In the movie For the Love of the Game, Kevin Costner’s character has a ritual before every pitch. He tells himself, “Clear the mechanism.” It’s his way of tuning out the crowd, the noise, the distraction–so he can focus on the one thing that matters: the pitch.
When the world melts away
I’ve found my own version of “clear the mechanism”–paddle boarding. The moment I stand up on the board, the world begins to fade. I focus on breathing, balancing, paddling, and soaking in the beauty around me. My mind slows down. I become fully present.
Like many people, my thoughts often race with demands and worries of everyday life. I rarely pause long enough to slow down enough to notice how noisy my mind has become. But a podcast I listened to recently challenged me to do just that. The host shared how his mentor challenged him to sit beside a lake for eight hours. He admitted that it took the first five hours of the day just to quiet his mind.
We live in a world where constant engagement has become the norm. With technology at our fingertips, silence is rare. That’s why my moment on the paddleboard stood out in stark contrast. I didn’t have my phone. Work could wait. No one needed anything from me. At that moment, I had no obligation but to be present.
Breath, balance, and being
And I wasn’t zoning out– I was fully engaged. My body had to find balance. My mind focused on paddling. Every breath grounded me. The worries of life couldn’t penetrate that moment of focus. It was just me, the lake, and the paddleboard. Stillness and simplicity held space for peace.
Now, as I write this, the house is totally silent. I am the only one awake. I breathe deeply and find myself longing for more moments like that–when my mind is quiet and my spirit can breathe. That’s when I feel most connected–to myself and to my higher power.
Instead of letting my thoughts circle the drain, as my mentor would say, I can learn to be more like still water reflecting back to me the truth of the world around me. That’s where clarity lives. That’s where peace arrives.
And that’s when I remember: I can choose to clear the mechanism–not just on the lake, but anytime I need to return to stillness.