According to fictional football coach and personal hero Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), a goldfish only has a memory of a few seconds. In Lasso’s opinion, the average goldfish can be found in freshwater, peacefully floating about with no concept of time, space or stress. The goldfish could have a near miss with a fishing hook and, moments later, fall back into bliss.

As a coach, Lasso uses this story as a tactic for players struggling with mental health issues. Lasso tells one of his players, Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh), “You know what the happiest animal on Earth is? It’s a goldfish. It’s got a 10-second memory. Be a goldfish.”

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Before the premiere of this episode in 2021, the concept of being a goldfish was one I was not familiar with. My life in sports has always consisted of overthinking — from obsessing about a missed shot or an unnecessary foul to endless debating on whether or not to continue playing competitive sports at all.

In my beginning years of attempted athleticism, I was told to just flush it: Clear your mind, look at the bigger picture, work harder and learn from your mistakes. Those sentiments were all meant as positive motivation, of course. But those words were simply scrambled letters in my brain, begging me to let it go when my instinct was to hold on.

That pent-up anxiety festering under my skin for a decade, combined with the realization that I am, in fact, a senior and the countdown to adulthood is live, I am proclaiming this year as my goldfish year. That doesn’t mean I’ll be swimming in the Los Angeles River or turning bright orange. It means that of the 39,998,160 minutes of our lives, one bad minute won’t impact my mental health more than it’s worth.

In sports, one minute of a game can make or break an entire season or even an entire franchise. For swimming or track, a hundredths of a second can take an individual out of the running for an Olympic medal. With stakes like these, how can you successfully become the goldfish we all dream of being?

The habits we build up surrounding our short-term memory are what make or break these moments. An athlete can practice for hours a day, work out until their muscles burst out of their skin and attain the best physical odds to win in their sport. But if something goes awry, that athlete is reduced to the moment of their mistake, not the lifetime of movement towards that goal.

However, if that athlete trains both their body and brain, one mistake will be reduced to just that — not a career-ending error.

This belief that athletics is as mental as it is physical is what inspired me to write this column. It’s an effort to destigmatize the misconception that athletes are all brawn, no brains because athletes need to construct mental and physical pillars to achieve greatness.

Being a goldfish doesn’t mean one should forget about everything they’ve done wrong, on or off the field, but rather, one should have the mental stability to learn from their mistakes instead of dwelling on them. Easier said than done.

Overachievers, like many of the students puttering around this very campus, may benefit from the goldfish mindset. Maybe it’s senioritis, or maybe I’m actually giving myself a break for once. A deep breath and some positive self-talk every once in a while shouldn’t hurt.

Despite being a self-proclaimed “old head” at the Daily Trojan, I want to embrace this goldfish concept. There’s something special about starting fresh — no pressure to perform, no previous season’s success hovering over you and the ability to surprise people with your skills. As I’ve gotten older — which is all relative because I admit I am still very young — I have discovered the novelty of starting anew.

I don’t want to let go of the feeling of a fresh start. This may be one of my last semesters writing for this newspaper, but it’s my rookie season of the goldfish era.

Dana Hammerstrom is a senior writing about the mental health of collegiate athletes, as well as the emotional pressures they face, in her column “Heart to Heart,” which runs every other Friday.