Decisions Have Momentum

“If you don’t change what you are doing today, all of your tomorrows will look like yesterday.” – Jim Rohn

For those of you who ever played sports, you hunger for playing time.  You live for the moments of being in the game.  But what happens if you get sidelined and no longer get to start or play? It could be an injury, the quality of the team members shift, a disciplinary action, you change teams, or maybe a new coach takes over – whatever the reason, you find yourself sidelined.  

Being sidelined whether it’s on a sports team, a work team, or other teams in our lives can have a drastic impact on our confidence, self-esteem, attitude, self-talk, and drive.  If we still have the hope of playing, we stay on the sidelines watching, wishing, wondering, doing some of the work yet fears can start to erode our confidence… fear of not being good enough, not accepted, failure.

If we lose hope of playing, we check out and ultimately we quit.

You may have heard the saying, “There are three types of people in this world – the players, the ones on the sidelines, and those in the bleachers.”

• The Playing Field is about living, learning, growing, stretching, taking risks, doing whatever you can to be better.  This person is making their life happen for them, they are proactive.

• The Sidelines – we watch other people take action, stepping up, and grabbing a hold of opportunities. Often this is a place where we feel stuck… fearful.  We WANT to learn, grow, and change yet the fear of risk, the unknown, of what people will think, fear of success, fear of failure, of not being enough, keeps us watching, wishing, wondering. Someday…

• The Bleachers are a place where we end up disconnecting from life, business, relationships with ourselves and others. A place where finger pointing, blame, excuses show up.  We have blinders on… seeing only what we want to see and hearing what we want to hear. A place where we check out and just go through the motions.

Being a player, sideliner, or bleacher person isn’t always black and white.  We can flip flop between these three types of scenarios depending on what is happening in our lives. When we are on the mountaintop, we jump in the playing field and say, “bring it on”! We have a little more boldness, confidence, and courage. We have momentum to keep practicing, to keep playing. We listen to podcasts, read books, take classes, create a system of accountability, and are willing to do the hard work.

Then we get hurt, discouraged, disappointed. Our ideas and dreams shutdown, squashed, and yet we still have hope. We still have a hunger to be better, do more, have more… however, fear or lack of belief can keep us from being an active participant.  We start the someday dialog… Someday… I’ll take that risk. Someday… I’ll get my degree. Someday… I’ll have the hard conversation. Someday… when I have enough money, or time, or the kids grow up, or when the kids leave I will _________________. 

If we stay disappointed for too long, if we stay stuck, stagnate and stale for too long… we begin to lose hope. We disconnect, disengage, check out and we end up in the bleachers. Our self-talk can become the should-a, would-a, could-a chatter.  Negativity, pessimism, anger, apathy, frustration can become the norm.

Life is a roller coaster. We go from being all in and playing the game of life, to standing on the sidelines, and then setting up camp in the bleachers. We get a little glimmer of hope and move out of the bleachers to the sidelines, and IF we get enough courage and the fiery passion ignites, we jump back into the playing field. 

It’s normal to have highs and lows, ups and downs, excitement and frustration, hope and fear.  Our feelings and emotions don’t define us. They are there to create awareness of our needs, wants, hopes, and dreams. We get to choose everyday how we show up, our attitude, and what we focus on.

Our decisions have momentum.  Everything we do and don’t do has a ripple effect. We won’t always be the best on the field. We’ll get passed up for the promotion, the contract will be awarded to our competitor, and despite all our hard work and effort we will be sidelined.  It is in these moments where our choices build our character.  This is where growth happens, where we get to show up bigger and find out what we are truly made of. 

Today, as you play the game of life…

• Give yourself grace 
• Get back up
• Reconnect to your vision for it is your fire, your inspiration and your guide
• Focus on what you CAN do and do that
• Surround yourself with people who believe in you and won’t sympathy vote you
• And remember, you’re not alone
• This is a new day…. it’s day 1

“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” – Karen Kaiser Clark

Mary Belden-McGrath