by Mimi Winsberg, M.D.

In part one, we looked at how engagement and focused attention fosters a graceful, confident and winning mindset in sport. How do these skills more broadly apply to success in life?

Controlling one’s attention and managing mental energy is not only a successful race strategy, but also fundamental to taking charge of one’s life and experience. The explorer Ernest Shackleton said “Life to me is the greatest of all games... And even to win the game is not the chief end. The chief end is to win it honorably and splendidly.” It’s how you play the game, and your approach that matter most.

What is your approach to time and responsibilities in your life? Do you find yourself bored, distracted, stressed, looking forward, looking for shortcuts, or engaged in the moment?

Family life can bring our tendencies into sharp focus. Raising children is a heady mix of emotion, boredom, anticipation and change. The afternoons can tick by very slowly but the years fly by fast. Slow time can feel like missed opportunity, but too much time spent chasing speed, and those precious slow moments are lost. What family life teaches us about time is that it is fleeting, and that without paying attention, what we are left with is not necessarily what we expected or knowingly chose.

Sooner or later in life, as in races, we find ourselves in a battle against time, and we are tested to be graceful under pressure. In life, in the end, time always wins, but it may be the battle and how we fight it that makes living worthwhile.

No matter how fit we get, or how fast, there are quiet reminders that time is gaining on us. What most of us think about when we think about time, and the time that is gone, is that we want to have mattered, and to have meaning. People come in for psychotherapy when they are threatened by loss of meaning, or when what was meaningful no longer makes sense.

Take ownership of your goals, your process, your attention. It will give your life meaning and bring equanimity. Plus, you never know... it might just make you race well.