Warrior Volleyball, Economic Genius, and Life

I have been fortunate to have witnessed beautiful calm in one of the most unsuspecting places ~ on the volleyball court.  It was with awe that I watched a team move through each point with such ease. The battle included errors and lost points, perfection and exceptional plays, yet on one side of the court, it was void of mental digression and excessive celebration.  

Daniel Kahneman’s (winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics) Regression to the Mean Theory states that although there is the belief that punishment improves performance and praise potentially hurts performance, the reality is that regardless of praise or punishment, the natural tendency is to always move back towards your mean performance level thus only giving the illusion that the outside influence actually had an impact one way or the other. With performance at an athlete’s peak being extremely difficult to maintain over the course of a battle as is evidenced by this theory, this would suggest that it is the basic play, the point-by-point seemingly un-dynamic work that truly wins the game. This made me wonder then if the mental surge of celebration during battle would then be as detrimental to an athlete’s performance as the mental digression that an error causes.  A true warrior has no time in the midst of battle to celebrate or mentally digress without the threat of being killed. However, on the volleyball court to be able to stay on task with little to no mental flux, patiently dedicated to your system regardless of great plays, errors, and the score until the battle is won is extremely rare, yet that is what the winning team displayed throughout the tournament I was at. 

So then, how is this applied to life?  Although our life is not usually looked at as a battle, it is the everyday tasks that are the core of whom we are and what we do.  It is the bulk of our life.  It is the mean that we regress to on a daily basis, yet most of us drudge through wishing that we had more to celebrate and we yearn for the few moments of extreme celebration that we experience so sporadically in life which causes us to see our everyday mean as not good enough or deprived of joy.  Then there are those who seem to always be in the midst of the mental calm that was displayed during “warrior” volleyball, enjoying life to the fullest regardless of the situations around them.  The beauty I see and what I witnessed is the TRUTH that through PRACTICE, this FLOW can be obtained on the court and in everyday life so we feel joy in EVERYTHING we do.  Are you willing to see the beauty in your everyday tasks that propel you through life?