Sometimes you just don’t “see it”. Whilst sometimes you don’t see ‘it’ because you lack knowledge or awareness, other times you possess the requisite knowledge and awareness, yet choose not to see ‘it’.

For the past few weeks, my left knee has been playing up. Not in an “OMG, I’ve done something horrible”‘kind of way, more of “huh, that doesn’t feel quite right, I wonder what’s wrong?” kind of way. But, me being me, I carried on, pushed through training, dealing with the consequences afterwards by way of ice, flossing, ibuprofen and massage. Guess what? It’s gotten worse. Now feeling rather stupid. My body was telling me (via the pain and discomfort) that something wasn’t quite right, but, instead of trying to address the possible causes, I kept on doing what I was doing. Dumb and dumber.

Letting self doubt fuel my desire to progress, I (wrongly) convinced myself that carrying on, ignoring my body’s protests was the way to go, thinking ‘maybe I’m just being a wuss’, ‘maybe it’ll just go away’. Result? My knee has gotten progressively worse, meaning no squatting, running, etc. for a while. Needless to say, this frustrated me. However, by focusing on what I couldn’t do, I didn’t see the opportunity this presented – more time to work on my gymnastics (most definitely a weakness)!

Closing our eyes to make things go away or disappear may seem to solve the problem, but invariably something will happen to make you open your eyes, whereupon the problem will remain. Similarly, while focusing intently on keeping your eyes closed to avoid the problem, you may not see an opportunity which presents itself. Open your eyes, address the problem and seize the opportunity.