Insecure.

That’s the best word to characterize the adolescent years, including young athletes, based on my 50-plus years of experience working with youth. (Please don’t do the age math on that.) Poetically phrased, insecurity is the essence of adolescence.

A few of the general sources of anxiety young people have shared with me over the years include the experience of getting older, the ensuing loss of childhood, and the terror of approaching adulthood.

Kids entering middle school express being intimidated by the older kids in the building, perceiving them as being in their late teens or early 20s. Trying to figure out how to be a teenager and their bodily changes are other shared challenges.

High school freshmen and sophomores are burdened with feeling immature and undersized. They also struggle with trying to figure out how to appear older and more mature. Juniors and seniors are saddled with the college application process and the realization that high school will soon be ending and that they’ll be leaving home for their post-secondary education.

Adding to all that anxiety-fueled insecurity for teen athletes is the worry about tryouts, playing time, and the future of their sports career hanging in the air.

College is next, as they enter a new world minus family and friends at their side. It’s off to strangers in a strange land. Ninety-four percent of high school athletes face the end of their sports careers as they enter college.

Entering the adult world, post-college has its own daunting, terrifying challenges, as we can all relate to from our own experience,

Insecurity about all that stuff is perfectly normal and goes hand-in-hand with the human growth process. It’s how young people respond to the thoughts and feelings accompanying their insecurity that will ultimately determine effective or ineffective living.

A Common Adolescent Response to Insecurity

Kids do what they believe will impress, grab attention, and get them aligned with the cool kids. Instead, they become scripted by other people and fail to discover and follow their own unique life path.

John Waldron, the president of Goldman-Sachs, described such behavior as “the peacock phenomenon” during an interview I conducted with him a few years ago. He agreed that all people doing that (not just the young) are insecure.

Thirsting to rid themselves of unpleasant thoughts and feelings of insecurity, many young people seek to feel better by following and clinging to peers. They thoughtlessly and carelessly do anything to gain inclusion to allay yucky feelings. It’s what acceptance and commitment training (ACT) calls experiential avoidance—doing things just to avoid intense, displeasing emotion.

Here are examples of such adolescent behavior:

• Kids vaping, drinking, or smoking marijuana just to fit in with a peer group.
• Teen athletes bullying teammates and others—what teens call “rage-baiting”— just to get a laugh and gain the approval and acceptance of the cool, arrogant member of the team; then drinking up a storm at team parties for the same purpose.
• College kids who do anything in the sorority or fraternity “rush” process. They gain relief by the acquisition of “sisters” and “brothers” as security blankets, engaging in endless partying and other typical frat and sorority craziness.

These kinds of middle school, high school, and college kids act like sheep, following the herd. They end up doing things that deliver short-term relief from anxiety. They go down a path that isn’t their own and can lead to self-destruction, like getting high, drinking, and other harmful activities.

How Successful People Responded

Those who turned out to be successful weren’t sheep. They sought to be the GOAT (Greatest of All Time). They were a bit insecure in their youth, according to them, but rarely compromised themselves in the need for security. They were too busy following their own path in pursuit of what was important to them.

Examples of successful people I observed and was blessed to know as they were growing up include John Waldron, Tom Modly, the former Secretary of the United States Navy, John Bell, the frontman for the iconic rock band Widespread Panic, and a plethora of others. They weren’t attention-seekers.

At the time, I ascribed their quiet demeanor to shyness. I was completely wrong. They were too busy following their own path and doing what was truly meaningful to them. They weren’t obsessed with trying to fit in with peers and couldn’t have cared less about that.

Moral of the Story

“Do not go where the path may lead, go where there is no path and leave a trail,” American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson advised. Stop seeking security by aimlessly following others and create your own life trail. Set your sights on what you want to achieve and set goals detailing the action steps you’ll take to climb to the mountaintop you seek.

Instead of being a sheep, try being a GOAT. Sheep just follow the herd, losing their individuality with a herd mentality. GOATs climb mountains, blazing their own unique trail en route to the top.

That’s a metaphoric phrase I created and has evolved into its current phraseology with the thoughtful input of young performers. It’s something that has strongly resonated with athletes and other people of all ages, empowering significant perspective and behavioral changes.

Give it a shot, young people, and be a GOAT in athletics or anything else you strive for.