It all starts now

This morning as I sat in the warm and humid sun of the soccer field, I was overcome by a feeling that "it all starts now". Everything. From now on. It starts now, in this minute.

I know, I know. Duh. On the surface this seems like an obvious thing to say. But is it really. How often do we go through life basing today and our thoughts for tomorrow on what has come before? It's an easy trap to fall into and I'd bet most people do it. We expect today and tomorrow to be like yesterday. In thinking those things we limit ourselves. We're limiting our future based on our memories or even perceptions of the past.

Two things came together this morning at about the same time that moved me to this awareness. First, my 11yo son played his soccer game. Now he has played soccer since he was 5. He has never been what you would call assertive athletically. For the first several years when he'd play, he'd jog around the rest of the players from a safe distance without ever really risking coming in contact with the ball himself. :-) Gradually he got to the point where he'd kick the ball if it happened to come to him and there wasn't another player bearing down on him. Today in his second game of this season I saw a different child. He was running with the ball, passing it to other players, and if someone tried to steal it from him, he held his ground and kept control of the ball. He has improved so much from the 5yo who wouldn't kick the ball. My husband pointed out that that is because now he believes in himself. He believes he can do it and so he does. He's let go of the memories of the boy who was afraid to kick the ball and opened himself up to the possibility of being someone who can defend the ball and control it. I don't care if he ever scores or if he makes the high school team or anything like that. But overcoming self-doubt is huge and is more than worth the entry fee we pay each year for him to play.

I also felt freed from limiting thoughts as I sat on the sidelines and watched him running up and down the field. I had just come from the post office where I mailed off four packets of application materials in my continuing job search. I had been closer than ever to giving up. Over the last couple of weeks I had almost decided I wasn't going to put myself through the repeated rejection and disappointment of not getting yet another job.

But something strange happened this week. On Thursday I shared with a teacher friend my hopelessness and difficulty in finding a job. She was able to show me a new website that I hadn't been aware of. On that website we found that the next school district over from ours had just advertised four elementary teaching positions the day before. Now, if you aren't in the elementary education world in the American midwest, you may not realize how unusual this is. Open positions are next to impossible to find, let alone *four* positions just down the road just posted the day before I connected with this friend and over a week *after* school already started. So I spent my Friday evening getting all of my application materials ready for each of the four positions and this morning I mailed them off.

I feel really good about this effort. Something just feels different this time. And as I sat on the soccer field this morning, I realized I had been limiting myself by self-doubt based on past failures.

But it all starts now. This is a new effort put out into the world. Something totally new could come from this. I'm going to stop thinking about what has already happened (or not happened as the case may be) and open myself up to future possibilities.