really bad mental wormhole. It’d be a bad performance. And I would get down on myself, then be a bad performance. I get down on myself thinking I cannot recover from this. And what’s interesting is that I actually ended up getting silver in that competition. What I learned was it’s not as bad as it seems, you make it way worse. So, to try to learn to refocus, to try to learn to come back after something challenging is one of those tools, that in my opinion, is only done by going through that situation. You can read about it in a textbook, you can have somebody tell you when you have a negative performance or when you’re feeling terrible and you’re down on yourself and you’re just not quite on par. You have to do these things to get back to it, but I don’t think you can actually do that without going through those things over again.