I Left My Heart….

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I’m here in beautiful San Francisco, attending and presenting at a conference.

I’m enjoying a cup of coffee as I admire the view. I can see the bay from my hotel room. I can hear the fog horns and ferry horns blowing.  Although I’m inside, I did take a few minutes to go through my basic morning routine of breathing and light stretching exercises. Helped shake out the cob webs.

Which needed to be shaked out, because my flight got in late last night. First off, we had clouds and storms in Austin, where I live. So some delays there. But I didn’t mind because it meant I got to watch my Washington Redskins play the Houston Texans. That’s the good news.

The bad news: my Redskins blew their lead and lost in overtime. Ouch!

If you are a Redskins fan, you understand the pain – the “wandering around in the great NFL wilderness for over a decade”  type of pain I am talking about. Our hopes of regaining our former greatness are dashed, year after year.

We all have high hopes for this season. Skins beat archrival Dallas last week. So we’re 1 and 1. And that’s cool. We don’t know for sure how the season will turn out. But we have hope. And sometimes that’s all you need, no matter what is going on. As long as you don’t get discouraged and keep your eyes and heart on your goal, you will be fine.

There’s an important analogy here.

First off, the Redskins must be deeply disappointed in the way they lost the game last night. But what will they do? They will take today off (well, the players will). Then they will get busy Tuesday preparing for the next game and the next team.

No time to dwell too long on the game, other than to leverage the mistakes made to (hopefully) improve. Say “Next!” and move on, and endeavor to do better next time.

Another analogy comes to mind as well. I mentioned that my flight took off late from Austin. Then we had to circle for about 45 minutes once we arrived in the San Francisco area. The fog and cloud cover was delaying things, and the flights were stacked up, waiting to land.

In fact, my better half, who was back home checking the flight status online (isn’t that sweet?), said there were over a hundred flights queued up to land at one point. All circling, circling, like a bunch of lost birds.

But, eventually, we got the green light and came on in. What a beautiful view of the city, even with all the clouds!

And that’s my second point today. Sometimes you may suffer setbacks, like losing the game. Sometimes you may find yourself running around in circles and seemingly not making any progress, no matter how hard you are working or how much you want it.

When you find this happening, step back, take a deep breath – or two, or three – and relax. Simply say “Next!” to the latest setback or delay and get back to the work at hand.

As the saying goes, “God’s delays are not God’s denials”.

Good way to think about it!

You Can Do It!

Karen

www.BestBreathingExercises.com

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