My father was the first teacher I had who shared with me just how powerful our intentions can be. I’d understood intention on a basic level, however my father’s story about how the power of intention had worked for him in attaining something that he dreamed into fruition was powerful was example and one I wanted to explore further. My father’s experience was a living example of how he, through intention, had made his dream into his reality. It would be years before he could put some definition around what he’d experienced so unwittingly as a young kid. It wouldn’t be until he was in his 40’s a book when he first came across a book written by John K. Williams titled “The Knack of Using your Subconscious Mind.” This book, for the first time, put a definition to his experience that day. It was the first time that he understood that what had happened happened because he had held an intention with such belief that his subconscious mind had made it so. My father was born in 1934 in Modesto, California, the second child born into a family of seven children. The Wiggin Family, just like almost of their neighbors, worked hard and managed almost every month to make ends meet. The depression had made its mark on this era and on the people who understood that at any moment, they could lose everything. This brought with it a frugality that would change the way people lived in which nothing was taken for granted. This applied to adults and children alike As soon as they were able, all of the Wiggin children were expected to carry their own weight and to take on part-time jobs to help to contribute to the family. My father, Paul, held many part-time jobs over the course of his young life – some paid, some didn’t…my grandfather was notorious for offering up the “Boys” as he called his four oldest sons, to anyone in need of any type of assistance, and in most cases that help was “on the house”. One of the jobs my father took on was as a groundkeeper for a wealthy family who lived on a modest estate in Modesto. Every Saturday my father put in an eight hours shift, mowing the lawn, doing yard work as well as any other various jobs that needed to be done on the property. What he did not know at the time was these eight hours of mindless work provided him the platform on which he could create and recreate his intention of breaking the Modesto High School shot record.
My father was very young for his age, having been sent to first grade at 5 years old. He found himself always a bit behind the other children in his class in every way – academically, socially and athletically. To make matters worse, and not known at the time (there was little luxury in testing much less treating), my father suffered slightly from dyslexia, making learning even more difficult for him. My father’s older brother Frank, two years his senior yet just one school year ahead, also did not do well academically (mostly because he was hard headed and didn’t care) but he was a very good athlete. I think this must have been hard for my father who would later liken himself to a St. Bernard pup, all paws and no control, as athletics for Frank gave him an identity. This was not true for my father. He was a bigger kid, my grandfather nick named him “Fat Boy,” (I know, I know, but it honestly was meant as a term of endearment, not as an insult and we’re talking about the late 1930’s and 40’s when this was more acceptable), and although he didn’t have the prowess and athleticism that his older brother displayed, he had started to show some promise as he became a teen. Just as almost all kids back then, my father participated in pretty much every sporting activity at school – even though he didn’t really excel, he enjoyed it. For almost all kids, playing sports was a nice reprieve from schoolwork and chores. There wasn’t television and although they, as most families did, had a radio that offered limited entertainment, school, sports, chores and sleep was what made up life for my father. High school and junior high sporting events were well attended by nearly all of the townspeople. These events were somewhat of a social outing, both a source of entertainment and an opportunity to come together. The Friday night football games especially were well attended and the townspeople took the wins and the losses personally. As my father approached high school (he was 14 years old as a sophomore) the pieces started to come together for him. He started to develop and grow. As they say, he began to loose his baby fat, which was replaced by lean muscle as he developed seemingly overnight from boy to a lean and fluid young man. It was this year that my father’s athleticism began to flourish. He threw shot for the track team that year for the first time and loved how the measurement of the shot could measure his own progress in the sport as well. The guy to beat was “Meatloaf Malone”, who as a senior had held the lead position for the last three years. Every day after school my father would work out with the team at track practice and then after every practice, he would carry the shot home and continue to practice in the orchard behind his house. I’m not sure if he was allowed to do this, or if he just made sure that he had the shot back before school the next morning. T Throwing the shot gave my father a tangible measure to his own improvement. He met one goal after another and, for the first time, felt a great sense of pride an accomplishment. He decided during that fall that he was going to break the shot put record at the track and field day the following spring, not only taking the spot from “Meatloaf” but in shattering a school record. This decision coincided right at the time that he took his Saturday job as a groundskeeper. He didn’t know it at that time but he had such passion about his goal, he now had the space and time to formulate the detail of the event itself. As he mowed and swept and watered, he began to picture the track and field event, from start to finish, in such detail that it became a movie real in his mind. Those uninterrupted eight hours every Saturday gave him the time and space to envision and live this idea, this dream, as if it was happening. He became so familiar with every aspect of that day from the minute he woke up, to arriving at the field, to throwing the shot, watching it land, seeing the measurement and the look of disbelief on the judges faces, and having the crowd erupt in applause. He watched as his girlfriend ran from the stands and down on to the field, followed by his mother and his father, as they, as well as his teammates, whooped and hollered in absolute and unadulterated joy! He beamed as he took it all in, knowing that this record would go down in the record books, not to be broken for years to come. The day would come to an end at a celebration in town with his family at his Aunt Pauline’s house so that the celebration could continue well into the evening. And this was the dream he dreamt and lived out for seven months until that spring day finally arrived. It was on this day that my father’s dream became a reality – a reality all of the way down to the very last detail he had created in the days of Saturdays. He could not have scripted it any better and it was on that day that my father broke the shot record for Modesto High School, and every detail he’d dreamed until now unfolded just as he’d seen it time and time again. He knew he’d tapped into something powerful – he just didn’t quite know what but this day shaped my father for his many years to come. As my father is now 87 years old, he’s used intention to navigate a great deal of his life. Aside from his personal accomplishments, he has led a stream of athletic accomplishments as well. To date, he has been named Defensive Player of the Century by Stanford University, was inducted to the College Hall of Fame, is in the Cleveland Browns Legends Circle, played in three Championship games in his 11 year career with the Cleveland Browns, played in the Pro Bowl three consecutive years, and was head coach for Stanford University and for the Kansas City Chiefs. He coached for the New Orleans Saints, the Minnesota Vikings and the 49ers in which he was the Defensive Coordinator, He still, today, works in player personnel for the Vikings. To this day, 73 years later, my father can still remember the events of that track and field day to every detail. His experience changed his life profoundly that day. For me, it is such a good reminder of how powerful our intentions are, whether we are aware of them or not. It is also a reminder to me to be intentional about my intentions because it is here that we can create all that we can dream.
1 Comment
Mary Binek,
2/15/2022 05:27:28 pm
Kristine that is absolutely beautiful. What
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AuthorKristyn Baker, CECP, is an intuitive energy healer and writer. Her forty years of working with energy medicine has evolved as she has expanded her own healing abilities and understandings. Combining her abilities as an Emotion Code practitioner and Simpson Protocol practioner with her intuitive insights and channeling, opens opportunities to heal and to release what no longer serves. . Archives
January 2023
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