The greatest book you've never heard of.
Edition 8 of Forward+
1 big idea worth considering.
Every now and then, life drops a book into my purview that stops me in my tracks.
The Inner Game of Tennis is one of those books.
Subtitled The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance, tennis plays the role of a proxy. It’s the medium through which the message gets delivered, but is distinctly not the message.
This book is about the mind.
Specifically, this book is about understanding the mind and using that understanding to affect the outcomes of our mindset, and subsequently, our performance.
Yes, in tennis. But more importantly, in life.
What follows are some of my favorite highlights from the book.
Chew on the passages and let them move through you. Yourself, and your mind, will be better for it.
When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as "rootless and stemless." We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.
Habits are statements about the past, and the past is gone.
It is a painful process to fight one’s way out of deep mental grooves. It’s like digging yourself out of a trench. But there is a natural and more childlike method. A child doesn’t dig his way out of his old grooves; he simply starts new ones! The groove may be there, but you’re not in it unless you put yourself there. If you think you are controlled by a bad habit, then you will feel you have to try to break it. A child doesn’t have to break the habit of crawling, because he doesn’t think he has a habit. He simply leaves it as he finds walking an easier way to get around.
Use outside models in your learning, but don’t let them use you. Natural learning is and always will be from the inside out, not vice versa. You are the learner and it is your individual, internal learning process that ultimately governs your learning.
Self 1 easily gets enamored of formulas that tell it where the racket should be and when. It likes the feeling of control it gets from doing it by the book. But Self 2 likes the feeling of flow—of the whole stroke as one thing. The Inner Game is an encouragement to keep in touch with the Self 2 learning process you were born with while avoiding getting caught up in trying too hard to make your strokes conform to an outside model.
So I believe the best use of technical knowledge is to communicate a hint toward a desired destination. The hint can be delivered verbally or demonstrated in action, but it is best seen as an approximation of a desirable goal to be discovered by paying attention to each stroke, and feeling one’s way toward what works for that individual.
Letting go of judgments, the art of creating images and “letting it happen” are three of the basic skills involved in the Inner Game.
It is said that in breathing man recapitulates the rhythm of the universe. When the mind is fastened to the rhythm of breathing, it tends to become absorbed and calm. Whether on or off the court, I know of no better way to begin to deal with anxiety than to place the mind on one’s breathing process.
A very wise person once told me, “When it comes to overcoming obstacles, there are three kinds of people. The first kind sees most obstacles as insurmountable and walks away. The second kind sees an obstacle and says, I can overcome it, and starts to dig under, climb over, or blast through it. The third type of person, before deciding to overcome the obstacle, tries to find a viewpoint where what is on the other side of the obstacle can be seen. Then, only if the reward is worth the effort, does he attempt to overcome the obstacle.
2 questions worth asking.
Good questions are the root of good coaching, because inquiry has the power to spark ideas and uncover gold that lies just beneath the surface. Each week on Forward+ I share 2 questions that you can use with yourself, at work, or in your relationships.
Question 1: What will it mean to you when you are successful?
Related to the last quote above, for most of us it isn’t natural to mentally rehearse and put ourselves into the future state of where we are aiming our ambition. By tying feeling and meaning to the future state, we’re simultaneously rehearsing the future and ensuring that where we’re headed is actually where we want to go.
Question 2: Where do you fear ending up if nothing changes?
Somewhat the inverse of the above question, it can be equally helpful to mentally rehearse what happens when we don’t change course. I love this question because it forces us to extend our current reality into the future. It is easy to gloss over bad habits in the short-term because no single habit / action, good or bad, is likely to be that meaningful in the big picture. But when those habits and actions compound over months and years, the most likely outcome changes as well.
3 links worth exploring.
📚 Strengthen your ability to influence people. (Harvard Business Review)
💡 Systematize the clutter in your brain and get things done. (Todoist)
🎧 How alcohol influences metabolism and longevity. (The Model Health Show)
That’s a wrap for this week’s edition of Forward+.
💡 Have an idea for a future edition or an interesting link worth sharing? Just reply to this email! I’d love to hear from you.
🗓️ Your Forward+ subscription includes weekly members-only office hours where you can book a 30 minute coaching session. Grab time here.
👥 Would your team benefit from Forward+ and weekly coaching office hours? Email me (adam@adamgriff.in) about getting a team-wide subscription.