In Football like Life - You play your best when you know the rules.

I'm back and I hoped you missed me. I had been in the DC/Northern Virginia area the last few days talking to book stores and setting up signings and talks. Well, I didn't get to see our President, he was too busy. Oh well, maybe next time. When I am going to spend time in the car I always bring some books on tape. Usually motivational or spiritual. They help give me ideas. I picked up one called The Law of Attraction and it was channeled by a spiritual entity. I believe that what we think about we attract. The problem most people have with the attraction theory is that things come into their lives (usually bad) where they say, "no way I would have been thinking about that!"
    As you know, you can't continuously monitor your thoughts. There are just too many of them invading your brain. It is the thoughts you hold on too that gain traction. But what about the situations that occur where you are totally taken unaware? The answer is "by default." For instance, let's say that you are watching a football game for the first time. You see a bunch of people make a circle, then they make a line while more people make a line facing the first. One man grabs an odd shaped ball and starts running around. He usually gives it away to another person either by handing it to him or throwing it. It the person misses the ball, then they start over again. If the person who has the ball is attacked by another person, everyone stops and starts over. Sometimes another guy comes out and kicks the ball. Sometimes he kicks it through a strange contraption at each end of the grassy area and others he just kicks it to the guys facing him. - Now get in there! Play and have a good time! Well, here you are in the middle and everyone is moving around, knocking each other over and doing it again and again. You have no idea what to do. You don't know the rules or really even how the game is played. A guy hands you the ball, you look around and boom! Someone runs right into you and knocks the wind out of you. Another guy with stripes walks over and blows a whistle. And every one stops and huddles, then once again they form lines and do it all over again. You are getting scared at this point because what if that guy hands you the ball? What are you going to do? The time before you started running before the guy received the ball from an awkward standing fellow and the striped man blew a whistle and everyone had to go back a few yards. Everyone on your team got mad at you especially the guy standing with a clipboard in hand on the side. He was jumping up and down yelling at you. Asking what the #$%& are you doing? You honestly don't know. But you have to play the game until its over. You try to act like some of the other people, but they all seem to be doing different things. They do them over and over again and when try you always get in trouble.
    When you don't know the rules of the game is when you get into a lot of trouble and you can't really help the team. The game of life is no different. When you are mindlessly watching television and you see people getting killed or hurt, it affects you. It causes you to think about it for a few minutes, not enough to manifest it - yet. But you will see this type of violence again and again. This will cause you to continually think about the dangers of the world. Then you start to get frightened that someone may hand you the ball like in the football game and boom! You get hit. That's is exactly what is happening. Attracting by default. Ignorance of the Law is no excuse. Life like football would be a whole lot more fun if you understood the rules of the game. Then you would not get hurt because you would know what to do when danger threatens. In football, you could run out of bounds or make a touchdown or even through the ball away. Because those are the rules. What are the rules with life? This is time to think about it, isn't it? What are the rules? How are they affecting you? Are you using the rules to your advantage or do you feel like your playing a game you have no idea how to win?

Nameste'

Barry Brown,  Author and National Speaker
"A Journey to Balance - Making Sense of It All"