A Balanced Stunt: A balanced Life
Life is all a balancing act. If you want to get anywhere in life you must master your mind. Tony Robbins says this best. A person does anything in life because of pain or pleasure. What the hell does that mean you ask? Well it’s actually pretty simple.
If you think about this in simple terms like a stunt. Think of a flyer in your standard extension. Now if that flyer puts all their weight on one base and not the other, most likely they are going to fall to that side with the most weight, right? Well now pretend one side is pain, one is pleasure. If you aren’t doing something in your life you are probably linking more pain to that task then pleasure. You must find a nice balance for that task, “that stunt” to work. You must find that sweet spot of you linking enough pain and pleasure to that task in order for you to complete it. You must put enough weight on each side to be balanced.
Let’s get serious here, you do things to make yourself feel good. You also do things just because you think it’ll give you more pain if you don’t do it. Just like school work. It’ll be painful for you and your grades if you don’t do the work. You’re just trying to get out of the pain of failing grades, so you can gain the pleasure of having passing grades. Sure school work can be painful, but if you don’t do it you will feel more pain than pleasure. So, I hope that in your mind you link more pleasure in doing the work than not doing the work.
Furthermore, if you want to excel and do more experienced stunts. Your main base should always be the “pleasure side”. Your pleasure side must be the one willing to take on the most of the weight if you go further up the skill level. The more you link pleasure to the harder, more difficult things in life the further you can go.
If you want to be a really great cheerleader, you must make it so pleasurable to the “pain” you endure within the sport. You must fall in love with working out, stretching, jumping, conditioning, pain of learning new skills to really excel. If you don’t want to jump, or you think it’s painful; you aren’t going to push yourself to do it. If you love to stretch, and love the pain of your muscles actually stretching further, my guess is that you’re a pretty flexible person.
When I cheered, I linked a lot of pain to jumping, standing tumbling and dancing. Can you guess what I wasn’t really good at? You got it. Jumping, standing tumbling and dancing. I was however, better in my flexibility, running tumbling and stunting because I liked doing those things. I linked in my mind more pleasure to those skills.
So take a close look at yourself. Is there some aspect in your life that you think you aren’t very good at? Now evaluate if you honestly think that that task is more painful to do than pleasurable. How can you link more pleasure to that task than the pain?
So in order to get this right, you must link enough pain to something and enough pleasure in doing it. So pain is essentially a great thing because it will give you the drive to do it. You must find it so painful, so daunting, that if you don’t do it you will be in more pain. Let this pain help push yourself further in life. Pain can be a good thing, if you use it correctly.
If your trying to lose some weight, you better make it so painful to eating that junk food. Every time you have the urge to pick up that junk food, make it so painful in your mind. Act as if it’s like eating acid and I bet you’re going to stop eating that junk food.
Don’t just stay within the pain either. You must also link a whole lot of pleasure to something to go towards it. So, if you’re looking to lose some weight, first link a whole lot of pain to that junk food. Then link the most pleasurable feelings to eating healthy and working out. Make it incredibly easy for your mind to want to do those things. Make it fun too! If you tend to overeat, every time you push that plate away that still has food on it, let yourself have that victory. Every time you work out, let yourself feel great. Give yourself so much pleasure when you do what’s right for your body so you will do more of it.
So in the beginning of this, we talked about mental blocks. Like the example in the beginning you might be trying to get over a tumbling mental block. So my guess is that your mind thinks it’s more painful to throw that skill. Make it lean in the other direction. Tell yourself all the things that will happen if you don’t throw tumbling anymore. Your coach may take it out of the routine, you might lose your spot on the actual team. Your coach might remember and you won’t make any of the teams next year. If you don’t make any of the teams, you can’t be with your friends. See where I’m going here?
Then it’s also very important to link a whole lot of pleasure to throwing that pass. If you throw this pass, you’ll be able to throw more difficult passes. If you get better, you’ll be able to be on a better team. Better yet, if you get better, your friends will notice. If they notice, they may feel as if they can get better too. If they get better too, your entire team will get better. If your entire team is better, you will win more. Then you can think all these things will happen because of YOU. You’re the one to start this ripple effect within the team. YOU are the leader of the team.
Your cheer career isn’t all that long, in a blink of an eye it will be gone. Trust me on this one! I wish that I knew these lessons way back when I was cheering. I had a mental block my last year of cheer. I wasted SO much time not tumbling to my fullest potential. I LOST all that time. That time will NEVER come back to me. I had a full in the routine to compete almost had a steady double. After not throwing the skill a few times during competition; my coach took it out of the routine. Rightfully so. I was so upset, but the coach had an obligation to make the routine the best for the team as a whole, so it had to come out and she had to move me.
So please take it from someone who has been there. You are on a team, you are obligated to do what’s best for the team and for yourself. So link more pain for yourself and for your team to not throwing those skills. Think to yourself; if I don’t throw this, if I don’t do this one skill. We could potentially get a lower score. On the flip side, if you do this skill. You can get better skills. Making your team that much better. If your team is that much better, the sky is really the limit.
How great would you feel if YOU were the one who lead the team to the stars! ✨