Winning or losing – these words evoke so many emotions. It’s especially observable in sports, where winning or losing can come down to a single point. One moment our team is winning, and we feel ecstatic and next moment, they are falling behind, and we feel miserable. We put so much emphasis on winning and are so disappointed with a defeat, that we often forget about what’s most important – the game.
It’s not so important if you win or loose, the most important thing is the spirit you approach this circumstances. When you win (or you think you are winning) – are you relaxed or do you scorn the other team? And when you lose – do you let this seeming defeat weigh you down? Do you feel it’s irrevocable and final?
If you answered yes to these questions, then you probably are too much focused on winning or losing and it can be harder for you to “go with the flow” of the game. Have a look at this video:
We see that the first team got so absorbed with winning, that they lost focus and forgot to provide good defense. They just thought – “That’s it, we are the champions, it’s the end of the game”. While they were busy with feeling overconfident with their assumed victory, the other team didn’t lose heart or think, “Oh no, this is the end of the match, there is nothing we can do about it”. Instead the seeming defeat permitted them to transcend the win/lose mentality that can prevent the enjoyment of playing the game, leading to a creative and free state of mind. This state is called “flow” in psychology, and it’s described as “an altered state of consciousness in which the mind functions at its peak, time may seem distorted, and a sense of happiness prevails”.
But this delicate state of mind can only be obtained only when a person is not focused on any external factors, such as winning or losing, in this case, but instead is only focused only on the activity itself. We have seen on the video that one player attained this state of mind. He released the worry of failure and was blessed by the flow feeling. He threw the ball and made a perfect 3-point shoot. But it’s only because he cast away this blockages of the mind that he could enter the state of flow, where nothing is impossible.When we go outside of ourselves, outside of our thinking and notions, fears and blockages, magic can happen 🙂
