Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Curtis Scott. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Curtis , appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I believe my resilience, in my personal life and in my career, stems from various sources and experiences throughout my life. Resilience is not something you learn or acquire and are set with it for life. Resilience is an on-going battle with your own mind and the external environment around you and the internal struggles as well.
Personally, the journey into gaining resilience is a constant and ever changing process but comes down to a few key things.
Realization and Acceptance: Before you can tackle adversity in front of you, no matter the level or degree to which the adversity is, you must realize and accept the struggle or challenge in front of you. When something tests your resilience, you shouldn’t just “muscle your way through it” or downplay the fact that you are faced with a challenge. You must first acknowledge the resistance, accept the resistance, and then you can be free to face it.
Courage and Boldness: Once you have realized and accepted the test to your resilience there comes a point where you are faced with a decision. The common “fight or flight”. When you are faced with adversity, whether mentally or physically, in your career or personal life, you must make the conscious decision to face it head on. This will take courage, because many obstacles in life elicit fear, self-doubt, and angst within us. You must be willing to set your ego aside and face the fear and tackle the obstacle either way. You must be willing to risk embarrassment, failure, or harm to conquer the fear within you, and the obstacle in front of you. A practice that I began incorporating into my life was to face each uncomfortable situation or seemingly insurmountable task with boldness. You must have the courage to take the first step and then must have the boldness to take the next step with confidence ferocity.
I learned these ways to gain resilience through my parents first and foremost. Them allowing me to step into uncertain situations, take risks, and be open to failure and loss allowed me to gain exposure to these situations and built my confidence and experience in dealing with them.
Most importantly, I learned how to gain resilience and the practice of gaining resilience through taking risks, facing my fears, and exposing myself to uncertain or uncomfortable situations. Whether it be applying for a job I may not believe I’m 100% qualified for, putting my reputation on the line as a leader, or even doing the dirty work and swallowing my pride and doing the hard and necessary things I learn and grow from each of these situations and harden my shell of resiliency.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Over the past few years as I’ve been learning, growing, and serving in my career field I have worked at a few places with some amazing mentors.
I began my journey at Willis Performance Training under Coach Armond Willis and Evan Strader in Marietta, GA. I served as an intern there assisting in personal training and group sport performance training for a range of athletes. I then went on to become the head strength and conditioning coach at X3 Sports, an MMA, Fitness, and Strength and Conditioning Gym in Athens, GA where I oversaw the strength and conditioning program, coached classes, and personally trained general population, tactical athletes, and MMA fighters. I then went back to my hometown to work as an assistant sport performance coach and personal trainer at Willis Performance Training again, until I moved down to Statesboro, GA to complete my degree at Georgia Southern University.
While at Georgia Southern, I volunteered for the Georgia Southern Football Strength and Conditioning Staff as an S&C Coach for the off-season training. I finished the volunteer internship and now have began a small business called “Southern Sport Performance” where I personally train the middle and high school and collegiate in and around Statesboro, GA. On top of that I was hired to become the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Southeast Bulloch HS Basketball.
Currently, I am gearing up to begin my position at Southeast Bulloch HS and continuing to grow by business serving the local athletes as their personal sport performance coach. On top of that, I am containing my education and holding business talks with multiple training equipment company CEO’s to sell the designs to a training harness I have designed, manufactured, and prototyped.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I believe the most important qualities of my profession and in my journey would be: Hard worker, resilient, compassionate, energetic, and motivating.
I believe the most important skills for my profession and that I work on in my journey are: Ability to effectively communicate and create genuine connections with those I work with. Leadership and selflessness. The ability to handle high stress and highly active work environments.
The areas of knowledge needed for my profession and things I am always tryin to learn and grasp more about are: fundamental training principles, effective communication, organization, anatomy and physiology (a full and in depth understanding of the entire human body), creativity, self-awareness, and team/system building skills.
My advice for those starting out their journey in the coaching career would be to seek quality mentors, have a lifelong learner mentality, and do whatever it takes to gain hands on, practical experience.
Having a close mentor who cares about your as a person and a professional will help guide you in your career and life. To be able to have the mentors I’ve had has helped me tremendously with simple life advice, coaching experience and wisdom, and the opportunities to learn, fail, grow, and succeed under someone who has skin in the game.
Being a lifelong learner is absolutely essential in my career. If you aren’t constantly reading, discussing, and testing different methodologies, philosophies, and practices as coaches you will be stuck in the mud and left behind by those who do. You must constantly expand your field of vision and test the knowledge and truths you have learned.
Lastly, practical experience is paramount. All the hard and soft skills of being a coach are great to know in your head and look really good on paper, but nothing builds your ability to effectively lead and coach groups of people like actually leading and coaching people. You have to be able to test your confidence, your skills, and your abilities to learn where your strengths and weaknesses are and grow your comfort in positions of authority.
Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
I am an absolute firm believer in identifying your weaknesses and strengthening them. It is very important in any facet of life to use your strengths to your advantage, after all if you don’t use your strengths you will nearly certainly always fail. However, we can never rest on our strengths and never challenge or attempt to grow in our weakest areas. Your strengths will get you by, but acquiring new skills and strengths will put you ahead. I constantly try to analyze and gain feedback or open my eyes to the weaknesses I may have in my personal and professional life. When I identify those weaknesses I must make the sometimes difficult and uncomfortable decision to expose and attack those weaknesses. Whether it is through reading and learning, practicing, or exposing those weaknesses we must find them and eliminate them to truly evolve towards a point of mastery in our lives. If we only focus on our strengths and use them we never grow, and never become the best versions of ourselves, which in turn negatively affect not only our lives, but the lives of those we serve.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @curtis.scottt
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtis-scott-816124160/
- Twitter: @curtisscott1017
