Richard and I were playing pool with his son a few weeks ago. I was fascinated with the physics and mathematics of it all, looking at the angles and the velocities that would get one ball to push another into those tiny pockets. At one point, I was struck with the thought that a billiard ball can’t decide to go in any other direction than where it is pushed. It can’t just say to itself, “the next time someone hits me, I’m going to float up rather than roll away.”
Scroll forward to this past weekend; a couple seemingly unrelated comments led me back to the billiard balls.
Richard and I got to meet the amazing Brendon Bruchard and experience his High Performance Academy. In one session, he talked about ants not having dreams for their lives, saying, "ants just do what ants do, humans get to create visions for ourselves." Hmmmmm, ants and billiard balls and people without a vision - all sort of the same.
Also, during that weekend, I heard a conversation about a negotiation where someone was giving advice to build up the pressure of possibility losing out on a good deal if they didn't act now. People get super frantic over the thought of missing out on anything. This must be a sort of a instinctual impulse. Just remember all the late-night infomercials urging you to buy some product you never thought you needed “before midnight tonight” or the offer goes away.
I can think of so many times in my life that I acted just like a billiard ball or an ant (depending on the analogy) reacting to some impulse (or infomercial) in a way that had no relationship to how I want to live my life.
For me, one of the most impactful changes to my life has been doing the Soul Sync meditation daily. Every day, I get to both visualize and experience my dreams for life. This allows me to react less impulsively and compulsively to external events and allow a life of miracles, where billiard balls actually do float.