Win Your Inner Game

"Harmony between the two selves exists when Self 1 is quiet and focused. Only then can peak performance be reached.”

--Tim Gallwey, "The Inner Game of Tennis"

I recently grabbed and reread "The Inner Game of Tennis," by Timothy Gallwey. I'm not a tennis player, but what made me want to read it, is that Tom Brady, of the New England Patriots, at the time the book was written, said that the book taught him mental toughness, I can certainly use a dose of that focus and mental toughness that keeps him winning.

I was reminded that the book was about coaching. Not coaching, like Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks, but about performance and professional coaching.

The premise of the "Inner Game of Tennis," is that we are really two people living inside ourselves. Self 1, the conscious mind, is the “teller,” and Self 2 is the “doer”, or the subconscious mind. When Self 2 learns and masters a task on its own, it remembers the task. It's instinctive and natural. The challenge is when Self 2 is listening to chatter from Self 1. Self 2 is unable to focus on the task, over-analyzes, tries too hard and is stressed into getting unfavorable results. It is the constant thinking/talking activity of Self 1 which causes the interference with the natural learning capabilities of Self 2. Winning this game between Self 1 and 2 is what creates mental toughness. Quieting Self 1 is necessary for reaching your full potential. Gallwey gives us skills to quiet Self 1, one of which I am going to discuss today.

We have to learn to let go of the inner process
of judging ourselves.

Stop belittling ourselves when we make a mistake or fail at something. There’s no shame in making a mistake when we are learning a new skill, or when we have learned something new about ourselves. Learn to see our blunders as a part of our developing process--a part of growing into who we want to become.

It’s a good thing we didn’t have a highly developed Self 1 when we were learning to walk. We’d all still be crawling, because Self 1 would tell us, “Do it this way. No, you’re going to fall. Watch out, Stupid, you’re going to hit your head again. Don’t you ever listen? You’ve tried it that way a ton of times and you’re too clumsy.” As babies, it didn’t matter how many times we failed, or banged our head, our natural desire to learn to walk triumphed.

Many Self 1 scripts were learned from experiences or people in our past. Listen the next time your judger Self 1 starts in on you. Ask yourself where that came from. Chances are there isn’t much truth behind those belittling statements. Observe your actions, emotions, from the outside as neither good nor bad, they just are. Napolean Hill says "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Become aware of your Self 1 chatter. Deny your critic, quiet your Self 1 and let your brilliant Self 2 take over and naturally learn.

Serving aces,

Jan

Jan McDonald
The John Maxwell Team

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