The message of the Inner Game is simple: focus. Focus of attention in the present moment, the only one you can really live in, is at the heart of this book and at the heart of the art of doing anything well.
I had long heard athletes praise this classic, so I read it to see whether it could help my development as an adult badminton learner. I didn’t find the YouTube summaries useful, but I liked the book.
Its central idea is non-judgmental awareness: stay mindful, observe what is happening, and let the body respond. It resembles meditation and is easier said than done. I do not see myself as particularly judgmental when learning, but the approach may be harder for beginners, who still have many bad habits and less capacity for awareness because there are many things to focus on.
Reaching a high level requires time and repetition. There is no shortcut. For me, the idea may be most useful during performances or competitions, when concern about others’ perceptions distracts me from the activity and lowers my performance.
Excerpts:
This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt, and self-condemnation. In short, it is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.
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Players of the Inner Game come to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; they discover a true basis for self-confidence; and they learn that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.
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…the key to better tennis–or better anything–lies in improving the relationship between the conscious teller, Self 1, and the natural capabilities of Self 2.
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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 “nonjudgmental”–that is, to see what is happening rather than merely noticing how well or how badly it is happening.
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In short, “getting it together” requires slowing the mind. Quieting the mind means less thinking, calculating, judging, worrying, fearing, hoping, trying, regretting, controlling, jittering, or distracting. The mind is still when it is totally here and now in perfect oneness with the action and the actor. It is the purpose of the Inner Game to increase the frequency and the duration of these moments, quieting the mind by degrees and realising thereby a continual expansion of our capacity to learn and perform.
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The first skill to learn is the art of letting go the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad.
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Letting go of judgments does not mean ignoring errors. It simply means seeing events as they are and not adding anything to them.
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Judgment result in tightness, and tightness interferes with the fluidity required for accurate and quick movement. Relaxation produces smooth strokes and results from accepting your strokes and they are, even if erratic.
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No matter what a person’s complaint when they have a lesson with me, I have found that the most beneficial first step is to encourage them to see and feel what they are doing–that is, to increase their awareness of what actually is.
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…I again ask him to observe his racket and to tell me exactly where it is at the moment of bounce. As the player finally lets himself observe his racket with detachment and interest, he can feel what it is actually doing and his awareness increases. Then, without any effort to correct, he will discover that his swing has begun to develop a natural rhythm. In fact, he will find the best rhythm for himself, which may be slightly different from what might be dictated by some universal standard called “correct.” Then when he goes out to play, he has no magic phrase that must be repeated, and can focus without thinking.
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Clearly, positive and negative evaluations are relative to each other. It is impossible to judge one event as positive without seeing other events as not positive or as negative.
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The first inner skill to be developed in the Inner Game is that of nonjudgmental awareness. When we “unlearn” judgement we discover, usually with some surprise, that we don’t need the motivation of a reformer to change our “bad” habits. We may simply need to be more aware.
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Acknowledgment of one’s own and another’s strengths, efforts, accomplishments, etc., can facilitate natural learning, whereas judgments interfere. What is the difference? Acknowledgment of and respect for one’s capabilities support trust in Self 2.
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Getting the clearest possible image of your desired outcomes is a most useful method for communicating with Self 2, especially when playing a match.
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“Asking for qualities” describes this other kind of role-playing…”Imagine that I am the director of a television series. Knowing that you are an actor that plays tennis, I ask if you would like to do a bit part as a top-flight tennis player…What I’m mainly interested in is that you adopt professional mannerisms, and that you swing your racket with supreme self-assurance. Above all, your face must express no self-doubt. You should look as if you are hitting every ball exactly where you want to. Really get into the role, hit as hard as you like, and ignore where the ball is actually going.”
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Letting go of judgments, the art of creating images, and “letting it happen” are three of the basic skills involved in the Inner Game.
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I made the point that a great deal of technique can be learned naturally by simply paying close attention to one’s body, racket, and ball while playing. The more awareness one can bring to bear on any action, the more feedback one gets from experience, and the more naturally one learns the technique that feels best and works best for any given player at any given state of development. Bottom line: There is no substitute for learning from experience.
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Ironically, the over tightening of these muscles has the opposite effect on power. It reduces power, by making it more difficult for the wrist and elbow to release freely. So again, the important point is to observe the tightness of your muscles so that you can experientially find the degree of tension that provides the best results.
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“What I consider to be the right technique for my swing is ever-changing day by day. My model is always being destroyed and rebuilt as I learn more and more. My technique is always evolving.” Self 2’s nature is to evolve every chance it gets.
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When you try hard to hit the ball correctly, and it goes well, you get a certain kind of ego satisfaction. You feel that you are in control, that you are master of the situation. But when you simply allow the serve to serve itself, it doesn’t seem as if you deserve the credit. It doesn’t feel as if it were you who hit the ball. You tend to feel good about the ability of your body, and possibly even amazed by the results, but the credit and sense of personal accomplishment are replace by another kind of satisfaction.
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But of course the instant I try to make myself relax, true relaxation vanishes, and in its place is a strange phenomenon called “trying to relax.” Relaxation happens only when allowed, not as a result of “trying” or “making.”
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As one achieves focus, the mind quiets. As the mind is kept in the present, it becomes calm. Focus means keeping th mind now and here. Relaxed concentration is the supreme art because no art can be achieved without it, while with it, much can be achieved.
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There are many ways to increase one’s awareness of muscle feel. One is to take each of your strokes in slow motion. Each can be performed as an exercise, in which all attention is placed on the feel of the moving parts of the body.
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The practical consequences to your volley of increasing your alertness are obvious. Most volleys are missed either because contact is made too far behind the player, or because they are off-center. Becoming more aware of the present makes it easier to know where the ball is at all times and react soon enough to meet it at the instant of your choice. Some people think that they are just too slow to return a hard shot when they are at net. But time is a relative thing, and it really is possible to slow it down.
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Alertness is a measure of how many nows you are alert to in a given period.
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Phil Jackson, coach of Michael Jordan and six-time NBA Champions the Chicago Bulls, describes the state of Self 2 focus very well in his book Sacred Hoops: “Basketball is a complex dance that requires shifting from one objective to another at lightning speed. To excel, you need to act with a clear mind and be totally focused on what everyone on the floor is doing. The secret is not thinking. That doesn’t mean being stupid; it means quieting the endless jabbering of thoughts so that your body can do instinctively what it’s been trained to do without the mind getting in the way. All of us have flares of oneness…When we’re completely immersed in the moment, inseparable from what we’re doing.”
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I was reading a description of the zone by Bill Russell, the famous basketball player for the Boston Celtics: “At that special level all sorts of odds things happened….It was almost as if we were playing in slow motion. During those spells I could almost sense how the next play would develop and where the next shot would be taken. Even before the other team brought the ball in bounds, I could feel it so keenly that I’d want to shout to my teammates, ‘It’s coming there!’–except that I knew everything would change if I did. My premonitions would be consistently correct, and I always felt then that I not only know all the Celtics by heart but also all the opposing players, and that they all knew me. It seems less odd to me now. It seems more like, yes, that’s the way it is, that’s the way it should be all the time. We can be focused. We can be conscious.”
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It is when competition is thus used as a means of creating a self-image relative to others that the worst in a person tends to come out; then the ordinary fears and frustrations become greatly exaggerated. If I am secretly afraid that playing badly or losing the match may be taken to mean that I am less of a man, naturally I am going to be more upset with myself for missing shorts. And, of course, this very uptightness will make it more difficult for me to perform at my highest levels. There would be no problem with competition if one’s self-image were not at stake.
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Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal, but the value in winning is only as great as the value of the goal reached. Reaching the goal itself may not be as valuable as the experience that can come in making a supreme effort to overcome the obstacles involved. The process can be more rewarding than the victory itself.
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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. It does not mean not to think–but to be the one who directs your own thinking. Focusing can be practiced on a tennis court, chopping carrots, in a pressure-packed board meeting, or while driving in traffic. It can be practiced when alone or in conversation. It takes as much trust to fully focus attention when listening to another person without carrying on a side conversation in your own head as it does to watch a tennis bal in all its detail, without listening to Self 1’s worries, hopes, and instructions.
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