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Trying Sooooo Hard
by Barbara Mencer
What do you do when you want something really badly? You try really hard to get it, right?
Let's say ... it being that time again ... that your goal is to win the gold medal in the 100-meter sprint at the Olympics.
You'd give it everything you've got, wouldn't you? You'd try as hard as you could to run as fast as you could. You'd strain to give that last ounce of effort. You'd grit your teeth and go for it, holding nothing back.
And you'd lose.
You'd lose to someone who'd learned to relax and let the energy flow freely.
And that's not me talkin'. That bit of wisdom comes from someone who knows more about sprinting than maybe anyone else in the world.
I was listening to NPR about a month ago and they were doing a story on Jamaican sprinters and what makes this smallish island such a breeding ground for the greatest runners in the world.
At one point, the man being interviewed, Dennis Johnson ... the 72 year old "Philosopher King of Jamaican sprinting" ... asks the host this question:
"Have you ever seen Usain Bolt come from the back and rush past the rest of the field?"
"Yes."
"Well that's not really what you're seeing. "What you saw was the other people tiring first. Because you cannot increase speed after 6 seconds or 60 meters. It's a physiological impossibility."
Hmmm. Interesting. At this point, both the athlete and the coach in me are intrigued big time.
So, what we were actually seeing when we watched Usain Bolt blast past the field in the final 40 meters of the 100 meter race at the Beijing Olympics was not Bolt speeding up, but the other runners slowing down.
He wasn't kicking it into another gear. He wasn't willing himself to go faster than the others. In fact, what he was doing better than the others was relaxing. Yeah, it's completely counterintuitive, but, in the words of the NPR piece ...
"According to Johnson, people have the wrong idea about speed. He says a relaxed sprinter maintains speed, while the sprinter who's tight, who's concentrating too much, can tire fast or lose it at the end."
So, they teach the Jamaican sprinters that if they want to go faster, they need to relax. Fascinating.
I've been pondering what we can all learn from all this. Several things come to mind.
Hard work is important. No Olympic athlete would ever reach that level of achievement without plenty of hard work and disciplined training, but when it comes time to actually compete, trying harder is actually counterproductive. You have to just let it happen.
That makes sense if you believe that you don't create energy as much as you channel it. And by trying too hard, you just end up blocking it. Your job is to let it flow.
Allow good things to happen rather than trying to force them to.
Don't strain. Breathe. Relax. Focus single-mindedly on the task at hand, but do so with no anxiety ... no tightness. Let the energy flow through you.
It's no different in life than it is in sprinting. Do the work, approach your preparations with discipline, and when it's time to perform, just let go and let it happen. When you can do that, you've done something special. It takes you to a special place, and once you've gone there, you'll always want to go back for more.
Athletes call it being "in the zone." Psychologists talk about being in a state of "flow." But whatever you call it, it's a very good place, a state of mind and body where the best of you comes out.
And you get there, ironically, not by dint of Herculean effort, but by virtually disappearing.
You get there not by willing yourself to perform, but by trusting.
You get there not by doing as much as by simply being. And how you're being makes all the difference.
Relaxed and flowing is a good way to be.
Warmest Regards,
Barbara | 
