Be the Quarterback Of Your Life

During a morning meditation I found myself working on affirmations and channeling reprogramming-energy. While identifying traits that I know hinder my growth, progress, and potential, it occurred to me to turn the traits into something tangible to aid my mind in identifying, processing, and managing when and how they affect me. Suddenly I viewed “them” (anxiety or indecisiveness, etc.) as football players standing on the sidelines and myself the quarterback of a team on the field. I watched myself dictating their “playing time” as I visualized something I desired to accomplish and witnessed the situation play out and how various aspects played a part in the realization of that goal. I was mentally connected with the idea that I had control over these negative-energy traits and could limit their effect on my abilities. To do so I would order “negative” players off the field and call in their “positive” counterparts. For example, when I felt “anxiety” on the line as I prepared for “a play” (a.k.a. visualizing something I want to achieve) I would see myself tell him to get off the field and call in the “positive/strong” player “calmness” to take his place.

We have roughly 50,000 thoughts a day and we get lost in our minds pursuit to process all the stimuli we are exposed to in our lives. Often, we are overwhelmed with all we are trying to accomplish on a daily basis and keep our grand-life goals on the back burner of our minds-eye which only distracts us and misaligns our energy causing more inner emotional turmoil because we know what we want to do and just cannot seem to get to it! I have painstakingly tried to figure out a way to get organized, but not physically organized, instead my internal approach to productively accomplish my goals. I had a thought bouncing around constantly in my mind, that I desired to tangiblize (I know it was not a word, but it is now) the intangible chaos that is my mind.

If you are not familiar with a quarterback, the role he plays on a team or a game think of him as a general and his teammates are his troops. If you are more of a business minded person, think of it like a manager and their team/staff. Now consider this: the quarterback, general or manager wants to accomplish a task. It is up to them to coordinate a plan to facilitate the successful accomplishment of that task. To do so they must delegate to their support structure, be it teammates, troops or staff, responsibilities that will dictate the successful fruition of the overall objective. This requires anticipation and strategy, but most of all it requires confidence. Confidence is one of the most important abilities to nurture within ourselves. Without confidence no one will follow your lead in any arena or situation; the same is true when attempting to manage traits associated with negative energy that hinder our potential and progress. I found it exceedingly difficult to confidently address and control my negative-energy traits when they were ambiguous, but as soon as I conceptualized them as something tangible it gave me a means to quantify them and what I thought was their effect on me. It gave me the confidence to be the quarterback of my life and dictate how I was going to play! Remember there are going to be good plays and bad, ups & downs, timeouts, and changes of possession throughout a game and life is no different! If you fight for every inch, stay true to yourself, and play with all your heart you will always win no matter what the scoreboard says when the game-clock reads zero!

Becoming the Quarterback Starts with Identification & Visualization

Quarterbacking in Action

Step 1: Identify negative-energy traits you would like to work on

Step 2: Tangiblize the Trait: Think of the traits as something tangible you have control over. It can be anything that makes sense to you, for example, players on a team, pieces on a chessboard, fishing lures, construction equipment (hammers, screwdrivers) anything that helps you associate the trait to something you can imagine using and have control over to help you achieve the desired result.

Step 3: Visualize & Dictate: See yourself in a situation working to accomplish an objective and identify when the traits you desire to alter try to get in on the action to hinder your progress. As soon as you ID them, speak to them as the tangible thing you made them. Tell them they are not needed and remit them back to where they belong (on the sideline or in the tackle/toolbox) and continue your visualization through the fruition of the objective and note the empowerment you feel from taking control of that situation and the confidence you now possess to take on future objectives.

Step 4: Repeat Steps 1-3 for any trait you desire to change.

Step 5: Reinforce this practice with repetition and note how much less of an impact the negative-energy traits have on your day-to-day life.

*I refer to traits that are considered “negative traits” as “negative-energy” traits because everything starts with the mind and the energy we give to our thoughts and the emotion we attach to it. So, I want to draw attention to the power we give to traits and highlight the energy that fuels them. If I were to say, identify your negative traits, bringing them to your consciousness would cause your mind to become agitated, competitive, or even shift into a downward spiral of negativity, distracted from the original objective which was to identify aspects of yourself you feel hinder you in some way; therein reinforcing its hold over you. This exercise is to lessen the power we give to those traits. Breaking it down to the energy of the trait and visualizing them as something tangible that has meaning for you will allow you to conceptualize them.

*It is important to stay positive throughout the exercise, if you feel yourself turning to “negative-town,” take a deep breath acknowledge it and remember you are in control and get back on track. YOU are behind the wheel, and YOU decide where you go!

Conceptual Property owned by: John Salutare VersaFit Training, LLC