“Look for the seams.”
My father gave me that advice when I played softball. I don’t remember if we were at the batting cages, or in our backyard, but it stuck. When standing at home plate, bat in hand, staring at the pitcher, I was to find the seams to ensure I kept my eye on the ball until it connected with my bat.
It’s been years since I played softball, but I was thinking about that advice recently while climbing. I was attempting to send a route that included a dynamic movement. It wasn’t a super aggressive dynamic movement, but at my level any dynamic movement is intimidating. Objectively, I knew I was strong enough and coordinated enough to make the grab, but my body wasn’t cooperating. I wasn’t catching my weight and repeatedly fell to the mat below. I told myself I was missing the grab because I was tired. I had been climbing for over an hour. My hands were aching. My forearms were taught from being taxed. I walked away for the day.
My next time out a few days later, my first few attempts delivered the same result. Me, on the mat, having missed the grab.
Maybe I was being stubborn, but as I sat staring up at the route, I refused to believe I was missing the hold because I wasn’t strong enough. That’s when I realized I was missing the grab because I wasn’t looking for the seams.
I had my eye on the hold while preparing to leap, but the second I advanced towards the hold, I stopped focusing on it. I’m not sure if I was closing my eyes, or simply shifting my focus to propelling my body up the wall instead of connecting with the hold itself. Either way, I was asking my hand to do all the work without any support from my brain. And it doesn’t work that way.
I needed to stay focused on the hold from the moment I decided it was my next move, to the moment my hand wrapped around it and was able to hold my weight. Once I “found the seams” and committed to focusing on that hold – and only that hold – throughout the movement, I never missed it again.
Because I love metaphors and am on this journey to establish myself as an independent consultant, I identified parallels between this epiphany and my current career status. It would be great to be top of mind for lots of different clients, have a waiting list of projects or to someday even open my own consultancy/agency. But those big, obvious successes are some distance away. And because they’re big and obvious, they’re easy to envision and ever-present on some level. They’re the equivalent of hitting a double or topping out on a route. But I’ll never get there if I’m unable to focus on some of the smaller, super important – sometimes super difficult – details along the way.
Developing an elevator pitch. Writing a cold outreach email. Closing my first project. Delivering a great experience on every project, no matter its size. Building my network.
So I need to focus. Not just on the sexy, glamorous outcomes that make it into the highlight reel. But on the details and micro-steps. Because if I can’t do that, this whole endeavor is definitely going to come crashing to the mat.
So here’s to keeping my eye on the ball. Or the hold.
Here’s to looking for the seams.