Players who move to a higher competition level often say the game “speeds up.”
It’s more than the athletes’ physical speed. Everything involved tends to be more complex and requires players to know more, make more decisions, in a shorter time span. When they move up a level–middle school to high school to college to pro–players often say things “come at them” faster than they can process them.
With young players, coaches work to slow the game down. They talk about training, about relaxing and reducing stress, about trusting your teammates and your skills. They talk about having faith in the process.
Of course this is all perception. The game can’t objectively move faster or slower. But, as they say, perception becomes reality. When it seems like things are coming at you out of a fire hose, panic and stress compress the perceived time line.
Happens in other areas of life, too. When we’re worried and stressed, pressure mounts. Decisions become rushed and seem more difficult. The timeline seems to contract.
Relax, think long-term, trust the process, and it’s remarkable how things seem to work out. Lean on your community, have faith, and train–the timeline seems to expand.
I think about this (of course) in terms of training and preparing for a bike tour. When I talk to someone who’s never done something like this their eyes get really big and there’s almost a sense of panic as they try to absorb the entire picture. There’s training and fundraising and living with new people and will the jersey fit and how many flat tires will I get and it just seems overwhelming. You can almost see the wheels spinning faster and faster.
My job is to slow it all down, help you see that there’s a process you can trust and a community that will help. Start early, do the training, and the timeline expands a bit. Suddenly it seems a little more doable.
Faith, hope, trust. Think long-term. Relax. Lean on your teammates. Trust God for the outcome. Works for bike tours, I think, because it’s how God designed us.
Which might make it a pretty good overall strategy.