As a kid, my family used to frequent a specific restaurant for breakfast, and I always ordered the "Everything Omelet" (would you expect anything else?). "Omelets are not made without breaking eggs" François de Charette. An idiom that is often utilized to emphasize that most things worth having come at a cost. A similar quote "Laws are like sausage, it's better not to see them made" Otto Von Bismarck. In other words, we like to see the results but don't really want to see the process that renders those results. And finally, "You can't have your cake and eat it too" Proverb (not from Proverbs in the Bible). This particular phrase I don't agree with. I believe that you can, indeed, have both your cake and also eat a cake ... merely bake two cakes and eat one and save the other. Mic Drop! Sure it takes more time and ingredients but two cakes are better than one ... always. Besides food, what do these three common phrases have in common? Success is not easy, it comes with sacrifice and struggle, and it requires a lot more effort and intention than many people are willing to give. And that is why success "tastes" so good when we achieve it.
0 Comments
Breathing detoxifies and releases toxins. Breathing releases tension. Breathing relaxes the mind and brings clarity. Breathing relieves emotional problems. Breathing relieves pain. Breathing strengthens your immune system. Breathing improves posture. Breathing improves the quality of our blood. Breathing increases digestion and assimilation of food. Breathing improves your nervous system. Breathing strengthens your lungs. Breathing boosts your overall energy levels. Breathing improves cellular generation (which helps us heal). Breathing elevates our mood. Breathing forces us to pause and be patient. Breathing keeps us alive. Stop! And ... Take a DEEP breath!
I lost my favorite pair of gloves four years ago. I looked everywhere for that pair of gloves. I looked in every possible place for two years. I loved that pair of gloves. Unfortunately, "they gone". I really don't enjoy snow, especially this time of year. It is very inconvenient and it disrupts my life and my work and my free time (I have a large driveway and am required to clear my street in front of my house and I don't own a snowblower ... I know, "First World Problems"). Two years ago, it snowed over 8" one morning. It was Valentine's Day so leaving the driveway to my wife to shovel was not a wise marital decision. So I put on my "garage jacket" that hangs in my garage for when I shovel the driveway. I only wear that jacket when shoveling snow. I spent an hour shoveling heavy, wet snow that morning. My back hurt and I was set back a couple hours. My day didn't start out the way that I wanted it to. I had a lot to do on "my list" for that day, so I had the absolute right to have a bad attitude. The driveway got shoveled that morning. Oh, and I found my favorite pair of gloves in my "garage jacket". A bad morning turned out to be a great day. I love those gloves.
"Thanks God for loving me and for not caring about whether I like to shovel snow or not." Lesson: We think we know what is best for us and we complain about a lot of things in our life because, in the grand scheme of things, our lives aren't that bad, they are merely inconvenienced. From kindergarten until my senior year in high school, I was required to raise my hand during class in order to ask my teacher for permission to go to the restroom. Thankfully, permission was routinely granted. The act of asking for permission allows a teacher to have control over our possible (or in my case "inevitable") disruptive behavior. In high school, my parents also required that I ask them for permission before taking the car out to do something with my high school friends. Again, my parents wanted to have control over my possible (or, again, inevitable) harmful behaviors. I am so glad that I no longer am required to ask for permission anymore if I need to go to the restroom or to drive my car. However, there are still times in my life that I need to give myself permission. We all have had negative experiences in our past that have created a specific mindset and that mindset often keeps us from growth. We allow our past to negatively impact our present and our future. When we find ourselves in a rut or when (not "if") we find ourselves not able to overcome something in our lives that is keeping us from improving or moving forward, it may be that we must give ourselves permission to release the past, and to take control of our future and to move on or try something new. We need to raise our hand and ask ourselves to allow us to get up and move beyond our past barriers and limitations.
Unmet expectations are the root of most of our discouragement, anger, sadness and frustration each day. Upset about a test score? Your reaction is based on your expectation that you would earn a higher grade. Frustrated that your car broke down? Your reaction is based on your expectation that your car will work properly. Having conflict with someone? Your reaction is based on your expectation that the person would behave a specific way and they didn't? Dirty dishes left in the sink! More snow than the forecast predicted! A sickness lasting more than a day! Improvement not happening immediately! Expectations are random perceptions on how we deem life should be and are based on less facts than we think and involve countless more variables than we ever consider. Expectations are assurances in future events. There are too many variables that are not in our control for us to expect much in life and to have assurances. Goals are different than expectations. There are no assurances in goals. Goals give us direction. We hope to reach our goals but the understanding is that goals are meant to motivate us and guide us and reaching the goal is a consequence of the previous two priorities. Expectations unmet typically lead to nothing but disappointment so we should set goals and not expectations.
Warning: many of you have been told throughout your lives to "have high expectations" and "expect more from yourself". Feel free to go with that philosophy if it works for you. However, my experience has shown that less the .0001% of the world's population performs well under pressure and/or responds to failure in an appropriate manner. Most people respond negatively to unmet expectations because they don't properly evaluate the variables that resulted in the expectation to be unmet and then they don't respond appropriately to the erroneous information they now have in their possession. This causes high expectations to be demotivating instead of being motivating, as they were initially intended by the wise person who told you to have "high expectations". Having high expectations requires an exorbitant amount of self-worth, self-esteem and self-confidence, along with an abundance of mental toughness and resilience and the fact is that most people don't have those tools in their toolbox. So it is better to know yourself and set yourself up for success by setting goals and not expectations). I have read some verses in the bible over one hundred times and by the hundredth time, I am finally in a place in my life where the verse makes sense. The verse finally has value to me and I actually retain the verse and change behavior in my life. The fact of the matter is that we are more receptive to hear certain things and value them, at different points in our life. As an athlete, we are constantly inundated with correction by coaches, yet we may not see improvement. One of the first areas we need to address is whether or not we are being receptive to the information or more specifically, what may be in the way of us receiving the correction. When we see value in what we are hearing, we are more likely to receive that information. When we don't see value or find other things more valuable, we are more likely to not receive the information and remain the same. Today we need to see improving as an athlete more important than our desire to justify or judge or our pride or ego or vanity or fear or skepticism or doubt ... and simply hear what someone is saying and instead of rationalizing to ourselves why that correction is not valid, we should put effort into making the appropriate correction.
Irony of the Day: One step in being receptive/coachable is being open to read things that may be helpful. I would estimate that of the 66 athletes on the TEAM, only 10-20 actually read these "Mental Tips of the Day". So if you are one of those 10-20, congratulations, you got better than your TEAMmates today. "80% of life is just showing up" - Woody Allen. Or "Half of life is just showing up" - Everyone seems to say that. These statements are mostly true in the context of comparing our relative success to others. For example, if I am competing with a group of people, sometimes all I need to do is show up because others most likely won't. But if they do show up with their bodies, it doesn't necessarily mean that they show up with their minds. That is why it is essential that if we desire to not only "beat" others, but we desire to "be our best", we need to do a lot more than merely show up. We need to be present in both mind and body, and we must put aside any distractions that take our minds away from the task at hand. We need to give our complete effort and full attention. And then in the end, when the activity is complete, we need to identify at least one thing (if not many things) that we learned from the experience that we can apply next time. We may show up and have success in that moment, but we must learn from that experience in order to repeat that success and improve upon it in the future.
https://it-it.facebook.com/dynatox/videos/1679916058703428/
Being a "pacifist" (believing that war and violence are unjustifiable) is a philosophy that some embrace. Being a "pacifist" is a real thing but being a "passivist" isn't. Passivist is not a word. However, there are many people who believe that being passive is a philosophy and thus have become "passivists". Being passive may be fine in certain aspects of life but not in athletics. I have never found myself or another coach instruct an athlete to "be more passive". Sure, patience, or calm, or deliberate, or trusting, but not passive. In fact, the opposite is the case. One of the big problems is that most feel that the solution to passivity is aggression. Cheerleaders even have cheers which encourage athletes to "B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E". However, aggression isn't the answer either (as aggression involves the intent to harm someone). And that is why most athletes struggle with giving the correct amount of intensity in their sport and erring on being too passive. When a coach tells an athlete to "Be more aggressive", the athlete doesn't know what is being asked of them, nor do they know what to do to remedy the problem. We don't need to be angry/mad/upset or "fired up". We simply need to be intense. We merely need to understand that passivity doesn't have a place in most sports but intensity does. Calm has a place but passivity does not. Being "assertive" is what we must be pursuing. Being assertive refers to being intentional and intense at the right moments. I don't know an athlete who wants to be referred to as a "soft" athlete. Soft is the result of not being intense when intensity is a requirement in athletics. The goal today is to find ways in our training/life that being more intense is beneficial. "You can't be so damn passive" Daniel LaRusso - Karate Kid III. |
AuthorCOACH. FATHER. HUSBAND. SON OF THE KING. WHITWORTH UNIVERSITY. Archives
November 2023
Categories |