What You Seek is Within You

A year ago, I took my front tucks on the trampoline out of safety lines for the first time.

Since then, each week I typically do at least few in lines before taking off the safety lines.

Doing a few in lines gives me a confidence boost, and remind me that I can do this skill safely.

I’ve rationalized that I use the safety lines to push my edge further in developing my skill: it allows me to push myself to bounce higher and take risks to modify my technique while knowing I’ll be safe.

This is TRUE.

Also true is that I’ve known for a while that I don’t really need this crutch. I can push my edge safely even without the safety lines. I do it each week on the flips that I do once I’m out of the belt.

But my routine has been that each week, I do a few in lines to warm them up before I remove the belt.

Today, in the last outdoor class of the season, I released the crutch. Thanks to whoever replaced the safety lines and made them a little too short, I was forced to jump right in (haha).

No confidence booster from the lines before taking the belt off.

No chance to get my bearings and feel my legs under me before going for it “for real.”

I had to get up and execute from the start. I had to summon my confidence from within. I had to deepen in my self-trust without an external aid.

I had to believe in what I already know how to do, and do it.

And I did.

I felt some fear, as is natural. It was a bit like the first time I ever attempted to do a front tuck without the safety lines. There was that moment when I simply I had to commit to initiating the rotation.

Once I’m rotating, there is no choice but to turn it over to my body to do what it knows. A front tuck is a blind landing — there’s nothing to spot to know when to open. It requires complete surrender to the inner workings of whatever tells my body that it’s time to open.

Landing on my feet on that first front tuck felt amazing.

Today I didn’t focus as much on bouncing higher or riding it up longer. The challenge was to do that first one, “cold”, and then ride through the surge of adrenaline to keep my focus on the next few.

But it was that very first one, starting off without the safety lines, that was the HUGE win for me today.

Of course, it’s not just about the trick on the trampoline.

This is a skill that translates to life: summoning what we need from within.

What Outside Force Do You Credit?

In fact, it was so perfectly timed: yesterday I coached a client who feels challenges with motivation to do certain types of work.

She recently she had a day where she was able to get in the zone and find her flow, but she attributed it to being given caffeine by mistake. She can’t have caffeine and wanted to find a way to get into that flow state without it.

As I probed her, she revealed that she wasn’t certain she had caffeine. She had ordered a decaf drink prior to sitting down to work, and she then found a flow state. She linked her flow state to the drink, assuming the drink had caffeine, but she had no proof that her flow came from caffeine.

I asked her to consider the possibility that her drink was not caffeinated. How would that change her beliefs about her motivation and ability to get into the zone and to do the work that she finds difficult?

This created a huge opening that put her back into her power — the true meaning of EMPOWER. I heard a shift in her tone as she realized: I have the thing I need inside me.

What We Seek is Already Within Us

The truth is that whatever we are seeking from without — motivation, confidence, trust, love, calm, silence, peace — already exists within.

As with our distractions, so too with our motivations and our inspiration: the trigger is always internal.

We simply need to learn how to access it and harness it.

Then we can soar to greater heights.