Discoveries in inner game.

[dubya]

I hate sports.
I always have. Most pro-sports are like watching paint dry. I find them dull and boring. My friends don’t understand that I’ve never seen a super bowl. And when I told them I’d watch it if the Saints made it that far the responses I got were almost universal, “It’s the super bowl.” It’s almost an unspoken assumption. It’s like they can’t understand someone not watching. It doesn’t make since to them. The problem though is it goes beyond being board. I have found there is an actual hostility in the way I think towards football. I haven’t been able to understand it until recently.

I will say that I never watched a game with my dad. Most kids grew up watching sports with their dad. I didn’t. But that doesn’t explain it. My dad didn’t watch sports with my brother. Yet my brother follows sports like most people. It’s the first section he reads in the paper. How can I feel this hatred towards something he has simply embraced?

I found the answer. It’s a little strange. It bothers me greatly. Its implications are horrid. But the solution is simple and readily available. As always I have lately been consumed with reading material. Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About The Bike has been the primary focus of my reading lately. But I’m also reading several email newsletters, all of which are related to the PUA community. Among these is the Stylelife newsletter. This I found not long after I returned to Shreveport from Dallas. Someone told me about the Stylelife while I was in Dallas. (Thanks dude for mentioning this and thanks also for the verbal ass kicking you gave me outside, I needed both.) I was curious so I searched for it. It is not a newsletter that is sent very often. But lately they have sent out “The Best of the Stylelife Challenge.” It was here that I discovered Huna.

While I want to read the complete book one day, the newsletter alone was enough to get the mind started in the right direction. There are seven main principles of Huna but for my purpose of writing this I’m only going to focus on one.

All Power Comes From Within

I’ll quote a small section here.

“This principle also contains the crucial disclaimer that “no other person can have power over you or your destiny unless you decide to let him or her have it” (11). Your boss doesn’t define you, that aloof woman doesn’t mark you, and that bully in third grade doesn’t stigmatize you. You have the power.”

Now hold all that in the back of your mind while I tell you the next piece of this equation. I’ve recently decided to get in shape. I’ve been exercising daily and watching what I eat. Mostly I’ve been doing cardio workouts and using my bike whenever I need something within a short distance of the house. Any kind of motion has become a sort of salvation. Sunday night though I decided to break the monotony a little. I took an old basket ball that I’ve never really used before to the park and started making shots from the free throw line. I stayed out there for about an hour repeatedly throwing the ball at the goal either making it or missing it and retrieving the ball. Most of my shots of course were misses since I’ve never really played. On my second or third attempt when I threw the ball it hit the rim and bounced off to the side. An old thought slithered through my mind as I saw this, “Crap, now they’re going to hate me.”

I retrieved the ball and stood there looking at it for a moment. “What the fuck was that,” I thought. Images of middle school and high school gym class passed through my mind. Images of the days we played three on three and I missed several shots or lost the ball as soon as I’d gotten it.

I continued making shots until I was no longer able to see because of how dark it had gotten. And the whole time I was out there I processed these things mentally. Throughout my life I had never gotten into any sports. I had proclaimed a hatred of sports and in particular football. Probably for no other reason then because it was the most popular. But this was wrong. This whole way of thinking was fucked up. It wasn’t the game that I hated. It was how I felt in relation to the game when I was a kid that I hated. It was how I thought others perceived me and what I believed they thought about me that I hated. The irony of this is that I had no way of knowing what they thought about me. They probably didn’t care if I missed a shot and their own heads may have been too full of similar crap for them to have really noticed.

I’m twenty-eight years old and there are fourteen year old little fuckers crawling around in the recesses of my mind dictating my likes and dislikes, telling me who I am, how I should live and the kind of person I should be. They’re there because I gave them power over me, over the way I think and feel about myself. Fuck that shit. They don’t belong there. They don’t get to decide any more what I’m good at or what I enjoy. I have found I have potential as an athlete. That belongs to me. It’s something I enjoy now and I’m going to keep it.

I’m not going to start watching football everyday but the way I react to people when they start talking about it has changed. I used to be aloof and make jokes pretending I didn’t know who certain players were. I did this for the shock value. But in reality I think it was done out of hostility. I’m not doing it anymore.

I’m wondering now what other areas of my life have been molded in a similar way as a reaction to fear, rejection or hatred.

The main point here is this; you choose who you are, not some little teenage fucker who recreates the destruction of Pompeii in the mirror each morning as he pops his way through a fresh field of zits. And it isn’t the girl you tried to sarge yesterday who told you to get lost. The only power those people have over your life is the power you give them. The authority they have over you is invalid. It doesn’t rightly belong to them. The only person who has the right to decide your destiny is you.

[Neuromancer]

I’m twenty-eight years old and there are fourteen year old little fuckers crawling around in the recesses of my mind dictating my likes and dislikes, telling me who I am, how I should live and the kind of person I should be. They’re there because I gave them power over me, over the way I think and feel about myself. Fuck that shit. They don’t belong there. They don’t get to decide any more what I’m good at or what I enjoy. I have found I have potential as an athlete. That belongs to me. It’s something I enjoy now and I’m going to keep it.

In chaos magic they are considered demons. Them roaming around in your brain manipulating your decision making processes is demon possession. They will continue to lurk around your mind unless you get rid of them AND replace them with something positive. Your potential athlete is a good example. You might try changing that up a bit make him the super athlete in you. Roll in Gov. Arnold, Lance Armstrong, hell, throw in some flash and Batman. Give him a name and a voice and whenever you feel the demon 14 year olds starting to talk smack send in super athlete to kick sand in their face and throw them out.

[Scoundrel]

I got that news letter too. It was a little too new age for me. But, if it's working for you, I think it's great.

[Pr0wler]

Its very interesting that you posted that. I believe that sports play a huge role in inner game development. I have been a martial artist for about 4 years now. Before i started training, i found myself very timid, shy, and full of doubt. As i began to get good and started to win at tournaments, my confidence in every aspect of my life skyrocketed. Inner game and confidence in my martial arts translated to inner game in respect to the game. While my response sort of went off topic, its definitely a viable point that achieving greatness in a physical sport or activity can directly translate to inner game outside of the sport. This is why working out makes you feel more confident about yourself... Any thoughts?