Keep Your Head Up

Keep your head up.

Think positive.

Chin up.

I heard this all the time growing up.

2Pac even made a song about it.

When things don’t go your way, keep your head up. There are good things coming.

And I believed it.

Then I started golfing.

And all my coaches told me to keep my head down. Watch the ball. Keep your eyes down. Don’t look up.

Everyone would walk to their ball with their eyes staring at the ground.

Then I got confused.

What am I supposed to do, keep my head up or keep my head down?

Golf has been preaching this since the beginning of the game. And it’s the first thing I hear when I coach players.

After they hit a bad shot, “Didn’t keep my head down.”

We shouldn’t keep our head down. (We don’t need to in order to hit a good shot… don’t believe me? Come find me and I’ll show you how).

Golf is wrong. (2Pac is right).

The beauty of the game… the people we meet... the positivity of life... It all happens because we look up. We see new things. We look beyond ourselves.

Life isn’t meant to be lived in a bubble, always looking down, never seeing what’s up there.

We need to look up to find positivity.

And I have a little trick that makes me smile.

I used to referee basketball.

I did it for 20 years.

I was in hundreds of gyms.

Now, I do Be the Nice Kid assemblies in auditoriums and cafeterias, and… gyms.

These gyms all have something in common.

No, not the faint smell of wrestling mats. Not that one squeaky bleacher that doesn’t quite push in all the way. Not even the after hours janitor… who is always there.

What they have in common is this…

Every gym I’ve ever been in has something stuck in the ceiling.

Seriously, go look.

There’s the dodgeball wedged between the vents. Or the basketball in the rafters. Or the lone mylar balloon (that may never come down). Sometimes you’ll see a volleyball or a frisbee. And every once in a while, the ultimate prize… a badminton birdie.

So here’s the trick…

Every gym I walk in to, I walk in with my head held high, looking up at the ceiling for something stuck.

I teach my kids this. I teach their friends this. I teach people I don’t know this. (Really, I do. I’ll enter gyms and see something in the ceiling and tap the first person I see on the shoulder, excited like a kid on Christmas, and say, “Check out that ball stuck up there.”

It reminds me to keep my head up. I reminds me to think positively.

And it makes me smile.

Next time you go into a gym, try it.

It’s a small thing. It’s an insignificant thing.

But small things can turn into big things.

Keep positive.

Keep your head up.

Keep smiling.

And find that badminton birdie.

Talk soon - Bryan