by Dr. Craig L. Manning, 2009, 2017
Adam sent me this book. Danette read it and liked it. It’s by a tennis player turned sports psychologist consultant. It’s like a thesis on how to control your mind, mainly, in order to become a peak performer. I like how he talks about thinking about the past is guilt and thinking about the future is fear. We need to live in the moment. We need to control the things we can control – our actions and thoughts. We need to set achievable objectives and goals each day. Then, at the end of the day, celebrate what we achieved. Don’t dwell on the mistakes of the past and don’t worry about the future. Live in the moment. I’ve been trying to do that for a decade now.
He teaches about ‘Deliberate Practice: to improve performance, objectives just beyond current levels of competence, provides feedback, involves a lot of repetition.’
He teaches about ‘Four Components of Our Composition: spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical.’ Without a spiritual side, we are aimless and our lives are meaningless. He gave the example of a college tennis player he coached who, 8 months after she graduated, had fallen into depression. She came to him for advice and he advised her to use the “Mental Skills Journal” to come up with objectives for her life that were unrelated to tennis. She soon was able to find meaning and purpose to her life. We need something to focus our energies on. “…the pursuit of perfection is eternal.”
Emotions can grow and become uncontrolled if we let them, leading to lots of negative thoughts and more and more mistakes. Channel emotions in constructive ways. We all make mistakes, every day – don’t become irritated leading to frustration and anger. As soon as you feel irritation or frustration, focus on what to do at that moment or what you can do better the next time=channeling your emotions.
The mental component directs the other three components: the mind directs attention to spiritual things, directs our emotional energy to either constructive or destructive paths, commands our physical side to act. We can exercise our thought processes, train them up, practice the beneficial thought processes in order to “think in an effective, productive, fearless way.”
It’s important to have dreams and to give your dreams a chance. Don’t fall for the safe life, giving up your dreams out of fear.
Motivation can either be task-oriented or outcome-oriented. Outcome oriented is bad, task-oriented is good. Outcome oriented is, for example, I need to win this match. This outcome is not in our control – we don’t know how good the other person is, etc. Task-oriented is taking it moment-by-moment, playing, having fun, trying to get better.
The 5 steps are Motivation, Anxiety, Concentration, Confidence, Decision Making.
In Motivation, he tells about growing up playing tennis in Australia and wanting to make it as a professional tennis player. He tells about one of the guys, the weakest and the youngest, who ended up being #1 in the world, Patrick Rafter. He was a task-oriented individual; he had a fearless mind. Task-oriented concentrates on things like, “I want to hit my forehand with good spin,” etc. They stay focused on the present. They enjoy the process. Ego-oriented play not to lose, to avoid embarrassment, worrying about the future.
In the chapter, “Perfectionism,” he talks about how he was diagnosed with this debilitating disease in college. His psychologist told him to be late to their next appointment. By being task-oriented rather than outcome oriented, we can overcome Perfectionism.
In the chapter, “Performance Mindset Scale,” he talks about arrogance-I’m good, you stink; Cockiness-I’m good and I’m telling everyone; Confidence-I am good; Passiveness-I am not very good; and Pessimism-You’re good, I stink.”
Arrogance and pessimism are terrible mindsets – they compare oneself with others, which is never a good thing.
Confidence (I’m good) is the best mental attitude – it is not arrogance because it is not comparing oneself with others like arrogance (I’m good, you stink).
Step 2, Anxiety – is it good or bad? It can be good if it is used as an alarm system to provide energy to get things done. Just don’t let it turn into high anxiety by learning to relax (yoga, deep breathing), regular exercise, good sleep, avoid alcohol and drugs and caffeine, and by using our mind to face the challenge: plan of attack, visualize and practice our response). And, once again, task-oriented individuals typically have lower anxiety than ego-oriented individuals. Their expectations are under their control.
Overanalyzing – basically worrying about the future (fear) and the past (guilt). Again, pay attention to the moment.
The Law of Attraction – talks about telling yourself what to do rather than what not to do, because when you say, “don’t hit the golf ball into the water,” you typically do. He spent so much time worrying about his backhand that he developed a phobia about it. He could have focused on what was good about his backhand and what he needed to do to improve it.
Attending to Our Side: rather than trying to control the people around us, control the things you can control inside yourself. He gives the example of a brother who gets addicted to drugs. We can try and help in any way possible, but it is his choice to take the drugs, we can’t take responsibility for that. In a tennis match, we can’t control what the other person is doing, but we can control ourselves: moving our feet, watching the ball, hitting with good spin, hitting our spots. He gave Federer at Wimbledon in 2006, answering a reporter’s leading questions with, “I am hitting my forehand very well, I am serving well, if I continue to play like this, things look good for me.” Staying in the moment, controlling what he can control. “Federer is a disciplined, task-oriented individual, so his anxiety is extremely low, enabling him to focus for long periods on those aspects of performance that he has learned are critical to his performance.”
Control What We Can Control
Concentration-Attention Control – Attend to relevant cues, not irrelevant cues, resulting in no wasted effort. Set controllable, achievable objectives and give yourself feedback on them each day.
Attention Control Under Pressure-when under pressure, people start to focus on irrelevant cues. Highest performing athletes can keep their mind from doing that, continuing to focus on the relevant cues.
High Performing Athletes – actually do less than others because they attend to the task at hand, “not feeding their own egos.”
Example from Star Wars – Hollywood’s heroes are often filled with humility, example, Jedi Knights, except for Anakin Skywalker, who has ego problems.
Confidence – Steffi Graf would tell herself before every break point, “I can do this,” over and over again.
Importance of Confidence – Confidence is the most important factor behind high-performing individuals.
Confidence and Arrogance – Confidence is admirable. Arrogance is not admirable because it involves comparison with others. One of his star tennis players would self-destruct. She was worried about being seen as arrogant. He told her confidence can be built continually by attending to the task at hand, continuing to develop skills. He also told about a young male tennis player who was very good, up 3-0 in a match, and his confidence turned to arrogance, and he quickly started hitting shots that missed and his arrogance turned to self-pity because he went from task-oriented to ego-oriented. Benjamin Franklin quote about pride – “There is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subject as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as as one pleases, it is still alive and will every now and then peep out and show itself.” “Franklin quipped that even if he were to overcome his pride, he would probably be proud of his humility.”
Cockiness and Passiveness – cockiness has never bothered him, because they are not comparing themselves with others. Passiveness is an, “I suck, you are great,” attitude. To counteract that, be brutally honest, don’t ‘sugarcoat’ things which reinforces their self-pity.
Developing Confidence – learn from our strengths, learn from watching others, repeatedly tell ourselves we can do it, control our physical bodies.
The Power of Positive Thinking – tells about Larry, a man who had ADHD growing up and was drugged so he was out of it. Then, at age 25, working as a bell boy, he asked a man how he got so successful and the man gave him a book on positive thinking. Now, Larry starts each day as he is shaving, with positive thoughts – I love my life, I love my wife, I love my job, I love where I live.
Decision Making – he started making every drill as he coached his tennis players, to have a mental component, that would help in the matches. Visualization, focusing on where to hit the ball. His coach when he was a pro said, “The worst hit shot to the right spot is better than the best hit shot to the wrong place.”
Why is Decision Making So Important? Confidence leads to good decision making, but you don’t have to be confident to make good decisions. If you make a mistake and can let it go, you can regain your confidence. Keep focused on the present.
Decision Making Experiences – he talks about playing a guy that looked absolutely fantastic during the warm-up. He beat him 6-0, 6-0. He couldn’t play under pressure. The opposite happened on a clay court in Austria; his opponent carried two rackets to the court and his socks were stained with clay. This buy beat him 6-0, 6-0. He learned his lesson.
Leveraging Strengths and Weaknesses-tweaks and fine tuning. Stories about a coach on the pro-tour who says, “I am working with Ferraris and Porsches; I just need to fine-tune the engines.” Help the players find their greatest strengths. Also, Pat Rafter had a good serve, but they tweaked it to have more spin which helped him to utilize his first volley better, his greatest strength, and that took him to #1 in the world.
Finding the Zone – tweak your system to find and stay in the zone. Change the number of practices a week, for example. Don’t allow superstitions to dictate your system.
The Highest Level – short two paragraphs when everything is humming along and skills are good, we have good objectives, and the mind is trained to stay in the moment.
The Power of Decision Making – ego-oriented individuals only focus on winning. Task-oriented individuals only focus on getting better. Continually learning and focusing on the present and what we have control over. Continual growth and the joy that brings.
Closing Remarks – focus on perfecting the task at hand, contribute to the greater good, achieve balance in life, living in the present. “When the mind stays attentive to the task, the proverbial door to fear stays closed, as all fear exists only in the future.”