I Cost My Team the Cup Final 😔

One of the biggest lessons in my life I learned through a moment on the football field. It was a grand final (cup final to those outside Australia), so the biggest game of the season with a trophy on the line. 

The game was evenly poised at 0-0 with around 10 minutes to play. The opposition got a corner and our team cleared out the first ball in, but it fell to an opposition player just outside the box who miss-kicked a pass that went high into the sky and landed just outside my 6 yard box. 

As I moved into position to catch the ball I saw out of the corner of my eye a player coming in to challenge me. Normally I’d be ok with this but earlier in the game I came out to punch away a cross into the box and I took a heavy hit that left me winded and down needing attention for a couple of minutes. 

So when I saw this player looking to challenge me my first thought was he’s coming into hurt me again. As a goalkeeper when you take a ball above your head it can leave your ribs and chest very exposed without protection and there are certain ways we learn to protect ourselves but sometimes you are just vulnerable. 

The ball seemed to be up in the air forever and I knew it was a ball that I had to catch. It was a very simple catch without anyone around but even with the player challenging it’s something I’ve done 100’s of times in practice and in games.

So I got myself in position and jumped up to catch the ball…….

… but I dropped it.

It landed straight in front of one of the opposition players, who pounced on my fumble and smashed the ball into the back of the net.

Immediately my heart sunk. I had handed the opposition an easy goal in the biggest game of the season. 

It’s those moments you just want the earth to swallow you up and disappear. 

THE LESSON

There’s an old saying: never take your eye off the ball. In this game that’s what I did. I took my eye off the ball and I dropped it. This is because my focus was dominated by the player coming in to challenge me and not wanting to drop the ball. Where focus goes energy flows. 

When we focus on things we don’t want, like dropping the ball or getting hurt, those experiences are more dominant and the energy of our mind flows towards creating those unwanted experiences, as it did for me that day.

These unwanted experiences are fear based. My energy was focused on fear and I received the end result of more fear. I feared for my safety by focusing on the player coming in to challenge me, I feared if I dropped the ball they would score and I would look bad and nobody will like me because I made a mistake, which was exactly what happened. 

All my energy (thoughts and feelings) went into that outcome, instead of what I did want which was to catch the ball. 

If I kept my focus solely on catching the ball I would have caught it just as I have many times before. 

This type of experience is a very quick manifestation of an energetic focus (thoughts and emotions). Most of us do this with other situations in our life. We spend a lot of time focusing on what we don’t want, instead of focusing on what we do want, and that focus is often the sole contributor to holding us apart from getting what we desire in life.

There can be a trick to this and money is the common example. People often focus on wanting more money in their life because they don't want to be seen as or feel poor. They think the focus is on money but it's really the underlying fear of lack of it that is driving their focus.

That fear of being poor is holding them in the fear based energy and more of that just shows up. You may have experienced this in your life already. The secret is what you want to desire needs to be out of love, excitement or happiness just to have it. If you want something out of fear it is very hard to get it and it will take huge amounts of willpower to be able to have it. Wouldn't you rather have it flow easier to you?

Remember everything is just energy, our thoughts, feelings and our physical body, they are all energy and all connected. When your thoughts and feelings (energy) are focused in the right way you can achieve the goals you desire much easier without having to rely on pure willpower to get you there. You can get to where you want in flow. 

BACK TO THE GAME

10 minutes later the final whistle blew and we lost the game 1-0. 

I felt like I had let all my team mates down. It’s a horrible feeling for any person who is involved in team events. 

I’d made big mistakes in games before and usually I would be inconsolable for days. I’d be down and angry at myself for embarrassing myself and angry that I’d let the team down. 

My confidence in all parts of my life would take a hit as well. 

But after the game for me things felt a lot different than they usually would have. It didn’t take me long to get my composure back. I was much kinder to myself and although I did feel bad the heaviness didn’t stick around for long.

It was at this point of my life that I had started testing the Emotion Code energy clearing method on myself and I was feeling great in other areas of my life off the field, but didn’t realise how much it helped me deal with that difficult situation. 

Reflecting on that situation I learned two huge lessons about energy. Firstly, my focus needed to be on what I wanted and not what I didn’t want, and secondly I learned that energy clearing work like the Emotion Code can have a massive effect on dealing with difficult situations and it made me much more emotionally resilient. As any athlete knows, the quicker you can bounce back from the disappointments and the downs, the better your overall performance will become.