Playing table football © by Ben Sutherland
Many years ago there was a game of table football at the taekwondo club where I have practiced taekwondo for almost 20 years. I thought it was great fun but the first six months the table was there I did not play; I wanted to, but I did not do it. I did not do it because I thought the others were so good at it that they did not want to play with me; I thought I would be very bad at playing table football.
But it was just my mind messing around because it turned out that I was quite good at it after playing for a while. I learned that if there is something I really want to do then I should just do it instead of thinking about it. If I think too much about it then my mind will over analyse the situation and conclude that I am not that interested anyway; that is so sad!
When I was younger I often said no when I was offered something; I do not know why I said no because I usually wanted it and even if I was asked again I would turn down the offer again. I was afraid that I could not live up to other people’s expectations. What I learned later – much later – was that most of the expectations were figments of my brain. The only thing people expected were my participation and because I was afraid I missed all the fun and ended up feeling excluded.
Sitting around thinking only makes things worse; over analysing will create fear and you will miss all the action; you will also miss the opportunity to accomplish something. Accomplishment is very important for your self-confidence because you need the feeling of having done something you can feel proud of. You need people to see what you have done to receive acknowledgement and acceptance.
Get up; stop thinking and do something! Let me give you a couple ways to act instead of thinking:
- Be present. Stop thinking about what happened in the past and stop worrying about what might happen in the future, because usually your brain will focus on all the bad things that could happen and totally leave out all the good thing that are more likely to happen.
- Take an easy-going attitude. Relax and do not take things to serious; just be yourself and act on the inclination to do something. Remember how it was to be a child and just do things because you felt like it, unable to worry about possible consequences.
- Have Fun. Imagine that you are in a theme park; what you are about to do is going to be so much fun!
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