Life doesn’t always send a memo before teaching you something. Sometimes, it just drops a small moment in your day—one that doesn’t look like much and quietly changes how you see everything.
For me, that moment showed up on a Sunday evening when I was in 8th grade.
It started simple. Just me, my friend, and a guy from abroad kicking a football around. Three players. One goalpost. Nothing serious.
And then... he did it.
A rainbow flick
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| New guy doing Rainbow flick 🌈 |
I stopped mid-run, watching him like he’d just bent the laws of physics. Up until that second, I believed things like that were reserved for “grown-up” players—the tall, strong, 10th-grade legends who somehow unlocked secret football powers after puberty.
But this guy? Same age. Same height. Same air in his lungs. And he just... did it.
I asked him how. He shrugged and said he’d learned it in football class back home. Then he casually showed off a few other tricks before heading off, leaving me with a brain full of confusion and curiosity.
That night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The next day after school, I went straight to YouTube and searched, “how to do a rainbow flick.”
There it was—a tutorial from a kid about my age, explaining every step. No secret power. No “only for older kids” disclaimer.
I didn’t even have a football, so I grabbed a basketball instead. And I started.
Day one and two—I just tried to trap the ball between my heel and toe, lifting it again and again for like 25 minutes a day. It looked ridiculous. But I kept at it.
By midweek, something changed. The ball began to lift higher. By Saturday, it actually worked. And when I finally got my hands on a real football, the flick felt smooth—like it had always been waiting inside me to be found.
That week taught me something I didn’t expect.
The barrier between “I can’t” and “I can” isn’t real. It’s just a polite way of saying, “I’ve never actually tried hard enough.”
Turns out, limits aren’t out there in the world. They’re in here—little stories we quietly tell ourselves to stay comfortable.
I used to think growth was about waiting for the right time, the right talent, or the right version of me. But that week showed me it’s really just about effort—uncomfortable, repetitive, slightly ridiculous effort (practice).
So if there’s something sitting in the corner of your mind with a label that says “not yet” or “not for me,” here’s the thing: it probably is for you.
You just haven’t started trying yet.
Because once you do, you realize something simple but life-changing:
Most of the walls holding us back were never real.
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