In baseball, a curveball is a pitch with more movement than pretty much any other pitch. There’s a lot of spin on it, and it will drop suddenly as it approaches the plate.
It’s an off-speed pitch, so when it’s delivered, the batter can be thrown off balance. Their timing might be disrupted, and they might swing too early and miss.
So, it’s no surprise that when we’re thrown a metaphorical curveball in life, it often has a similar effect on us.
Those metaphorical curveballs can really put a hitch in our stride. They might represent obstacles that get in the way of achieving our goals and leave us feeling discouraged, or they might represent a disappointment that leaves us devastated and wondering how we’ll move forward.
Of course, there’s always a chance we’ll hit that curveball and knock it out of the park, but when we swing and miss, that’s when we need to take a moment to get ourselves back on track. Here are my best tips.
Let yourself feel all the feelings.
At the end of the day, a curveball is a surprise, and when it’s not a good one, it’s important for us to recognize and experience our feelings in order to fully process what happened.
We can get into trouble when we deny ourselves the time and space to do this. We can get trapped in our emotions without even realizing it, and as a result, they can get bigger and start affecting other parts of our lives.
It’s important that we don’t shame ourselves for feeling a certain way, or be critical of ourselves when we “let” something bother us. The fact is, we’re human, and we react to the world around us in different ways. Having feelings and emotions is part of the human experience.
When a curveball comes our way, welcoming and validating what we’re feeling–instead of ignoring it and pushing it down–can help us release and move forward.
So let yourself experience all the emotions and all the feelings. If this curveball made you sad, cry it out. If it was something truly absurd, laugh (because sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh, am I right?)
Allow the change to happen.
Of course, a curveball can come in a variety of forms, but sometimes it represents a significant and unexpected change in our lives. And we might find ourselves wishing that whatever change that curveball brought with it didn’t happen.
It’s when we resist that change, however, that we can get frustrated and stuck. To keep the baseball metaphor going here, we might wish that the curveball wasn’t thrown.
Although it might seem counterintuitive, there truly is so much power to be found in allowing change to happen. As much as we may hate it at times, and as badly as we might want to control everything around us, the reality is that change is inevitable. And it’s not always a bad thing.
So let the change happen. Go with the flow. Find peace in knowing who you are and that this curveball was just one bad pitch in the game of life.
Swing again.
When a curveball comes our way, it doesn’t mean that it’s our last strike.
You get three strikes until you’re out in baseball, which means you have more swings to turn that at-bat around.
That being said, whatever the challenge you’re facing–whether you were rejected from your dream job or it’s raining on your wedding day–there’s likely a way to resolve it by swinging again.
If you were rejected from your dream job at your dream company, keep an eye out on other job openings there and look for ways to connect with other people who work there. If it’s raining on your wedding day, put up a tent, or move it inside.
Sure, the solution might not look like what you thought or hoped it would, but that next pitch that comes your way might be a fastball. And guess what fastballs are great for? Hitting home runs.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard this one before. But it’s actually decent advice, as corny
and played out as it might seem.
And when I hear that saying, I also hear this: Sometimes we just need a little perspective.
Making sweet lemonade is looking at sour lemons from a different angle, isn’t it? So, if we think about that curveball from a different angle, we can consider how we can make the best of it. In baseball, a curveball is a deceptive pitch. Maybe that curveball is really a blessing in disguise. Maybe the path we started walking down really wasn’t the best path for us, and that curveball is helping redirect us toward something better. Maybe that curveball was what we needed to help us start building the life we’ve always dreamed of.
As difficult as it can be to reframe our thoughts when we’re disappointed, the best part is that when we’re able to see a situation from a different perspective, and learn how to see the light in the darkness, it can change the whole game.
Without sugarcoating it, getting thrown a curveball can really suck. It can be easy to feel sorry for ourselves, get angry, and become, well, miserable, but with just a few tweaks to our mindset, we can understand that it was just a little bump in the road and be ready and waiting for the next pitch that comes our way.
