I’m going to die.
That’s what I said to myself as I was lying flat on my back, staring up at a blue sky littered with a few wispy, white clouds.
I’m going to die because I can’t move any air.
Then I felt someone gently put a hand on my chest and say, in the calmest voice, “Just relax. Breathe in slowly.” The voice was from the person who put me in this unenviable position.
It was fall 1979. I was a 9th grader at North Whidbey Junior High in Oak Harbor, WA. And it was early in the junior high football season.
I was with a group of teammates working on tackling drills. It was a simple concept: one line of guys was on offense carrying the ball, and the other line was on defense attempting to tackle.
I had the ball. My friend Eric Seelye was on defense. While I’d played Nerf football with Eric and other friends in the streets and parks by our homes, this was my first formal football experience. Eric was in the same grade but had played the previous year. He was both more experienced and a better athlete than me. I didn’t know it when I took off running with the ball, but this wasn’t going to end well.
In less than a couple of seconds, I knew the impact was coming. Rather than picking up speed to build momentum, I did the very last thing I should ever do. I came to almost a full stop and raised my chest up.
BAM!
Eric Seelye crushed me. His shoulder pads met my number 12 in the middle of my chest like a ton of bricks. That’s when I found myself on my back gasping for air.
For any of you who’ve had the “wind knocked out of you,” you can empathize with that feeling. Eric was the first one there and, probably because it had happened to him sometime in the past, knew exactly how to handle it with me. Not bad for a 13-year-old kid!
That was the first of many instances when I realized I was more cut out for golf than football.
The error of my process was slowing down and standing up. In every sport I ever competed in, coaches preached that the best way to avoid injury was to always go full speed. You were less likely to be injured when you had momentum and energy.
The same is true for businesses, careers, and our lives.
Let’s simplify by folding all three into one. While we might think we have two “lives,” a professional and a personal, the truth is we really just have one life. I don’t believe in the concept of “life balance,” because our lives at any one moment in time are generally out of balance. Rather, my belief is that business and personal are integrated into one life.
I’m just past six decades of life, and I feel confident when I say there are seemingly many moments when it’s easy to lack momentum and energy. We are all human. However, the key to our lives may very well lie in our ability to unleash momentum and energy when we need it most.
There are a lot of obstacles out there ready to hit us like Eric hit me on the football field almost 50 years ago. Ever experience any of these in your life: the death of parents and other loved ones, relationship challenges, financial troubles, divorce, health concerns, loss of a job, or being turned down for a job or promotion? How about the mental strains that come with all of those and might also include impostor syndrome, poor self-talk, loss of confidence, anxiety, and/or depression?
All of those can and will make us stand straight up and get tackled, knock us on our backs, and take our breath away.
On that football field, I had a friend take care of me. Eric helped a teammate out that day, and we still see each other annually on the golf course and laugh about it.
Here are three ways to stay resilient so we don’t allow our own life’s momentum and energy to stay on the ground for very long:
First, use the power of the people in your life. Life is a team sport, and you have teammates who want the best for you and are ready to pick you up: family, friends, co-workers, and employees.
Second, when things get hard, relax and breathe. One thing I’ve learned is that the challenge is rarely as bad as I first think it is, and the answer is simply finding a way to keep moving.
Third, believe in yourself. The first “sale” is always to yourself. When you have confidence, those around you will “buy” more stock in you. And that will help keep you moving.
While getting smacked down by Eric Seelye didn’t do much for my football career, it did teach me a valuable lesson that I’ve kept for nearly half a century. Unleash your momentum and energy, and there’s nothing that can stop you from scoring touchdowns in life.
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