When I was a child, my father once told me: “To win a competition you need ingenuity, but what is more important than that , it’s courage. » I just believed what he said that day. One day something changed me and made me believe that I should have been more careful with his words. I always thought that lack of ingenuity led to failure until I was assigned to a karate competition in Thailand. I realized that ingenuity was not enough. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In 2017, I was assigned to a competition in Bangkok, Thailand, in which athletes from many nations participated. Southeast Asia. I didn't want to attend the competition because I didn't have the will to show myself and my strength for the competition. I hated and was afraid of being stared at by so many people around me, especially during competitions. Even though I had spent two years training and was criticized for the mistakes I made during the training session, I never had the courage to win a karate competition. My only goals were good health and self-defense. My Sensei kept asking me to participate in the competition and I asked him why. He replied, “You may think that years of training seems to be enough for you, but that’s not why you know how to use it. Moreover, you may know the battle tactics I taught you, but you haven't had the courage to act yet, that's why I think this is your opportunity to not only show your abilities , but also to become more fearless in combat. I decided to do as I was told. I couldn't sleep properly at night before the end because I was imagining how things would be when I competed. It was like going to war empty-handed. My father gave me his advice about fear and how he would reward me if I came home with a medal. He thought I felt motivated when I felt depressed. After a long bus trip, I arrived in Thailand a few days before the competition with my Cambodian team. We therefore had a few days of preparation and consultation with our Coaches. I noticed that I was the strangest young man on my team. During the exercise with my teammates, they seemed well trained and absolutely tenacious. They performed very well when training all together, so they were simply blamed by their instructors. Plus, they had experienced a lot of national competition, so the rest of the team seemed confident, except me. I was the only one who got blamed extremely often. One of my coaches told me: “You are not compatible with this type of competition. You're just a scared idiot. You need to open your eyes and see other athletes on your team as examples. They're not like you. What are you so afraid of? It was so frustrating to spend years training and get scarred just by hearing those words that I almost quit that competition, but he wasn't wrong, so I had to admit it. . These athletes were so professional because they had won a few medals in their previous competitions, which allowed them to perform well without hesitation. So I was not up to the task not only for the competition, but also for my own teammate because I had never won a medal before and it was also my first time participating in an international competition. After a few days of warming up, the competition started but I was not.