Victims of Circumstance

Twice in a row. On consecutive calls last week, I had players tell me that their hockey teams had fallen victim to circumstance the night before. What does it mean to fall victim to circumstance? It means to examine a life situation, make a negative assumption about what’s going to take place, and then to manifest that result.

To be specific, since both players’ teams were competing in the second of back-to-back games on the road, players and coaches assumed that their teams would feel fatigued, lack energy, and perform poorly. And, as suggested, that’s exactly what happened.

So, using fatigue as the example, let’s rectify this commonplace misunderstanding.

The truth is that human beings can only feel their thinking. Meaning, fatigue is an effect of thought, not hockey games. Or said another way, there’s not a transmitter from an external circumstance (back-to-back games) to one’s feelings (fatigue). It doesn’t actually exist.

Need proof? Consider this: Have you ever been super tired and lacked energy, but then an emergency suddenly struck? Your need for sleep didn’t change as you sprung into action, did it? No. Your thinking changed, and so did your level of energy. That’s because a thought-feeling transmitter does actually exist.

As I said, the outside-in misunderstanding is common—and unfortunate. Most of us fail to grasp the alluring power of this innocent trick of the mind. I’ve seen coaches (in dealing with the same lack-of-sleep issue) ineffectively remove older players from lineups, thinking they can “fix” their team’s fatigue. I’ve also heard coaches claim that their players were getting outhustled by a more rested opponent when it just wasn’t true.

Although it often looks otherwise, what you feel, and experience, is a projection of your own thinking and nothing else. If you believe it works the opposite (what occurs on the outside can cause you to feel a certain way on the inside), then you’re easily a victim. While, no matter the life situation or feeling, grasping that the human experience is created from inside to out activates your innate capacity to rise above.