Have you ever tried doing something, but the entire time you were doing it you were so worried about everything that could go wrong, that you just couldn’t focus on what you were really wanting to do?
Friday night, I went in my backyard and took out my hockey net and shooting pad. Now if you don’t know what a shooting pad is, It’s basically a slippery piece of wood similar to a white board that you can use to shoot ice hockey pucks. However, it is a bit more complicated, because the pucks don’t slide near as well as they do on ice.
Not to mention, if you have ever held a hockey puck you know that they are hard vulcanized rubber, and they can do some serious damage. In an ice hockey rink, that’s not a big deal because of the protective glass and nets. However, in my backyard, I have my hockey net wedged between a shed and a canopy. On the sides and top of the hockey goal is an almost 2 foot protective netting. The 2 side nets protect, the shed and other random things on the patio and the top net keeps pucks from going into my neighbor’s yard
Since, it had been a while, I took a little bit of time just firing the pucks straight in the middle of the net. This requires hardly any skill, and after a while is fairly boring. Then I decided that I was going to shoot all of the pucks into the tiny target net in the top right corner. This requires a quite a bit more skill and plenty more can go wrong at least in my backyard.
For the first little while I was so focused on how much pressure that I was placing on my hockey stick, too much pressure the puck doesn’t go very far, too little pressure and the pucks begin to catapult into my neighbors yards like a barrage of stones shot out of catapult. I was paying so much attention to the pressure of the stick, that I wasn’t paying as much attention to where I was shooting. I would look down at the puck and then right as I shot it would look where I wanted it to go and needless to say it wasn’t going into the tiny net, I kept shooting and shooting but it just wouldn’t go in.
I was getting a bit frustrated, it had been a while since I had shot a puck, but this was ridiculous. Then that still small inner voice said, “Focus on where you are shooting, instead of the shot itself.”
I was worried if I wasn’t watching the puck that I would get under it and sail it into my neighbor’s yard, making her none too happy. However, I decided just to try for that next shot to look at the target instead of focusing on the puck itself, and the craziest thing happened– The puck found it’s home in the back of that tiny target net. I was surprised. And then I tried it again, and to my surprise it went in again. I started making so many of them, and each time I was surprised when it went in.
Before, I had been so worried about watching the puck leave my stick that I had forgotten it was more important to focus on where I want it to go. I was so worried about not shooting the puck over the fence that I kept missing the target.
How often do we do that? How often are we so worried about missing the target that we also forget to focus on what really want.
What if instead we just focused on what we really wanted and started taking shots towards that? Once I started to make a few of those shots, the confidence began to build and I began to believe that I could continuously hit the target. Did they all go in? No, but once I changed my focus, they would either go in or get super close. Most of them would still go into the goal.
Interestingly enough, I only actually missed the entire net and the protectors one single time and it did hit the shed and left a One square inch mark, which did annoy me.
How often do we worry about everything that we don’t want to happen, only to have it happen. Whatever we focus on we get more of. Once I started focusing on what I wanted instead of what I didn’t want, I started hitting it.
Are you focusing on all the things that you don’t want right now and everything that can go bad or are you focusing on what you truly desire more than anything in the world?
Yes sometimes bad things are going to be happen, but not near as many times as they are happening in your head. I shot probably 100 pucks that night and only one of them was so far off the target that it did a tiny bit of damage to something. How often do we worry about that 1% of the time that we do mess something up.
I think especially in dating, we have a few bad experiences and we say, I don’t want to experience that again. However we experience things so much more in our minds than we ever do in real life. If someone rejects you, it only happens once, yet we are the ones that continuously push the replay button. We don’t have to always press the replay button on the painful experiences of our lives. Most often when someone does or says something unkind to you, it often has to do more with them than us.
Why do we keep our worst memories on replay?
It seems to me it’s for fear, we feel that if we keep replaying the memory and remembering what happened that we can prevent ourselves from experiencing future pain. You need to understand part of this life is experiencing pain, sadness and heartache and if you think you are going to escape all of that, you are probably sadly mistaken.
However, most of the things that we think are going to be super painful really aren’t that bad. It’s like in a football game, yes it will hurt if you get hit, but rarely is it a serious injury. And on the other hand just to be in the game is a lot of fun! Of course you are going to have bumps and bruises, but the more you learn to live with bumps and bruises instead of walking around in your own protective bubble the more you are going to realize how happy you can be.
And also when you start focusing so much more on what you want and shooting for it, you just might get it.
What is it that you really desire? Are you spending more time taking shots at what you desire or more time worrying about everything that can go wrong?
Just start now, because it’s always better now than never! When you start, you make the impossible, possible!
-The “It’s Possible” Guy
Joseph
P.S. Remember You’re okay. Start doing what’s possible in Your life and you will create miracles!