Focus on the next ball

With an infant sleeping on my lap regularly these days, I’ve been able to watch a lot of tennis this summer. I caught a match recently where a player down match point – i.e. if she lost the next point, she’d lose the match – ended up coming all the way back to win the match.

How do you maintain the belief that you can win a match when you’re one point away from defeat?

Being a tennis player myself, I can tell you that in that moment, she probably wasn’t thinking about winning the match at all. She was only focused on hitting the next ball back in the court. If she doesn’t do that, nothing else matters. The match is over – along with any grand hopes of a come-from-behind win.

Whether we’re talking about a tennis match or your financial situation, it helps to remember that the majority of the time, we benefit most by keeping our focus on the next item on our to-do list. That’s what we can control in this moment and the next steps can’t happen without it.

So if you catch yourself playing too far into the future, bring yourself back with these questions:

What’s my next step? What do I need to focus on in this moment?

Your ultimate goal remains winning the match, reaching your long-term goals.

But the only way to get there is by taking it one point, one step at a time.

And if you need help figuring out where to begin or what your next step should be, I’m here to help.

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