Tennis and life

After years of playing tennis I've realized that I get more out of it than just physical exercise and releasing pent up energy or aggression. There are three other things. First, while I don't particularly like dancing (especially the kind where you just stand separate from your partner and gyrate aimlessly) tennis comes close to what others probably get out of ballroom dancing: fluidity of movement combined with a purpose. I've always admired Sampras and Federer for their effortless, graceful yet powerful movement. I've tried to emulate that.

Second, when you get deep into a match I find it's also like a form of meditation because you are so focused on one task that everything else falls away. When this happens we reach the “flow” state described by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Third, one of my main goals in life is to find balance. In tennis it's integrating the mental challenges with the various physical challenges. Trying to find the right blend of power, touch, spin, tactics and even deception (by setting up to make it look like I'm going one way then going another at the last instant). Then there are the various challenges. How to handle a power hitter? How to handle a much younger player? How to pace yourself in a 2+ hour match in 90+ degree heat? How to play with an injury? How to play when your game is "off"? And how to handle a loss? I think a lot of this spills over into other parts of life.

Happiness vs. Vitality

I reviewed The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris a while ago. Just recently I received the latest newsletter from the author which had an interesting observation.

[I]f we believe that happiness is the same as feeling good, we are constantly going to be struggling. Expecting to feel good all the time is like expecting a crocodile to be your best friend. You’re soon going to be disappointed. In ACT, we generally stay away from using the term “happiness”, as so many people think it means “feeling good”. Instead, we talk about “vitality”: a sense of being fully alive and embracing each moment of life, regardless of how you are feeling in that moment. If we were to define happiness in ACT terms, we would define it as living a rich, full and meaningful life in which you feel the full range of human emotions; or as the sense of vitality and wellbeing that comes from living by your values (something the ancient Greeks called “eudemonia”).

I like this idea of vitality and eudemonia (also referred to as “flourishing”). In fact, I wrote a paper on the Greek concept of eudemonia. Edith Hamilton best summarized it in her The Greek Way as: “The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.”

Tips for maintaining objectivity

Here is one page summary of cognitive distortions thanks to Michael Prescott. Has some good advice!

The Happiness Trap Review

The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living by Russ Harris is one of the best self-help books I’ve ever read. Yes, that’s a bold claim, especially with how many books of this kind fill the shelves of bookstores. I’ve read a lot of these books over the years. Almost all of them offer variations on one of several themes. Think positively. Repeat affirmations to counter negative thoughts. Bolster your self-esteem. All of them, according to Harris, share the same trap. “To find happiness, we try to avoid or get rid of bad feelings, but the harder we try, the more bad feelings we create.” This trap comes from the shared definition of happiness as feeling good. The Happiness Trap adheres to a different definition of happiness: living a rich and meaningful life.

Living such a life doesn’t automatically mean we’re feeling good all the time. We will still have negative feelings and challenges to overcome. The goal of The Happiness Trap then is to give us strategies to deal with negative feelings without denying them. Harris offers six core principles.

1. Defusion. Painful or unpleasant thoughts are defused by various techniques such as labeling them. When one notices such a thought instead of suppressing or denying it we create some distance by saying “I’m having the thought that …” In doing so we put some distance between the thought and us. In other words, we strive for objectivity.

2. Expansion: consists of making room for unpleasant thoughts and feelings.

3. Connection: being fully aware of your here and now.

4. Distinguishing between your thinking self and observing self. The various techniques in The Happiness Trap get us out of our thinking self and into our observing self.

5. Values: what kind of person are you and want to be? What is significant and meaningful to you? What do you stand for?

6. Committed action. All of this business about being objective and mindfulness must be followed by a commitment to action if we truly want to change.

These principles form the core of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by Steven Hays. While Hays and others have published a number of books on ACT they were written for therapists applying ACT to different conditions. The Happiness Trap translates ACT’s principles for laymen interested in applying these principles. As Harris points out ACT also stands for something else:

A – Accepting your thoughts and feelings and being present in the moment,

C – Connect with your values, and

T – Take effective action.

The Happiness Trap holds a lot more insights and techniques than I can do justice to here. Overall I like several aspects of The Happiness Trap and ACT.

1. They don’t try to suppress or ignore emotions. The recommended methods aim at honoring these emotions while trying to get beyond them.
2. They emphasize mindfulness and objectivity.
3. The end goal is to get us to act, not just to idly analyze our feelings.
4. Values play a key role because ultimately this is what motivates us to action: what is important to us.

As I said at the beginning The Happiness Trap has joined the small group of my favorite books. It offers a realistic guide with a number of helpful activates to get us to move beyond self-limiting thoughts and emotions so we can obtain, express and enjoy our values.

How to say No: Update

Back on December 31, 2007 I posted a review of The Power of a Positive No and outlined their basic method of yes-no-yes. This means when faced with saying no to someone you first state your interest (the first "yes"), say your no (that you can't or won't do what is requested) then end with an alternate proposal (the second "yes"). I have been applying this since that review and can report that it does help in two ways. It helps me to resist doing things I don't want to while still maintaining a relationship if the request is coming from some with whom I have a continuing relationship.

Here is an example from work. A broker I deal with on my accounts asked me to remove something from one of our reports (while copying two of my account contacts). I said that my company policy wouldn't allow it even if I agreed with him but that I would investigate it further by discussing it with our technical expert. The key is that I offered to write an e-mail or letter that indicates that the recommendation in our report is our best advice but does not affect how we look at the account. The broker thanked me for the offer but said he was willing to wait to see what happened with our technical expert's review. I believe my explanation about being limited by company policy but willing to help if I could kept the broker on my side and left him willing to see how things play out. I think if I had left off the final "yes?" the situation could have escalated.

Made to Stick Review

Have you ever needed to make a memorable point? If you answered no then you must live by yourself, work in a job with no interaction with people, don’t have kids and aren’t married. For the rest of us every day we’re faced with making a point, asking for someone to do something, convincing someone of your position and so on. Some people do it better than others. A lot better. Why? What makes some people so effective while the rest of us struggle?

Chip and Dan Heath have studied this question and concluded that all of us can craft messages that “stick” by applying several principles which are explained in Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.) Being true to their own advice even their book cover is catchy: it has what appears to be duct tape across the front.)

Their formula for success is SUCCES.

S: Simple. Find your core idea and make it compact.

U: Unexpected. Find something unexpected about your core idea and communicate it in a way that keeps your audience guessing. You do this by focusing on what questions you want your audience to ask.

C: Concrete. Make it easy to understand by translating jargon into laymen’s terms. Too many times we slip into using our profession’s jargon and think everyone else understands our lingo.

E: Emotional. Your audience is constantly asking, “What’s in it for me?” Keep this in mind or you’ll lose them!

S: Stories. When possible wrap your message in a story.

This last feature - how to tell stories - has become a cottage industry. But this approach recognizes that we become more involved and receptive when listening to a story as opposed to a dry lecture or a litany of facts. (See The Secret Language of Leadership by Stephen Denning.)

The Heaths provide many examples and stories to support their principles. In the interest of keeping this entry short I have only reported the key points (in a fashion typical for an engineer).

Coming from an engineering background where the currency of the field is facts, facts and even more facts, I’ve come to appreciate the effectiveness of appropriately packaging and presenting these facts to improve how they’re received. The Heath’s advice is sticking with me.

Review of The World is Flat 3.0

Do you ever debate buying a book? You know what I mean. Something about the cover or title catches your eye. You pick up the book, skim it a bit then put it back onto the shelf. The next time you go back to the store you go through the routine again. And again. Finally you break down and buy the book. After reading it you wonder why you didn’t buy the book the first time. That’s the story of The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. I must have picked up the book five times before buying it. I wish I had bought it sooner.

Not that this book is perfect. A 100 or more pages could easily be trimmed with tighter editing and removing repetitive passages and Friedman’s name-dropping stories. But his premise is interesting and particularly applicable to individualists. By “flat” Friedman “means equalizing, because the flattening forces are empowering more and more individuals today to reach farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before, and that is equalizing power.”

Friedman contends we are in the third version of globalization. In Globalization 1.0 countries were the key agents in the world. Globalization 2.0 shifts from countries to international companies; Globalization 3.0 shifts again with individuals becoming the focal point.

The World is Flat identifies ten flatteners behind this evolution. While I won’t discuss each one they fall into three categories: political, business practices and individual empowerment. The key political flattener was literal: the flattening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which enhanced the free movement of best practices. Most of the other nine flatteners deal with corporate practices such as work flow software, outsourcing and off shoring which drew formerly isolated countries such as India, China, Mexico and others into the world market. As the corporate practices lowered barriers between countries other developments occurred to enhance the ability of individuals to obtain information and, more important, to express their ideas that normally would have no outlet. Of course, we’re talking about the Internet, search engines and blogging. Traditional media outlets like TV and radio (except call-in talk shows) are just that: outlets in which the participants passively receive media output with limited ability to have their voices heard.

Blogging, personal web pages, etc. allow individuals to express themselves and to form collaborative virtual communities. In addition, as Friedman notes, small and medium size companies hire the most people, not the mega-corporations. Flattening allows these small businesses to compete better with the big boys. All of these developments provide tools to empower individuals like no other time in history.

These developments also could bode well for preventing wars. While some conservative thinkers fear (appropriately) the growth of Islamic terrorism and the rebirth of totalitarianism, Friedman shares something both interesting and hopeful: the Dell theory of conflict prevention. “No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.” In other words, economic interdependence can trump political agendas. One can only hope that this theory is true! Of course there are no guarantees. Political leaders can force their agenda onto an unwilling citizenry. However the ease of being able to do this is getting more difficult as the world flattens.

Returning back to the individual, Friedman offers some advice to succeed. “The most important competition is now with oneself – making sure that you are always striving to get the most out of your imagination and then acting on it.”

Life Lessons from Refereeing

This post might not seem to relate to the theme of this blog which is flourishing and how to live a good life. Bear with me. I hope the connection will be clear by the end of this post.

On a Massachusetts soccer forum one poster asked why many games in Massachusetts Premier League (MAPLE) don’t have three officials. This spurred a number of posts by referees who shared their horror stories dealing with abusive parents and coaches. It is well known that there is a high turn over in referees. From talking to various people the biggest drop-off seems to be among the teenagers because of having to deal with adults who challenge them. For many teens this is intimating and even scary.

I got my Grade 8 referee license last spring and have done recreational games (Division 2 and 3) in my town, Massachusetts Soccer conference (MASC) games and even a MAPLE game recently. A week ago I worked the lines for a boys U14 MASC game in which one team was constantly pushing offside. Almost every time I flagged the team for it I could see a parent vigorously and vocally disagreeing with my calls. The center ref (who is much more experienced than me) agreed with me when we discussed my calls after the game. I can see why there is shortage of referees based on my experience.

So why are adults so vocal? Why do they feel they have the right to heap abuse on officials? Her are some ideas.

1. People (not just parents but coaches too) think it’s easy to referee. One coach said as much months ago in another thread on refereeing on the Touchline forum. In my opinion if you feel that way then you’re not doing it right and/or don’t understand the challenges of doing the job properly! I’m sure someone who has never actually stepped onto the pitch to referee (or play) look at the referee’s job as simply running around. They don’t appreciate that even under ideal conditions the referee has to make decisions quickly and on the fly. I’ve found that running the lines is even more challenging than being the center referee because you’ve got to stay in line with the last defender while keeping an eye on the ball and when it is played forward. In addition you’ve calling out-of-bounds, who takes the throw-in and looking for fouls.
2. Many parents don’t understand the laws of the game, particularly offside.
3. The focus on winning and losing regardless of the age or league. This is especially true in MAPLE where one goal can spell doom for a team’s future within MAPLE. So a perceived “missed” call by the parents, players or coach can escalate when so much is at stake. Yet we have also seen some outrageous behavior in MASC, even at the U10 level (!) where last year a parent was banned for the season because of extreme, continued harassment of the official even after the game.

As a coach of both town and premier girls’ teams from U12 through U18 my focus has been more on playing well and doing your best than on winning and losing. Why? Because you can’t control the outcome but you can control your effort. My message to my players is that as long as you play hard, play smart, play as a team and play fairly that you can walk off the field with pride even if you lose. Unfortunately some parents seem to live vicariously through their kids and feel winning at all costs is more important than the level of effort and thought.

But I think there is something else going on here. I think a collection of beliefs at work.

1. That a “bad” call “steals” success from their child.
2. Winning and preserving their kid’s success (the ends) justifies harassing the referee (the means).
3. Treating others without respect and as objects is OK as long as your ends are served.

The combination of these beliefs falls into the trap of believing that of blaming others for lack of success. There is even a whiff of the idea that parents and their kids are entitled to the results they want even if it might really not be deserved. And that’s why I believe this behavior does not help one to flourish.

Positive Coaching Advice

While the subject of this post is geared more for those who coach (or manage) I think it's lessons also apply to how we coach ourselves as well as our kids. Below is a post from the And-Again soccer coaching forum. I like what the coach says. It’s similar to Tony DiCicco’s Catch Them Being Good: Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Coach Girls. DiCicco recommends that coaches emphasize what players do right with the idea that you reward someone for doing something right but also motivate the other players to emulate the same behavior. The traditional approach taught at least by the USSF is to stop play, correct what you saw wrong, have the player rehearse then restart play. I always had reservations about this approach because I felt it puts the player who is being corrected in a negative spotlight. If done too much the players will start playing conservatively, afraid to make a mistake. I saw this vividly a couple years ago when a coach who “helped” me with my U18 girls team stopped play almost once a minute to correct something he saw wrong. It didn’t take too long for me to see the girls dread every time he yelled “Freeze!” out of fear that they were going to be the one he singled out.

I’m not saying we have to coddle players or never correct mistakes. I think there are times to correct a player but to do it one-on-one or wait until you see a pattern of similar mistakes by several players then use this opportunity to show the entire team what to do better. But overall I like the approach of focusing more on the positives than on negatives.

Here is the link to the discussion followed by the text of the post from the coach.

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/andagain/vpost?id=2586055

I am currently reading a book called "The Mind Gym". I think this is a must read for any coach...especially those of older teams that rely more on the mental part of the game to compete. One thing I took from the book is to concentrate on what you can do and not what you can't. For instance, before our game last night...which was against the top team in the league...undefeated throughout the winter and this would be our last game against them....I asked my team how they feel during a game if they are not playing well and we are losing. They said things like;

Ø Afraid of making mistakes

Ø Afraid of being subbed out / don't want to go back in

Ø Get mad at themselves

Ø Say negative things to their teammates

Ø Get tense and feel like they can't breath / feel tired

Then I asked them how they feel if they are playing great and no matter what they do everything goes perfectly and it feels like they can do no wrong. They said things like;

Ø Not afraid to try anything

Ø Feel like they can play forever....do not feel tired

Ø Everything is positive to all their teammates and themselves

Ø Don't mind being subbed out but are ready to go back in right away

Ø Feels effortless to play at maximum level

Ø Every thought is focused and clear and flows easily

So then I asked them what all those things listed above are. And they finally got it.....feelings. These are all feelings that every athlete / person carries within themselves. Their feelings can be controlled / channeled in a positive manner no matter what happens on the pitch. I ask them that when they made a mistake to just "flush it" and to pick each other up.

I had to correct my terminology and actions as well. Many times I will tell my defenders "not to lunge". Instead I said "get on proper technique and delay until they give up the ball". This is called coaching the "do's" instead of coaching the "don'ts" because the do's set a positive tone and re-inforces what they should be doing while coaching the dont's re-inforces a negative tone and sets in their mind what they should not be doing so the player might be saying to himself don't lunge, don't lunge, don't lunge so much that it sets that bad behavior into his mind. It's like when I play golf and I say don't slice the ball to myself. I always end up slicing it. Instead say to yourself what you should do and then practice it. Another example was when we'd miss the goal on a shot. This time instead of making a correction I applauded the effort and told them what a great job they did to create the opportunity and good try in taking the strike at goal

Throughout the game I had to bite my tongue. Breaking old habits is tough.

At half time we had a 1-0 lead. The feelings were positive and we did not talk about tactics. The kids were all smiling and positive. Some were already celebrating which I warned them about. I told them we had a long way to go and no matter what happened to keep being positive to each other. We had one bad lapse where our center mid did not mark up their center mid and he buried a beautiful 22 yard shot into the upper corner on a rope. About 4 minutes later a few kids were scrapping for the ball just inside our goal box and a quick toe poke found the back of our net and all of a sudden we were down 2-1 with 15 minutes left. I said nothing after either goal. The boys on our team were all shouting "2 minutes" to each other. It's a signal we use to ourselves to dig in and play harder for the next 2 minutes after a goal to get momentum back on our side. I was happy to hear them all say this. With 8 minutes left we tied the game after some beautiful footwork and intensity from our left midfielder to create some space for himself and his cross was perfectly to the head of our attacking mid who buried it. All I did was clap. The kids emotions were overflowing with positive energy. With 1 minute left we transitioned quickly out of our half and found our left striker 1v1 about 25 yards out from goal. He made a nice turn to the inside but the defender was on him and he cut it back outside and when the defender stepped he cut it back inside and had a step on the defender. From about 18 yards out he unleashed a shot toward the far post that hit the bottom of the crossbar and slid in to the goal. Clock showed 50 seconds left and the kids were all hugging and pumped. And again they said 2 minutes to each other. We won 3-2. Very big win for us psychologically and a very important lesson I learned. I coached in the "do's" and it made a huge difference. After the game one of my players who is ultra competitive and can get down on himself and his teammates at times said " that felt really good". And I have to agree that it did. Things don't always go like this...I fully realize that....but I feel it took my team to a new plateau and definitely taught me something about myself.

And by the way our keeper made some fantastic saves throughout the game and the kids mobbed him after the game.

So, how do you conduct yourself on the sideline? Are your words negative? Is your body language negative or uptight?

This is not going to be easy for my ultracompetitive personality but I am going to conscientously make an effort to hold myself to this standard. I have already had a few of my players email me this morning that they are still excited about the game last night. I think I may have set off something within them that will help them reach a new plateau in their development.

Competition and challenges as meditation and relaxation

I just recently returned from skiing and re-learned a lesson from more than twenty years ago when I first read The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. His premise is that we perform complex physical skills better when we relinquish control of “Self 1,” our conscious self to “Self 2,” our subconscious self. Actions like playing tennis or skiing are too complicated for our conscious mind to control. Gallwey revolutionized tennis instruction (then golf and skiing) by providing techniques to quiet and distract the Self 1 while the Self 2 is going its work. The problem is that Self 1 always wants to be in control and therefore is constantly trying to intervene. It’s a constantly challenge to keep Self 1 occupied.

However, there are another two aspects that I’ve learned from experience.

1. When skiing it’s important to stay relaxed and focused on the challenges ahead of the trail ahead without worrying whether being able to handle them. The same thing happens when I’m playing tennis and focus on my performance, not whether I win or lose. This doesn’t mean I win all of my matches nor am I happy when I lose but my chances of winning improve. Staying relaxed lets me perform to my potential.
2. Letting Self 2 operate creates a condition like mediation. Being fully involved in the task at hand without concern over the outcome creates an experience described as “flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. What I have found is that the effects of this flow state linger for a while afterwards. It ultimately has a calming and reenergizing effect.

Running up the score or running down the competition? To What End?

This week the girls U12 club team that I co-coach easily won an indoor game against a local town team. When we jumped ahead by 4 goals we told the girls that they had to string at least 3 passes together before shooting on goal, that they had to use their moves and that shots had to be with their left foot (if their right foot is the dominant one). I have been involved in games where we were on the receiving end of mismatches. It's no fun for the losing team and I believe it doesn't teach the players on the winning team anything. Mercilessly running up the score also is poor sportsmanship, shows a lack of respect for the opponent and can let the girls slip into complacency so that they're caught off guard when they play a stronger team down the road. (I especially love the teams that celebrate every goal in a drub fest as if they just won the World Cup while their parents are ringing cowbells. Geesh! Get a life!)

Since the opposing team was not creating enough pressure on us (in other words, they were “ball watching”) we imposed conditions on the girls to make the game more challenging for them without disrespecting the other team. We explained to the parents in a team e-mail that we felt it was a good time for the girls to work on what we have been teaching them in practice: when you run into pressure you relieve this pressure by moving the ball elsewhere by a combination of back and square passes then moving into areas with less pressure before the defense can adjust. The natural tendency of players is to plow straight down the field until they run into the defense or run out of space then lose the ball (which is the approach you'll see in some other programs). Taking this “kick and run” approach creates ugly soccer with frequent turnovers and lost scoring chances. We would prefer the girls to possess the ball until they can penetrate the defense with through passes, wall passes or crosses. Playing this way also involves our keeper in the play as well. But, most important, this way of playing the game is more attractive to watch and is effective at all levels of competition.

But I digress. What does this have to do with flourishing? I’ve heard coaches for the team that relish running up the score claim that they let their players do so because they don’t know what else to do, that it’s too hard to turn off the competitiveness, and that their players shouldn’t have to pull in their reins. While this might be true for professional sports where coaches and players are paid to win, I don’t accept this at the youth level. (Even in the premier league in Massachusetts the standings limit the goal differential of a win so that winning by more than 5 goals doesn’t help in the final standings.) I believe this rationale is an excuse that feeds the coach’s and player’s egos. In other words, it’s a rationalization for poor sportsmanship and for treating the opponents as objects, as something less than human. I feel the purpose of competition is to test and expand your limits. If the opposition can’t provide enough resistance to challenge you, I believe it’s better for everyone to impose conditions on yourself to make the game harder and therefore more rewarding.

There also is the issue of empathy for what your opponent experiences. Easily and gleefully crushing a team can demoralize the opponents. What is to be gained doing so? A false inflation of one’s self-worth at the expense of someone else? A person who has a strong self-image doesn’t rely on making others feel bad in order to improve how they feel about themselves. Flourishing doesn't have to come at the expense of others.