By Jill Wolforth –
What’s nice about the start of a new year is that it often leads us to reflect on things important to us, things we want to see more of in the upcoming year. One of those for me is from Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, and I thought it was worth sharing this week. It’s the concept of “Accurate Thinking”.
I believe it should be a foundational component of our daily living. In simplest terms it means to accurately (clearly, without exaggeration positively or negatively) evaluate something. At our house we’ll often say “It is what it is”.
Instead of accurate thinking, most people will do one of two things. Some will make a situation out to be far worse than it is while others try to sugar coat it. Both situations are faulty, one painting an overly gloomy picture and the other overly flowery.
Our goal should be to treat it for what it truly is, thus our “It is what it is”. Believe me, it’s not always easy. Let me share a personal example with you.
Several years ago, Ron & I were returning home from a trip where he had given a corporate presentation and I somehow / somewhere lost our video camera bag. (I think it was left in the taxi). The main purpose for taking the video camera was to tape Ron’s presentation. So, that made it a bad situation but there were also several other videotapes in the bag containing some family memories.
I was quite upset, one, because I expect more from myself as it was a sloppy mistake, two because of the missing tapes and three because there was no way for someone to identify the bag as ours and return it. (Side note: have contact information – name & phone number – on all your travel bags 😀 ).
Almost everything in the bag was replaceable and even those things that weren’t won’t actually dramatically affect our lives not having them. So, what’s this story have to do with accurate thinking? Here it is: Yes, I made a mistake but my negative reaction, which lasted almost 8 hours, was certainly not as accurate as it should have been.
The accurate thinking: I lost a video camera bag. It will cost a couple hundred dollars to replace should I choose to do so. There were tapings that can’t specifically be replaced but nothing that causes any severe problems or challenges to us. Ron will do his presentation again and thus it can be retaped. It was a sloppy mistake but if learned from will prevent it happening on a larger scale somewhere down the road.
That’s it, nothing more, nothing less.
Accurate thinking, in my opinion, can and should be applied to everything we do. For baseball / softball, it would apply to assessing one’s play. Don’t add or take away from what happens. It is what it is. Once we’re able to do this, we can then also accurately plan for what to do next.
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Important TBR Updates
- The TBR staff will be making our annual trek to Minnesota February 3-5 for our “Ranch on the Road” event in conjunction with the Minnesota Blizzard. For more details and/or to register, contact Adam Barta at abarta@minnesotabaseballacademy.com.
- Summer Intensive Program information will be available mid to late January. Watch for updates.
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