The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

Product Information

Gallwey, W. Timothy (1974). The Inner Game of Tennis (1sted.). New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-49154-8. the inner game. 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.”

As a boy, Tim Gallwey was nationally ranked tennis player in his division and later captained his Harvard University team. Green, Barry; Gallwey, W. Timothy (1986). The inner game of music (1sted.). New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-23126-1. 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. Self 1 is your ego and judgmental self, Self 2 is your innate, child like, unconscious self. Get Self 1 out of the way, and let Self 2 take overGroundbreaking . . . the best guide to getting out of your own way . . . Its profound advice applies to many other parts of life.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes (“Five of My All-Time Favorite Books”) Slumps are part of the process. They are not “bad” events, but they seem to endure endlessly as long as we call them bad and identify with them. The Inner Game reveals an approach to accelerated learning and achievement. It challenges you to re-examine everything that you do including your own fundamental motivations for doing things and your definitions of what success really is. It helps you define the landscape of what we term as a high performing interdependent organization. Consider the process of watching the ball. Often, people think watching the ball includes watching the ball, thinking about the next shot, or worrying about what anyone watching will think if they flub it. There was also quite a lot of esoteric tennis minutia presented here, despite the author saying there wouldn't be.

One of Tim Gallwey’s first long-term clients was AT&T. In the early 1980s they were faced with the challenge of changing the mindset of the largest company in the US from the “bell shaped head” of monopolistic thinking to the mindset of a competitive, market-driven, entrepreneurial company. Each of these adds up to the idea of “relaxed concentration,” which is the Platonic ideal of a successful tennis player—fully in control and fully relaxed at the same time. Understanding Self 1 and Self 2 For the sake of your mental health and your productivity, practice holding your attention in the here and now. On ControlFrom this discovery came Gallwey’s first book, The Inner Game of Tennis, which has sold over two million copies. Other books in the Inner Game series include applications to Golf, Skiing, Music, Work and Stress. Our definition of performance needs to include the employee’s experience and learning, as well as his or her performance. The real value of this redefinition of work is that it involves and sees everyone as an individual, and the organization as a whole as place for growth, learning and enjoyment. Technical instructions are a modern innovation. Experience had to proceed instruction or technical knowledge, because how would that knowledge have been acquired in the first place? Verbal instruction comes from people with experience, but when it’s passed on to people with no experience, it’s harder to understand. There’s a huge split between mind and body.

Physical technique is also, of course, an important part of a successful player’s game. Trusting Self 2 can improve your physical as well as your mental game.The greatest lapses in concentration come when we allow our minds to project what is about to happen or dwell on what has already happened. In 1960, Gallwey was captain of the Harvard University Tennis Team. In the 1970s he learned meditation techniques which Gallwey said enhanced his powers of concentration in a manner that improved his game. [1] Inner game [ edit ]

In short, if we let ourselves lose touch with our ability to feel our actions, by relying too heavily on instructions, we can seriously compromise our access to our natural learning processes and our potential to perform. Instead, if we hit the ball relying on the instincts of Self 2, we reinforce the simplest neural pathway to the optimal shot. The Inner Game of Performance will change the way many people relate to their work, and perhaps even more important, it offers institutions a way to simultaneously facilitate accelerated performance, learning and satisfaction in the workplace. Becoming a high performing individual and organization is far less demanding than we imagine. But it does ask each of us to honour our own inner intelligence to learn to learn and to allow our own excellence to result spontaneously.Ending judgment means you neither add nor subtract from the facts before your eyes. Things appear as they are—undistorted. In this way, the mind becomes more calm. What I really wanted, I realized, was to overcome the nervousness that was preventing me from playing my best and enjoying myself. I wanted to overcome the inner obstacle that had plagued me for so much of my life. I wanted to win the inner game. The best way to quiet the mind is not by telling it to shut up, or by arguing with it, or criticizing it for criticizing you. Fighting the mind does not work. What works best is learning how to focus it.