The coach laid down a ball about a cm away from the hole and asked his client to put it into the hole. The client did so, to which the coach said, “This is putting.”
There is a profound insight in such a statement.
The act of putting is not related to the distance between the ball and the hole. It also is independent of its result, that is, whether the ball goes into the hole or not.
What can change the act of putting is the presence of an internal conversation that comes along with bodily sensations. Especially, if this internal conversation is perceived as one, one has to pay attention to and maybe even engage with.
It is a natural and human reaction to notice whatever pops up in one’s mind and perceive it as relevant.
That’s how doubt emerges.
The assumption is that it is something we, through some magical power, created or received to secure our performance. It is as if anything that pops up in our mind needs to be important or relevant and is ours.
But why?
If we created it, shouldn’t we be able to stop it too? And if we are not able to stop it, was it really our creation?
What if it was simply a memory, something we once heard, noticed, and transformed into something relevant for ourselves at that moment? Can that memory simply be outdated, yet continue to appear as a suggestion as it once proved helpful?
Imagine being praised for something as a kid and having taken that as a guideline to receive more praise since then. Without noticing it, your focus shifted from what you might have been doing and enjoying at that moment, to an idea of how to receive praise. That shift of focus moved you away from whatever you had been practicing, to the then-existing desire of receiving praise and maybe even, since then, have become driven by that desire.
If something like that happened, it has an unseen consequence: This praise you heard becomes an experience you believed to be repeatable and thus something you want to achieve. However, such a belief that praise is possible can only exist if it is also possible that praise will not be experienced. It’s how doubt developed. One day praise appeared, the other not. It is as if it’s something we could once control and now fail to achieve. It’s now how doubt emerges.
After a while, it becomes so well-trained that the chances that it might disappear by itself are minimal. As it pops up on its own, there is also little chance that you can make it go away.
But, if you can see it as a message from the past, you may also notice that it might not be relevant anymore when it appears. Maybe you can just let it be. Maybe it’s sufficient to notice it and to let it go. And to support that move, maybe it’s simply necessary to get back to your intent and focus on that.
Spotting something as a message from the past, letting it be, and focusing back on one’s intent is the result of practice. It’s through practice that maybes become less relevant.
