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April 2 - April 15, 2023
Getting it together mentally in tennis involves the learning of several internal skills: 1) learning how to get the clearest possible picture of your desired outcomes; 2) learning how to trust Self 2 to perform at its best and learn from both successes and failures; and 3) learning to see “nonjudgmentally”—that is, to see what is happening rather than merely noticing how well or how badly it is happening.
Be clear about this: letting go of judgments does not mean ignoring errors. It simply means seeing events as they are and not adding anything to them.
I can’t describe how good I felt at that moment, or why. Tears even began to come to my eyes. I had learned and he had learned, but there was no one there to take credit.
The saying of an old master is pertinent here: “No teacher is greater than one’s own experience.”
My best effort at this was borrowed from a fencing instruction given to Cyrano de Bergerac: “Hold the foil as a bird, not so loosely that it can fly away, but not so tightly that you squeeze the life out of it.”
A child doesn’t have to break the habit of crawling, because he doesn’t think he has a habit.
By not thinking you already know all about it, no matter how many thousands of balls you have seen in your life. Not assuming you already know is a powerful principle of focus.
The current phrase is “playing in the zone.” The interesting fact about this state of mind is that it really cannot be described accurately because at the moment you are in that state, the one that usually describes is not present.
Though I hated losing, I didn’t really enjoy beating someone else; I found it slightly embarrassing.
I would try hard to prove on the court what I had difficulty proving scholastically, but would usually find that lack of confidence in the one area tended to infect the other.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” The answer was easy: “I could lose 6–0, 6–0.” “Well, what if you did? What then?” “Well… I’d be out of the tournament and go back to Meadowbrook.
Staying in the tournament another round or two didn’t seem overwhelmingly attractive, so I asked myself a final question: “Then what do you really want?” The answer was quite unexpected. What I really wanted, I realized, was to overcome the nervousness that was preventing me from playing my best and enjoying myself. I wanted to overcome the inner obstacle that had plagued me for so much of my life. I wanted to win the inner game.
Among the most vocal are youth who have suffered under competitive pressures imposed on them by parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by making no effort to win or achieve success. They go on strike, as it were. By not trying, they always have an alibi: “I may have lost, but it doesn’t count because I really didn’t try.” What is not usually admitted is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, then yes, that would count. Such a loss would be a measure of their worth.
The surfer waits for the big wave because he values the challenge it presents. He values the obstacles the wave puts between him and his goal of riding the wave to the beach. Why? Because it is those very obstacles, the size and churning power of the wave, which draw from the surfer his greatest effort.
The difference between being concerned about winning and being concerned about making the effort to win may seem subtle, but in the effect there is a great difference. When I’m concerned only about winning, I’m caring about something that I can’t wholly control.
But one can control the effort he puts into winning. One can always do the best he can at any given moment. Since it is impossible to feel anxiety about an event that one can control, the mere awareness that you are using maximum effort to win each point will carry you past the problem of anxiety.
The people who will best survive the present age are the ones Kipling described as “those who can keep their heads while all about are losing theirs.”
Maybe wisdom is not so much to come up with new answers as to recognize at a deeper level the profundity of the age-old answers. Some things don’t change. The need to trust oneself and grow in understanding of our true selves will never diminish.
Yes, our backhands can improve, and I’m sure my writing can get better; certainly our skills in relating to each other on the planet can improve. But the cornerstone of stability is to know that there is nothing wrong with the essential human being.
Focus means not dwelling on the past, either on mistakes or glories; it means not being so caught up in the future, either its fears or its dreams, that my full attention is taken from the present. The ability to focus the mind is the ability to not let it run away with you.
What does it mean to win the Inner Game? A few years ago, I might have tried to answer this question. Now I choose not to—even though I think it is the most important question. Any attempt to define an answer to this question is an invitation to Self 1 to form a misconception.
