Sunday, June 7, 2015

Playing On The Grand Field Of Life

By Evan Sanders


In almost every case, there will always be this hum you'll hear from the stands. However no matter the whispers going on, we must focus on the field of life.

Take the sports we play for example. In this case, baseball in particular.

There's this moment when you are up on the mound pitching where the sounds the other team is making, the fans in the stands and the environment around you silences. It's just you and the catchers mitt. Everything slows down and the gap between you and the plate really appears to shrink. You get this type of tunnel vision and when you realize you are in that moment, you are close to unstoppable. Your body is in complete flow with your pitching mechanics and your motion becomes second nature.

But there are other moments when you walk 2 of their players, someone gets a hit, someone makes a gaffe, and the game starts to speed up on you. When that goes down, boy can you really hear all of the distractions around you. You can hear the other team screaming and yelling, you can hear people in the stands and throwing a strike becomes extremely difficult.

How do we silence the inside and outside and chatter in life?

How can we move past the fear of failing - the phobia of success and not having the ability to handle it - the dread of being misinterpreted for something we aren't? How can we be less scared of losing everything we have made? The hard part is, the larger the risk you take the greater the questions become surrounding it. What can we actually do to go forward?

We should understand that this is part of the game.

Balls, strikes, home runs, errors, over throws, passed balls, wild pitches, strikeouts, walks, that really is all just a part of the game. It is not about having a flawless game each day. You really cannot do that. Pitching is about grooving when you have it and facing difficulty when you don't. There are so many times you go out there and 2 of your pitches are not even close to working well in any way. What on earth do you do when that happens?! Target the fact that you don't have your changeup and curve, start hitting the pitching zone with your best fastball - one that has every ounce of conviction behind it. Of course you try feeling it out and throwing the other pitches because you want to find them throughout the course of the game, but you can not bring yourself into a negative space or else you will probably not going to ever make it out of the first inning.

The hum of the crowd is always likely to be there and it can even get vicious on occasion. But it is better to be playing the game than sitting on the bench. It is better to really be in a place facing brutal criticism than to not be playing in any way.

And here's the closer. If you can get to a spot where you not only can tune out the negative things that folks say, but also use that as fuel...you will push yourself further than you ever possibly could have imagined. Use something negative and make a positive result with it. Perhaps that's the greatest type of alchemy itself?

So get back to that place that you can focus deeply on your mission and your purpose. There will always be views about what you're doing, but in the final analysis, you really do have to litsen to what's within you.

Case closed.




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