Saturday morning my son played baseball, despite the temperature not reaching 40 degrees. Despite a Wind Advisory with gusts of wind strong enough to wipe out a t-ball player! Nevertheless, we played. Played, and won…
As I tried to comfort the chilly and crying kids and just endure the cold, I transported myself to the beach. My Mom used to tell me to do that: on cold days standing at the bus stop, she’d tell me to imagine I was on a warm beach… when the weather was blistering hot in the summer, she’d tell me to imagine being on the North Pole!
The point here is that you can trick your body into believing whatever your mind feeds it. Today I was freezing until I started thinking about that beach. You must involve every sense in order for it to work, you must imagine what it smells like, how the salt coming off the ocean takes on your lips, the heat of the sand almost burning your feet. When you start thinking in detail, your body starts to respond.
We used to do this playing volleyball. We’d have a practice every so often that wouldn’t be on the court at all, but in a classroom, with a sports psychologist. The psychologist would tell us to relax and close our eyes… once everyone was relaxed, he would start the ‘game’. We would be playing a match in our minds, he would give us the details and we would envision the outcomes (obviously playing to win)… the interesting thing about these exercises was that our muscles were responding to the mind game as if we really exerting ourselves out on the court! Our muscles would actually feel sore! WOW!
So obviously this works both ways, if you can imagine a better outcome, you can also envision something worse. This is what happens to most of us. When we stew on our misfortune or sorry state of affairs, we make our problems bigger than they really are. We exacerbate the problems by reliving the moments in our heads over and over. Have you read or watched The Secret? Whatever you create in your mind will manifest itself in your life…
So when the chips are down, tell yourself to smile and put your best foot forward. Tell yourself that things are GETTING BETTER BY THE MINUTE, and they will!
Photo Credit © Mark Aplet | Dreamstime.com
