I was playing in a basketball game the other night, and by accident, the scorekeeper made the team with the dark jerseys the home team, instead of the usual way of making the light jerseys the home team.
Now, I usually don’t pay attention to the score of the game for the first ten minutes or so, because I don’t think it helps me play well, so when I looked over and saw my team leading by 10 points, I was mildly surprised, but didn’t think anything of it, because I knew we had a good team, my shots were falling, and it seemed like we were winning.
I went on believing my team was winning for the entire game, and nobody said anything, probably because we were really losing the whole time!
I didn’t realize it until after the game was actually over what had happened, and then I felt pretty stupid, but I also had another feeling.
Even though everybody in the gym agreed we had lost, I still felt like we had won! I had been spending the whole game noticing all the good things we had been doing, and in the game of basketball, the difference between one team winning and losing is only a few baskets here or there. Even a week later as I’m writing this, it’s still hard for me to believe.
I guess the real lesson here is that thoughts going through my head really do have an incredibly powerful effect on how I felt physically. I felt great the whole game, had tons of confidence in my own shot and my teammates, and kept thinking to myself how we were a really good team to still be winning, even though we seemed a little off. Sure we missed shots and they made shots, but that happens in every game, and it’s not like the other team was playing perfect basketball.
I had always believed thoughts are powerful, that’s pretty obvious. But I never thought they could be this powerful! If I would have known we were losing the whole time, a ton more negative thoughts would have dominated my head that game, and I would have gone home frustrated, trying to think positive, but knowing that we just weren’t as good as the other team.
I want to figure out how to use this new knowledge of the power of thoughts to my advantage more, because even though it didn’t affect our ability to win the game, I know it affected my play in a good way, and it was a lot more fun to go home feeling good even though we had lost. I guess one thing I can do is make a real effort to focus on the positives and not pay attention to the scoreboard. I should start doing that more in life as well.
