Choose Your Response – Football Playoffs

 

I have found that watching NFL football playoffs can be a great lesson on attachment and chosen response.

 

When most people watch football during the regular season, they typically have a home team that they care about. For example, I live in San Diego so it would make sense that I would be invested in the San Diego Chargers. It would also follow that I would root against the Oakland Raiders since they are considered the archrivals of the Chargers. During the regular seasons, we find the attachment to our home team to be normal and expected. What we do not typically think about when watching our team win or lose, that we are choosing how to respond to the game due to a chosen believe and an attachment to a desired outcome (a win for our team).

 

During the playoffs, the reason to root for a specific team becomes more tenuous. Yesterday, I watched the Green Bay Packers play the New York Giants. I typically have more fun watching a football game when I have someone to root for. I chose to root for the packers since I did an internship in Wisconsin and since Eli Manning disrespected Charger fans a few years back. It was a conscious controlled decision to root for the Green Bay Packers.

 

Once the giants started to win the game, I found myself becoming disappointed.

 

Just 2 hours earlier, I really did not care about the outcome of this football game. I had chosen to care and wrote the story of my belief of why the packers should win. I was disappointed since I chose to be attached to a specific outcome.

 

If I had chosen to root for the giants, my experience would have been quite different. I would have been excited by the “Hail Mary” touchdown completion before halftime and by each time the Giants received the ball from a Packer’s turnover.  

 

When watching sports, we have absolutely NO control over who wins or loses.

 

We can only control our response.

 

So if you feel yourself getting upset on Super Bowl Sunday, remember you can always choose to root for the other team. Or you can choose not to care, get more snacks and wait for an amusing commercial.