Reviews
Good concise discussion of mental blockers to physical learning and sport
It's ok
Excellent book even though I don't play tennis. The approach seems intuitive but much easier said than done. The hard part seems to be the "nonjudgmental observing" of yourself or others. I wish I could be more detached from my own observations of myself in certain areas. I like how he explained our need to trust our own ability to learn and to embrace the learning process without judgment by comparing it with how we teach kids to do new things. When a baby is learning to walk, we don't get mad at them if they fall, and they don't get mad at themselves either. At some point in our lives, we lose that childlike approach through some combination of our own thoughts and our interaction with the world around us. This also made me think about performance improvement at work and the drive to constantly measure performance. There's a difference between observing performance and judging it. I know I'm guilty of judging the performance of others and simply observing the performance of myself sometimes. As a manager, it can be difficult to know when to judge that an employee will not be able to learn important skills, especially if he/she is trying to do so. Favorite quote: ' A very wise person once told me, "When it comes to oversoming obstacles, there are three kinds of people. The first kind sees most obstacles as insurmountable and walks away. The second kind sees an obstacle and says I can oversome it, and starts to dig under, climb over, or blast through it. The third type of person, before deciding to oversome the obstacle, tries to find a viewpoint where what is on the other side of the obstacle can be seen. Then, only if the reward is worth the effort, does he attempt to oversome the obstacle."'
I read this book after reading a book about mindfulness and it's basically the same thing. In a good way.
This is one of the most insight-dense books I've read.
I got a lot more out of this book with a second read through whilst highlighting. It’s an amazing book and helped me make sense of many of things I experience as an athlete. I’d recommend this book to anyone but especially other people playing sports or learning new skills as it applies to so much more than just tennis. I imagine myself coming back to this book many times during my life.
Doesn't translate into a book. I'm sure these workshops would be awesome as a musician, but I found reading through this frustrating and disconnecting because it assumes a certain level and type of musician or musical student. I think it would've worked better as a workbook and if it adjusted exercises for different levels/types of students, but that would've made for a way larger project and why the format for this sort of learning feels tied to an in-person, interactive experience and not text in a book.
