Love On the Brain (Corey Crawford)

1| Mind Over Matter

Jessica

The mind... it can be such a wonderful thing. It is responsible for how you feel, how you act, what you say and why you say it. Every spoken word, every feeling you have is created in the brain before it becomes something more than a thought. Each moment of your life is affected by the mind, from your happiest moments to how you get through the hardest hours. Nothing that you go through gets past the brain, it's there always and it never sleeps. There isn't a thing in this world that is more powerful than the mind.

And so it can go one of two ways. You can create a mindset where you know you are strong and you are powerful making it so you can get through anything. You can build yourself up with knowledge and experience telling you that you can do this, no matter what this might be. Or... you can let your mind be deceived by people telling you that you're not good enough, that nothing is ever going to be good enough. You can let your mind be filled with fiction and unrealistic realities that are there only to break you down. And trust me, if you give your mind a shot to take you down, it will. And it won't miss.

It's hard to get your mind right, sometimes life is just out of your hands. And while you can't control what happens to you, you can control how it effects you. Your mind will let you know if you're living or just existing in any given moment. Whether you're living your life or a different version of someone else's idea of what your life should be. It's the difference between letting something define you or letting something build you.

The way I see it is that either you control your mind or it controls you. And ever since I was a little girl I was amazed by what the mind can do. It can make up some of the most beautiful pictures or someone the darkest days. But whatever happens in the mind can easily become a reality, and when you're stuck at a cross road and your not sure which path is the one that's best for you, you can't just sit there and wait for it to become more obvious, because I promise you it never will. Make a third path and make it whatever you want, there is no limits to the mind. Mind over matter, always.

That's why I became a life coach. There's something so satisfying about helping someone find themselves and teach them how to make their lives better, that makes me happy. When you feel like you have no control of your life... it's scary. But finding ways to see yourself for who you are and who you're meant to be, well to me it's the greatest feeling in the world. To find your worth and to never question it again. There's truly nothing better.

And I'm pretty good at my job. I've worked with high school and college kids all the way up to people like Will Smith and even Elton John for a little. Half the time I'm learning just as much as whoever I'm working with does. It's one of the many perks of the job.

But one obstacle I haven't worked with is a athlete. And while athletes are humans too, their minds are on a whole another level than what most people function on. They are incredibly intelligent in their fields, but outside the games things tend to get blurry. When you've trained for one thing your entire life that is inevitable to happen. They didn't have a normal childhood experience or social experiences that teaches them some of the things they need to know and that ends up coming back and making adulthood a little bit more difficult to navigate with the limited information they have on communication and expectations. Thing like handling adversity and fixing problems doesn't come as easy as it would to someone who didn't spend their whole life focused on one thing.

Competing is fun to them but no one wins every game, being a athlete is hard enough physically but then you add the mental aspect to it and now that brings problems of their own. They are judged on their every move they make out there, there's so much pressure put on them it's a miracle that they don't all lose their minds in the middle of a game. Then again most of the great ones are pretty crazy. There's just no way to be able to be able to give everyone what they want while still being true to themselves. In order to be considered great you have to give up a lot, more than anyone ever should. And that's why my next case is a doozy.

So I sit in my office and see what I had on file here. I would be working with someone from the Blackhawks organization that they felt like needed a life coach. It was kind of a last straw type of situation so the pressure was on to help him. Now I know little to nothing about hockey, but I know a lot about life. And this guy, he was a person and his life is more important than any hockey game he'll ever play in. It said in the report that he was struggling with his coping and relationships and needed someone to guide him in a different direction. There wasn't a lot of information here but that's okay because I would rather hear it from him. At this rate he could lose his job if he can't figure out how to change. My job was to tap into his mind and help him find out where he was going and make sure it's in the right direction.

After reviewing what was sent to me I start to map out questions I want to ask. It's a fine line between finding out what I need to know and being too personal but I'm never afraid to walk that line. The more I know the easier it is for me to work. So I outline some things for our meeting and make sure I had what I needed. Once I felt like I did I leave my office in one tall building in the heart of Chicago and go home to another tall building.

"Good evening Toby" I greet the doorman as he opens the door for me. I let out a sigh of relief when the warm air meets my bare face after braving the cold Chicago winds on my walk home from work. It was early October so it wasn't too bad yet, but it wasn't fun either.

"Good evening Miss Davidson. How are you today" he asks.

"Oh you know, the same old same old" I shrug.

"That good to hear" he nods and I laugh. Since when is the same old same old god news?

I head up to my apartment and let myself in. It's much bigger than anything I would ever need but it allows me to be flexible with my job. Being a life coach is interesting because it's so personal. I have to talk daily to a client, I invite them over and make them feel comfortable with me. I can't do my job without some type of mutual respect and trust and that isn't easy to come by. But there's ways to make strangers become friends quickly.

Once I get settled in I start on dinner. I always preferred the home cooked meal because cooking always allowed my mind to relax. I can turn on music and tune out life for a little while. Because getting stuck in your mind isn't always a bad thing. Sure there's some scary thoughts that pass by every now and again, but that doesn't take away from the beautiful parts.

And while my mind has been constructed from years of learning lessons the hard way I finally got it where it needs to be.