There will be times when the big activity you love (for example, football) involves smaller steps or activities that you don’t enjoy (for example, conditioning). You probably won’t like every aspect of your sport or every part of your job. If this is the case, then I’m guessing that you often blame the part that you don’t like for your negative feelings.
When you are involved in one of those activities, rather than understanding you have mind over matter influence, opening up your thoughts, and realizing that this activity cannot make you feel or think any certain way, you are most likely blaming, judging, and putting your mind in the past or future. In other words, you are taking your mind off the moment in front of you. In essence, you are creating closed, blocked thinking that requires great effort and wears you down. This is what is called grinding.
Grinding is normal and not a problem from time to time. But chronic grinding may be a sign of a deeper issue, and perhaps it’s time to examine how much you truly love what you are doing. Furthermore, if you see grinding as something that is forced upon you from the outside, you are conditioning yourself to believe in a matter over mind world. It is like driving down a dead end road, ignoring all the signs along the way.
Instead of buying into grinding, see if you can open your mind to possibility. Remember that change is possible. Remind yourself that you might just begin to love this activity if you gave it a chance. Most activities aren’t as bad as we think if we just connect to them and do them. Even though your heart might not love the activity, your main negative experience of it is caused by your habit of closed thinking, which is characteristic of a low mood.
Remember that the activity itself has no power to create your dislike of it. Your thoughts about the activity create your feelings. If you just let go of that thinking and actually got
into the activity, you might even discover that you can find flow while performing it. Love flows from inside you. It is not something you catch from an activity. Project love onto the activity if you can.
Making the Play 