Toss & Catch: The Simple Practice to Develop Creative Confidence

You already have the confidence you need. You just need to find it and tap into it.

Photo by Peggy Anke on Unsplash

Within minutes of leaving my front door for a walk, it’s almost inevitable that I’ll have stooped down to pick up something off the ground.

Most often it’s a small, interesting (at least to me) stone or pebble-when I’m walking along the coast my pockets will end up literally overflowing with such stones-but any vaguely spherical object will do, including various forms of nuts, seeds, fruits, or other naturally occurring orbs.

While in Texas a couple of months ago, I picked up a collection of acorns that are now apparently accompanying me around the world.

Acorns are wonderful metaphors for the value of patience, persistence and how great things can grow from small beginnings, and I keep them on my desk as a reminder.

This isn’t an article about acorns, however.

See the picking up of the object, in this case, an acorn, is only the starting point. Once I have it in my hand, it’s only a matter of time before I begin tossing it to myself.

Toss. Catch. Toss. Catch.

I’ll start with low tosses and easy catches, all the while continuing to walk, but as I become more comfortable with the size and weight of the object, understanding how it arcs through the air in the current conditions, I’ll begin to throw higher.

Soon, I’ll attempt throwing it over tree branches, through gaps in the foliage, throwing higher and higher as my confidence increases.

Toss. Catch. Toss. Catch. Toss. Bounce. Drop. Stoop. Retrieve. Toss. Catch.

I originally thought this habit was some kind of boyish male compulsion born of a love of sports and competition.

How many groups of guys have I been around, who, when pulled over at a road trip rest stop for example, within five minutes have, without speaking or explicit organization, found a target at which to collectively throw rocks in tacit competition?

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was something else going on and that this habit had…