Where You Look Is Where You Go

image copyright denz zani

As I mentioned, we went surfing in Hawaii. Our instructor, Nate, was awesome. He had been teaching surfing long enough to be patient, cool and encouraging, but not long enough to be burned out. As we grinned and sloshed awkwardly out on wave after wave, one of the things he repeatedly coached, besides "Paddle, paddle, paddle!" and "Push up, then get up!" was

"Where you look is where you go."

It really stuck in my brain. My mother, the spiritualist minister (and junior high school teacher) has been sending inspirational emails about being positive and affecting positive change in our lives. I suspect she sends these to me in part because she sends them to my sister, and she doesn't want it to look like she's just sending them to my sister. At this point in our lives, my sister needs a little more encouragement about positivity than I do. I'm hip to this whole thing, but for me, this little phrase really nailed it in a precise way.

What it means in surfing is that if you look at your feet, you will fall down. If you look at the beach, you will go forward. What it means in life is that if you focus on the negative, you will go there. If you focus on the positive, you will go there. As Peggy Hall puts it in the Yoga for Surfers video : "Picture yourself doing it, and you will." (I highly recommend Yoga for Surfers II, a sweat-inducing 30 minutes that stretches and uses every muscle in a short time period. I dare you not to be pleasantly sore.) Ok, so the position she's referring to is one I'm not sure physics allows considering the current dimensions of my body, but I get the idea. It's that simple.

Life is that simple. The head leads the horse, physically and mentally. You don't have to be a Pollyanna. Just picture the best, coolest life that you can imagine, keep that picture in your mind, and believe that you deserve it. Then go there.

PS- While wiki-ing Pollyanna, I discovered the Pollyanna Principle, which is the tendency of people to believe positive things said about themselves. I think it would make a great band name.