Rhythm & Flow Tennis

1st in a series on the psychology of winning

Winners have more awareness than the average person. They are well aware of how little they really know about anything in their world. They are eager to learn, especially about their own impact on their quality of life. Winners display positive self-awareness. Positive self-awareness is self-honesty. Winners are honest about their potential and honest about the time and effort necessary for top achievement. Winners are more tuned- in and more turned- on than others around them. They don’t need drugs or external stimulants to make life “a happening”. Losers are unaware of what’s happening (or lie about it) in their environments, unaware of the needs of others, and unaware of their own personal involvement with life.

Winners are open. They look at “relative” rather than “absolute” facts. Losers are narrow-minded human beings. Positive self-awareness is open-mindedness. Are your prejudices inherited or are they your own? Are you looking at life through someone else’s eyeglasses? Positive self-awareness is realizing that each human being is a person with equal rights to fulfil his or her own potential in life. It is realizing that skin color, birthplace, religious beliefs, sex, financial status, and intelligence are not measures of worth or worthiness.

This ability to accept the fact that everyone is unique and to be able to understand another person’s point of view is the definition of empathy. Empathy is walking in another person’s shoes for a mile before passing judgment. Empathy is “feeling with” someone else. Sympathy is “feeling for” someone else.

And here is an important key to winning self-awareness. Winners develop mental toughness which is commonly referred to as strength of character. Winners learn to relax and cope with the trials and tribulations of everyday life without popping “uppers” when they are depressed and Valium when they are anxious. Experiments have proven that adversities and failures in our lives, if adapted to and viewed as normal corrective feedback, serve to develop in us an immunity against anxiety, depression, and stress.

Sixty million anti- anxiety drug tablets per year are consumed in the US. These drugs serve to reduce emotional reactions to the threat of pain or failure. Unfortunately, they also interfere with the ability to learn to tolerate these stresses. Those who can’t tolerate stress in life, over-react to what is happening. They get angry quickly and defensive easily. Their blood pressure jumps as their heart rate quickens. The effects of this type of daily distress are devastating to the mental and physical health of the individual. As a result, these people tend to drink more, smoke more and pop more pills to cope or escape.

Winners know who they are, what they believe, their role in life, their great potential and the future roles and goals which will mark fulfilment of their potential. They have learned these things through experience, insight, feedback and judgment. As a result, they can continuously not only “play from strength” in the game of life, but also avoid errors and correct weaknesses.

They don’t kid others and they don’t kid themselves.

Losers say: “Who knows what I could do if I only had a chance”. Winners say: “I know who I am, where I’m coming from, and where I’m going”.