Snowboarding:
Thinking causes falling for me while snowboarding. If you think much about anything other than where you are going to fall. It’s the greatest way to get away from thinking. In between trips down the mountain you end up thinking about all sorts of things, like why am I outside when it’s cold and snowing, should I go home now, am I hungry, which way should I go, why is my life so goofy, do I know that person, do I have to talk to the person on the lift next to me, am I unfriendly if I don’t, and on and on. But when you are going down the mountain all I think about is, turn, turn, turn, jump, turn, turn, turn, stop.

Golf:
Thinking equally causes woe and success. It seems that you can put bad thoughts in your head and cause the exact effect you are hoping to avoid, like hitting the ball into the water. Conversely concentrating on just making a good connection with the ball and not worrying about how far it goes or anything else often results in a good shot. The less worry the better things go.

Yoga:
Thinking is a curse in ways its better to just stretch or move and forget the thinking, and just listening to what the teacher says. The more I think about wow this hurts or wow I’m tired the more things fall apart and the less enjoyment I have. When I just let go and enjoy what I’m doing it all goes much better.

Different Measures of Achievement:
Snowboarding:
It’s hard to measure achievements in snowboarding, does it matter if you go faster or turn tighter? Is jumping higher or spinning better? What if you learn to do more tricks but they look horrible? How can you judge which matters more? I’m not sure that I really worry about getting better as much as I just like to do it.

Golf:
My score should be going down. I’m right around 100 right now sometimes below, and less often lately I’m a couple of strokes over 100. I wanted to be below 100 consistently this year but I didn’t get enough golf in to see that happen. Not enough dedication this year. You can blame Bella, although surely it’s my own fault. Golf scoring is interesting, you are the only one that really keeps track, and it’s easy to fudge, do you just forget that penalty shot for losing a ball or do you count every stroke. What happens when you are shooting so badly that keeping score starts to hurt more than help? I usually stop keeping score then, since I’m out for fun more than to keep score or get better.

Yoga:
I just want to kept stretching further and doing it all the poses better. Doing Bikram Yoga gave me a bunch of new goals, since there are a handful of poses that I can’t do. There are things I’m getting closer to, there are things I’m still not flexible enough to do, there are things I seem to either lack the focus or strength to do but I know how to work towards doing them. I know I can relax into it, or push into and eventually I’ll get there.