By Mark Rearden, West Lake Country Club | August 1, 2019
Earlier this week, I sat down to prepare an article for the paper and as I began to gather my thoughts I was barraged by what felt like a hundred other things trying to steal my attention from the keyboard. What eventually happened was that the one hundred other things ended up winning out. I shut down between the ears and essentially became somewhat paralyzed by the mental clutter. The unfortunate part of the story is that I allowed the distractions to overcome my focus, which should have been finishing the article. It occurred to me the following day that I have spent a lifetime teaching tennis players how to cope with distracting situations on the court. I have doled out countless hours instructing folks on how to focus their attention away from the on court annoyance and to keep themselves attuned to what is before them. It’s a crying shame that I didn’t pay enough attention to some of my own advice.
As it turns out, some of the skills we use to stay on track on the tennis court are the same ones we use to stay on the straight and narrow in life. As an example, I spoke with one of our junior tennis players after a recent tennis tournament, a tournament in which he didn’t fare too well. His entire conversation centered on what he did poorly and how badly he played. When I asked him what he was thinking about during the match his response was much like this: “I was mad because my forehand was way off, my service return stunk, and I knew if I were playing normally I would be winning this match easily.” Well you know what, that was very close to the conversation I was having with myself. “The stupid computer is messing up, the phone won’t stop ringing and if I had a little peace and quiet, I would be finished with this article and moving on to another project.”
Do you see a similar pattern here? Both of us were letting what we could not do interfere with what we could do. For my young protégé, he never considered the things he was doing well. After a little probing I discovered that he thought he served pretty well and also that his volley game was good that day. Since he had already filed his forehand and service return into the “stinko basket” the better mental approach would have been to isolate on the things he could do well and then begin building a game plan within the framework of those two things. Unfortunately, he spent all of his mental energy consumed with his own anger and his poor performance.
The same held true for me. I never considered that I had options. I allowed myself to be shackled by things I couldn’t do rather than doing the things I could do. Heaven forbid that I might consider using paper and pencil to draft the article or hop in the car and head up to the clubhouse and finish the article there, away from the distractions. Instead I remained mired in the slough of distractions and let it consume my thoughts, never finishing what I had begun.
I have stated on other occasions that I believe sports to be a microcosm of life, and this occasion surely supports that belief. The expression, “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do” has always seemed a little trite and Polly Anna-like to me. In this instance I must reconsider and say it perfectly describes the best way out of the problems both of us were having. Mark my words, use what is working and put aside what is not.