The Day I Learned to Stop Rushing My Dreams

There I was, lying on the gym floor with a bloody lip, looking up at my coach Cheryl who had just caught me red-handed. "Did you just try it?" she asked, and I straight up lied. "Nope," I said, as if my bloody lip wasn't a dead giveaway that I had absolutely just attempted that back handspring she specifically told me not to try alone.

That was me in a nutshell – a fearless, persistent, obsessed-with-getting-it-right daredevil who wanted to be the best immediately. I looked at the higher level gymnasts and knew deep inside that I could do what they were doing. The problem? I wanted it all right now.

But then I met Coach Miguel, and everything changed. He looked at me one day and said, "Angela, you're going to be a star." And you know what? I believed him. He gave me confidence I didn't even know I was missing and made me feel like I belonged on that higher level team.

When I told him I wanted to learn a Tsukahara vault – a big, intimidating round-off into a backflip – I expected him to let me just go for it. Instead, he gave me drills. One for takeoffs, one for rotation, one for landing. For weeks, I did them over and over again, feeling like I wasn't making any real progress.

Then one day, out of nowhere, he looked at me and said, "You're ready." I didn't feel ready. I hadn't even put all the pieces together. But when I went to do the vault, it all clicked. I landed it on the first try.

In that moment, I finally understood: Sometimes when you're rushing towards a goal, it feels like you're not making progress. But if you trust the process and focus on building the foundations through those little steps, when the moment comes, you'll literally be ready.

This lesson doesn't just apply to gymnastics – it applies to everything. We all want things to happen now. We want to master new skills immediately, be at the finish line before we've even started training, get results without going through the process. But what if rushing actually slowed us down? What if the fastest way to reach our goals was to break things into pieces, gain confidence, and master each step?

That's exactly how I train women to do their first pull-up now. You don't just jump on the bar and hope for the best. You build the strength, the technique, and the confidence piece by piece. And then one day, you literally pull yourself up and realize you were ready all along.

The gym became my reset button – the one place I felt in control, the one place I found my flow. And even now, whenever life feels overwhelming, whenever I feel stuck, whenever I catch myself rushing, I go back to that lesson I learned in gymnastics: take a breath, break it into steps, trust the process, and trust that the moment will come.

Find your Coach Miguel. Surround yourself with people who see something in you even before you do. Create that reset space where you can pause and remember your power. And most importantly, stop rushing the process. The best results come when you take the time to build a strong foundation.

Your moment is coming. You got this.