I played softball yesterday, the first time I have thrown a ball, fielded a grounder and swung a bat since 2001.  Naturally, I was horribly out of shape (and still am).  Playing again made me deliriously happy, which is why I probably played too long and tried to ignore the injury to my calf.

There is nothing new about an older guy trying to play like a teenager again, and I was just as ridiculous.  However, for me, this was reconnecting with something that was very important to me for a very long time.  Even with the pain, and knowing I no longer have the skill level that I used to have, just being on the field and actually playing was wonderful.

When I was a small child, I fell in love with baseball.  It was the first thing that I decided I really wanted to do for the rest of my life.  I started playing at six years old, and was allowed to be the bat boy for the junior team in my small town that first year.  That was before tee ball.  I learned how to field grounders by throwing a rubber ball against the brick foundation at the end of my family home for years.

I was good field, no hit until my high school years.  During those years, I became one of the best players in our county, and began to seriously consider a professional career.

I did not pursue that dream.  For a long time, I blamed it on the high school coach, who had been my seventh grade teacher.  I went on to college, and played recreational baseball and softball whenever I could.  After military service, and returning to school to finish my degrees, I got into other activities, but always had fond memories of baseball.

My love of chasing a ball was rekindled in 1989, when we moved back to our home town of Memphis.  Somebody told me about an adult baseball league in town, the Hernando Desoto League, and I was hooked again.  I played through 1999 with the HDL, but moved to Indianapolis for a job change.  I had to sit out the 2000 season, then played one game in the Indy Senior League before moving to Charlotte in 2001.  At that time in Charlotte, I was unable to locate a league to play in, so I gave up the game again.

The intervening years have been a time of great change, as we all know.  I focused on making a living, and left behind nearly all the things that I used to do for fun.  I put on extra weight and slowly lost my conditioning, fought low back pain and other health issues.  Every now and then, I would think about how much fun it had been to play, to have had a second run at something I loved, but that seemed just out of reach now.

It’s interesting to note that, even though I had played with 60-year olds in the HDL, I just did not have the time (or perhaps the courage) to seek out a place to play again.

If you know me, or have read some of my posts previously, you know that I am embarked on a mission to manifest a truly abundant life for myself and my family, as part of my move to become recognized as an author, speaker, teacher and coach in spirituality and personal development.  This experience turned out to be a fabulous lesson in following my heart and seeking to live my passion.

I am a member of an informal car club.  It’s the only thing I have done over the last few years to have a life outside work, and it is also the result of connecting with past passions.  One of the members, whom I have known casually for some time, is athletically very active.  He turned out to be instrumental in me getting back on a baseball diamond, but the actual series of events is highly instructive in terms of how you attract things that are important opportunities when you focus correctly.

This recent chain of events actually started with viewing the All Star game last month.  Even though I love baseball, I do not watch it very much.  This is partly because I stay very busy, always having way too much on my to-do list (which is something I am working on trimming), partly because I no longer pay enough attention to Major League Baseball to even know who the current players are, and partly because I have never been a very good spectator for the game I loved to play.  The All Star game is the one game I am most likely to watch.  I am a long-time National League fan, having grown up in the St. Louis Cardinals market area.  Most of the few games I attended live were in St. Louis.  If you are a baseball fan, you know that the NL, which once dominated the All Star games, had not won a game since 1996, so most of us NL fans have been quite disheartened for a long time.

I was working on stuff that Tuesday last month, and just happened to be reminded of the game occuring that evening.  I was a bit brain-dead from the work I had been doing.  I deliberated about whether I should just be a couch potatoe and watch the game.  I vacillated several times, but decided just before game time that I might as well watch, because the quality of play is typically high, and I was tired of working.

The game was a real nail- biter for NL fans, but they made some stellar plays and actually won.  I was very enthusiastic, and really enjoyed it.  Afterwards, I sat for a while and thought about all the fun I had had playing ball.  I actually had the thought that I could play again; my back, which had been my major health problem for several years, had finally responded to a focused regimen of natural anti-inflammatory supplements and inversion, and I had the definite feeling that I could play again, but with no prospect of how and where, I just let go of the thought, feeling that if it was something I could do, an opportunity would present itself.

Just a few days later, I had lunch with my friend from the car club.  He told me about all the sports he was playing, and I told him about having played baseball all those years.  He invited me to come out to a Sunday morning pickup softball game he organizes.  The first Sunday was already committed to work appointments, so yesterday was my first opportunity.

I hope you can imagine the feeling of joy that hit me on that field.  It did not matter that I was out of shape and rusty.  It was literally the happiest, most joyous experience I have had in a very long time.  It was true abundance.

If you have studied any of the teachings regarding creating an abundant life, you will probably know that one of the keys is to be happy right where you are.  Another is to do what you love, what brings you joy.  I set a goal of immersing myself in those activities that I passionately care about.  When I did that, I was thinking primarily of manifesting an income doing what I loved, and that part of the plan is in process.  I have now been reminded that there is more to fulfillment that just financial stability.

This experience also once again reinforced to me that process that I only came to believe in last year, that I could create the life I wanted.  Early in that realization, I finally took responsibility for not having pursued all the things that I became interested in.  After years of blaming circumstances or people for my failures, I realized clearly that I could have achieved those dreams, every one of them, if I had only had the courage and the belief in myself to persevere.

That was the other reason for my happiness and joy at playing ball again.  I experienced reconnecting with a passion.  It was another sign to me that I am on the right track, and I can achieve anything I wish to.

I hope that, by sharing this experience with you, you too will be motivated to focus on your passions, and realize whatever your dreams may be.  In this extraordinary time on Earth, I believe we all must wake up to our dreams, and learn to live in spirit, consciousness and abundance.

As you might expect, I have had both positive and negative moments.  I am focusing on celebrating the positive developments and considering carefully the “negative” ones, looking for the lesson in each disappointment or unwelcome situation.

My wife and I had lunch with a dear friend and her new gentleman friend recently.  We had not met the gentleman previously.  When I explained, or tried to, what it is that I am moving to in my life, to become an author, speaker, teacher and coach, the gentleman immediately began to ask me specific questions about how I would help or coach someone on getting a job.  At first, I thought he was asking for himself, but as the conversation went on, I finally realized that he was hypothesizing so that he could decide how good I was.  This was my second mistake, not listening clearly; the first was doing a poor job of explaining what I want to do.

Part of my problem stemmed from not wanting to be put on the spot with a stranger.  Especially when this person began grilling me, I became resentful.  I quickly realized that he had a particular view of the world, based on his success in a particular industry, and probably made it his mission to advise everyone on how to fix their life based on his model.  Unfortunately, I got off completely on the wrong foot with the entire meeting, and it took quite some time, and specific observations from my spouse, for me to sort out everything that happened.

So this was a very uncomfortable, even negative, episode.  On reflection, I realized that this person did me a huge favor.  I learned several very important things about myself and what I am engaged in becoming.

I do not have an effective “elevator speech.”  While I tend not to focus on standard sales and marketing techniques, and put more emphasis on being authentic in my relationships with others, it is important to be able to answer the question, “What do you do?” in a succinct and straightforward manner, and with confidence.  I have been able to do that previously because I was speaking to friends and acquaintances, a nurturing audience.  This was the first time I had to answer that question for someone whom I did not know, and whom I mistakenly viewed as a potentially hostile audience.

Even though I consider myself a good listener, I failed to be completely in the present for this situation.  I allowed another person to put me in a defensive state of mind, though that was not his intention.

As I thought further about the episode, I also realized that I had fallen into an old trap that is very much part of my personality – I was trying to do too many things with my new business, and some of them don’t really make sense to the casual outside observer, making for an uncomfortable experience when trying to explain them.  In particular, this helped crystallize my thinking on coaching services, in that although I believe strongly in my ability to be an effective life coach, I have no credibility at this moment, and really need to be emphasizing the efforts that can establish me as someone who can truly help others with life issues.  This episode also educated me clearly on the fact that many people, especially those who are traditional in their experience and their thinking, really do not have any concept of life coaching or life transformation.

The end result of this experience is that I have removed two sections of my web site, which also involved finally making a decision to drop something that was not really serving me, and refocused my time and energy on getting my Life Talks videos created, and getting my book finished and published.

Many of the best teachers and transformational leaders constantly remind us that, as humans, no matter how enlightened we may become, we always have personal challenges to overcome as we go about our lives and try to give our gift.  It is very important that we learn to view these challenges as something we can learn a great deal from, and act on whatever the lesson is.  I truly appreciate the lessons I found in this experience, just as much as all the positive and reinforcing things that occurred during this same time.