Angelina Melnikova wrote a post on her Instagram, talking about how transformative this year has been for her. She has been struggling with injuries and nerves throughout the whole year and received lost of criticism from the fans and the team management about it. Nevertheless, she felt like 2017 ended up on a positive note for her because she learned many things about herself:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BdFgopfH4G5/?hl=en&taken-by=gelyamelnikova
“So, this year is ending and I, as many people, draw conclusions. This year ended up not the most successful in my career. But it’s possible to still take something good from it. It’s a huge experience for me, just enormous. I’ve been in so many situations during this year that I haven’t been in during my whole athletic life. I felt such internal changes and upheavals of my worldview, that it’s possible without hesitation to call it “upside down”. I realized how important is your mental state and how it affects your physical state. I realized how important sleep is because I experienced huge problems and couldn’t train, my body was getting tired fast and was not recovering because I wasn’t sleeping at night, and I felt it. I realized how important is to eat so that there would be enough energy to train! You have to keep track many things and do them correctly. Because I’ve changed. Turned out it’s not so simple. And I was depressed and wanted to cry, just because, very often. I was persuaded that everything was bad because I often heard from the people around me that I’ve changed, I’m not developing, I’m staying in one place, and all this got stuck in my head and I was always afraid to do anything, I was afraid to hear these words again, but then I started dividing things into “necessary” and “unnecessary” and did the same with people. I started getting everything out of my head, got free and the only things that stayed in my head were I and WHAT I NEED. For the first time, I experienced what it means when things are hard, really hard, and psychology, not physics was to blame for it. I realized that I can control my mind and myself and if I really want something, it’ll happen. The most important thing is not to be afraid of anything. 2-3 years ago everything was simpler, I was just doing my job in any condition. It was easy for me and I didn’t think about any problems. But it’s all changed now. And my path to everything written above lasted a whole year. It took me 3-4 months to process and all these months I was lost and only later realized what I really needed. I learned a huge number of lessons this year. Thank you 2017.”
Photo: Russian Federation fo Artistic Gymnastics
