And we talked about Tennis, since I was suffering from some neck pain related to my competitive tennis play.

And in a eureka moment, he said, “And there’s that guy who wrote that book about tennis.”

My eyes lit up. “Timothy Gallwey.””That might be it.””You mean The Inner Game of Tennis, by Timothy Gallway?”

“That sounds right.”Holy Cow! He had hit me square in the heart. Not only had The Inner Game of Tennis formed a HUGE part of my youth, and my understanding of tennis as an exploration of self, but more recently I had gotten in touch with Timothy Gallwey, in order to support the publication of his new book, The Inner Game of Stress.

“YES!” I said. “The concepts of the Inner Game have been part of my life for a long time. I think they’ve guided me more often than I know. I mean, I learned them when I was about 14 or 15.””Well, there you go.””I was trying to learn about tennis, and this “self 1” and “self 2” concept was a bit over the top. BUT… It worked.””That’;s what I’m saying. I think you have your training. And it’s something you’ve been working at passionately for years.””Yeah, since I was about 10.””And you still love it.”So we talked about tennis and Timothy Gallway for a bit and I said something about the tennis racquet being sort of like a sword. And the game being fairly analogous to a duel. And in telling him about my game, I was describing my serve as a powerful weapon.

“The first cut,” he said.In principle, the serve is a single motion and attack, when executed effectively puts the opponent on the defensive. In my game it is my single strongest weapon. Nothing gives me more confidence than to have my opponents complement my serve at the end of a match. At the completion of a doubles match, hearing “We just couldn’t get a handle on your serve tonight,” is truly the highest complement one can receive in tennis. In addition to the WIN, that is.

I’ll go fish out my Gallwey book. And both my friend and I made a point to go seek out the new book The Inner Game of Stress.

Now I think I’d better go hit some tennis balls before the weekend rain starts again.

via The First Cut: Applying The Way of the Sword to Life and Tennis | uber.la.

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via The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance « karycumby.

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Federer

In thinking on this topic I remembered Tim Gallwey’s classic book, “The Inner Game of Tennis,” which I read a couple of years ago, and pulled it off the shelf. Gallwey has some interesting thoughts on competition, which I won’t go into in depth here, but I was struck by a quote at the beginning of the book attributed only to Maharaji, who the book is also dedicated to and I assume is his spiritual teacher: “What is the real game? It is a game in which the heart is entertained, the game in which you are entertained. It is the game you will win.” What do you think, athletes? How does competition fit in with your spiritual life?

via Thoughts Happen: Are Buddhism and Competitive Athletics Compatible?.

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Getting in the zone either happens by chance, on any given day and there aren’t really any events that trigger it. It just happens. Sometimes you do everything right to prepare and have the worst day on court. Other days it feels like you’re not ready and then all of a sudden it clicks.

There are certain ways to trick your body, or rather your mind into helping you get into the zone. Mostly its about thinking about one thing and letting the body do other things by itself. I don’t wanna make this post long, so I’ll make a quick suggestion. Buy and read the book Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey. Amazing book and will answer many of the questions you have.

via Controlling when youre “in the zone” – Talk Tennis.

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“I remember the time I first won a tennis match against my father,” says Tim Gallwey, author of the classic book The Inner Game of Tennis. Gallwey’s father had promised him a new racket if he won. Gallwey was 13 at the time, and had been playing in state tournaments. During the match, he was torn between wanting to win a new racket and not wanting to beat his father. When he won, he felt regret and compassion for his dad, who’d just been defeated by his own son, but was also elated by victory, glowing with a sense that his abilities had reached a new height. “That sense of self-worth is very precious,” says Gallwey.

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Can brain training help you in the real world? Definitely! Tennis Coach Timothy Gallwey has argued for years that you will do better at learning even a sport such as tennis if you become conscious of how your mind naturally learns. The same principle applies to most domains of experiences.

The human consciousness is the awareness of oneself as a being that thinks and learns. Consider the difference between your consciousness and its closest relation, emotional awareness. Since the time of Freud (who lived from 1856 to 1939), we as a society have become skilled interpreters of how dreams, fears, conflicts and emotional attachment affect our experiences and actions. In spite of our high level of emotional awareness, few of us achieve a high level of mind consciousness. Otherwise educated and sophisticated people have virtually no awareness of how they solve problems, discover ideas, assimilate and manage information, or adapt to change.

 

Is it is important to develop your mental prowess? A human mind is an instrument of enormous power. The similarities between the workings of your mind and the mind of a major scientist (such as Einstein) or a revolutionary thinker (such as Freud) are great, while the differences are subtle. To make the most effective use of your mind, you need to be aware of what it does as you think and learn. Strange as it may seem, you only have to learn to use the ability the mind that you already possess. That is why mind consciousness is such a powerful asset. With the right techniques, you can train your mind and improve your memory and accelerate your learning.

 

You can never totally be the master of your mind any more than you could ever totally be the master of your body, but you can guide it. Your heart keeps beating, your lungs keep breathing, your ears keep hearing, and the rest of our body keeps working, for the most part, whether you tell it to or not. In the same way, your mind keeps assimilating information and reinterpreting your experience. But neither are you obliged to let your mind master you. Think in terms of the analogy with your body. You can tell your eyes where o look and your feet where to step. With exercise you can influence how far you can run, and with training you can even affect how rapidly your heart beats. With memory training, if you observe your mind and understand it, it will exceed your expectations. If you continually train your mind with the right memory techniques, it will serve you well in years to come.

 

With subtle change in your observation skills, you can guide your own learning in the same kind of way that a government regulates a country’s economy. Economists offer methods for the government to avoid both an over heated inflationary economy and economic depression. They track business cycles and prescribe remedies to contain the excesses that could derail economic growth at any point.

 

Your mind goes through learning cycles in the same way that the economy goes through business cycles. If you understand the cyclical patterns of your own mind, you will be able to keep the growth of your own mind magic on trick as well.

 

Can brain training help you in the real world? Definitely! Tennis Coach Timothy Gallwey has argued for years that you will do better at learning even a sport such as tennis if you become conscious of how your mind naturally learns. The same principle applies to most domains of experiences.

 

Adapting to life in the information age will in essence be no different from adapting to any other dramatic change in living conditions. Futurists such as Alvin Toffler and business experts such as Peter Drucker tell us that power in the information age will come increasingly from the mind. That can mean only one thing, in the future, even more than before, you will have to rely on your own natural ability That should not be cause for alarm. Your natural ability is entirely adequate as long as you are skillful in putting it to good use.

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Tennis and business have a lot more common than you may think. In 1982, a tennis professional coined the term “unforced error” to describe what happens when one player who is in position to return the ball makes an error by hitting the ball out of the field of play — or missing the ball altogether. That same kind of error happens all of the time in the business world.

Research shows that even the smartest managers make the worst career errors. Once again, the same is true in tennis. Even the best players in the world make unforced errors in every match. In professional tennis as in business, the player with the fewest unforced errors usually wins.

Research also shows that at the top levels of corporations unforced errors have taken a greater toll than ever before. For example, CEO turnover is up 60 percent between 1995 and 2006 and shows no signs of slowing down (that according to a Booz Allen). However, you do not have to be a CEO to make a costly unforced error.

In my career of nearly three decades, I have had a front row seat to countless number of unforced errors in the workplace. Much to my surprise, I have witnessed egregious, stupid errors made by people I regarded as the smartest, most effective of colleagues.

So what kind of tennis mistakes also translates to your life and career? Consider the following:

Mistake No. 1: Always playing with a singles mindset
“Playing doubles,” alongside a partner, is more realistic than acting like the Lone Ranger who does everything on his own. There are some individuals — think of them as cowboys — who have no ability to delegate or work with colleagues. This could be a huge unforced error; given the complexity of today’s operating environment, every employee and manager can use all of the help he or she can get.

Mistake No. 2: Not facing reality at all times
Many great tennis players have wasted precious time arguing with referees insisting that the ref’s calls were wrong (think John McEnroe and Serena Williams). In business, the same phenomenon occurs all the time. For example, managers cannot come to terms with the fact that their latest new product is a failure and they pour more good money into bad chasing something that should have been abandoned.

Mistake No. 3: Not taking learning seriously enough
This is another problem that exists in both the tennis and business worlds. In tennis, one needs to put in the requisite practice hours to improve his or her game. John McEnroe felt that Ivan Lendl became the incredible champion he did through “sheer rehearsal.” In business, one needs to take learning just as seriously. Former GE CEO Jack Welch affirmed that when he said that it is the responsibility of every worker to find a better way of doing things.

Mistake No. 4: Not experimenting on a consistent basis
Celebrated tennis writer W. Timothy Gallwey once said, “Perfect strokes are already within us, waiting to be discovered.” Tennis great Billie Jean King explained that champions keep playing until they get it right.” In business, a perfect stroke might be a marketing presentation that wins a million dollar account, or a strategy presentation that that helps you to win that elusive promotion.

Mistake No. 5: Not being prepared at all times
Being prepared counts for a lot in business as it does in tennis. And unlike other traps, this one is entirely within your control. For example, if you go to a meeting and your boss asks you about a project that is your responsibility, can you give her up-to-date-information on the account? Do you know important deadlines? What landmines must you look out for? These are the kinds of things that a manager must be prepared to answer at all times.

Mistake No. 6: Not protecting your flanks
Tennis players need to see and be in command of the total court. In business, one needs to be in touch with all aspects of the game if they are going to have a good chance of success. Everyone is affected by turf wars and power plays that take place every day in your office. The key, says career expert Dr. Kathleen Reardon is that if you “choose any two competent people, the one who has political savvy, agility in the use of power, and the ability to influence [others] that will go further.”

Mistake No. 7: Not taking ownership of your part of the court
Not taking responsibility is another of those tricky unforced errors of omission. The mistake is not in something one does, but in something that one doesn’t. So this is an easy mistake to make and one of the more common of unforced errors. While you can’t control everything, step up and take more responsibility — within reason — whenever you can. If there is nobody addressing a problem that you notice or taking advantage of an opportunity that you identify, think about whether you should be doing it yourself.

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I wanna talk more about my tennis game.
Sure. How’s your tennis game coming along?
It’s coming along pretty good. I’ve been playing pretty much every day even when we were in Switzerland – they have beautiful clay courts over there.
Does it help your guitar playing?
I swear to God it does. There’s this book called “The Inner Game Of Tennis” that sort of set me on this idea. You know, on the court, just looking for the zone where you can just play effortlessly…and that’s what you’re looking to do on stage or in the studio
So when we see you on stage with an elbow brace, we’ll know why.
Yeah, exactly.

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Amazon has more than 300 reviews of the autobiography of Lance Armstrong, It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. The reviewers consistently agreed that this book is very inspiring and hopeful.
There are too many messages and lessons in the book, they all relate in this article. However, there are three main strategies that are of particular relevance to the Inner Game of Tennis. Basically, they can be absorbed by the declaration, it is not about the Racket.
The three main strategies are:
1. Do not let others limit your goals or your dreams
When Lance Armstrong was recovering from brain surgery and aggressive chemotherapy, there was a lot of people said that he would never ride again. Even one of his main sponsors dropped Lance, because he believed that he could never recover from the destruction of cancer and related treatment.
Lance refused to betray to define or limit his ability to beGoals and dreams. He was determined not only to ride again, but to win on the demanding Tour de France for his first time. Lance Armstrong went on to win the Tour de France seven times!
Even when he was emaciated, exhausted and worn out, he still maintained his goals and dreams. So the first strategy was is to your goals and dreams even in the face of resistance tended meaning people.
2. Deep in your inner resources
Lance argues that the keyFor him, learning from his illness and survival, that we are better than we know. We are completely underestimate our inner reserves and unrealized capacity, not because we do test the power of our mind. It is often only emerge from a crisis that these inner capacities.
One of the key strategies of the Inner Game of Tennis is to learn to dig deep into our inner resources and develop our untapped potential. This requires the will, determination and willingness to win against all adversity. Lance survivedhis cancer, even though the doctors assume that he is a 3% chance of survival, not had great opportunities!
Here is another striking example. The press, globally and locally, decided at the beginning of the 2007 Australian Open Tennis Championship, that Serena Williams had no chance because they are overweight and not suitable. They did not allow for its underlying basic fitness or ability to open up to her incredible inner resources. You will have the force was so strong that their opponents often in the fadedgiven their sheer determination, even if they led in the game.
Therefore, the second important strategy in order to learn to tap your inner resources against the limitations that we impose on themselves.
3. Make every obstacle an opportunity
Lance Armstrong takes this strategy to his mother, who reminded constantly to him as a child, that he in all obstacle an opportunity to improve. Said in an interview after his first Tour de France, Lancethat his illness has a new opportunity to improve on many fronts. He claimed that his fight against cancer it harder and more patients than even cyclists and more thoughtful, compassion and responsibility as a man, a father and partner enabled.
Therefore, a third key strategy of the Inner Game of Tennis is to improve your game and offending over every obstacle you.
The Inner Game of Tennis is not about the racket. It’s all about you. It is concerned about how your skills to define and maintain your goals, how you access your inner resources and how to obstacles, improve, and your tennis game.

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