The Mind Body Project
The Mind Body Project
Sit & Talk: Perspective, Prison or Power
We use a simple baseball story to show how perspective turns the same event into defeat or fuel. We break down victim vs victor thinking, why optimism is a choice not denial, and how small reframes change homes, work, and hope over time.
• perspective as prison or power
• the baseball parable and the twist
• winner or loser framing and its ripple effects
• victim vs victor mindset with practical questions
• interpreting hardship without denial
• failure as feedback and the next useful step
• optimism as a deliberate decision
• seeing beyond the bars to sunlight
• self-belief and being your own cheerleader
• final challenge to choose agency
Thank you so much for joining me on today's walk and talk. I look forward to seeing you right here next time as we walk and talk together
Welcome back to Walk and Talk. Thanks for taking a little time to join. This is your first time to walk and talk because what we're going to do is we're going to walk and talk. What do a couple friends do when they're out for a walk, just out for a leisurely stroll, and they have a great conversation. They talk about things, they share things, ideas, thoughts, hopes, and dreams, and that's what we're going to do in walk and talk. You can take me along, you can hop on the treadmill and walk as I walk, take it outside, or just sit and listen. We're just a couple friends walking and talking, here to share some ideas and thoughts with you and give you some challenges and things to think about and apply to your life. So on a walk and talk today, we're going to talk about. I don't know if you've ever heard the song The Greatest. It's just one of my favorite songs. It's it's about this little boy. He's out playing baseball by himself, and he's throwing up the ball and he swings the bat to hit it and he misses. And the song kind of takes us through that experience. He swings and he misses, he swings and he misses, and he gets three strikes, and he's out. And so then as the song goes along, you know, he his mom calls him for supper, and it's time to go home. And as he's heading home, he thinks to himself, I'm the greatest pitcher that ever lived. He struck out the batter. Three strikes, you're out. And so it kind of takes a twist at the end because we think, oh, this poor kid, he he swung at the ball and he missed three times. He's gonna be sad. But no, he's looking at it as he is the best pitcher of all time. So we're gonna talk today about perspective. How it can be your prison or it can be your power. I mean, it's so powerful. Just looking at that song, and if you have a chance, go listen to it. Stop, stop where you're at right now, and just go listen to it real quick and then come back, and you'll kind of have a better understanding of what we talk about today as we talk about the greatest and perspective of how it can be your prison or your power. It's so powerful. Because how does, you know, and we think now how does that relate to us? How does our perspective, how can that be our prison? You know, when we think of prison, what do we think of? Uh we think of bars, walls, guards, maximum security, you know, uh barbed wire fences. We think of prison. But is it sometimes we can be in our own prison and nobody ever see it? There's things holding us back, there's attitudes, there's ideas that we're locked into and we can't get out of, and that's our prison. And that's kind of kind of what we talk about today is how how can we turn some of those perspectives? Uh, maybe they are your current prison, maybe they're maybe they're holding you captive. And how do we turn that into our power? How do we do that? And so we're gonna talk about how do we do that. You know, when when the little boy's mom calls him home for supper, he's going home as one of two things from that game that he played, from that baseball game he played. He's going home as a winner or as a loser. One of the two. There's no no other options. He's only going home as a winner or a loser. And as we listen to the song and he strikes out, we go, man, that kid's going home a loser. But on his way home, he's going home as a winner because he struck that batter out. He's going home a winner. Did the situation change? No, the situation didn't change. Because what changed is his perspective of the situation, and and that makes a huge impact of how things change is because of our perspective. You know, how does perspective shape our reality? Uh, if you think about it, you know, if you're in a current circumstance and and you're not pleased with it, it's not going well, and you think, well, this is where I'm stuck. I can't do anything different. When we when we change our perspective, it doesn't change anything necessarily in the moment. It won't change, shape our reality in the very second we decide to have a different perspective. It won't change it that way, but it will over time. So let's take a little boy, for example. You know, he struck out three times. And if he goes home a loser, and he's he's the worst hitter there has ever been. He goes home and his mom caught him for supper, and he's sitting there about to eat supper and he throws a fit. Like he doesn't want to eat what's on his plate. But she gets mad at him, he's sitting there and he's you know sulking and maybe crying, and they have a bad interaction. How do you think the rest of that evening? He's probably gonna get in trouble. He might get a timeout, might get a spanking, might get sent to your room, might get grounded, all kinds of things. Then there's tension. Then then, if it's back in the day, you know, wait till your dad gets home. So that there causes a domino effect of things from his perspective of being a loser, of not doing well. Now, what if he goes home and goes, Man, I was the winner, I was the best pitcher ever. He goes in, he goes in, gives his mom a big hug. He goes, Oh, what do we have for dinner? She said, Oh, that I love that. And and it's just a whole different interaction when he when his perspective is different of how he played that game. And the same thing is true for us. We when we look change our perspective of it, this is not well, I can't change it the moment, but I can change my attitude. I like to call it the victor or victim mindset. What does the victim mindset say? It says the world's against me, it's always somebody else's fault, it's my boss's fault, it's my spouse's fault, it's my kid's fault, it's the guy, the gal in traffic's fault, it's the stoplight, it's my car, it's my whatever. It's always somebody else's fault. It's just life's just beating me down. Where a victim mentality, a victor mentality is what can I do to change the situation? Well, how can I think differently? What can I do? Why was this why was it why did this happen? What am I supposed to learn from it? What can I do? How can how can I learn from this? How can I move this forward? How can it change me? It's the victor. I'm not gonna let this get me down. You're not looking around for somebody to blame it. It's like, okay, let me let me handle this. It's the victor mindset, and that's and that's really the essence of our perspective is it our prison or is our power? Our prison is gonna say, I'm a victim every time. No matter what's going on in life, I'm the victim. But when we use it as our power, we go, man, I'm a victor. What can I do to change this? And I'm not gonna change it if by the way thinking differently, it's not gonna change it in this moment, but then how I start showing up and I interact with others. I go to work, I interact with my spouse, talk to my kids, talk to my friends, that starts to change over time and it starts to make a difference. And sometimes, you know, how we interpret our experiences matters just as much as the experience themselves. There's some awful things that happen to us in life. Awful things. Awful things that have happened to me, awful things that have happened to you. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Don't we know those people that used it as a victim mentality? Of why did this happen to me? What did you know, why, you know, as somebody else, you know, I didn't deserve it. And there's some bad things that happen, and there are victims, and I'm not saying that I'm saying that it sometimes it's a mentality of everybody's out to get me because of this experience. But some and we know those people that those experiences can happen, the exact same experience can happen to somebody else, and they respond to it differently. Because it's how we interpret that experience. How am I gonna use that? How am I gonna use that to ask my power? Because there are some lot of bad things that can hold us a prisoner for a long, long time, and it it takes some some power to go, okay, what am I gonna do with that? You know, maybe it's maybe taking power is if if it's something that really is really a victim of something, maybe it's therapy, maybe that's taking your power, maybe it's learning the tools to have a different perspective of it, and it can then become your power. Often hear this that your mess can become your message. What is that? All that is is a perspective mindset, it's a change in your perspective. It goes from what's my prison? I'm gonna make it my power, my message. So it's how we interpret that experience. And also, perspective is what's how are we resilient in the face of failure? I don't know about you, but for me, I have yeah, if you if you ask me about my successes, they'll be fast and quick. You ask me about my failures, I can go on and on and on about my failures. But we have to remember again, perspective is failure, isn't the end. It's just a lesson learned. Huh, that didn't work. Let me try something else. You've probably heard Thomas Edison. How many times does it take to get the light bulb right? Thousand, if not more. What if he stopped on 999? What would happen? There's stories after story after story about those that kept on trying. They would fail. That didn't work. That didn't work, that didn't work. They tried something else, tried something else, until they finally got it right. What if they used that perspective? I'm just a failure. I've struck out three times, I'm a failure. I'm quitting. What if they did? What if you did? What could you be missing out on? You could be missing out on your light bulb. It may not be the next time, may not be the time after that, but what if it is? What if it is? It's showing back up, it's part of the process, and again, it's using that perspective of it's part of the process as my power. Instead of I'm such a failure, such a loser. That's a prison. That's a prison perspective. It's holding you back. There's this little meme that is uh two guys sitting in a uh a jail cell. And you can see the bars, that there's a window up there, and you can see the bars, and outside the bars is trees and grass and birds, the sun's shining. Got one guy on the side of the prison, his clouds around him, he's kind of moping and dreary, and he looks when he looks at the out the window, all he can see is the bars. He can't see past the bars. The other guy sitting on the other side, he's bright, cheery. Because when he looks out the window, he sees the sun, the green grass, the trees, the clear sky, the birds. He can see it. They're still both in the same situation, they're in the exact same location, but they have two completely different perspectives. One is his power, the other is his prison that he'll stay. So, how do we take that experience? How do we take that failure? And how can that be our power? Because it's not the end. We focus on what is after this. Guy sitting there in the prison is looking, what is after these bars? There's life out there, there's things going on, there's enjoyment after my current prison. We've all been in prisons, but have you ever, ever experienced and experienced a night where day didn't come? Ever in your entire life? No. After every single night, there is a day, every single time. Same thing is true with our prisons in life. We will get through those. Sometimes it doesn't take a day, sometimes it's not a week, sometimes it's years. But we can get out of those prisons by changing our perspective. Our perspective can be our power and get us into the daylight, it can get us through the night and get us into the daylight. And just like the little boy, we have to have that belief in ourselves. He believed in himself that he was a good pitcher. It was a big game, major league event. Everybody's around. Big game. Had to believe in yourself, even when there's no one out there cheering. But he could hear there's nobody out there clapping, saying, Yay, but in his mind, he could hear the crowd going crazy. He could see the lights, the grass, everything. Even when no one is around, are you cheering yourself on? Are you using that perspective as your power? Are you being your own cheerleader? Saying you got this. You're the best. Even when nobody was around. And it's that sometimes that inner confidence that that can carry us through tough, lonely times. Again, it's that power in our perspective. When nobody else is around, but we're we're we're no one's watching, but we're cheering ourselves on. It's when our character comes out because our character is what we do and no one is watching. When that is squeezed and that comes out, that's our power. That's our power that we can change by by our perspective. That's our power. And that power in our perspective and and our squeezing of our character, and what really comes out is our power. That is can be optimism. And is optimism a choice? Yes. Is it is optimiz I've ever done? Is optimism denial? No. It's a deliberate decision to find strength or success, even in setbacks. We've all had setbacks. Don't we know people that have had setbacks and stay back? What if your setback is a set up for something better? And by changing your perspective and looking at that, that's your power. This setback is a setup for something better. It's not going to hold you back, it's getting you ready for the next big thing. And that's optimism because it's a deliberate decision to find strength and success in what just happened. And that's optimism. And it's just a great lesson from the little boy that we learned that don't underestimate the wisdom that can come from childlike honesty, imagination, and resilience. And he taught us all of that in that song. His perspective was his power. We can find those truths in those simple moments of a swing and a miss. A swing and a miss. A swing and a miss. My power, I'm the greatest pitcher that there's ever been. How are you gonna look at your swinging and a misses? Are you gonna look at them as a failure? Or are you gonna look at it as like, man, I'm the best pitcher there's ever been? And that's the challenge. Is how are you gonna use your perspective? Are you gonna allow it to be in your prison? Are you gonna allow it to be, are you gonna be that person that's sitting on the bed in the jail cell and all they can see are those prison bars? Or are you gonna be the person on the other side of the prison cell that can see beyond the bars? Can see the green grass, the sunshine, the birds chirping, the clear sky on the other side of those bars. Whatever your prison is, on the other side of that, you can just look a little bit past that. Gets a little clearer, gets a little shinier, gets a little cheerier. So that's the challenge. Make it be your power. Don't allow it to be your prison. Don't be the victim. Decide that I'm gonna be the victor in this own in my own story of this life. Thank you so much for joining me on today's walk and talk. I enjoyed sharing with you. I enjoyed uh walking with you and talking with you. And I hope some of the words I've said have are gonna will stick with you through the day, through the week, through the year. I hope they'll stick with you through your life and make a difference because we shared a little time together and we walked and talked. I look forward to seeing you right here next time as we walk and talk together.