Bundle up, Reader!
There is a particular moment every fall when I realize that winter is no longer some distant concept. It usually happens on a morning when I walk outside wearing something that was perfectly acceptable the afternoon before. Suddenly, the air has that unmistakable bite to it, and I find myself questioning both my clothing choices and my decision to leave the house in the first place.
Of course, I do what any reasonable person would do. I immediately start complaining about winter. Never mind that it's still October, the leaves haven't finished falling, and we could very well have a seventy-degree day next week. In my mind, the snow is already piling up, the driveway needs shoveling, and I'm scraping ice off a windshield while questioning why I continue to live in Pennsylvania.
Eventually, I make my way to the closet and pull out the winter coat that has been hanging there since March. There's something oddly comforting about putting on a coat you haven't worn in months. It's familiar, reliable, and apparently doubles as a storage facility for things I forgot existed. A receipt from a gas station, a couple of cough drops that should probably be considered archaeological artifacts, and occasionally a few dollars. Finding money in an old coat pocket is one of life's underrated victories. It's technically my money, but somehow it feels like someone just handed me a gift.
The funny thing is that the coat hasn't changed. The weather hasn't even gotten particularly bad yet. But simply pulling it out of the closet seems to signal that the enjoyable part of the year is over and the season of inconvenience has officially begun.
...and it got me thinking.
How often do we start experiencing something emotionally long before it actually happens?
I've noticed this in myself more times than I care to admit. Something appears on my calendar a few weeks away, and before I've even gotten close to the date, I've already started thinking about everything that could go wrong. Maybe it's a difficult conversation, an important meeting, or a responsibility that I know will require more energy than I currently have available. Whatever it is, I start carrying pieces of that experience around with me before there's anything I can actually do about it.
What's interesting is that I usually convince myself I'm being responsible. I'm thinking ahead. I'm preparing. I'm making sure I'm ready for whatever might happen. And sometimes that's exactly what I'm doing. Preparation is valuable, and I would never suggest that we should simply ignore the future and hope things work out.
But there is a difference between preparing for an experience and mentally living through it before it arrives.
I see this frequently in the world of sports and performance. An athlete has an important competition coming up, and the event starts occupying space in their mind weeks before the first whistle. They begin thinking about who they'll be playing against, what the coaches will expect, how much playing time they might receive, and what happens if they don't perform well. By the time the competition actually arrives, they've already played through dozens of possible versions of it, most of which have not ended particularly well.
The event hasn't happened, but the emotional experience has already begun.
I sometimes wonder how much energy we spend responding to situations that exist only in our imagination. Our brains are pretty remarkable at creating possible futures, but they aren't always particularly good at reminding us that those futures are possibilities rather than guarantees. A single thought about something going wrong can become a detailed scenario, complete with imaginary conversations, reactions, and consequences. Before long, we're frustrated with someone who hasn't said anything yet or anxious about an outcome that hasn't even had the opportunity to occur.
And the more time we spend rehearsing those possibilities, the more familiar they can begin to feel.
As a coach, I've had moments when I've walked into a practice already expecting things to go poorly. Maybe the previous practice wasn't particularly productive, or we were coming off a difficult match. Without realizing it, I had already written part of the story in my head. I expected a lack of energy, anticipated mistakes, and prepared myself to be frustrated. The athletes hadn't even touched a volleyball, but I was already responding to a practice that existed only in my imagination.
That's a pretty unfair advantage to give a bad day.
The same thing happens outside sports. We anticipate being overwhelmed by the holidays before November arrives. We worry about conversations before we've had them. We decide how difficult a project will be before we've taken the first meaningful step. We can even convince ourselves that we're going to dislike an experience based entirely on how similar experiences have gone in the past.
I'm not suggesting that worry is something we can simply turn off. There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the future, and pretending otherwise isn't particularly helpful. Sometimes the difficult conversation really is difficult. Sometimes the competition doesn't go well. And sometimes winter really does dump a foot of snow on your driveway when you have somewhere important to be.
The question I've been thinking about is whether our anticipation is helping us respond to those possibilities or simply making us experience their discomfort earlier than necessary.
I think this is where attention becomes important. When our thoughts drift toward what might happen, it's easy to lose sight of what is actually happening. We become so occupied with preparing ourselves emotionally for a future moment that we stop fully participating in the one we're currently living.
There is a certain irony in that. We spend so much time worrying about whether we'll be ready for tomorrow that we occasionally forget to show up for today.
Maybe one of the more valuable mental performance skills isn't learning how to predict every possible outcome. Maybe it's becoming more comfortable with the fact that we can't.
We can prepare for a competition without deciding how we'll perform. We can approach a difficult conversation without writing the other person's responses in advance. We can acknowledge that a challenging season is coming without allowing it to define the season we're currently experiencing.
And perhaps most importantly, we can recognize that thinking about something doesn't necessarily mean we're doing something useful about it.
That last one is particularly difficult for me. I have a remarkable ability to spend an impressive amount of time thinking about something and then congratulate myself for being productive. Meanwhile, the actual thing I needed to accomplish remains completely untouched. Apparently, mental rehearsals don't shovel driveways, answer emails, or finish projects. Someone should really look into that.
Which brings me back to my winter coat.
A few days after that first cold morning, Pennsylvania will probably do what Pennsylvania does best in October and give us an afternoon warm enough to make me question why I bothered getting the coat out in the first place. I'll probably leave it hanging by the door, just in case, while enjoying a little more sunshine before the colder days arrive.
Winter will get here eventually. The snow will fall, the mornings will get darker, and at some point I'll be standing in my driveway holding a shovel and wondering whether moving south is still a realistic career option.
But none of that is happening today.
Today, the leaves are still changing colors, there's a little warmth left in the afternoon, and somewhere in the pocket of that winter coat, I might still have another five-dollar bill waiting to be discovered.
It seems a shame to miss all of that because I'm already thinking about February.
Until next time, thanks for reading, and remember to enjoy the season you're actually in.
