“Here is a book that should be in every school library because it is loaded it is loaded with so many ways to help others find themselves.”-
Dale Brown, author, motivational speaker, and retired Hall of Fame Basketball Coach, Louisiana State University (Shaquille O’Neal’s College Coach)
“This book is a comprehensive life guide for anyone who wants a sporting chance at breaking the vicious cycle of despair and dysfunction in their life.”
LaGeris Underwood Bell, Multi-Emmy Award Winning Television Producer
SPORTING THE RIGHT ATTITUDE:
Lessons Learned in a Troubled Family
by
Walter Jackson, Msc.D.
Copyright 2008 Walter Jackson
*******
SPORTING
THE
RIGHT ATTITUDE
Lessons Learned in a Troubled Family
Walter Jackson, Msc.D.
Cover Design by Cathi Stevenson
Copyright © 2008 by Walter Jackson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.
Smashwords Edition
Published by:
Self Awareness Trainings, LLC
645 West 9th Street, Unit 110
Los Angeles, California 90015-1640
Los Angeles, California 90027
Smashwords Edition
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This book is available in print at Amazon.
* * * * * *
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my belated parents, Walter and Dorothy Jackson, who did the best they could raising our family; to my wife Janet and her priceless gifts of understanding, caring and support; to my children, Ryan, Devon and Jasmine who have brought much love and joy to my life; my mother-in-law, Evelyn Benton who has always been there to support the family; and others mentioned throughout this book whose lives have touched mine in their own unique way, and to the reader for whom I hope this book will provide awareness, inspiration and understanding.
* * * * * *
SPECIAL THANKS
Special thanks to my editor Maggie Frost. To my soul mate, my, and wife Janet, for her priceless gifts of understanding, caring and support…as well as the long hours helping me research, and her invaluable editorial assistance.
* * * * * *
Table of Contents
SPORTING THE RIGHT ATTITUDE:
Lessons Learned in a Troubled Family
HYPERLINK \l "FamilyBlueprints" Chapter 1 - Family Blueprints
HYPERLINK \l "IMissTheHomeBoys" Chapter 2 -.I Miss the Homeboys
HYPERLINK \l "WhyMe" Chapter 3 - Why Me?
HYPERLINK \l "YouCantGiveUp" Chapter 4 - You Can't Give Up
HYPERLINK \l "JustAThoughtAway" Chapter 5 --Just a Thought Away
HYPERLINK \l "OvercomingtheSilentEnemyYourHiddenAnger" Chapter 6 - Overcoming the Silent Enemy: Your Hidden Anger
HYPERLINK \l "UsingSetbacksAndObstaclesToWin" Chapter 7 - Using Setbacks to Win
HYPERLINK \l "BelieveInYourself" Chapter 8 - Believe in Yourself
HYPERLINK \l "PictureItInYourMindVisualization" Chapter 9 - Picture it in Your Mind
HYPERLINK \l "CoachingYourThoughts" Chapter 10 -Coaching Your Thoughts
HYPERLINK \l "FocusingOnTheGameOfLife" Chapter 11 -Focusing On the Game of Life (Mindfulness)
HYPERLINK \l "TheHealingPowersLoveAndForgiveness" Chapter 12 -The Healing Powers: Love and Forgiveness
HYPERLINK \l "Bibliography" Bibliography
HYPERLINK \l "AbouttheAuthor" About the Author
* * * * * *
PREFACE
During the time it has taken to write this book, I have been content with the title “Sporting the Right Attitude.” Sports allowed me to taste the fruits of victory as I won games early in life. Sports also helped me survive growing up in a violent family.
Let me explain what I mean. As a child, I was under pressure, but I didn’t know how to handle my anger, my hurt, and all of the other negative emotions that surfaced in me. It was sports that helped me most to direct my thoughts positively.
I focused on athletics because sports have assumed such a predominant position in our society over the past four decades. The television industry has increased its sports programming time because public interest has grown --- or could it be the other way around?
Media coverage has allowed us to follow our favorite teams or athletes from training right up to their final games. Games have become faster and talent more abundant, forcing today’s athletes to be even more versatile. Over time, the top athletes are increasingly stronger, taller and faster than their predecessors. Similarly, world records continue to be broken again and again. Nevertheless, one essential quality successful athletes need, remains the same: the right attitude.
Athletes know that in order to win, they must maintain winning thoughts regardless of the adversities they may face.
Just as the athlete must have the right attitude in order to win the game, anyone, with the right attitude, can cope with the emotional stresses of their troubled family.
The skills I developed in sports, along with the courage and principles I later discovered, taught me that we can have inner peace while the outer world appears to be falling apart.
Sense of confidence is built up through sports --- a reassurance that somehow things will always turn out all right as long as you do your best.
I was certain I would be able to escape my family violence if I received an athletic scholarship. Several universities had expressed an interest in my athletic ability in football, basketball and track during my junior year in high school. But I watched my dream of becoming a professional athlete slip away when I was injured in a car accident that left me in a coma for three days, and took my best friend’s life. The road back to physical and mental recovery was a difficult one. I now realize that I suffered emotionally because at the time I had no knowledge of certain principles that I am sharing with you in this book.
Many athletes use practical methods to rise to a higher consciousness to help them overcome challenges on and off the playing field. By using constructive channels of thought, most athletes learn to believe they are winners. Coaches use helpful principles such as visualizations, affirmations, mindfulness, and pep talks to inspire their players to believe in themselves, to realize and achieve their greatest potential.
In the world of sports, as well as in normal day-to-day activities, people need to further their own spiritual awareness, to believe in the rightness of what they do. Somehow, spiritual power magically and effortlessly brings us to an inner peace.
But it’s impossible to be enthusiastic about our own lives if others --- family members, peers, co-workers, supervisors --- are allowed to control us with negative attitudes. When we give our power away to someone else, we are bound to stumble. However, people who trust themselves will succeed.
I ran into many psychological brick walls and spent years trying to find my way, until I realized that what I was really searching for was inner peace. The answers I was seeking were being constantly whispered into my ear by my inner self.
My greatest fulfillment was learning that there is a greater power within us that can provide an inner peace and won’t let us fail if we keep believing. We can learn how to nurture and channel this power. Whatever we call it --- self-acceptance, inner light, the voice of God --- the power of belief will surface to help us win.
Nothing is more important in the journey of life than to gain an understanding of our individual power, to unify with it, and to become empowered. Many famous athletes who are considered physical supermen and superwomen and who have performed outstanding feats have been able to do so because they have become partners with that inner power.
So can we.
Yes, this is the good news --- that people can learn, and they can change their reality by changing their attitudes.
* * * * * *
A cknowlege
T he
T ruth
I nvestigate
T he
U nknown
D eclare
E xcellence
* * * * * *
Chapter 1
HYPERLINK \l "TOC" Family Blueprints
“You have no idea what a poor opinion
I have of myself and how little I deserve it.”
--W.S. Gilbert
A lot of single-parent families lived in the government housing project where I grew up in Stockton, California. My household was one of only a few where both parents lived at home.
Although my parents physically fought often, I felt fortunate to have both of them living in the same household, despite the shame and embarrassment they caused me with their constant fighting. I frequently heard people gossiping about my parents, saying they fought like “cats and dogs.”
I was ashamed because it seemed that all my friends in the project knew about our dysfunctional family. I tried to justify my feelings by telling myself that my parents’ fighting was acceptable behavior since they both lived at home. Most of my friends only had one parent at home.
I carried a tremendous amount of anger and fear, but I didn’t understand why. These feelings made me confused about myself and others.
Whenever a situation arose that triggered these insecure emotions, I would blame anyone and everyone in trying to defend myself. Not once did I try to figure out why I was so insecure. I even began to believe that maybe I was to blame for the family’s problems.
My father, who was a very quiet person, kept his feelings bottled up inside and would seldom talk. I never saw my parents discuss their problems. They would simply argue. It seemed that arguments and physical fights were the only ways they could deal with their differences.
One summer, my father’s brother, Charles Jackson --- who had enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed in Germany --- came to see us. He had received new orders that stationed him in San Francisco, 90 miles away. Charles felt this would be an ideal opportunity to visit his brother and family, whom he had not seen in almost eight years.
On Uncle Charles’ last visit, I was two years old. But now I was 10, old enough to feel my father’s excitement. He very seldom showed his joy, but I could sense his happiness this day.
I was at school that morning when my father picked up his brother at the Greyhound bus station. My parents knew sports were dear to my heart, so even though Uncle Charles was coming, they allowed me to stop off at the gym in the projects after school to practice with the community basketball team.
After practice I headed for home. As I walked along, I felt good, I felt talented and special, full of confidence to tackle life’s challenges. I needed sports for escape. I felt my life depended on football, basketball, baseball and track and field in more ways than one.
When I arrived home, Uncle Charles was sitting on the couch in the living room. He gave me an affectionate hug and sat down to talk warmly with me about things I was interested in. I would have liked to experience this affection from my parents but they did not feel the freedom within themselves to take each other’s hand or kiss in front of their children. It seemed they could not get past their negative emotions. and I knew they were unwilling to come forward on their own.
I thought how nice it was to know your blood relatives --- maybe because it would seem easier to share my genuine feelings with a relative than with my parents. I wanted to express those feelings that had been knotted up inside me for years.
I had come to believe our relatives who lived out of state didn’t like our family. They would usually visit other relatives in California, but never seemed to have time to come to Stockton. I felt that, except for Uncle Charles, our relatives treated us like outcasts. This was a very sensitive issue with my parents.
It was an exciting reunion with Uncle Charles. The next evening, after Dad got off work, he took his brother out for drinks.
My mother, who was always angry about something, now seemed to have an even bigger chip on her shoulder. I remember how she used to make my sister and me come in early almost every day, long before the other kids in the neighborhood. And we didn’t come in early to do homework either. I believe she did it so she would not feel lonely, since my father was hardly ever at home, and when he was, they acted like strangers toward one another.
Shortly after my father and uncle arrived home that night, an argument broke out between my parents. The moment I heard them raise their voices, my heart began to race.
I jumped out of bed, put on my clothes and Converse sneakers, as I had done so many times before. I was 10 years old, still a kid, but tough. In the projects you learned early on how to take care of yourself in more ways than one. I knew I might have to break up another fight.
I knelt on the floor. “Please God, take this anger and temper away from my parents,” I prayed. Somehow, Uncle Charles was able to calm them down and prevent a physical fight. But this sort of confrontation happened almost every week in our home and was usually handled by my sister and me.
For some strange reason, my mother was immediately calmed by Uncle Charles. Little did we realize she was still a volcano smoldering inside. She calmly stepped over to the sink, put some water in a pot and placed it on a burner. No one thought anything of the fact that she was boiling water. Suddenly, she took the pot from the stove, turned to my father --- who had his back to her --- and threw the boiling water on him. Then all hell broke loose.
I have never understood why my mother ran into the bathroom and locked the door when she could have run through the kitchen and out the front door. It was as though she had a death wish because she knew my father was going to “kick her butt.”
It didn’t take long. With a surge of rage, he kicked open the door. My mother was curled up on the floor under the sink. But before dad could put his hands on her, my Uncle Charles and I grabbed him. I also tried to take a kitchen knife from him, but he had such a strong grip, that when I tried to pull the knife from his hand my finger went across the blade, cutting me severely.
As the blood gushed from my fingers, all the attention was immediately shifted to me. Once again, my mother would survive another "barn burner" by the "skin of her teeth."
A common problem I had as child was trying to channel my anger and fears, but not being able to. Frustration upsets the child who cannot rationalize his feelings, and makes him feel angry and powerless. There is no one to turn to, no source of help. Carrying these emotions round with me day after day made me feel like a volcano ready to explode.
I was scared and I didn’t know how to talk to my parents about my insecurities. I didn’t know how to solve my problems. They just seemed to grow and magnify other problems.
My father was a good provider, but he didn’t spend much time at home. I was angry with him for never being there, but I was afraid to tell him so. Of course, if I had told him, he still wouldn’t have changed, so I kept getting angry at the wrong people.
I noticed how I would get angry with my sister, Linda, for the slightest thing. She and I would often end up arguing and fighting with each other but usually, neither of us understood why.
We didn’t have a clue that we were imitating our parents. We were both frustrated and this was another way of getting our parents’ attention. We had no role models who could show us how to behave in ways that would make us feel good about ourselves.
Our lives were miserable because we all had so many negative emotions stewing inside us. These feelings, so deeply lodged within our subconscious minds, would haunt us for years.
People know the saying, “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” means that whatever you haven’t got is exactly the thing you want. The thing I didn’t have and deeply wanted was love. But being young and full of wonder, I discovered many simple pleasures during those years that helped me keep loving life and myself.
Occasionally, on my way home from school, I would slip away to a nearby pond to catch tadpoles. My sister knew how much I enjoyed this and would always tell on me if she found out — not because she was concerned about my well-being, but to “put me in the dog house” with our parents. But I was willing to risk it, because when I stood on the bank of a creek, something inside me shouted with joy.
Our housing project had nature as a neighbor. Nearby, fields and miles of open land were filled with creeks and ponds. Nature’s wealth and abundance was at our fingertips.
My friends and I would shed our sneakers and wade into the water, tad poling. The water would ripple and crickets would begin to chirp. Water bugs raced across the pond. A bullfrog would “huh-Rok!” as we waited for our prey to appear. We lowered our jars, ready to scoop the first tadpole that passed. Ah, here comes one, he swims closer…flash! The jar scoops in for the catch. “We’ve got him!”
The tadpoles we kept we put into a plastic dish filled with water and soggy leaves. As the days went by, I would watch their growth as they eventually turned into frogs.
When I was 10 years old, I could not intellectually explain what life was offering me, but I believe I sensed the natural rhythm with nature’s simple pleasures of life that gave me confidence to carry on another day.
Looking back on my childhood, I believe that curiosity and love of nature and sports kept alive in me an excitement for life, for wanting to know more, to do more. I think I learned to calculate the mysteries of life by plunging into the muddy ponds and creeks.
“Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,” one of the handbooks for Alcoholics Anonymous, says, ”When a drunk has a terrific hangover because he drank heavily yesterday, he cannot live well today. But there is another kind of hangover which we all experience whether we are drinking or not. That is the emotional hangover, the direct result of yesterday’s and sometimes today’s excesses of negative emotion. If we wish to live serenely today and tomorrow, we need to eliminate these hangovers.”
Because my parents fought, they were always harboring resentment and didn’t communicate effectively with their children. We always felt that we had to “walk on egg shells” and never felt free to express and share our feelings. There seemed to be no cure for our emotional hangovers.
Yet, during the 12 years my family and I lived in the project, I was totally unaware of how my frequent visits to the ponds flooded my senses and reached down to the darkest corners of my mind, giving me hope. When I watched the transformation of a tadpole to a frog, I felt a spiritual connection that life was always evolving to a higher form.
I always dreamed of the day that I would be grown and could leave home and not have to put up with my parents’ oppression. I had no idea then how these early family experiences shaped my belief and values, so that even when I left home, the insecurities and bitterness followed me into adult life.
When I finally moved out of the house I had to find out who I was. The hardest part of facing my insecurities was discovering what it was that made me afraid.
The late Virginia Satir, a leading expert on families, said that 98 percent of American families are dysfunctional. My parents were violently dysfunctional. There is a common denominator among alcoholics, foodaholics, gamblers, workaholics, sexaholics, and neurotic parents: each is controlled by a negative habit. These habits cause people to lose touch with their feelings because they have tried to make them disappear through addictions. They also suggest that there are a lot more addicts than we realize. But we limit this area by focusing mostly on drug abuse or alcohol.
A solution depends on two things. The most important one is sporting the right attitude; the other is having the ability to face what drives us to drink, gamble, fight or overeat --- submit to those addictions that hide us from our real feelings.
The family is the basic unit of society. It answers the human need to be nurtured, to belong, to feel secure in the love of others, to be a part of something that matters.
When one parent is dysfunctional, according to John Bradshaw in his book “The Family,” the whole family system is upset and reacts accordingly. Therefore, the entire family must be treated as a single patient in order to get to the core of individual problems.
The price we pay for not saying how we feel can be dear indeed. It’s very important to verbalize our feelings and try to realize the hurt and the need for love behind our behavior. It’s important to communicate and share our feelings to keep our anger and frustration from exploding inside us.
If we go through life holding in hurt, we lose our perspective as human beings. In time, our confusion will definitely take its toll psychologically and emotionally.
We can think of the family as a sports team. When we think of sports, we probably think of a team concept: one group of athletes competing against another. Each team works toward a common goal: to win its league championship and become the best team in the state or nation. And when the team wins or loses a game, it affects each player psychologically and emotionally.
In team sports like basketball, football, soccer, hockey and baseball, each player plays a certain position or role, an individual link that allows the team structure to exist. The guiding principle of team concept is wholeness: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Only to the extent that the team members operate and function together as a whole unit will the results on the field be successful.
The key to each individual player’s success depends largely on the attitude between player and coach --- an attitude which can be built up or torn down by the coach and his assistant.
The team concept in sports is a lot like the family-as-a-system, forming a unified whole.
By looking at the family as a system we can see that parents emotionally support their children in much the same way a coach supports the team players to develop and maintain a healthy outlook.
Unless the coach --- or parent(s) --- works collectively and individually with the “team’s players,” then the techniques alone won’t be enough. “Recipes in books don’t bake cookies, people do.” “Blueprints on paper don’t build bridges, people on a team do.” A parent’s lectures aren’t enough. She or he must interact with a child through loving and caring.
The most important relations we will have are those with our families. We need a parent/coach to help us develop the mental and physical skills to handle life’s ups and downs. If they are not present in our lives, it’s helpful to find someone else. Perhaps a mentor, a teacher, or someone in the church to help guide us. We have to ask for help sometimes, and be open to answers.
Children who are emotionally abandoned, rejected, hurt or shamed will adjust to stress by creating certain roles to help them survive. We create images to protect ourselves. Some people pretend to be tough and others act as if nothing can bother them --- both hiding their pain.
We grow from a child’s body to an adult body. But even when we’ve developed to the point where we look and talk like adults, deep within, there remains a child who never got his needs met.
When we are children and our needs are not met, we could become dysfunctional. We search for love in all the wrong places and for all the wrong reasons. Children often make compromises to try to satisfy the need for acceptance and approval. But, by being compromised, we cannot find direction. If we block out our real needs and feelings, that energy does not die. It surfaces in self-destructive ways.
As adults we may find ourselves continuing to play the same roles we played as children to protect ourselves in our dysfunctional families.
I found myself playing several of the many kinds of roles: the Hero, the Perfect Child, the Scapegoat, and the Rebel.
The Hero brings dignity to the family system. The rationale is, “If I’m good enough and smart enough my family members won’t fight. I’ll be so good that they will get along.” Through my sportsmanship, awards, newspaper articles and scholarship offers, I brought pride back into our family. This was my child’s way of creating a family I could be proud of: taking control of what I could.
The Perfect Child is the one who always tries to do things to please his parents. So many times I did things merely to please them. I was seldom concerned about my own happiness.
The Scapegoat is the child who acts out all the anger and pain. He will be the one the family blames for its problems. The attention is taken off the real problems of the family and placed on this child. I used to pick fights with my sister, in acting out my anger and pain. My family would blame me for their problems. They wondered why I couldn't behave.
The Rebel is the family member who tends to break away from the family. He or she is different and often stands alone in their perspective on the home environment. I was so angry at the violence going on in my family that I was determined to get out of the house and have a life of my own at any cost. I didn’t want to repeat the same kind of lifestyle that my parents were demonstrating. I tried to stay out of the house as much as possible.
In John Bradshaw’s book “The Family,” he writes: “The major factor in getting out of a dysfunctional family is awareness about abuse and dysfunctionality.” But usually, the more we try to change, the more we stay the same, because we have no new thoughts or information to break the old beliefs that continue to bind the family system and keep us trapped.
We don’t have to wait for a catastrophe in order to bring our families closer together. There is so much information and help available today that all we need to do is open ourselves up and be willing to see the truth. We should let ourselves off the hook for a lot of our family history simply isn’t our fault. When we can do this, we may be able to find inner peace and help our families by being the light.
Very few people have the perfect families. Even those families who appear to have wonderful relationships, have problems behind closed doors. Our families’ difficulties can help us to build our character, and become stronger. Conflicts with our parents is a way of teaching us to become a better person. If you are without parents, their absence teaches you to become stronger and self-reliant. If we can’t find the love from our families, we can still love ourselves. In this book, you will find ways to build your self-confidence, love yourself, and to sport the right attitude.
RECAPS:
Look at your anger and resentment. These are normal feelings. Are there problems in your family? Have you been removed from your family? Did someone die, or leave? Do you feel angry that they left?
* *
Stop blaming. When a situation arises that triggers those insecure emotions, ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way?” Just being aware helps us to heal.
* * *
Communicate your feelings. Find a friend, counselor, teacher, or someone to confide in. If you can’t, sit down and write your thoughts in a journal. If words don’t come easily, draw what you feel. Don’t edit your words or drawing, just go with what you feel. Get into a habit of putting your feelings on paper. Oftentimes keeping things bottled up is what causes us to do things and say things that get us into trouble. If you think this may hurt someone, keep the drawing or writings to yourself.
* * *
Are there other positive ways you can channel your feelings? (music, sports, art, helping others?)
* * *
Know if your feelings are overwhelming, especially depressive feelings, and you feel like you want to hurt yourself or others, this is a time to seek help. Talk to someone you know can help you. If you can’t find someone, call information operator for a hotline to help you.
* * *
Sporting the Right Attitude is thinking like a star athlete. Know that if you feel you are losing, or that you have lost…you can still win. Don’t give up.
AFFIRMATIONS
Affirmations help us to change our thinking from negative to positive. They work when we memorize them and actually start to feel and visualize what we affirm. “I am” is used to affirm that we already are, what we wish to become. Read the affirmation chapter of this book to learn how to write powerful affirmations that will help you. Here are a few:
I am using these experiences in my family to become a better person.
I am a stronger person because of these family challenges.
(If your parents are absent in your life physically or emotionally)
I am loving myself more despite my parents not being here for me.
* * * * * *
Chapter 2
HYPERLINK \l "TOC" I MISS THE HOME BOYS
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us
while we live.”
---Norman Cousins
I remember when we moved from the projects to our own single-family residence. My father used his G.I. Bill to buy a beautiful three-bedroom house with a nice large back yard in a quiet community. This was a big mental adjustment for me. I missed my “home boys” in the project, and as often as possible I returned to visit, but my after-school involvement with sports made it difficult.
Despite our having moved to better surroundings, my parents continued to fight and argue. Nevertheless, I got more seriously involved in pursuing my dream of becoming a professional athlete. I put all my time into developing my talents to the fullest, going from one sport to the next, from the football field to the basketball court, to the track and to the baseball field, year after year.
In the summer of my junior year at Edison High School, a family from Oakland, California, moved into the neighborhood. They purchased a home located diagonally across from our home. Their son, Ellis Porter, stood every bit of 6’5” and was an incredibly talented basketball player. Eventually, we met and became the best of friends.
Ellis would invite me over to play some one-on-one basketball. Sometimes we just talked. Playing against him improved my basketball game greatly. In fact, with his addition to our varsity basketball team, we had one of the tallest starting lineups for a high school basketball team in California that year. We went on to win our league championship and were invited to compete in the Camellia City Tournament of Champions in Sacramento.
In addition to Ellis’ basketball talent, I respected and admired his family. His father was a well-read, intelligent man who could discuss any subject. His mother was always very hospitable to me.
There were times I would go over to their house. Mr. Porter would be sitting in his rocking chair, smoking a pipe and reading a book. Ellis’ mother might be doing chores or cooking for the family. Sometimes I would go over to their house just to talk with Ellis’ father. He would stimulate my mind in many areas beside sports. They never knew about the violence between my parents and I did not volunteer the information. Unconsciously, Mr. Porter may have been the father figure I never had and always wanted.
Mr. Porter often told us, “You will have many mountains to climb and you will be faced with many challenges. But, just carry on, and one day something will happen. Then, you’ll realize that your good wouldn’t have happened if not for your previous challenges.” He always spoke with a deep sense of inner peace and conviction. His conversations about life made me think deeply about the thoughts that stood in the way of my making good choices.
It’s important, if we do not have positive role models in our family, to reach out and find them --- a neighbor, coach, friend, teacher, employer, or someone to talk to. It’s important to vent your feelings.
In his book, “The Language of Feelings,” David Viscott writes: “Not to be aware of one’s feelings is worse than being blind, deaf and paralyzed. Because those defenses that have blocked our unpleasant memories are also blocking the pleasurable ones.”
Many of us have lost --- or perhaps have never developed --- those positive feelings about ourselves to overcome obstacles. Finding others to talk to can help us to stop replaying in our minds those tragedies that trigger our pain and continue to block our happiness. Those “old tapes” are the primary reasons we stay trapped.
Some of us think that those negative feelings somehow vanish into air over time and our lives become more manageable as we grow older. Some people feel we are just like our parents and we should not expect to be happy or have a positive outlook.
In dysfunctional families, most of what we really need to know about how to live and handle our internal feelings is not taught to us by our parents. They may be too busy trying to make their own lives work.
This is a very important concept. It is human to want acceptance. We feel secure because we have been given our parents’ love and approval from day one. We learn that our family loves us. Because they do, the opinion of others doesn’t matter. But what happens to the child who is abused, neglected, or whose parents don’t know how to love, or are not there? Who do not know how to affirm him or her?
If we are lucky, we learn from our teachers how to better ourselves intellectually. But even so, we’re torn down mentally by schoolmates if we don’t excel academically or socially, or if we don’t wear designer clothes.
Advertisers tell us that wearing the “right” clothes or driving the “right” car will put us out in front of the race: “He who would win must look like a winner.” We are constantly fed these unrealistic messages about success. As a result, we often adopt false standards.
Intellectual and social achievements play major roles in showing us how to either suppress or express our feelings and validate our self-worth. Regardless of what we can learn from these experiences at school, we must accept more responsibility for cleaning up our lives. All of us have to find our own path and work out our own destiny. We can change what we don’t like about ourselves.
Change can only come when we want to change. In other words, we have to have a good attitude and have faith that we can become better.
Dennis Conner wrote a story for Sports Illustrated magazine about how he won the America’s Cup. “The Cup represents the ultimate test in the game of life,” the yachtsman said. “Just as in life, success demands commitment and commitment demands a positive winning attitude. I told all the guys who came into our Cup campaign that if they were going to make the grade they needed three essential ingredients: attitude, attitude and attitude.”
ESPN Sports Announcer, Kellen Winslow, was a tight end for the San Diego Chargers, when the team was named pro football team of the quarter century, 1960-1984. When the team was chosen, he was the only active offensive player honored.
Winslow learned to get in touch with his feelings despite playing such a macho sport. “My first five years in the NFL I didn’t have the inner peace I needed off the field,” he said. “I don’t care how much money you have, if you don’t have peace of mind and feel content with yourself, you’ve got a problem. I cry in church and I don’t mind if people see my tears. If one of my boys cries about something, I don’t tell him he’s a sissy. I comfort him and help him develop the right attitude, because I think it takes a real man to show his feelings.”
Males are often considered sissies if they don’t play sports or otherwise live up to a macho image. Most men are really afraid to let go of the macho image of themselves. They fear others will find out that they are not as tough and strong as they pretend to be.
Men are not born with a macho image of themselves, no more than we are born with any of our belief systems. Attitudes are learned from others. I don’t care how strong, how big or how bad we think we are, as humans we all have certain attitudes and problems that we have to deal with.
Dexter Manley, 6’3”and 257 pounds, led the Washington Redskins to two Super Bowls. Not surprisingly, he found himself forced to fit into the macho image.
In a Sports Illustrated article Rick Reilly writes: “There were times when I think Dexter wanted to back down but couldn’t” says his college buddy L.P. Williams. “He had to live up to the image people had of him. This meant talking big and playing big to cover his loneliness.”
Most of Manley’s life he had an attitude of having to prove himself. As a youth he was trying to constantly win his father’s approval because his brother seemed to be the favorite son. He might have succeeded, if he hadn’t gotten his girlfriend pregnant during his senior year in high school. “Marry her,” said the girl’s mother. “Don’t you dare,” said his father. Manley said he would marry his girlfriend to please her mother, but he would not tell his father. When Manley’s father found out, he was furious.
Manley never had the opportunity to explain. When he departed for his first summer at Oklahoma State, he was unaware that his father was dying from colon cancer.
On June 15, Manley’s father died. His grief was terrible. He was consumed with the guilt of feeling he had betrayed his father.
After his father’s death, says Manley, the family started deteriorating. They even fought over their father’s belongings. Before long, Manley’s older brother, Reggie, started drinking heavily and smoking marijuana.
Just before Manley returned to college he pleaded with Reggie: “Be very careful, I’m worried something is going to happen to you. Just be careful.” It was as though he sensed something awful would happen.
Not long after that, Reggie was robbed and murdered. Luckily, Manley still had football, but because of his performance during practice and games, the coach told him he was never going to amount to anything but a factory worker or a ditch digger. Manley thanked him for that day, because it was the challenge he needed to try harder.
He was driven to become the best.
Now his mother was in bad shape. She had a brain tumor. She was also a diabetic and had undergone a mastectomy. She had to learn how to walk, talk and eat again. Manley now had to help support his mother and his sister who was their mother’s caretaker.
All the responsibility thrown on him may have been instrumental in his problems with drugs and alcohol. He eventually checked himself into a rehabilitation center.
No one can change our past or our early family experiences, but we can forgive and release them. One way we can release those hurts and pains that people have caused us feel, is to talk to them lovingly about our feelings. Use the “I feel” words. “I feel (this way____) when you, ________.” If you simply cannot communicate with them, write a letter. But don’t give it to them if you think it could hurt them. Even if that person is dead, you can write a letter. Sometimes just writing to a person without mailing the letter helps to relieve the anger and hurt. It is a way to get it off our chests without being judged for how we feel.
Manley wrote a letter to his father after his father died. “I told him I was mad at him, that he never told me he loved me,” he said. That letter helped Manley deal with the emptiness he had experienced for so long. We can’t always control how others treat us, but we can choose how we react to their attitudes and have the courage to heal ourselves.
Dorothy Briggs recommends in her book, “Celebrate Your Life,” to become parents to ourselves. We can try to become the type of parents we wish we had. Think back to what would have brought you joy as a child and re-create it for yourself.
If we make a conscious decision to do something about our early negative programming and stay with it, we will experience changes in all parts of our lives. Our lives can begin to flow without strain or frustration because we are learning to trust our true selves.
The true self within each of us gives us the feeling that we are in touch with something real and it does something to us from within. It is a mysterious something that is easy to recognize but difficult to define.
In “Creative Visualization,” Shakti Gawain says, “We have all had experiences of being connected with our true self or higher selves although we may not have conceptualized it in that way. Feeling exceptionally high, clear, strong, on top of the world, or able to move mountains, are indications of being connected to your higher self.”
In order to receive inspiration from within, we must first be intensely interested in solving our particular problem or challenge. Only then will creative ideas become unblocked and allowed to flow freely.
In my adult life I continued to blame my parents for all my failures. I was angry and felt they should have known better. After all, they were adults, I told myself.
Later, I discovered the forgiving helps us to get on the right path and get in touch with our higher selves. We must remember, if our parents had known better, they would have done better. So, until we learn to forgive, we cannot release our past. When we are free from resentment, we will succeed in conquering challenges that once seemed impossible to overcome.
Achieving success begins by being willing to change the image we have of ourselves. If we are willing to lay aside those false self-images and confront our emotions realistically, it is possible to overcome negative feelings of weakness, strain and fatigue. Using the tools of faith and forgiveness we can relieve our pain and uncertainty. With faith, knowing things will get better, and a forgiving attitude, we are training our mind and body to operate at peak performance just like athletes who train for the big competitions.
RECAPS:
Accept your feelings.
* * *
Beware of trying to find inner peace through substance abuse, drugs and alcohol. The long-term effects are severely damaging.
* * *
Forgive to free yourself of the past and others.
* * *
Write a letter to express your feelings if you cannot speak to someone face-to-face.
* * *
Use the “I feel” words. Example: “I feel hurt when you_________.”
* * *
Beware of advertiser’s messages. Often they are hidden messages to make you feel you aren’t good enough if you don’t have (whatever they are selling.)_______.”
* * *
It’s OK to cry.
AFFIRMATIONS
Today, I am becoming a better person.
Today, I release the ideas that money, power and
approval from others determine my success.
Today, I determine my own success.
Today, I know that I am being guided toward my real purpose in life.
SPORT THE RIGHT ATTITUDE!
* * * * * *
Chapter 3
HYPERLINK \l "TOC" WHY ME?
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can
Make heaven of hell, a hell of Heaven.”
---- John Milton
My senior year in high school, when I was 17 years old, I experienced a drastic event that turned my life inside out. It made my days seem like weeks and my weeks seem like months.
On a Friday night in Stockton, after a football game, a friend came by my house to see me. He wanted me to go with him on a joy-ride to Modesto, which was 28 miles away. My first instinct was to say “no,” but I decided to go anyway. We left and picked up a few other friends along the way.
We were a happy carload of teen-agers ready to party. But about 18 miles out of Stockton, on Highway 99, we were forced off the road by a drunken driver. Lemore, my best friend and the front seat passenger, was thrown out the front window as the car turned over and slid 290 feet. Leroy and I (two of the three back-seat passengers) were thrown out of the rear side windows. The driver and the other passenger somehow remained in the car. Paramedics found Leroy and me underneath a chain-link fence 120 feet from where the car stopped.
An ambulance unit rushed us to San Joaquin General Hospital in Stockton. I was unconscious when we arrived. Lemore died in route to the hospital.
We were placed in separate rooms until doctors arrived and families came to identify us. Somehow Lemore and I had been misidentified as each other.
When my parents arrived, they were told their son, “Walter,” was dead. When they went into the room to identify the body, they were relieved to find out that it was not me.
When I was eventually located, my father burst into tears. The nurse told my parents my condition appeared quite serious, which it was. I was in a coma having sustained a skull fracture, a broken shoulder and multiple internal injuries.
Doctors told my parents that I needed an operation to correct an injured scalp bone which would take several hours, and suggested they go home and come back later. My father refused to go, but my mother went home to gather her emotions and try to rest.
After my operation, my father was told that my condition was critical and my chances for survival were not good.
Here I was, in a fight for my life, the biggest challenge I had ever experienced. It was a battle greater than anything I could have faced running track, or playing on the basketball court, or the football and and baseball fields.
When word got out about my condition, carloads of school mates, coaches and teachers filled the hospital corridors. That weekend the hospital had to call in extra security to make sure no one entered the room but my parents.
Two days went by and I remained in critical condition. My father was at the hospital nearly around the clock. The doctor had done the surgery. The rest was up to God and me.
There’s an old saying, ”The doctor dresses the wound, but God heals it.” No physician or surgeon claims that he healed the patient. The one healing power is called by many names --- God, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Life, Creative Intelligence, the Universal Mind, Allah…and many others.
To the doctor’s amazement, on the third day I came out of the coma. On the fourth day I was still being fed intravenously, but I was taken off the critical list. From somewhere deep within, I had begun to fight for life and was winning. I believe it was that competitive spirit I developed from sports that helped me refuse to give up on life.
In a Runner’s World magazine article, sports specialist Edward Coyle says that athletes retain some long-term psychological benefits from exercise even after training has ceased.
Doctors know from experience that a patient with a fighting spirit and a positive attitude seems to have a better chance of recovery than one who surrenders to their illness.
Norman Cousins, in his book “Anatomy of An Illness,” writes about having been told he had a disease of the spine. He was told he had one chance in 500 of surviving it and would probably never walk again.
Cousins had read Han’s Selye’s classic book “The Stress and Distress of Life,” in which Selye details the effects of negative emotions on body chemistry. He believed that if negative emotions produce negative chemical changes in the body, then positive emotions should produce positive chemical changes.
Cousins decided he was not going to give in to his disease. In hopes of healing himself, he ordered Marx Brothers movies and old “Candid Camera” episodes. What he discovered was laughter and a positive attitude enhanced his body’s ability to fight inflammation and set in motion the mechanisms of self-healing.
This incident made him realize the importance of the thoughts we think: the direction they take actually constitutes our will to live or die.
My parents were overjoyed when they learned that my condition had changed for the better. I had spent my life as a teenager developing my athletic skills, hoping that someday I would be on television playing for a professional team. I had set school records, won awards and trophies and received scholarship offers stemming from my Most Valuable Player awards. But immediately after the accident, the scholarship offers vanished and for the first time in my life I lost all confidence in myself.
Now, I was frightened about the future. But I was unable to let go of the past, because I had put all of my energy and even my will to live into sports.
Elvin Hayes, the former National Basketball Association Champion scorer and re-bounder, said, “The worst moment in an athlete’s life is discovering that forever isn’t very long. The kids playing now think they’re going to play forever.”
Nine days after I entered the hospital I was released. For weeks, I was like an infant, unable to do anything for myself. One morning I wandered away from the house. Friends found me and brought me back home.
After about one month, I was coherent enough to realize what had happened. When I did, I was filled with anger and resentment. “Why Me?” I asked myself over and over. I blamed my mother for not telling me to stay home that fateful night. I blamed my father for never being there when I craved his love and affection. I didn’t know whether I should blame the driver and retaliate against him. I blamed everyone but myself.
In calculating my fear against my need to get back on course, one thing was certain: No matter how many people I chose to blame for my condition or how much frustration I was feeling, if I was to rebuild my life, I could not do it if I held on to negative thoughts. Somehow, I would have to keep my thoughts on a higher level and as far from the problem as possible to be able to move past it.
Two months passed before my doctor decided that I was physically and mentally able to return to school. By this time I was afraid I might have lost my athletic talents. I had become the first Edison High School athlete to letter in four different sports (football, basketball, baseball and and track and field) in one school year, two years in a row. I was also attempting to accomplish that in my senior year before my accident.
My recovery was one of the most difficult periods in my life. I had to trust myself because I had no one else to turn to. My parents were distressed and I didn’t know how to reach out to them. The accident did bring us closer together, but only for a moment. I had to face the lonely and painful days ahead alone.
RECAPS:
During the course of our lives we may experience events that turn our lives inside out. It’s not life that makes us or breaks us, it’s how we accept what has happened to us.
* * *
The greatest fight in our life will be the battle within ourselves. We have to be aware and stand guard against our negative thoughts that keep us from our good.
* * *
When maintaining a physical exercise program for a long time, we can maintain the long-term positive psychological benefits even if we stop exercising.
* * *
Doctors know from experience that a patient with a fighting spirit and a positive attitude seems to have the greatest chance of recovery from illness.
* * *
“If negative emotions produce negative chemical change in the body, then positive emotions should produce positive chemical changes.”—Norman Cousins.
* * *
One of the greatest crimes is to not strive to better ourselves.
* * *
Giving up resentment and blaming others for circumstances in our lives will empower us with the energy and mental freedom we need to change for the better.
AFFIRMATIONS
Today, every challenge will bring me closer to the place I desire to be.
Today, I will look to the future knowing my life is going to be better.
Today, I refuse to allow anything or anyone to condemn me.
Today, I am now being all that I can be.
SPORT THE RIGHT ATTITUDE!
* * * * * *
Chapter 4
HYPERLINK \l "TOC" YOU CAN’T GIVE UP
“The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in not giving up.”
Tommy Lasorda, Legendary Baseball Hall of Famer
The football season had ended and my doctor would not release me to play basketball. Despite his restricting all my activities for several months, I was determined to pursue my dream to become a professional athlete.
I started working out long hours alone on the basketball court trying to regain my athletic skills. My stubborn side would not surrender to my setback. Instead, I worked harder than ever to make San Joaquin Delta’s Junior College basketball team.
I resented having to go to junior college, but then, as I thought about it, I felt I would have the time to rebuild my confidence by making the junior college team. There was still a chance to get an athletic scholarship to a four-year university if I could prove I hadn’t lost my ability.
When I was participating in sports I felt good about myself. I believed I was in total control and there was nothing I could not do. But it was also during this time that I began to consider what I would do without sports in my life. If I didn’t make the squad, how much would I miss people cheering for me at games? Most of all, I knew I’d miss the way my friends looked up to me. The good opinion of your peers is very important when you’re growing up.