Finally!  Endlich!  We won!  It felt so good to be ahead when the buzzer sounded.  Because, as I said last week, it’s been awhile.

I had mentioned that my realism would be enough for a win and it turns out I was wrong.  The mere fact that we can/could win wasn’t working out too well for us now was it?  Now, I’m a smart girl but it took me awhile to figure that one out.  Of course we CAN win… anything can happen in this world, especially in the world of sports.  So what was I missing?  A push into the positive.

This is nothing new.  For as long as I can remember my head has been a revolving door of negative thoughts.  I’m not harboring murderous or terroristic ideas or any sort of thought that could have me in handcuffs.  No.  My most common negative thought is any variation of “this is going to suck.”  Now, how can anyone enjoy anything when this is the dominating atmosphere of their brain?

So these past couple weeks I have been trying to share some positive energy with the team because I really believed in us being successful.  I believed in their genuine effort, heart, and will to win.  But I had it in my head that I was in a personal basketball slump (whether real or created) and kept throwing negative energy at myself.  In the form of: “that’s terrible,” “I can’t make a shot,” and “Ugh, what am I doing!?”  Not conducive to any kind of success.

Anyway, Wednesday night I stumbled upon a youtube video about negative thoughts.  The gist of the thing was not to let your thoughts control you.  It literally suggested talking back to your thoughts and letting them know YOU are the boss of what goes on upstairs.  Strangely enough, this seemed like something I could do.  See I’ve always talked to myself, on a daily basis, and often out loud (is this weird?).  So I decided to treat my thoughts as a completely different person that was trying to get the best of me.  I even caught myself at practice laughing at the person inside my head like, “you really think you can beat me?”  I think making the control of my thoughts a competition between negative Nancy and positive me helped: I hate losing!

Despite the positive thinking, I didn’t shoot any better at Thursday and Friday’s practices but we felt good as a team going into the game.  During warmups there was a good feeling, ‘Stimmung’ in German, one that allowed us a 30-12 lead after the first quarter.  I took the first shot of the game and when my teammate passed it to me I said, “I got this.”  My lips probably even moved and I continued that throughout the game en route to some made shots and more importantly, a win!

I usually make fun of those players who jump around and celebrate like they have never won a game in their life but last night, that was me and I did not even care!  After seven losses in a row it felt so good to be happy with my teammates, to laugh and jump around with them.  And 550 of our awesome fans were there to enjoy it with us.  They believed, we believed, and I believed.  We finally have the monkey off our backs, maybe I’m developing a new outlook on life, and maybe we can start a new streak.  Regardless of what’s coming, it’s been a great couple days.