Hurry, hurry, you have to win and you’re slowing us down.
“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date!” the white rabbit exclaims.
“What could a rabbit possibly be late for?” says Alice.
The excruciating feeling of being late is something I often find myself feeling. There’s always somewhere to be or something to do, even though most times I’m not sure where or why I need to be in a certain place.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way as rates of anxiety in our society are rapidly increasing and I can’t be the only person who gets that nagging voice that I forgot something important every time I leave the house.
This anxiousness often hits me when I’m on the golf course. I yearn so longingly to post a good score that I feel I need to race through my round, to hit the next shot, especially after a bad one. Especially after a bad one.
I spoke about this a bit in a previous episode of “TeeJayye’s Diary,” called “Stop Digging.” The shame of hitting a bad shot and the fervent desire to correct that mistake courses through your body and causes you to only compound the tragedy. It makes a bad thing worse, even when you think things can’t possibly be worse.
Only they can.
By allowing that anxious energy to pump through my veins, I lose the ability to truly focus on my desired outcome, and I feel the need to rush to correct my mistakes.
My mind roams through various swing thoughts, instead of simply visualizing the shot I’m attempting to hit.
My muscles stiffen and I lose the natural flow required to pull off my desired outcome.
Most importantly, I forget that I’m supposed to be having fun.
I pump one out of bounds. Anger. Embarrassment. Race to put down another ball. More swing thoughts. More stiffness. Another ball out of bounds.
Hurry, hurry, you have to win and you’re slowing us down.
The harder you push to make something happen faster, the harder the universe pushes back. Newton’s third law.
It’s a nasty cycle.
Only when I stop pushing, when I relinquish control, when I stop rushing toward a set destination, can I finally get my ball to land where I want it to the first time.
When I stop needing instant gratification, everything seems to fall together.
We’re all looking for a perfect outcome, and we feel like we need it right now.
It’s just that most things don’t happen in our time.
When we want something so badly, we try to force it into existence. That force messes with the natural flow of life and causes it to go off the rails.
Enter, bad outcome.
Letting go of control over the outcome and the time frame in which it happens opens the door for the true magic to happen. It allows a host of other possible outcomes to present themselves, maybe even one better than you had originally planned.
Wanting something to happen is not a bad thing, but wanting it to happen right now interrupts the outcomes that were meant to come our way and prevents us from obtaining a better one.
We’re essentially blocking our blessings.
When you’re on your way to a meeting, no one is going to notice the extra ten seconds you took when you stopped to smell the roses, but they’ll definitely notice the smile on your face because you did. And maybe that ten seconds keeps you from falling into a hole, which probably doesn’t lead to Wonderland.