Your decisions define you. I remember a time when I was on my first college jump rope team.

I was a very confident, very vocal jump rope jumper, and it showed. I was not, as I've come to learn, a particularly good friend. In fact, I was one of the most unruly jumper on that team. What happened is that I made friends. I befriended members of the opposing team, and their jump rope coaches.

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I saw that they were like me, and they were not like me. They were better in every way. They were more creative. They were more open to new experiences. Their lives were much more interesting. They were better people. The only thing that defined them was their jump rope game. It was so easy to pick them apart. That's what jump rope is all about: jump rope is the ultimate individual sport. You can get away with a lot of things on a jump rope team, but not getting away with getting away with something. At first the jump rope training teammate would play along with me, but eventually, he would realize that I was lying. Then he would get angry and say things like, "If you want to play on our team, come to practice."

Or I'd point out another jumper who I thought was the problem, and he would tell me about what the other jumper had done, how he had gotten away with it, that the other guy was too good to be on the team. That was when I realized that, if I wanted to be on the team, I had to make every decision like that. And as I made more and more of those decisions, I became a great friend. I still don't care much for jump rope, but I'm a great jump roper. This reminds me of a story told by David Lamda, who said, "If you can't only jump so much on one leg, you need them both.