The Power of Neutral (Bot9 #286)

Let me make it clear from the beginning of this piece - I’m still working on the idea I’m about to present. I’m not yet good at it, but I hope to be one day. Friday illustrated my flaws in this area. We had an emergency meeting on Friday afternoon (over Zoom, of course) during which we were told that we had to pull the plug on our skill development work through Thanksgiving. I’m in the middle of individual video analysis on all of my high school hitters so a bunch of them are going to be left hanging for a while, and we’ve been building some really good momentum in our defensive skill work. My motor got hot quickly and I overheated. I was angry, frustrated, and not my best self. I kept my sound muted on the Zoom call and turned off my video. I stood in my office and walked around while listening to the rest of the call. In that moment, I was over all of it and frustrated at a lost opportunity.

The irony in sharing this is that a lot of people have told me I’m overly positive. I’ve had people tell me how calm I appear to be while I’m coaching on the field. It’s funny how different an outer appearance can be versus the inner storm. I can be overly analytical and see the many flaws and potential failures occurring during the course of a game. A highly-competitive baseball game requires many, many, many things to go well in order to win. But the pace of baseball calls for us to try to act more like Joe Torre than a run-of-the-mill, hot-headed football coach. We need to have a failure philosophy that matches the pace of the game and allow for God to make beauty from any ashes left on the field by failure.

I was listening to a podcast in which Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was being interviewed and he presented his failure philosophy. He talked about the power of neutral. When confronted with a negative situation, he had trained his mind to stay neutral and look for a plan to make it positive. He had found that some of the overly positive people he’d encountered in his career missed an important step between positive thought and failure. For him, neutral provides a stepping stone in between failure and a positive outcome. It resonated with me immediately because I was finding a gap between how I was able to process the failure of my players on and off the field, and their experience as a player. When they found themselves in a cycle of failure, a positive spin was doing them no good. There was too big of a gap between positive and where they were in that moment of failure. I’ve got to learn to be neutral, present a plan out of negative, and build towards a positive outcome.

We can all choose to go negative, get angry, and become the worst version of ourselves when failure occurs. But nobody needs you to be Coach Obvious. You don’t have to grunt, yell or scream after a player makes an error or mistake. But a better takeaway here is that it may also be detrimental to be Coach Positive all of the time. It might be too many steps away from where the player is in that moment of failure. This is where the power of neutral exists. Overcome and dismiss negative emotions by remaining neutral. Stay above the fray. See the way out and present a plan to get out of the hole. What we need is more people to remain neutral - coaches, players and parents.

But, if you know me at all, I had to run this idea through the filter of Jesus before presented it here. Was this power of neutral present in His teachings? Like any good gift or truth, of course it was. How about the story of the Adulterous Woman? “Did no one condemn you? Go and sin no more.” He doesn’t point at her obvious flaws in the moment. He stays neutral, doesn’t condemn her, and gives her a plan to follow. How about the Prodigal Son? Son comes home after squandering everything and is going to offer himself as a servant. Dad hears him, but throws him a feast instead of pointing out his many flaws and even tries to reunite him to the entire family. His son was lost but now is found. They’ll build from here.

It wasn’t just the teachings of Jesus that shows the power of neutral, it’s in His life also. Well, His death to be more specific. On of my favorite worship songs is “Grace to Grace” by Hillsong. The lyric that draws my heart and hands to raise is “When I see that cross, I see freedom, When I see that grave, I'll see Jesus.” Paul noted this crazy paradox of the Christian faith in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 when he writes about Christ’s power being made perfect in weakness. In Christ’s last moment on the cross, the Bible accounts that He “gives up His spirit.” In that moment of surrendering the strength limited by His flesh, He set forth a series of events that led to His resurrection and the fact that I’m able to write these words now. When we give up our spirits and get to neutral, God can go to work in us. He can’t do anything when our internal motors are running hot. It takes us surrendering our spirit, taking the stick to neutral, and establishing a plan to move forward out of failure.

Thankfully, I have a friend in our coaching community who got me to move from negative to neutral. All it really took was a couple suggestions about what we could do with the athletes the following week. There was no lasting acknowledgement of my negative emotion, nor was there a bunch of flowery positive fluff. It was a plan that got me thinking and visioning the opportunity instead of the failure. I got back to neutral, shifted into excitement, and we will have a great week on the field because of it. I hope you’re able to learn the power of neutral along with me!