“Why would you ever deal with any emotion in a logical way when you could have the option of absolutely losing your mind?” – Conan Gray
After another tennis lesson where I was battling every inner demon known to mankind, I keep finding myself coming back to the whole mental aspect of tennis (or sports and life in general).
Going slightly cuckoo bananas when struggling with something has been the default approach as long as I can remember. Every mistake felt like a sign sent from above that I’m not good enough and every constructive (!!) criticism coming from someone’s mouth felt like being held at gunpoint. My journey in horse riding started waaaay before my brain registered half of the things happening meaning that the learning curve that happened in my early years has been long forgotten. Yet, I’m 100% convinced I experienced all the same emotions during the first half a decade with horses that I do now with tennis. As a life long perfectionist and devoted practitioner of “if I’m not good enough in this in 20min, this is not for me”, tennis has been humbling to say the least. However, for whatever reason, despite falling on my ass literally (psa: check your hard court shoes after a few months of playing, chances are these now resemble F1 slicks) and figuratively, giving up has not crossed my mind even once. Why? God knows. Nonetheless, it’s been frustrating af. It’s been long since I have felt ‘put myself on the spot’ the way tennis has managed to do it. “Bad” shots feel like mistakes I shouldn’t be doing and “good” ones are taken for granted because those I consider as normal. To really cross the T’s and dot the I’s, I’m the most self-aware person I know and (to prove my point) I’m painstakingly aware of the self-sabotage that my negative thinking patterns cause. Whoever figures out why I’m putting all this pressure on myself will get a personal thank you card and shanked forehand in your honor.
At some point I realized though that maybe (just maybe) it’s not the best way to go about things. While losing my mind is somewhat intriguing, adding some spice to everyday life, it is also incredibly exhausting and just downright annoying once I came to realize that it’s a pattern that comes with zero to none long-term benefits. It came down to two options: to deal with it (time consuming, hard work but potential future benefits) or not to deal with it (very little effort but drives me insane and is counterproductive to what I want to achieve). High-achiever as I am, I opted for the first. Started to discuss sports psychology and all sorts of fun stuff my brain does with my psychologist and after a few months the progress has been… slow. To be expected but at least we are moving. “It’s a marathon not a sprint,” or whatever the streets are saying. Patterns drilled for many years don’t change overnight but there are some positives (seemingly decreased number of experienced crash outs on court). The road is long, shitty days are inevitable and seeing the number of competitive players at all levels struggling mentally is, while sad, also oddly reassuring. At the end of the day we are all in the same boat and human experience is quite literally equivalent to ‘same word, different font‘.
To finish on a less sappy note, I remember telling my psychologist that while my mind is my worst enemy, I truly believe it’s also my biggest asset. Nothing has better ability to kick me down and then pick me right back up. Personally, I can say with my hand on my heart that my mind can do so much good and it truly has helped me on countless occasions. Maybe the smartest thing I have ever done is to try and outsmart it even more, like I do now. Checkmate, bitch.
Life disguises growth as failure and progress as pain.
– as found in my notes app –
~ live, laugh love, S.