You Are Allowed to Want More

Don’t be greedy.

Let someone else have a turn.

The other team has been better all year.

You’ve had too much success.

Neutrals who had supported Brisbane for the past three years were saying these things to me this week.

And it hurt.

Because for something to trigger us, it has to threaten something deeper. Our sense of safety. Our sense of identity. And, for us tribal creatures, our sense of belonging.

So there I was yesterday, head in my hands, tears in my eyes, surrounded by 100,023 people, desperately wanting those boys to do something that, deep down, I’m not sure I believed we deserved.

Four months ago, I got a tattoo.

The word BELIEVE, the Story Bridge and a lion.

It’s there to remind me to believe in myself. To believe that I am resilient, talented and strong enough to achieve what I am here to achieve.

Yesterday, those boys gave me one more reason to believe.

I hope they had the same effect on you.

At a Grand Final brunch, Marcus Ashcroft — father of Will and Levi, members of this almighty team — spoke about how proud he is of his boys for things that have nothing to do with being good footballers.

He is proud that they are dignified in defeat and humble in success.

And he said he hoped, at the end of the game, they would be humble…. We all cheered

Some might argue the Lions weren’t particularly humble yesterday.

They were showy. They celebrated hard. Maybe they were insensitive to Fremantle. Maybe they were overly excited for a team that, in those final four minutes, seemed to scrape through on sheer luck.

And perhaps there is some truth in that.

But you can be happy and humble.

You can be wildly excited and deeply sympathetic.

You can work incredibly hard and get lucky.

Those things can exist together.

Because humility isn’t making yourself small.

You can be grateful without believing you’re undeserving.

You can celebrate your own joy without diminishing someone else’s disappointment.

And you can acknowledge luck without denying all the work, resilience and belief that brought you close enough for luck to matter.

Reflecting this week on the possibility of a three-peat, I realised something about myself that had very little to do with football.

Deep down, I didn’t think I deserved it.

I didn’t think I was kind enough, worthy enough, good enough to experience that much ecstasy in one lifetime.

To be there to witness a three-peat — not once, but twice in my lifetime.

With my dad and my cousin beside me both times.

How lucky could one person possibly be?

Turns out those boys wanted to prove me wrong.

And it turns out the football team I love so much has taught me, once again, something about the type of human I want to be.

Kind.

Humble.

Resilient.

A human who defies conditioning.

Who defies limiting beliefs.

Who defies society’s desire to put us in boxes.

Who defies the ego’s command to play small.

Who understands that wanting something extraordinary doesn’t make you greedy.

That humility doesn’t require you to make yourself smaller so somebody else can feel bigger.

And that being grateful for everything you already have doesn’t mean you have to stop wanting, striving or believing in what might still be possible.

So I’m making a conscious decision to back myself, meet life with everything I have, take the luck when it comes…

and follow the call of destiny.

Believe.