To have the ideal mental conditions to play our best tennis
we have to train our mind regularly and correctly. Training our mind entails
lessening and eradicating negative minds, increasing our positive minds and
improving our mental capabilities like concentration. When we start getting
results from this training everything in our life becomes better.
The final goal of mind training in tennis is a calm, clear,
positive and stable mind, free from any disturbance. To accomplish this we need
to understand our mind and how it functions. There is nothing more important to
do. When we get our mind right, then the external things in our life will be
right. In tennis we will make better decisions, and know more clearly: how much
tennis to play; what to practice; how to practice; how much and what types of
exercises to do; who to have as a coach; what therapist to see; who to rely
upon for advice; how to learn; who to have in our circle of friends; our
strategy in matches; and so on, in order to become the best tennis player we
can be.
The goal is being
calm not just looking calm or pretending to be calm. We can’t act differently
from what we really believe; all we can do is fake it, while our mind stays
disturbed. When we change our beliefs and views of situations it changes our
reality. Our beliefs about our tennis determine our state of mind while
playing.
When our mind is calm, clear and positive we are in the best
position to:
- · Learn from everything
- · Better understand all that is going on around us
- · Change to a winning strategy
- · Come up with many creative solutions to any difficulties
Our main obstruction
The cause of all our problems stem from the mind of self-cherishing. Self-cherishing is a
mental attitude that considers oneself to be supremely important and precious.
Because of this mind when things don’t go our way we get disturbed. If we have
strong self-cherishing we get very disturbed. We always have this mind to some
degree so we constantly suffer from anxiety, fear, and unhappiness. For example,
if we are very afraid of losing during a match, we have strong self-cherishing
and our mind is very agitated. Self-cherishing is our real enemy not our
opponent on the tennis court.
With self-cherishing we pay inappropriate attention and
other delusions such as attachment, deluded pride and anger arise. Attachment is a mind that observes an
object that appears to be pleasant and a cause of happiness and wishes to
possess it. It is a delusion because happiness comes from the mind not from
external objects. When we are attached to something our mind is disturbed which
is the hallmark of a delusion being present. When anything gets in the way of
getting what we want (like winning a tennis match) or we don’t get what we want
(like losing a tennis match) we become more disturbed.
Self-cherishing has many faults and disadvantages. What you
can do is look at everything that disturbs you and it can always be traced back
to self-cherishing being the cause.
The solutions: from sitting quietly to playing a
big match
While sitting
quietly we can think of what bothers us the most when we are playing tennis?
What do we wish was different when we play tennis? Let’s say it is our attachment
to winning. What does this mean and how does it destroy our peace of mind and
therefore our tennis game?
Wanting to win a
tennis match is not a problem. Trying our hardest to win a tennis match is not
a problem. What is a problem is being attached
to winning a tennis match. This means we think winning a tennis match is a
cause of happiness. This is a mistaken mind, a delusion that is discriminating
incorrectly the cause of our happiness, which comes from our mind. The moment
we make this mistake we experience an unpleasant feeling, our body tightens up,
and our mind becomes focused on: not losing; not missing; and many other
thoughts that disturb our mind. This turns the mind away from our primary
focus. Physically we become weaker, we lose accuracy and power, and we get
tired faster.
Seeing in our
experience how attachment hurts our tennis game, we think about these faults of
attachment and our attachment will weaken and not have the same power to harm
us any more. By contemplating these faults, we will rely upon this faulty mind less
and less.
An exercise we can do
is to sit quietly and imagine we are playing an important match, and the score
is close, in the second or third set. Or we can just remember a situation when
we were afraid of losing a match. Then we watch our mind to see precisely what
we are saying to ourself. From this we can see what beliefs we have about
winning and see exactly what we are attached to. When we see this, it will be
easy to stop the delusion, because it will be obvious to us the mistake we have
been making. We can also pay attention to how our body is tightening up. The
more faults of attachment we find and become familiar with, the weaker it will
become.
The mind of
attachment, like all delusions, is unrealistic. By becoming more realistic, our
delusions will lessen. A few examples of being realistic that are beneficial
include: understanding the reality that we will lose a lot of tennis matches
throughout our life; we will have match points and lose some times; things will
never quite go the way we want; some days we won’t play as well as others; we
will lose to someone nobody would ever think we would lose to, etc. It is more
important to focus on learning all the time and doing whatever we can to keep
improving.
As a mind trainer,
I lead people to know their own mind. For example, what beliefs and attitudes
they have, and the harm the negative ones are causing, so they can stop relying
upon them. We will keep relying upon something, no matter how harmful it is,
until we realize it is not producing the results we want.
On the tennis court
we can watch for attachment arising in different ways – we are attached to many
things. If we are busy thinking about things we don’t have much awareness of
what is going on around us, let alone about our mind. We must always watch for
self- cherishing and see how it is screwing everything up for us and develop a
strong motivation to eliminate it. Through being aware of our mind while
playing, we will see what our biggest obstruction is, and deal with that one
first because it will have the biggest impact on our game.
When we notice we
are getting tight, this unpleasant feeling reminds us that we have a delusion
in our mind. If there is a delusion in our mind, we know we are paying
inappropriate attention to something. If we stop the inappropriate attention, the
delusion stops, the tightness in our body stops, and we can therefore play
better.
In creating all the
best internal and external conditions to play our best, we also need to get rid
of what doesn’t work. We need to check everything we are doing and see if it is
bringing us the results we want. Important things may seem difficult at first,
but then become easier with practice and through familiarity. Good luck.
