Siddeeq Shabazz
CFL.ca
The fourth lesson from blog 4 helped me get through the toughest parts of my relationship as well as the uncertainty with my football career.
- Lesson 4 – Attachment isn’t a necessary ingredient for true love.
The instant I realized I would be okay and could make the best out of whatever the situation with both the way my family and career would turn out, that sense of empowerment I used to feel when I was playing ball came back tenfold. However, this time rather than being routed in what I did, and the name I had created for myself, it was routed internally in my belief system which is much harder to lose unwillingly than say a job, wealth, or any of the many things we mistake for personal power.
I stopped fretting over the things I couldn’t control, such as my fiancée’s and NFL teams’ decisions, and focused on what I could control: my own thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and actions. With this new perspective I would ultimately end up creating what I desired, getting my family back together, with considerably less stress and force, while at the same time signing a contract with the Edmonton Eskimos.
This was around Thanksgiving 2006 that I started to find that in more than just these two instances that the more I’d stress and push things to be a certain way, the harder life seemed and the less I would get of what I desired. When I started letting relationships and life in general flow naturally, things just started to fall into place for me.
After reading the book “Goals” by Brian Tracy – it was actually a book on compact disc I had borrowed from my brother Day for my 22 hour drive from Atlanta to New Mexico – that I would start to experience the true power of creating exactly what you want through letting go of all preconceived notions and letting things just flow, while also applying Tracy’s goal setting and achieving techniques.
By the time I had reached my destination, my home in New Mexico, I was ready to start my new year off right. In the first few months I would end up getting certified as a personal trainer, build a strong clientele of 25 where I’d impact numerous lives through health and fitness, I started my free life-skills and football camp with the help of volunteers and donations from throughout our city, and I invested in my first entrepreneurial endeavor with my older brother Day. The best part of the whole thing was the fact that I was in the worst financial circumstances I had been in since my college days but I was able to give more than ever before in my 25 years of life. This is when I dropped being realistic and decided on being a possibilities guy.
- Lesson 5 – Right and wrong, and good and bad are just judgments, and when you judge others you’re really just judging yourself.
This is one that I am working on understanding everyday, in myself and in relation to others. We all make hundreds of judgments daily, whether it’s about others or ourselves. What I learned is that from different vantage points anything can be viewed as either good or bad, and the truth for one person isn’t always the same for another. The way an individual interprets their world around them can only be based on their personal experience of it up to that point and in being aware of this, you can 1. let things just be as they are, and not always take them so personally; and 2. you can be more opened and sensitive to differences of opinion/perception.
This idea helped me further free myself from self condemnation as well as taking too seriously criticism from others especially in the turbulent world of professional sport. It gives the empowerment of knowing that critics are only seeing and judging me through their own interpretation of life, and then I get the final decision on what impact I will let that have on my perceptions rather than always taking it at face value.
This idea ties directly into lesson 6.
- Lesson 6 – We’re responsible for creating our own reality, so be mindful of who and what you let influence it.
By not buying into societies and others judgments we get to create our own reality, another practice I work on daily to bring more peace and joy to my life. We are bombarded with fearful images on the news, negativity from our peers and co-workers and if you’re not keen to it, it becomes easy to get engulfed in it. On a football team we experience this quite often. When things go bad, and they normally do at some point during a 19 week CFL season, it gets easy for the critic to come out of the best of us. You always have that one person who can’t wait to start pointing fingers and throwing people under the bus when things go wrong. If you haven’t prepared yourself to ward off the negativity it’s not long before you’re complaining right along side them, and when this cancer spreads through a team or organization it just becomes another obstacle to overcome and it’s a hard one to overcome.
I don’t know why it’s so much easier, or maybe just so much more common, to spread negativity than positivity. What I do know is when I catch myself falling into this trap I quickly make a mental note of it, and direct my attention to the positives. Then, once I’m straight I do my best to interject something positive about the situation or change the topic all together to something more positive. I can’t lie though, it gets hard at times, especially when your tired and your defenses are down, say during those last few days of training camp, or after a couple of back to back losses. But try and be mindful of this in your place of work and see if you can be that positive voice, and notice how your perceptions become your reality and feel that sense of empowerment when you decide to create a more positive sense of it. I will finish this look back on the lessons that brought me to my current state in the next blog, till then here is wishing you health.
Siddeeq Shabazz is a second-year linebacker with the Edmonton Eskimos. He led the team in defensive tackles as a rookie in 2007. He is also a lifestyle coach for www.yourdayetc.com.
