Keeping Focused -- Lessons Learned from a Game of Darts

“All you have to do is know where you're going. The answers will come to you of their own accord.” ~ Earl Nightingale

Several years ago, my husband and his family were part of a dart team, and they met every Wednesday evening to compete against other people. Having just arrived to the US from Italy where darts are pretty much un unknown sport, I was intrigued by the accuracy of their game; the few times I tried to throw darts myself, I was relieved that no living being was around – one would have thought I had disjointed arms and aimed the darts at everything but the board.

One day, while we were at his parents’ house and the whole family was practicing for the next tournament, I asked my husband if he could share the secret of his success. “Just fix your eyes on the bullseye,” he said, “and you can’t go wrong.”

Ha! Maybe that worked for him, but in my case I think my eyes and my hands were going through a bit of a cold war and were not talking to one another. I fixed my gaze on the red spot intensely enough that I could have burned a hole into it, but my darts were still all over the place. Angry at myself for my lack of skill, I thought about giving up, but something bigger than that – pride, I think they call it – refused to lift the white flag, and here I was again the next weekend - alone this time to at least save my dignity – shooting darts like a toddler playing with a new water gun. With time my ability to at least hit the board improved, and I even managed to score decently a few times, although I never gained the level of skill the rest of the family had achieved over the years. I wasn’t good enough to play at tournaments, but I could hold my own in a match played at home with the family.

Through the years I realized that approaching new challenges is no different than learning how to shoot darts. You set your eyes on the goal and move through the motions, allowing your mind to evaluate and adjust each time you obtain a less than desirable result. In the end, you might not become an expert, but you will have learned that nothing is unachievable if you continue to try.

The greatest problem with meeting challenges is that many times we don’t focus in the right direction. If rather than staring at the small, red spot in the middle of the board I stared instead at the picture frame hung nearby, sooner rather than later I would have shot a dart in the forehead of the hound in the picture. Focusing on the challenge and assimilating it through our senses is what enables us to send the right data to our higher mind. Once we have a clear picture of what we plan to achieve, our inner mind gets to work to figure out ways to bypass obstacles and deliver us at the doorstep of success.

Clarity is the first step to going somewhere and achieving anything. If a mother wants a more challenging job which will pay her more but will require her to work longer hours, she might find herself in a pickle of a situation trying to figure out how to meet the demands of childcare, so although she doesn’t do it intentionally, she will self-sabotage to give herself more time to work out the details. If she decides the job is what she truly wants, and childcare is the only obstacle in the way, then she can give her mind something well defined to work toward. When I have asked a few people what they want out of life, many of them have replied that they just want to be happy, but what does that exactly mean? Each person is wired to find happiness at different levels, so by saying they want to be happy, they leave the spectrum of possibilities too wide open for the mind to come up with a plan.

Building a beautiful house is not too difficult a job, if one has taken the time to draw a good model plan.

A Faulty Design

“Unless you start doing something different, you’re in for more of the same.” ~Author unknown.

Have you ever met someone who will complain daily about life, but won’t do anything to change the dynamics of it? They are genuinely distressed about the dramas repeatedly unfolding in their lives, but if one ever suggests changing some of the causing factors, they instantly become defensive, and are immediately ready to wear self-pity as armor.

Believing we are victims of an unkind destiny is much easier than accepting that we are largely responsible for our own failures through our choices. Life deals undesirable cards at times, but what will ultimately cause us to win or lose is how we choose to play the game.

Let’s imagine that a man is planning to build a home. If he’s unaware of the strong storms that habitually hit the area, he might choose the wrong materials, the wrong design, or might even build in a risky area. When the first storm hits, the home will likely suffer substantial damage. After the storm is over, if he rebuilds with the same type of materials, same design and in the same zone, the house is going to be destroyed or heavily damaged again. Over and over he repeats the same mistakes, and, all along, he complains about the weather and the unfairness of destiny. If a Good Samaritan comes along, and points out the faults in the design - or barely attempts to suggest alternative materials - the man indignantly turns away from the stranger and goes back to work; he replaces the boards with more of the same, and follows the same building plan. All along he curses God and angels for putting him through all the work, and the stranger is also not spared a few colorful words for daring to judge and come forth with suggestions.

In reality, the man never meant to improve the home; rather, he used the adverse conditions to justify his shortcomings. Mostly, he was happy to have a place in the spotlight, wearing a victim’s costume.

The man has two choices: he can accept his stubbornness - and continue living under precarious conditions - or he can make changes and improve his situation; simply being angry or weepy about the disasters he facilitated through his own poor choices only serves him to lose more energy and funds, and does nothing to relieve his misery.

If we keep building the same faulty house and complain about it, maybe we should take a step back and really look at what we have created. If we are not happy with what we see, it is okay to admit to our mistakes and seek a new path to walk. Once we do, our friends will be happy to talk and listen to us, for they will be eager to hear a new story told for the first time.

Until Death Do Us Part: A Reflection on Love

In The Lady or the Tiger? Frank Stockton explores the impact of emotions on human decisions, especially when one must choose between passion and true love. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LadyTige.shtml

In the story, a barbaric king chooses to leave justice to divine law and orders an arena to be built. From that day on, when one of his subjects is accused of breaking laws or is found guilty of otherwise questionable behavior, the king condemns the poor soul to meet his destiny in the arena. Behind two doors of the arena hide both an aggressive tiger and a beautiful maiden. The prisoner himself chooses which door to unlatch, and his fate is sealed – he will either be killed by the tiger or married to the maiden. Either way, no human decision will have any weight on the outcome; if killed by the tiger the subject is believed to have been guilty and promptly punished, while if he makes it out alive, he immediately receives a reward for his innocence by marrying a beautiful woman.

It so happens that the king’s only daughter, a young woman just as intense as her father, falls in love with a handsome young fellow who is, unfortunately, not a noble man. When word of the forbidden affair gets to the king, he immediately orders the young man to be imprisoned and condemns him to be judged in the arena.

As the day of the final judgment approaches, a ferocious tiger and the most beautiful maiden in the kingdom are chosen, and both are hidden behind the doors. When everything is ready, the young man is led into the arena, where he bows in front of the king and his daughter before courageously taking his place in front of the two doors. Before pulling one of the levers, he meets his lover’s apprehensive gaze and waits for a sign. Now, the king’s daughter knows exactly which door hides the tiger and which door hides the maiden, but she’s torn in her decision – if she signals to the door hiding the tiger, her lover will die, while if she signals toward the door hiding the maiden he will be saved but he will be forced to marry the young girl whom she is already jealous of.

Finally she makes her choice, and subtly lifts her right arm only for her lover to see. Without a doubt, the young man approaches the right door and opens it. At this point the story ends, leaving the reader wondering whether the unfortunate young fellow will live or die. This quite ambiguous ending is intentional, and it triggers a reflection upon the type of emotions which rule our decisions. Which door do you think the young man opens, and why?

When my son and I read the story together, we had opposite ideas – I thought the princess indicated the door with the maiden, while my son believed she signaled the door with the tiger. When I asked him why, his answer was simple – the princess was jealous and she preferred to see her young lover dead rather than happy in the arms of another woman. When I explained the story to other people I know and posed the question to them, they answered the same way my son did.

Indeed, passion and jealousy are powerful forces, able to cloud our better judgment. Quite often, we subconsciously wish to control the people we claim to love, and the mere thought of our loved ones happy with someone else triggers feelings of self-doubt we are unprepared to deal with.

True love is not threatened by competition, and it shouldn’t fill us with a need to “own” people, but rather with a feeling of joy at the thought of seeing our loved ones happy, with or without us, similarly to the way we feel toward our children. We don’t have to physically be with someone to love them, as being in love shouldn’t be equal to being in need. Too often we look toward our outside world to find what we should seek within to fill the void, and unfortunately, many of those relationships meet an unfortunate ending.

I suppose the fate of the young man will forever remain in the eye of the beholder, and that each person will choose the ending most appropriate to their way of seeing love, but for myself I really hope the princess made the right decision and allowed her lover live.