THE ANTI COACH

It was third down, two yards to go for a first down at our opponent's ten yard line. We (St. Patrick High School) were on a roll. I was playing fullback on that memorable Sunday afternoon. (The afternoon was memorable because we were on our way to a touchdown. This touchdown could win the game for us and winning was a unique occurrence for the St. Pat's Shamrocks back then.) The coach called all the shots and sent in the halfback with the play the coach felt could get us the touchdown and salvage some degree of respectability, not to mention his job. The halfback joined us in the huddle with the play. The coach, in all his wisdom, had called my number, I was going to carry the ball.

Just before we broke the huddle, the halfback leaned over to me and provided the coaches words of encouragement, which you are unlikely to find on a motivational poster, Coach said. "whatever you do, don't fumble." To this day the ball has not been located, and I picked up the name "Cinderella" because I missed the ball.

Golfers, do you ever say to yourself, "O.K. duffer, whatever you do, do not put this ball in the water." Then you tee up an old scuffed, scratched, oblong, "water ball" just to give validity to your pessimism.

"Whatever you do don't say anything about the big bump on Aunt Martha's nose." A sure way to get into a nose bump discussion with Aunt Martha.

Our minds cannot focus on the opposite of an idea. You can't focus on not doing something. You do a major disservice when you tell yourself or others what NOT to do. Focus on what you want to see happen, not on what you do not want to see happen

This positive focus is not only important when dealing with ourselves, look what happens when we focus on what we don't want others to do. Since I'm already on the football coaches manure list I'll just dig myself in a little deeper.

While playing football in college, the coaches took movies of each game. (This was B.V.-- Before Video.) They took movies to "help us become better players." The way our coaches conducted those session they worked in much the same way as the electric chair helps convicted murders become better citizens.

I remember one game in particular. The camera focused on an opposing player running around end, and as luck would have it, yours truly was the only one between the runner and a sizable gain. I never had the quickest reflexes even so, I felt pretty good about myself and my abilities--until exposed to a little help from my coaches.

The camera was able to isolate just the runner and me. He faked; I bought it, put a great tackle on where he used to be and, in compliance with the law of gravity (which had just been enacted), settled in a cloud of dust. It was all natural turf in those days. The camera caught every agonizing moment of that play.

(Anybody who has ever played in a sport where movies or video tapes were taken by the coaching staff, knows what is coming.) At the next practice session, when the coach came to the part of the movie where the tackle was missed, he showed the play, rewound it, showed it again, rewound it, showed it again, and rewound it for what seemed like half of my life. All the time he was telling me, and anyone else who would listen, while also reinforcing my "failure" visually, what a lousy tackler I was.

What had my coach accomplished? Did I see myself as a "tackler" or a "non-tackler" when I left the meeting? I was just coached for a whole hour on how not to tackle!

Sports are an easy way to demonstrate the negative effect of focusing on what you don't want to happen, but its not the only way.

I'm sure many of you remember Karl Wallenda, the founder and father of the famous high wire act, the Flying Wallendas.

I'm also sure it would surprise Karl to find his tale being told around the campfire in many personal-improvement training programs. His story is called, curiously enough, the Wallenda Factor.

The Wallenda Factor, as reported, goes something like this. Prior to his death in 1978, according to his wife, the lovely and talented Mrs. Wallenda Factor, all Karl thought about was falling. He obsessed over the wire, the winds and the whatevers. While that line of thinking does not sound unusual or unwarranted, it could be fatal. Because as we have said there's no future in focusing on what we don't want to have happen. For Karl that turned out to be literally true.

Focusing on falling was probably not the best thing for Karl to think about before boosting himself 75 feet in the air over downtown San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The obvious, yet often ignored, point of the WF is if you get what you think about most, why would you think about what you don't want?

Do you define major portions of your life by what you're against?


Lesson:  Focusing your energy on what you don't want to happen not only doesn't work, but doesn't leave much energy for what you do want to happen.