What ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ taught me about mindset
A friend of mine recently told me about a book they thought I would really enjoy.
It’s called The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by W. Timothy Gallwey. I’ve never played tennis (except for a lesson or two when I was a kid), but the title intrigued me.
While it centers on tennis, the book goes so much deeper than that. I can apply the lessons I’ve learned from it so far to so many aspects of life, and that's because it’s really a book about changing your mindset and releasing yourself from the expectation to perform a certain way.
The author argues that by removing those expectations, you can better harness your natural, authentic way of performing and, ultimately, perform even better—all while having more fun and feeling more fulfilled.
The book has made me think about how, as leaders, we tend to put so much of our focus on the external: what we're working on, the results we're getting or not getting, what we're achieving or not achieving. And while the external matters, the most important part to focus on—and what dictates the external—is the internal. But that’s often where we spend the least amount of our time.
In The Inner Game of Tennis, Gallwey says that if you want to take your performance to the next level, the most important thing to master lies in the six inches between your ears: your mind.
Full disclosure: I'm only halfway through this book. But I’ve learned so many powerful, impactful principles that I can apply to my life and leadership from the first half that I want to go ahead and share them with you!
Here are my biggest takeaways so far. . . .
Gallwey begins by talking about how the best tennis players are the ones who can step onto the court with a quiet mind. By “quiet,” he means that these players don't judge themselves or their performance, and they don't seem to have an attachment to winning or losing. They often end up performing better, Gallwey says, because they’ve mastered “the inner game.”
Players who haven’t mastered it, on the other hand, are very fixated on winning. You can see in their emotions that they are very much judging their own performance, and it’s to their detriment: Gallwey says that when players are highly activated in judging themselves, their performance tends to get worse.
He introduces the idea that we each have two selves. Self 1 is the conscious mind, which is prone to judging, criticizing, and overthinking. (It reminded me of another book I read called Tame Your Gremlin, which talks about how we all have this gremlin on our shoulders that's telling us how we should perform and then judging whether we meet the mark.) Self 2 is the unconscious mind. It’s the side of us that’s connected to our natural learning skills and performance.
Gallwey says that whether we play tennis or not, if we want to perform better, we have to learn how to quiet Self 1’s criticism and learn to trust Self 2’s instincts. That is the key to mastering the inner game.
I find this idea of not attaching judgment or emotion to your performance fascinating.
I totally understand not judging yourself when you fail. In the book, he talks about how, if you fail and then you're hard on yourself about it, you might sabotage your performance. That really resonated with me because, of course, I'm all about giving yourself permission to screw up. I believe that failure can propel us forward and that we shouldn’t let it drag us down or keep us from trying again.
But I hadn't thought about the flip side of this, which is that positive judgment for achieving success can unintentionally create more pressure to continue that success. Whether you’re calling something a success or a failure, Gallwey says, you're making a judgment in your mind that aligns with an expectation. What can happen then is that you become so hyper-fixated on meeting that expectation that you’re no longer allowing your instincts to guide you.
Around the time I was reading this part, I happened to have a session with my trainer at the gym where she had me do a really challenging exercise, but she didn't tell me how long I was supposed to do it. I was supposed to go until I couldn't go anymore.
The first time I tried it, I asked my trainer how long she thought I should strive for. She said, “Well, I'd like to see at least 30 seconds. I know you can do that.” So, in my mind, that became the expectation for my performance.
I did the first round, and I made it to 30 seconds, just like she’d said. For the second round, I did 30 seconds again. In my mind, I’m thinking I’m doing a great job: I hit 30 seconds. That was the goal. That’s success.
I had one more round to go, and at first, I was going to tell my trainer I wanted to go for 35 seconds this time. I wanted to push myself to do more. I wanted to be even more of a “success.”
But then, I remembered the concepts I was learning in this book. The whole point, Gallwey says, is not to pressure yourself to succeed or meet an expectation. Doing so can actually limit you. What you should do instead is focus on being present to the experience, surrendering to it, and letting your instincts kick in.
I caught myself right as I was telling my trainer I wanted to go for 35 seconds. “Scratch that,” I said, “I just want to see what happens.”
And what happened? I held the position for 55 seconds—so much longer than I thought I could!
By simply removing the goal (which turned out to be a limitation), I could feel the difference in that round versus the first two. In the first two, all I could think about was making it to the 30-second mark. I felt every single one of those seconds pass as I counted them down. But during the last round, I wasn’t focused on the seconds at all. I was present in my body and only thinking about what I needed to do to keep going.
I think that if I had gone ahead with the 35-second goal, I would have hit it, but I wouldn't have learned what I was really capable of. And if I’d set the goal and not hit it, I probably would’ve been really discouraged with myself. In my mind, I wouldn’t have met my metric for success, and that could have affected future performance.
It was so powerful to experience the impact of this mindset shift in real time. I can clearly see how remaining unattached to an outcome and just saying, “I'm going to see what happens and have fun,” can lead to better results and performance. I'm really excited to see how I can continue to incorporate these principles into my life.
So, how about you, friend? How often do you attach expectations to your performance? If you do, do you think it helps you perform better, or does it hinder you? Do you think that focusing on your “inner game” could help you get better at something you’re working on? Hit “reply” and tell me all about it!
If you’re looking for more ways to strengthen your mindset, first, I highly recommend reading The Inner Game of Tennis. If you do, I want to know what you think! Next, my team and I have created a resource on overcoming your limiting beliefs that can help you learn more about that gremlin on your shoulder and how to keep it from holding you back. And finally, I write about mindset and how to take it to the next level all the time on this blog because it’s something I’m committed to improving in myself. I've pulled five of my favorite posts, so if you want to read more about mindset, you can check them out here, here, here, here, and here!
Cheers to mastering the inner game!
Big hugs,
