I’ve been getting a lot of attention on social media this week… here’s how I turn it into fuel.
Just to quietly toot my own horn a bit, back in the day, I was a bit of a gun at the penalty shoot-out.
To a lot of Aussie ball sports fans, the penalty shoot out in soccer is a disappointing way to decided a result.
I mean you have two teams slogging it out for 90 minutes, collective strategy against strategy, only to let it all come down to something that can deliver totally random results.
Penalty shoot outs are unpredictable. The better side doesn’t always win in a shoot out.
But personally, I love the drama of it.
Because the shoot out is a battle of the mind.
Mostly soccer is played on instinct. When you’ve got the ball, on a break down the flank, you’re totally in the moment. Time slows down and speeds up. You’re in ‘the zone’.
When you’re getting set to take a penalty shot though. Nothing is happening. The world has stopped. And it’s just you and your head.
In sport they talk about closed skills and open skills. In open skills you’re reacting to something. The cricket ball bouncing off the pitch towards you. The unpredictable bounce of a footy.
There’s no time to think.
Closed skills on the other hand occur in controlled environments. The gymnast’s dismount. The golfer’s putt. The shoot-out.
If things go wrong, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.
Which is why there’s so much pressure.
Nailing a shot past the keeper at practice is one thing. Doing it at the end of a long game to decide who takes home the premiership flag is another.
And this pressure can make even the best players look stupid.
You don’t see it so much in the professional leagues. Professional sports people are paid to deal with pressure. They practice it. They develop strategies.
They learn techniques that help them work with the violent and explosive energies moving through their body.
But in the amateur leagues, you can get some pretty out-there results.
Either people can’t get a handle on all that energy. They throw too much at the ball and send it into the stratosphere.
Or they’re choking down too hard on that energy and they freeze up. There’s no fluidity in their movement, no power in their strike, and they end up plopping some lame piddle at the goalie.
Pressure gives you an unusual surge of energy. You have to learn to channel it effectively. You’ve got to strike that balance. You can’t let it run wild through you, but you can’t lock it down either.
Finding that balance is a skill.
And I would say, it’s an important life skill.
I’m thinking about all this because it’s been an unusual week. Regular readers would know I published a pretty substantial and hard-hitting take down of negative gearing last week.
I said it’s a scam. Not a scam ‘by’ the people using it, but ‘on’ the people using it. Check it out. It’s one of the best things I’ve done. I gave myself an A+.
Anyway, just for my own interest as much as anything, I decided to throw a bit of a facebook advertising spend at it. I was proud of it and wanted to share it round a bit.
I wasn’t really ready for what happened.
It got traction. A lot of traction.
In just a few days, it’s racked up over 753 shares, with a lot of people tagging their friends into the conversation in the comments.
You can see the post here: https://www.facebook.com/knowledgesource/posts/1267145150004552
I saw a huge surge in traffic to the site.
So I’m thinking, here we go. I knew I was walking into a lion’s den with such a hot button topic. I was ready for the insults, the slurs, the hatchet jobs.
In the end, the comments were actually pretty positive… most of them. It could have been a lot worse.
But I was ready, because one of the skills I’ve learnt in life is how to take negative energy and transmute it into drive. Eat hate and turn it into fuel.
It’s like the pressure of a penalty shoot out. You’ve got to work with it.
You can say, “oh this person’s an idiot, I’m not going to let it affect me.”
But you don’t really get a choice about it. You don’t get to choose your emotions. You only get to choose how you react to them.
Or you could try and block out the yucky feeling and “rise above it”. But that just locks you up.
The discipline is to accept the hate heading your way, allow it into your sphere, but then turn that energy into personal energy, and then direct it towards something productive.
Do you ever wonder how someone like Donald Trump does it? He’s obviously got enough awareness to know that half the world hates him. What’s it like when every comedian in the country is mocking your hair, your speech, your values, your grip on reality?
Could you do it? I don’t think I could hack it.
But I think he just does what I do. He takes that negative energy and turns it into a fuel source.
Accept that it’s part of the game, and turn it into drive.
Of course, that starts with not being afraid of it. And that probably means having an ego that’s robust enough to deal with daily attack. That’s something that takes work.
Then its about not being afraid of your feelings. You’re having a reaction because someone’s called you a brainless toilet brush. That’s ok. That’s great.
Accept it. Transmute it. Drive it.
Straight into the back of the net.
How do you work with haters?
KiwiAl says
Interesting new angle Jon! Very thought provoking.
I find haters are easiest, so long as they don’t manage to track you down to your house or somewhere you hang out. Then, it can get very scary. Apart from that, they are fun to play with, for a few seconds. More than that is a total waste of time.
It’s the one’s who are smarter and more knowledgeable than me, who can accurately and justifiably shoot down something I said in a brilliant techni-colour ball of vividly exploding flames, that I find way, waaay the hardest to deal with. They knock me back into my own half, and are hard to justify myself against.
How do you deal with those? I certainly have no idea how Don does it.
But, maybe, he’s not like me. Maybe he doesn’t give a damn, and maybe he’s just doing it for the sheer fun of winding everyone up off the clock! He’s certainly starting to do that now. Hard not to look desperate and grasping at straws, unless you really don’t give a damn. Haven’t looked lately, but he doesn’t seem to be backing off, even though it looks more and more like he’s going to lose.
I see his Hollywood Blvd stone even got smashed up on YouTube (don’t know the link) by a hater with an axe. Don’t really understand that. In reality, Don, by what he has done, has achieved far more for women’s rights than any woman I can think of. I mean, now, any woman who gets groped need have no fear about calling out a “Donald Trumping”… It’s brought it all much more out into the open, more into the public eye, where it needs to be.
Gotta go.
KiwiAl says
An after thought, while I was away.
For The Don, maybe this is all very carefully calculated (by his accountants) and quite well-planned. I mean, we all know he’s not the world’s purest citizen. So, why’s he doing it at all, in spite of his lack of credentials, lack of knowledge, lack of political training and nous, and all the negative exposures and bad publicity?
MAYBE, he’s worked out (OK, his accountants, more likely) that it’s way, waaay, waaay, by FAAAAR and away the cheapest publicity he can buy on the face of the planet.
And as they say, All Publicity is Good Publicity!
My 2cents… Call me a cynic if you like! (I don’t know if this is an original thought; probably, it’s not, but I haven’t heard it anywhere else as yet.) George Bernard Shaw put it correctly, IMHO.
ron goddard says
don’t hate them..just outlive them. and that means living the good life and ignoring the ‘haters’.
if they have a problem its their problem not yours. it matters not how perfect you are there is always some bugger out there bad mouthing you because you are perfect! lol
with shootouts, i remember that in the 2006 world cup germany(world cup favourites), had a shootout with, i think spain. they missed all bloody five shots. good article jonno. (oh..and lets not forget the wingeing that went on when the italiano soccer player fell over our man and scored a penalty goal. i have never heard or seen such a hullaballoo..not a very sporting reaction from oz sports fans. remembering that most of the cup was played in 32 deg c heat and those players were entitled to feel tired after 90 minutes running around..and its all PART OF THE GAME!)
ron goddard says
remember the usa election? trump vs clinton. josef stalin said it best.: i don’t care how many people vote or who they vote for..just let me know who the counters are. in other words gang, the gerrymanderers of politics rule the roost. donald t .should win by a street, but hilarys little bugs will get into the counting machine and give off a tremendous bout of ‘false flag’ results and therefore win the election by a narrow margin just to keep everyone happy. but not everyone is happy in uncle sam territory. one congressman has already stated that if the donald loses the election he’s a gonna pick up his musket..and watch out! also the former head of the f.b.i. went on tele yesterday, crying, and said that americans must..must vote for donald trump or all is lost! meanwhile in downtown moscow vladimer p. has stated quite categorically, in russian of course, that if hillary c. wins, the whole east and west coasts of usa will be frozen (power, water etc.) but not central usa. nobody will get hurt..its just that the only way he can prevent ww3 is to immobilise the military of america. and the yanks have got no answer. he has those nice emp s all ready for the americans. good stuff!! i like vladimer p. he’s got guts. it takes an iron will to defend his country from the bigots of the west. and great patience too. according to facebook and twitter etc. trump is ahead by a country mile. most americans are now aware of h.c.’s bad stuff. there is so much dirt on her coming up it will take years to sort through it. you see she hates americans! there you are jonno i got around to your hate subject quite nicely i think. lets see what happens next in the jewmerican vaudeville.
KiwiAl says
Hi Ron,
Now yo’ talkin’!! (Looks like it’s only you ‘n’ me wanna talk about haters.)
Care to do us a favour and post some trustworthy links to some of these videos or what have you? Would luv to see it for meself.
Cheers,
KA