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| Photo courtesy of Microsoft Are you able to turn a stressful situation into an advantage? |
It
is easy to go off course during a project. You don’t know what to say when someone
asks you a question during a presentation at work. You forget how to play a
piece of music at a recital for which you have spent months rehearsing. Time
seems to stop as that crucial event and the split second in which “it” occurred
are burned into your mind and memory, forever. But time continues to march on
and, you still have your life to lead and that project/performance/game, etc.
to complete. When your focus is disturbed, are you able to maintain your
composure and carry on as if nothing is changed? Will you use the disruption to
your advantage, or will you freeze and miss out on later opportunities to
recover because you are still focused on what has already happened?
I
saw both scenarios play out tonight while I watched the Super Bowl. The Denver
Broncos lost control of the football to the Seattle Seahawks in the first 10
seconds or so of the game. Seattle quickly took advantage of their “advantage”
and kept powering through the game. You could see their athletes’ confidence grow
with every play. Football players are big guys, anyway; however, Seattle’s players
literally seemed to get physically bigger
every time they scored a point or got an inch closer to the end zone. They had
more spring in their step on the field and on the sidelines. Conversely, the
Broncos were stuck in an endless loop of that first scrimmage. I could see the
frustration and disappointment on the team’s faces and, more importantly, in
their demeanor. Each time a pass was intercepted or one of the Broncos missed
or dropped the football, everyone on that team seemed to deflate a little bit
more and their opponents got that much bigger.
Two
sides of the same coin.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified
hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors
from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information
about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2014
