By Jennifer Drum, Resident in Counseling
Intensions and Uncertainty
If you turn on your television over the next few weeks you can enjoy the physical, emotional, and psychological ride of college athletics through “March Madness.” In the spirit of these student-athletes, let’s take a moment to feel into their reality of uncertainty when it comes to this tournament. Yes, they have trained. Yes, they have sacrificed. And yes, with all of this in alignment, there is still uncertainty regarding outcomes.
In sports, your training is fueled with intensions of giving your best effort to win knowing that it is possible that you won’t because sport is dynamic and human and full of variables affecting outcomes. When the big game is over, it’s about the learnings and insights gained from the experience and the training along the way.
Mental Health Take-Away
At times, when one is looking more closely at what lies beneath feelings of anxiety, they may discover a discomfort with the theme of uncertainty. This looks different for everyone. For example, maybe someone is worried that they will put their time and heart into something where there are no concrete guarantees. Therapy offers space to process our discomfort with uncertainty. Maybe we shift focus for a moment onto intentions and motivations as we accept the uncertainty of outcomes? What is rich about the journey to your hopeful outcome that will have meaning even if the outcome looks different or doesn’t happen as planned?
At the end of the day, it may be more about intentions than the “the win.”