NYT recently ran an article about a golf pro with a growing history of faltering at the very end, letting tournament after tournament slip away from his grasp. The paradox is that sometimes, the more we try to avoid an outcome, the more our anxiety tends to attract to the very thing we fear. Quicksand makes a great analogy: the harder you struggle, the more stuck you get (see below for proper escape techniques).
The answer? Simple! Release!
However, simple is not always the same as easy. Any sports psychologist will tell you that the key is to exist in the present moment and ONLY in the present moment. Yea, great, so how do I do that? Practice! Mental discipline! Self-awareness! Meditation is a terrific way to train and calm the mind as is journalling. My sport is racquetball, and I think of it as a moving meditation: when I walk on to that court, I leave the outside world behind. It took me years to get there and it wasn’t easy in the beginning to keep the wild dogs of worry at bay but now it is automatic. And if the other player got lucky (admittedly playing a bit of a mind game on myself however, I refuse to concede skill advantage as that is not generally a path to a winning place) and has scored more points than me, well, I have multiple responses:
1) I give myself permission to release the score and just focus on hitting the ball as hard as I possibly can (this works a significant percentage of the time).
2) Again, I release winning (the final outcome in the future) and stay in the moment; my ONLY goal, my sole focus, is to win the current point. Do that often enough and I achieve the desired final outcome.
3) Even if the odds are 100 to one against me, why not me, why not today?
I am responsible to a large number of fellow Team Members and tens of thousands of Customers to which we have made a meaningful brand promise, along with commitments to multiple other stakeholders. I care deeply about delivering quality and excellence and while we are ever improving, we have yet (surprise!) to hit perfection i.e. daily I fail. I learned a LONG time ago that to function, I had to learn to care constructively; I had to calibrate my caring, pace my passion in order to continue to persevere and perform at my long term best.
Release. Release. Release. Then Renew and Restart. Repeat. Ever higher, ever forward, onward and upward.
Closing Quotes:
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James, 1842-1910
“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.” – Kahlil Gibran, 1883–1931
“Stress is not what happens to us. It’s our perception of what happens to us. Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.” – Wayne Dyer, 1940-2015, Real Magic
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
CALM: How to escape quicksand
C – Chill → Don’t panic; you won’t sink fully.
A – Air out → Lean back, spread arms/legs to float.
L – Loosen → Wiggle gently to let water in and free legs.
M – Move slow → Glide toward solid ground, don’t yank straight up.
Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832
