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BASKETBALL, BOWLING, WAR,
AND YOUR INTENTIONS
By Gary
Nordgren
I enjoy bowling and when I go I love to see my own mental game of
it.
When I make an intention to do something and I win the game or bowl three strikes
in a row I go through an internal process. I visualize the pins falling down and the feeling
after.
If I consciously try to do something special when I let the ball go then I
usually get frustrated and go in a direction most of the time where I can’t count on the results I
intended. I love bowling but do not bowl much. Maybe once every year or two I go
bowling.
When I play with my friends the bowling game I noticed that if I have a desire to
beat them I ALWAYS DO. And when I do not care and have no intention about it the score I ALWAYS go
to is a default and poor or low average score. Whenever I set my goal to bowl above a certain score
almost without fail I do this unless I stop believing I can.
How about you; what do you do? Know you bowl great or feel intimidated that you
haven’t got past the 100 score range and feel like you failed before you began? Try this next time
intend ten to fifteen points above your last highest score. Feel it. See or imagine the end result
as you want. What happened?
Intention. Do you use it intentionally? How do you apply it and in what
ways?
I meet someone who tells me that they’ve never been beaten at war with playing
cards ever. Well what do you think my intention would be? That’s right. Beat them hands down. Part
EGO and part wanting to see if I could control my own reality. I did it also because I desired
to find out what part of the energy of my intention always comes true or when I don’t have
any particular outcome in mind, what I would average.
Those who don’t know what the game of war is: It is where you start with 2
players with 26 cards each and so does your opponent, and you turn them over at the same time and
whoever has the higher cards wins the hand unless they are the same card strength and then you have
a duel which is where you put down three more cards face down as part of your losses or wins and
then the fourth card decides who wins that battle. If you tie again you do it again until someone
wins that battle.
Sometimes you mix up the cards when you have to restart your deck or not but you
can’t see how you are mixing them so you can’t consciously control the outcome with your eyes.
Whoever has all 52 cards wins. It’s a fun game that can take 20 minutes or an hour to
play.
There was times when I intended to win that I had one card and came back to win
the game. So winning this game was a fun ego trip for me but the lesson is if you have a powerful
intention for something then you can make it happen within your life. This person came to dislike
playing me because I almost always won. The last couple of times we played I decided to intend that
they won and they did. Weird in so many ways but it leads us to using on intentions with more of a
purpose.
On July 4, 2005 I had a chance to evaluate my skills at throwing a basketball
towards a hoop or a goal if you will. The court was cement and it was normal size. Not very
exciting to see some 40ish guy out throwing the basketball towards a hoop but my inside experience
was where it was all happening. And I learned something from this experiment. I hope you will
too. As I got on the court I had no idea I would learn something from the next few hours I was
goofing off.
As I started to play my nephew’s cousin was there shooting baskets with me. We
shot around the court until my nephew started to shoot around with us. I missed most of the shots I
put up into the air. We decided to play PIG. This is a game where you copy the person who shoots
the basketball if they make it. If you miss it you get a P or an I or a G. If you make it the
person after you has to make it too or they get a letter. Once you spell PIG you are out of the
game.
We played and after the first game I got out first. The second round I intended
to win the whole game of PIG. Or maybe more rounds the next time. The second time I actually won.
Hmmmm…. Intention. On the third round we decided to play Horse instead of pig. I went out
second.
The wives of the other men came into the game to play another round of Horse.
They strategically put themselves in between us three guys. The first two guys got out. Then it was
me and the two girls. Then it was just me. We stopped playing. I had won two of the four and no one
else did. Hmmmm. I considered that I won the entire “rounds” of pig and
horse.
Intention.
Then one of the wives said. We intended on beating our husbands and we did so and
we are happy.
Hmmmmm…. Intention.
They left me to shoot baskets by myself on the court. I goofed around for a
while. I had this idea poop up that I had recently studied in Secrets of the Millionaire Mind book,
seminar and The Success Principles by Jack Canfield.
I thought about the idea and I asked myself this question – if is it true that
“How I do anything is how I do everything?” “How
you do anything is how you do everything?”
I started wondering about if I could apply it to what I was doing there right at
that moment. Is this how I do my life? I kept repeating the phrase and asking the question. As I
looked at me goofing off I noticed that I went in the direction of where the ball landed and shot
the ball close to where it landed or in its path. How do I do that in my life? I rarely set an
intention unless it’s really important to me. I usually wander as what Zig Ziglar calls “a
wandering generality.” Meaning I have no purpose for many hours of the day. I am not driven towards
an end place to give me something of a better life or that I trade my precious earthly experience
for something valuable to me. Do you do something like that or do you live a life of your values
being met in uncommon hours?
I found my doing the basketball was exactly like my life. When I have no
conscious intention it seems to bring very little or any purpose to my life. I started getting more
on purpose with each shot to discover something new. I started researching my intention of the
“How” that I make baskets. I started with affirmations. Positive and negative affirmations, and I
would shoot the ball to get my favorite sound of a swish. That is where the ball goes through the
net and never touches the rim. Most did change how often I made a swish. Most shots to the basket
just bounced off the rim. I was practicing making shots but frankly I stunk at making baskets -
maybe 1 out of 12.
Some affirmations concerned love and money and negative affirmations like I hate
myself or I can’t do this, etc.
Affirmations on love when I generally put them in – I found an increase with a
better rate than one out of ten; it increased to about three out of ten. Then I started swishing
some of those.
When I said I love “someone special to me” or I said “someone special to me”
loved me I increased my ratio of getting more baskets with the ball. But it still was hit and miss
more often than I wanted. I was encouraged because it seemed I was swishing the ones I made more
often.
I stated another belief I just made up “I make 9 out of 10 baskets”. I started to
shoot from that belief and affirmed it before I did it but it didn’t quite work as I wanted. I
wasn’t making many more baskets. So I added visualizing the basket ball swishing through the hoop.
I them added the sound of the noise it makes as it swishes through the net of the hoop. It was
weird when I started the belief; it was something I just made up three minutes before. Then I
started swishing the shots.
Hmmmm.
My body actually lined up and I started using all the training I had at a
basketball camp when I was 11 or 12. I jumped off the ground and my body lined up perfectly for the
shots. That lasted for about 5 shots at the basket and then I unconsciously stated that I wasn’t
this good and I started to focus on the one I would miss and I started to miss
again.
I noticed when I changed my belief about the baskets and restated my intention in
a different affirmation. “I never miss.”
I got in the place that I believed and then visualized the shots going in then I
started making most of the shots as swishes. Then I added another caveat – the belief that “I never
miss from the foul line.”
I started swishing them again from the foul line for a little while and then I
fell back to not believing that again. The negative self talk centered around the feeling of being
so good or better than someone else that I would get caught up in that. Not appreciating my gifts
but noticing somewhere inside that “I can’t be this good” based on my past behavior and what I
truly thought about my basketball skills.
Each time I believed, and visualized I made it. Each time I had any resistance to
me making every single shot then I missed. I started to revise each shot that missed and revised
that I actually made it within my feelings. I first felt liked a fraud because I missed. I
discovered a new-found feeling inside that I hadn’t noticed when I missed. It was a let down of
energy or disappointment in not making the basket: a feeling of failure. I started flowing the
belief that “every shot was possible” as a scenario.
Once I found my own internal pattern I made more shots than when I didn’t do the
“every shot is possible” belief.
I visualized swishing it and hearing it happen before I took a shot - I stated to
myself that I never missed; and then I increased my ratio to seven out of ten baskets made. I
played with it a little bit. Then I tried about 3 feet past the goal line and did the exact same
internal pattern and I found that I got the same exact
results.
When I believed, I always make the basket and I hear the swish as it is
happening, as I visualize the basketball going in. After that I imagined I was on a court with
other players and put an announcer’s voice in my ear where he announced to everyone that the other
team was in trouble because I never miss foul shots after I was fouled. It took me to 8 out of ten
basket made. I increased my chances to an even better score just sitting there. Every time I
visualized the end result, felt it, and revised it if I missed then added the announcer’s voice I
made the basket. If I felt any doubt about my abilities or about what was true of who I am then I
missed.
Now 2006 November I sit with this lesson. How have I applied it to my life? How
has knowing this changed me?
When I have determined intention I now can add the tools of visualizing my
intention as true and then have an imaginary voice I make up as an announcer says something that I
want to hear.
Use this for a workshop for yourself
now by asking yourself these questions and get more clarity towards what you do.
How often do I visualize what I want as already
accomplished?
How often do I hear myself successful internally that my intention was true for
me?
How often do I hear other peoples successfully proving to me internally that my
intention is already true?
How often do I give myself a chance to BELIEVE this intention or this big goal is
true for me?
And truthfully it won’t matter to you as much as if you know your own process for
doing your own life.
How often do you believe something is possible without lots of effort towards
that end or checking out what your past experience was been but just believing it is
possible?
How often are you willing to see the end result as done already though you
haven’t even started to “do anything” yet?
How often will you tell your self that YOU are successful at your desire before,
during and after you start to go for your intention or goal?
How often do you validate your dreams as real and possible and deserve to be done
by you and you alone.
I think each of us has our excuses and our dreams. When we keep lining them with
the excuses in front of the dreams we never find a way to have them. When we line our dreams up in
front of our excuses we go after our dreams as if there is no tomorrow.
I used a play on words there, but let me get you thinking a little differently.
Stop making excuses not to go for your dreams. Instead, start making your dreams come true and find
every excuse to pursue them!
I will lend you a few ways to do that.
I don’t have the rest of my life to do my dream; I have to do it
now!
Wow I feel so much energy just thinking about my dream that I HAVE TO DO IT NOW.
I can’t wait for anything!
My dream fills me up so much with positive feelings I know it will work and
everything will line up perfectly with it and I will have an even better
life!
Give your self an excuse to do your intention and your dream and let
it give you every reason to see you to the most
successful completion of your goal.
Remember your Intention, Goal, and Dream are only fueled by your energy and life
force. You are the only one that can see it through! Find excuses and reasons now to live a life of
passion and excitement and love today!
“How I do anything is how I do everything?”
“How you do anything is how you do everything?”
How are you doing your anything? And how are you doing your
everything?
Are they matching up to the fantastic life you deserve?
Okay now go out and do your own experiment on yourself!
How do you do what you do?
Write it down and figure out your own process; it will work everywhere through
your life if you apply it!
Have FUN with this!!!! Make it a game and a BLAST!
Copyright 2006 by Gary Nordgren
Originally Published in
Yahoo Gary’s Quotes at Mon Nov 13, 2006 1:26 pm
Republished with
authors permission. Grammar revised. Copyright 2010 by Gary Nordgren
You can share this if you keep the article in whole including
copyright and authors acknowledgements as part of the article.
Gary Nordgren is The Law of Attraction Business & Income
Coach. You can reach him through www.PersistentSuccess.com or
Call (801) 274-0744 to transform your business and your income. He has lead many Tele-Workshops and
Tele-Seminars on Law of Attraction that are in recorded format on www.LOA-U.com . He also
creates new Workshops and also Free LIVE Tele-Seminars www.Persistentsuccess.com
He is the founder of The Neville Project
at www.NevilleLectureHall.com You can forward this article provided you keep it originally as
formatted and leave intact all the copyright and author acknowledgements, and websites from the
publishing of this article in PDF.
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