The pendulum of life

With their impressive win over the Detroit Lions, the Chicago bears are now 6-3 and tied for the Wild Card lead in the National League. Their defense has never looked better, their offense is rolling, and it seems as if they might be championship contenders. However, If you had asked me or any other sports analyst four weeks ago if the bears were going to make the playoffs, we certainly would have responded “No, they are not a playoff team”. How did they change so much during these few weeks? They might’ve moved a couple players around or had more practices or bonded as a team, but other than that, the team hasn’t physically changed much. In this case, it is all about the momentum.

Momentum is a physics concept that literally equals the mass times the velocity of an object. However, when used as a cognitive metaphor, it is the tendency for things to improve (positive moment) or worsen (negative momentum). It’s often said that sports are games of momentum, because it’s momentum that can be the deciding factor between a win and a loss. Take this year’s Notre Dame Michigan game for example. Notre Dame had all of the momentum at the beginning and went ahead 24-7 going into the fourth quarter. They’re defense had contained Denard Robinson while Cierre Wood and Tommy Rees had the offense running smoothly, it seemed as if they were the better team and had already won the game. However, Michigan was able to score early in the fourth quarter. This score seemed to regain their footing and caused Notre Dame to have thoughts of a possible comeback. Following the Michigan score, Notre Dame was held to a three and out, and was unable to get the ball moving like it did. Michigan got the ball back and scored again. Michigan’s offense seemed to inspire its defense, and the defense seemed to fire up the offense. Meanwhile, Notre Dame remained locked in a downhill spiral and began to panic and lose hope. It was this sense of positive vs. negative momentum that decided the games outcome and often changes the tide of many games no matter the sport.

Though momentum is seen to be very decisive and evident in sports, it doesn’t actually exist. Momentum is simply just a word used metaphorically and often unknowingly to describe the increasing and decreasing levels of confidence that a team has throughout a game. Society has used physical concepts to better describe the psychological because it allows them to understand and picture it more easily. However, this subconscious metaphor that society uses only downplays the importance of confidence not only in sports, but in life in general. By being confident, we find that we can accomplish more than we imagined in all aspects of life. Gandhi emphasizes the importance of confidence when he says“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning." But don’t take his word for it; there are hundreds of others who believe the same thing. If confidence can be such a large deciding factor in sports, imagine how much of a role it plays in your life. Thus, no matter what you are doing next, if you remain confident and continue to believe that you will succeed, you surely will achieve your goal.