In basketball, a pivot requires keeping one foot in place while repositioning the other. It’s a way to get unstuck, to free up space to make the next move. It’s a travel if you move both feet, but it’s legal if you keep one foot grounded.
It’s the same thing with training our brain. We can pivot to get ourselves unstuck from repetitive thought patterns. But just like in basketball, the pivot has to be grounded. We can’t jump from focusing on the negative, the blocks, the barriers, the conflicts to suddenly getting exactly what we want. That’s a travel – we’ve tried to take too many steps, and we ultimately lose possession of the ball.
However, if we make incremental moves from where we are, if we redirect our attention. When we consider what we want to have, how we want to feel, rather than what we don’t want and what we don’t want to feel, we pivot from where we currently are.
Ultimately we are making microshifts to stay in the game. We are creating space to get unstuck, so we can make our next move.