Positive Thinking: Try, Try and Try Again
The Manager, The magazine of the League Managers Association, Issue 4
When illness hit, Anna Hemmings was told her professional sporting career was over. But instead of giving up, she came back stronger.
Its a well-worn phrase in team-building and self-help sessions the world over – you can achieve anything if you want it badly enough. While in practice the link between achievement and self-belief isn’t always so clear cut, some cases highlight brilliantly the power of positive thinking and gritty determination.
When Britain’s leading female marathon canoeist, Anna Hemmings, started to suffer from extreme tiredness, her doctors and coaches put it down to overtraining. Their orders to rest and turn her back on her sporting career went in one ear and out of the other.
Hemmings, fiercely competitive and entirely committed to excelling in her sport, refused to accept that she wouldn’t get better. “I never give up on anything,” she says, “I hadn’t finished my career yet and I wanted to do so on my terms.”
Hemmings was eventually diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, an illness about which little was, and still is, known. “I was told to rest and wait while the doctors searched for a solution,” she recalls. “I found it very difficult, mentally, to have no end in sight for such a long time.”
The whole period was the most challenging thing Hemmings has ever experienced, but while she admits there were dark times, she never gave up hope. The remedy finally came in the form of Reverse Therapy, which teaches sufferers how to eliminate their symptoms by understanding what those symptoms are telling them and then acting on it.
“It isn’t a treatment where you simply take medication,” explains Hemmings. “You have to really believe in and embrace it fully, which I did. If I hadn’t, it may not have worked for me.” After her recovery, she not only regained her fitness but, in 2005, her world champion status. She went on to defend her title the following two years, totting up a total of six gold medals in her career and confirming her status as Britain’s most successful ever female canoeist.
“I value that success even more now and I realise how privileged I was to be a professional athlete,” she says. “I still set myself tough goals at every step. But now, if I don’t win a race, I know that if I gave it my all and bettered myself I can be satisfied with that.”
According to Hemmings, the whole experience has made her a stronger and more balanced person. “I used to be quite consumed by sport, but I now understand how important it is to have a balance in your life and to keep things in perspective.”
It also made her realise how valuable it can be to have the right people around you. “You need people you can turn to for help,” she says. “I was never very good at that before, but now I understand there’s no weakness in asking for help or admitting you can’t do something on your own.”
The overarching messages of Hemmings’ story are of the power of tenacity and self-belief, but also that if you can’t get there on your own, support from your team is invaluable. “While you might not succeed at first, you can’t give up. If you want something badly enough, you’ll find a way.”
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