There's Power in the Pivot
There’s power in the pivot. Shoot for the moon.
In basketball, if you want to turn with the ball in your possession, you must glue one foot to the floor and circle with the other, holding tight to the big orange sticky thing like you are protecting a quarter pounder with cheese from a dangerous cadre of gangly teenaged girls slapping, scratching, and grabbing like it's the last morsel of food on the wood-slatted island. That was my JV basketball experience, just before I asked Coach Pell if I should try out for Varsity. He answered cheekily, "You could try out, but I'm pretty sure you'd be a liability to the team." I took his answer as it was time to pivot off the court to a different calling.
In basketball, the pivot concept is simple. Once the pivot foot is established, there are three legal ways to free it: shoot, pass, or dribble. But simple is not always easy. We don't always know what the calling is on the other side of a pivot—where to dribble or pass—and the rim is rarely in clear view, what with the flailing hands in our faces.
In life, we make countless spin moves on a vast spectrum: daily events like when your lunch place is closed for renovations, you pivot to the nearest turkey sandwich, to life-altering, sometimes brutal ones like the end of a relationship or losing someone you love.
Often, we don't recognize the pivot until we look back on it and say, "This wouldn't have happened if it weren't for that…" like when my husband, who never missed a class in college, opted out of a Business School major after his Econ TA refused to bump him one-one thousandth of a point (.001). He was so mad that he pivoted his major to History, which meant a year later, he would attend the liberal arts Oxford Summer Abroad program, where we would meet and fall in love. And the rest, they say, is (wink, wink)—History.
Some pivots result from unwelcome surprises, like when I didn't make the Freshman cheerleading squad in high school because I wore an ugly matching set with a bubble top that made me look fat. It didn't matter that I couldn't execute a cartwheel or a herkie.*
Other pivots are planned, like when Dan and I packed up our comfortable teaching lives in South Carolina, including 18-month-old Eliza and two 75-gallon Rubbermaid water troughs we'd saved for five years and moved like fledgling actors seeking their big break to Hollywood. Our destination was Lexington, Kentucky, where Dan would chase horses. We lost one of the water troughs on I-20 when it flew out of the back of the truck. Bulldog legend Loran Smith wrote a cute profile about Dan's big pivot.
Pop-up or planned, petty or profound, every pivot requires fortitude, focus, and faith (the three Fs).
I like this pivot foot metaphor because change doesn’t have to feel like chaos. Our pivot foot is the base from which we make our next move. Fixed firmly, strong, and stable, it keeps us grounded as we circle to explore our options—pass, dribble, or shoot. This grounding, however difficult, is how we maneuver with intention to the next best thing.
My friend, Trisha Addicks, thought she would lose herself when her boys graduated from high school and left the nest. She was born to be a mom, and her identity, calendar, and friendships were integrally tied to that role. We talked on my People-Inspired Podcast about this challenging time and how she pivoted her energy into a successful sorority rush consulting business, which led to a Netflix series, "Bama Rush," a weekly podcast, “Mad Rush,” a forthcoming book, "The Rush Bible," releasing next Spring, and even a movie (in development). It took fortitude, focus, and some faith, but Trisha is on an inspiring roll, and I'm so happy for her.
One of Dan’s many mantras is “Disappointment is the gap between expectations and reality.” That one usually follows “Life is difficult and unfair.” He does have a few optimistic mantras, too, but you can bet he recognizes the power of the PIVOT.
I can list a multitude of pivots, his and mine, off the top of my head because I tend to remember the hard stuff. But I also can list the happy benefits of some scary maneuvers like moving to Lexington where we built a beautiful life over 26 years, or when I chose to leave education after a rewarding career to pursue writing full-time, expanding my curiosity, creativity, and community in ways I never imagined.
If we trust the PIVOT, we can find the power to move forward (dribble, pass, shoot), close the disappointment gap, or just try something invigoratingly new.
So—what are your power pivots?
*After balling my eyes out because my cheerleading career was over at 14, I joined the Varsity soccer team (no tryouts). I ended up captain on a team with a protracted losing record, and then I used that experience to get my first job teaching at Brentwood High School, where they desperately needed a JV girls' soccer coach. If it weren’t for that matching set…;-)