Raise your hand if you own a copy of The Secret? Are you one of 19 million people who have read it, listened to it, or watched the movie version of it in one of the 46 languages it is available in? For those of you not raising your hand, the premise of The Secret franchise is that you get back from the universe what you put out there – they call it “The Law of Attraction.” So if you think you are a Brazilian super-model neuro-scientist then you will attract into your life all the tools to help you actually be a brainy vixen. Go big or go home!
I have to say, I’m not much of a Kool-Aid drinker but I’ve definitely gulped down the law of attraction. I mean I’m not a Brazilian super-model or a neuro-scientist, but we all have “friends” – you know someone not us – who doubts themselves, doesn’t think they are worthy of happiness, always waiting for the other shoe to drop and sadly enough these things all seem to hang around these “friends” like that nasty cloud of filth that follows Pig Pen around in Charlie Brown cartoons. Conversely there are those not attractive (I’m being as nice as I can be), buffoonish men, with beer guts and hair loss (gel only makes it look worse, people) who swagger around as if they are God’s gift to the planet and amazingly enough they always seem to have some gal believing they are the best thing since sliced bread. And if you think I am writing about you, I am.
But I digress.
About two weeks ago now, in an elementary school gymnasium, I had the most amazing reminder that the Law of Attraction is alive and well. My oldest son, the evil genius, is many things. But when it comes to being aggressive in sports he really isn’t that kid. When he was itty-bitty it wasn’t a problem as all the kids were pretty petite. But now that boys are getting bigger and he’s young for his grade and he’s easily half a head shorter than most kids on his team he’s hesitant to jump into the fray. And as his mother, I totally appreciate that my son doesn’t want to get creamed – I don’t want him to either. But his desire to avoid pain and leave the heavy lifting to the bigger kids makes it hard for him to be a superstar athlete – or really any kind of athlete. In fact, last year during basketball season his coach, for whom there is a special space in Heaven, constructed a play that the team used during the last game of the season which was designed to feed my son the ball and block every other player on the opposing team so my son could score at least one basket that season. That’s no typo folks. That was one basket. The whole season. Because the entire team helped him make it. Am I painting you a picture?
But my son remained undaunted (bless his heart) and asked to play basketball again this summer. And the season started out as dismal as the whole last season had been with my son not making a single basket and looking more like a spectator than a player. Until about two weeks ago when at the last second before half-time he threw up a Hail Mary buzzer beating shot and sank it. The crowd went bananas! Now mind you this is a sparse crowd of parents watching their eight-year-old play basketball but man they can cause a ruckus when they see something cool!
Under pressure my son didn’t have time to think about what he was doing he just had to act instinctively. And when his instincts turned out to be brilliant his mind finally decided that he could trust them. It was literally as if a switch was thrown in his brain. From that moment on – and for these last few weeks – he has been playing like he couldn’t lose. He’s become one of the top scorers on his team.
To me, as an adult with perspective, there’s no clearer example that you manifest the message you feed your brain than the difference between my son before “the shot” and after “the shot.” My son had the exact same skill set and physical abilities before that moment as he did after. It was simply that his brain finally said “you can do this.”
So for the last couple of weeks whenever I’ve felt a pang of self-doubt or caught a whiff of wavering in my conviction for the best possible outcome, I’ve envisioned my son launching that basketball with all the hope of an eight-year-old superstar athlete. And then I whisper to myself “you can do this.”
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