When things are going wrong, focus on what is going right
I believe the title of this piece says pretty much everything, but I feel like I need to elaborate a bit more. I also believe that this is rather important for everyone to take a second to read and consider, not just athletes. Allow me to explain.
In sports and life, anything can happen. Everyone has something that they are really strong at and everyone has things which they are rather weak at. Now when you are doing something that you are rather strong at things do not always go as planned and occasionally things go wrong. Vice versa, when you are not good at something, occasionally things go right. We are going to focus on when you are good at something and things go wrong.
Inevitably in life things will go wrong. Lawyers will lose cases, there will be complications in surgery for doctors, athletes will not always have perfect games. That beings said, the big issue is not that things are going to go wrong, but rather how do you respond when things go wrong?
Your response to any given situation is solely on you. If you spend all your time focusing on what is going wrong, more things will go wrong, and it will turn into a downward spiral that will be very difficult to dig yourself out of. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know something is going wrong, all you can think about is what is going wrong, ergo things will go wrong. In effect this is Murphy’s Law.
Here is the thing, we as humans are very much prone to remember what goes wrong and or what’s not right. We take our happiness and well being for granted and focus solely on what’s upsetting us. I believe strongly that this is important for everyone. When you fixate on what is going wrong or what went wrong during the day you will go to sleep upset, when you go to sleep upset you wake up upset, when you wake up upset you start the process all over again. If instead before going to bed you focus on what went well during the day you will go to sleep feeling good about things, then you will wake up feeling better and ready to start the day.
So, if when you focus on what is going wrong, you find more things going wrong, then what happens when you focus on what is going right? Inevitably, if you focus on what is going right, things will start to get better. Again, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you focus on the good things will inevitably go well. I know that this is significantly easier said than done, but when you do things will start to get better.