I’d like to share a beautiful metaphor created whilst working recently with a group of University athletes.
As a group, we considered the things that appear to ‘get us’, seem to ‘put us in a bad mood’, ‘send us crazy with frustration’ and distract us from our performance programme.
One of the most common circumstances at University is, the state of the kitchen!!!
So to illustrate the misunderstanding of where our experience comes from, we created the ‘Feeling Bullet’. Somehow, the dirty dishes are equipped with bullets, which fire out at anyone passing by!!!
The bullet transmits a feeling immediately to the recipient (lucky them) who experiences the appropriate emotion contained in the bullet – anger, disapproval, annoyance, blame, irritation, empathy, cool, love etc. (It’s the luck of the bullet!)
The group could really see the funny side of what we do to ourselves through a simple misunderstanding, (it’s a trick of the mind) – Of course this is not how it works! Who believes in feeling bullets?
The athletes further recognized that nothing on the outside of them; their high volume training programme, early morning starts, losing the match, the away crowd, team-mates lack of discipline, have these so-called – feeling bullets, we just think they do and we have it upside down!
The conditions on the outside of us are neutral; it is our thinking ABOUT the external factor, which determines our experience in the moment. As human beings, we are designed to create whatever experience we like about any given situation – nothing is bound to cause us to feel in a particular way.
There is no automatic transference of a feeling from the outside circumstance to a human being; we simply do not have the mechanism to ‘feel’ directly something that happens external to ourselves. We either engage with our thinking about it or not. When we don’t respect negative thinking, our heads clear, we regain our balance and we’re free to train and perform connected to our wisdom.
How do you operate as a human being, as a Performance Director, as a Coach, as an Athlete? Are you a victim of conditions & circumstances or are you free to explore your own unique genius?
If you know coaches and athletes who are bombed out by their thinking, please share this with them. I’d like to help them and you get the results you’re working so hard to achieve.
