Good book. Useful distillation of Buddhism into layperson's terms applicable to athletics and daily life.
Notes/quotes:
"...stress itself can create a vulnerability to being injury prone"
"Freedom is now or never. I chose now."
AOF: ass on fire: desperation as a gift that compels us to move forward. Also, the idea that it's dangerous to be too comfortable in life. [Am I too comfortable in my life??]
"The five superpowers": mindfulness, concentration, insight, right effort, trust.
Mindfulness:
Dealing with monkey mind conception that the mind is restless, agitated, confused, hard to control. Calming and pacifying that monkey using mindfulness, to help you pay attention to your thoughts in a non-attached manner, slowing down your experience of time and reconnecting you to the present moment.
Flow is your ability to stay in the present moment.
Focusing too much on winning, or trying to hard to be spectacular (the destination), these things take you away from getting the results you want including experiencing flow (the journey).
The space between stimulus and response: Reacting (with anger, anxiety, fear, craving, etc) versus responding (becoming still, being volitional, observing our thoughts and feelings without judgment, and then acting from this space of calm).
Using a moment of adversity, turning it into "a Thich Nhat Hanh" by using it as a bell of mindfulness, a reminder to come back to your breathing and a place of observing yourself.
"When you cease to strive to understand, then you will know without understanding."
Zen and the Art of Archery, also The Inner Game of Tennis, and The Tao of Jeet Kun Do, all are books on being calm, still, like water, responsive, not reactive, calm, observant, not anxious or grasping.
From the inner game of tennis: "Toggling" between Self 1 and Self 2... Making it an act of volition, of agency. "The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; he discovers a true basis for self-confidence; and he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard."
Concentration/Focused Awareness:
Breath awareness
Being in the "country of now", this exact moment; the past play or point is gone and the future play hasn't happened. There are no anxieties or emotional distractions in the now.
"The mind has to be empty to see clearly."
--Krishnamurti
Kinesthetic imagery/kinesthetic visualization: mentally rehearsing, mentally experiencing a point, a game, a series of situations with outcome expectation as the frame.
"The brain doesn't know the difference between what we think and what we experience."
Bring to mind a play that you were able to execute on the tennis court, like powerful serve up the middle, or like a backhand cracked crosscourt with a lot of topspin.
"The key for the mindful athlete is to preprogram the mind-body connection with a regular practice of coming back again and again to the breath so that the body does its thing without the mind getting in the way."
Insight/Intention:
As in:
A backhand which is a bigger weapon than my forehand
A much much bigger forehand
A more relaxed serve with more spin on it
Very consistent groundies
100% of all balls watched closely
etc.
Deep listening: "ask yourself in silence what do I really want? What is my life for? Intention will emerge if you go deep enough." A clear sense of purpose, then match it with deliberate practice.
Anders Ericsson's book "Peak" (probably ought to reread this)
Four elements of deliberate practice: motivation, knowledge, immediate informative feedback, repetition
Going over fundamentals until they're hardwired into your mind-body, "we go over and over the same terrain, each time picking up more intelligence and information, even if we're unaware of it."
Implicit learning: you might not think you're making progress but you're adaptive unconscious is an overdrive, and new patterns of excellence are being laid down and reinforced with every repetitive cycle of practice.
Staying in the zone of discomfort, versus bailing when the going gets too tough. You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Maintaining a calm benevolence in all circumstances.
Poise: a convergence of the principles of concentration, outcome expectation, visualization, intention, and deliberate practice. The ability to keep calm and stay connected to your center at all times without getting thrown off balance. And when we do get thrown off balance, we remember to come back to the present moment through conscious breathing and mindful meditation.
Concentrate on one:
Thought in your mind
Concrete thing you are doing
Outcome you wish to achieve that day or one intention for that day
Unintentional belief systems, or your own clear sense of purpose. "You'll see it when you believe it" versus "I'll believe it when I see it."
Seeing your own suffering clearly, and the fact that you identify with that suffering.
The four noble truths
1) that suffering is part of life
2) there is a cause for that suffering: cravings, attachments, expectations, emotional mindsets
3) there is an end of suffering: well-being comes through practicing non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion.
4) the noble eightfold path: right understanding, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
"The wolf that wins is the one you feed": This is a useful metaphor, we have two wolves in us, feed the right one.
Five categories of hindrances:
1) sensual desire,
2) ill will or anger,
3) sloth or torpor,
4) restlessness or worry,
5) skepticism and doubt.
The more we feed these "wolves" the bigger they get, also the way we release stress can be the very thing that creates it: e.g. emotional eating, alcohol, etc.
The more we practice mindfulness, the more we are quiet, the more we're able to "observe our wolves" with nonattachment.
Letting go of our attachment to feeling good.
The "yips" as a center of underlying mental or emotional stress.
Training yourself to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, to feel calm in the midst of chaos, and to access and stay in that space between stimulus and response, rather than react in a knee-jerk fashion distress. Developing a greater tolerance for cognitive dissonance. Learn to tolerate or embrace discomfort for an extended period of time.
The three C's: Commitment to growth, Control over your response to stressors, viewing every crisis or pressure as a Challenge. Self-efficacy. Viewing crises as an opportunity for growth. Remaining in a high state of self-awareness, so you know when to push yourself out of your comfort zone.
Embracing failure. Non-identification with failure; rather, instinctively learning from mistakes.
Cultivating a state of wonder, of curiosity, of humility: "How about I just go and do this and let it speak to me, instead of assuming I know in advance what it is."
"George, can you afford it?" Mumford's tai chi teacher asking if he is willing to make a commitment to something very difficult, like doing splits, etc. [an example of Right Effort]
Noticing what's right: like noticing that I was returning Lance's serve much better.
Right Effort:
Bruce Lee, not Sisyphus, not forcing things with effort or force, having proper motivation. Right effort is the expression of mindfulness in the realm of action. Cultivating positive mind-states while becoming aware of and abandoning unwholesome mind-states. Joy in the doing of the task and the journey itself, no matter how long or difficult.
Not avoiding discomfort, approaching/accepting difficulties as a challenge: "The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that the warrior takes everything as a challenge while the ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse." --Carlos Castaneda
On learning how to make states of mind such as mindfulness, happiness, love, or compassion arise and manifest: "It also means knowing how to handle unwholesome states of mind. For example, when anger arises, you understand how to let it go without pushing it away or trying to get rid of it, which in any case doesn't work. Instead, with right effort you actually pay more attention to the anger when it arises and take the time to be with it, breathe with it, and let it go without effort. By taking this deliberate action, you naturally generate a positive mind-state, no matter how angry you are."
The No Sword philosophy: using what is there, becoming one with what is there, the situation, blending and flowing with what is.
Avoiding autonomic responses: unlike an addict being triggered to use drugs by some experience, we can put a physiological response in between the trigger and your old response, thus you choose to act differently. "In a high-stress athletic event, the ability to react to another player's action without emotional triggers is often the difference between a wise decision and one that loses the game."
Right effort: respond versus react, flow with obstacles and adversity versus resist. Embrace uncertainty rather than seek an escape from it, embrace discomfort instead of comfort seeking.
Right effort for the love and joy of the game, not for victory or fame.
What was the situation?
What thoughts were you aware of during the situation?
What feelings were you aware of during the situation?
What action if any did you take during or after the situation?
As you write about the situation now, what belief systems or paradigms do you think you were operating from?
Trust/Faith
Our Buddha nature, our awakened selves
Seeing divinity in others, being present and compassionate with them.
For further reading:
Sharon Salzburg: Lovingkindness
Jon Kabat-Zinn: Full Catastrophe Living, Wherever You Go
Anders Ericsson: Peak