I was so anxious to pick up more wins that I forgot the task at hand. This is called trying too hard, putting pressure on yourself, getting tight. Whatever you want to call it, it’s not a good thing. If you\u2019re the New York Yankees and you get to the World Series, you\u2019re expected to win. If you\u2019re the Florida Marlins, it’s a huge surprise if you win. Who’s gonna feel looser and play better? It’s bad enough if others put pressure on you to perform well but it’s really unnecessary if you do it yourself. I don\u2019t see anyone lining up to see me play.<\/p>\n
Anyone who thinks we play sports for fun isn’t paying attention. Watch people routinely berate themselves and throw their racket and scream when they make an error. While I was playing my opponent today, his teammate kept applauding his winning shots and cheering him on. That bugged me so I looked over at him and gave him a dirty look. He left. Heaven knows what I\u2019d do if I had to play in front of a hostile crowd. The point is that all the insecurities and doubts that plague my everyday life are also front and center at a tennis match.<\/p>\n
If I wanted to have fun I\u2019d have taken up bingo. No, I want to learn how to compete and do it well and I want to chase away the demons that drown out a much larger part of the day than they should. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a happy highly functioning human being but a lot of the internal messages I generate are negative or critical. If I wrote them down they\u2019d look absurd. No one would admit to having thoughts like that. Houses have burned down, whole families are dead and cities have crumbled before I’ve woken up from some daydreams.
\n![](\"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennisdiary\/images\/self.gif\")
\nI\u2019m working under the assumption that I can use tennis to slowly decrease the volume of those inner voices. If I can play tennis and focus on the task at hand, getting the ball back over the net, then I\u2019m not thinking about anything else. If I can develop that skill in tennis, I can develop it in other parts of my life. Actually, the volume of the voices probably won\u2019t decrease at all, it\u2019s just that I won\u2019t be paying attention because I\u2019ll be thinking about something else.<\/p>\n
Practice and Competition Report<\/em>: played league<\/a> matches, one set of doubles and one set of singles: 3-6, 6-4. I was supposed to play an opponent who is ranked below me in my league match this week. I was sure I could pick up some games and get my winning percentage up to 50% by beating him. I hoped to win by at least 6-3 but it rained hard the day before the match […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,68,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-body-mechanics","category-mental-skills","category-tennis-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSolutions Analysis<\/em>: looking for a solution to the problem of getting nervous. Possible solution: use an affirmation<\/a> that deals with playing under pressure.
\nSuccess Analysis<\/em>:
\n1. Won my singles match. Got the ball back over the net consistently.
\n2. Returned serve well.
\n3. My serving is starting to feel automatic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"