Tennis Without Cooking
Next to tennis, cooking is my favorite pastime. So it should come as no surprise when I tell you that sometimes my mind wanders from the game, and instead of watching the ball and hitting a good shot, I think about what I am going to prepare for my husband's dinner. It's really all his fault, as he'd be the first to admit. He's kind of demanding, as you'd know if you knew him, and insists that I cook when we're in the country just because I never cook in the city.
It just happened this morning. I was playing with my favorite tennis buddies, and drove a smooth shot down the alley. Instead of paying attention to my opponent who returned with a great drop shot and made the point, I was considering how I would marinade the salmon we were grilling for dinner. The combination of soy sauce, white wine, fresh chopped garlic and ginger immediately came to mind. I had never known how to cook fish until quite recently. Now I have this great recipe from my son, Jordan, and can never go wrong. "The only thing is," he had warned me "don't leave the fish in the marinade for more than twenty minutes or it will overpower it."
When my partner gave me a dirty look for double faulting, glared at me for netting the next passing shot, and yelled at me for the next lob that sailed out, I started to feel bad. But then I remembered Jim Loehr's advice that I had recently read in Tennis Today. He is a sports psychologist who suggests that dealing with mistakes in a positive manner allows you to play your potential and have more fun. Even though it was kind of hard to do that while we were down four-love and my self-esteem was down even further, I decided to make reservations instead of salmon and change my perception about my errors.
I quit thinking about our opponents gloating, and instead thought of this as an opportunity to learn. I knew that the brain acts like a computer, I was just hoping that mine was in the on position. I told myself that mistakes aren't dead-ends. They aren't personal failures. In fact, our brain needs us to make mistakes in order to learn and improve and provide information that it needs to find the right answer, whether it be how much spin to put on our topspin lob, or how much earlier to strike the ball to send it sharply cross-court. Considering the generous amount of negative feedback I had already provided my computer, I figured I was in good shape.
So instead of being put off by my mistakes I became motivated to correct the problem that had taken me off course. The first thing I did was to stop my mind from worrying that my friends would never ask me to play again. Then, I instructed myself that the only thing that existed was this moment, and that in this moment there was only the ball, which I kept looking at it no matter what. Whenever my mind strayed like a naughty puppy who wouldn't stay in place, I simply brought it back to the ball. My partner grinned and gave me a high-five when we took the set 6-4.
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