CHAMPIONS ARE ALERT AND EXTREMELY SENSITIVE TO ACTIONS THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS
By Allen Fox, Ph.D. c 2005, all rights reserved
book excerpt from “THE WINNER’S MIND”
The winners seek information and mentally file away for future use every scrap of available data. Most importantly, they see what works. Much learning comes from experience, and the champions are alert. They concentrate intently on the task at hand, learn quickly from their failures and successes, and adjust their behaviors accordingly. Information gleaned from reward and punishment immediately shapes future actions. Champions do this because they are so deeply committed to their tasks. Their high drive sharpens their senses. Wanting so badly to succeed opens their eyes. It focuses their attention and masses their powers of concentration. In this state they are remarkably perceptive. In a word, they work “smart.”
Conversely, the less successful are not perceptive and tend to make the same mistakes repeatedly, behaving as if there were no difference between reward and punishment.
Because their fears of failure make them shun commitment, they tread only on the surface of life. The task at hand does not fill their view-screens and their attentions wander. Their insecurities and self-protective impulses cloud their minds, and they see with half-closed eyes. Not believing deeply in their own capabilities and only too willing to cast their fates to chance, they proceed blindly, making only perfunctory efforts to understand the competitive scene confronting them. In a word, they work “dumb.”
Consider how great tennis players learn where and how hard to hit the ball in particular situations. They learn by trial and error. For example, they may, in one situation, hit the ball to a certain spot and lose the point; later, in the same situation, they may hit the ball to a different spot and win the point. They mentally record the results of these and thousands of other experiences and develop a feeling for which spots are advantageous and which are dangerous. During competition they instinctively use this information to select the shot for each situation that provides the maximum payoff for the minimum risk. People like Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams are able to choose with uncanny efficiency the highest percentage reply to any shot their opponents may hit. They rarely hit the ball harder or closer to the lines than necessary. They develop this judgment by keeping their eyes open and adjusting their strategies in response to what they see. They are sensitive to what works, drawn to it like a shark to blood.
On the other hand many people seem largely oblivious to the lessons provided by success and failure and respond only to the most obvious examples. (Champions, by contrast, respond to the slightest nuance.) I saw this in operation at the tennis camps I ran during my years as coach at Pepperdine University. During the summer nearly 100 young tennis hopefuls attended each week, eager, for the most part, to hone their skills and improve their games. My opening talk on strategy stressed the fact that at the lower skill levels defense has the advantage over offense, and the person who hits the ball in the court most often will usually win. Lacking fine accuracy, the player hitting hard and close to the lines takes too many risks, makes too many errors, and is going to lose. They all nodded in agreement.
Yet when they got on the court most of them did what they had always done – hit the ball too hard, too close to the lines, and made too many errors. Their take on the situation was that hitting 3 out of 4 balls in the court was not great, but good enough. Unfortunately for them, when they ran into an opponent who hit 4 out of 5 balls in the court, they had to hit a winner within three shots or lose. Since they couldn’t, they needed to become steadier, a condition accomplished simply by hitting the ball easier and farther away from the lines. The few that understood this (and hit more safely) had a commanding competitive advantage and won almost all of their matches.
Somehow the majority did not respond to the evidence of their senses and continued to over-hit, even though they lost again and again to the steadier players. Instead they responded by calling the steady players “dinkers,” belittling their games, and claiming that the “dinkers” would never get any better playing that way. In the process, they failed to adjust their games in accordance with their capabilities. Rather they continued to hit too hard, miss, and lose.
Why did they do this, despite the evidence of their senses? They did so because the usual bugaboos of insecurity and the desire to avoid difficult tasks clouded their judgments. It is, to put it simply, emotionally easier to just bang away at the ball and leave the outcome to fortune than it is to, in a controlled and thoughtful manner, keep the ball in the court. If you have a good day, you win; if you have a bad one, you lose – no emotional drama. By contrast, playing consistently leads to long, difficult, stress-filled points. You go nose to nose with your opponent, and the contest becomes an obvious battle of wills. It’s hard work, and it gets personal. Winning requires emotional discipline and prolonged, strenuous concentration. Unruly nerves and choking raise their ugly heads and must be overcome. None of this is pleasant, so the average person dodges the situation. They subconsciously realize that if they scrutinize the scene too closely, they might have to take actions that they would rather avoid. So they don’t look; they keep hitting; and they lose.
In order to work “smart,” the way champions do, you have to be perpetually alert. You have to continually take in and process information. In a word, you have to always be thinking about what you are doing, not, as is too often the case, mindlessly going through the motions – on mental autopilot. As they plug away on a task or practice a new skill champions ask themselves questions like, “Is this the easiest way to do it?” “What are my weaknesses and how can I improve them?” “Why am I doing it this way instead of that way?” They want to know everything about what they are doing so they can do it better. Their eyes and minds are unceasingly active and vigilant.
For example, when tennis champions practice they constantly refine their techniques, and this requires mental effort. When working on their groundstrokes, great players focus on getting into perfect position, preparing the shoulder turn early, watching the ball, and any other technical device that proves helpful in hitting the shot better. They concentrate intensely for hours at a time making small adjustments, attempting to rehearse the muscle memory involved in a perfect stroke. Their goal is to make all motions correct and automatic for use in competition. On the other hand, their less successful contemporaries may put in similar amounts of time on the practice courts and exert similar amounts of physical effort, but their minds are often elsewhere, hence their improvement per hour of court time is far less. The less successful are mentally passive during practice, assuming that simply putting in the time and doing the physical work will make them better. Of course they do get better, but not better enough.
Most people habitually avoid mental exertion. Examples are commonplace. Watching television, which is a mentally passive activity, is more attractive to the masses than reading a book, which requires active mental participation. The repellent aspect of exercising is more mental than physical. The mind has to force the body to work, and it is this, rather than the work itself that most people wish to shun.
Do you need proof? Recall the television ads for those belts that you wrapped around your midsection and which supposedly stimulated your abdominal muscles with pulses of electricity and caused them to contract. You saw beautiful young men and women with shapely abdominal muscles on these programs, claiming to have gotten their figures by relaxing and watching their favorite television shows while the belts stimulated their muscles. (It seemed too good to be true, and it was.) But what was the charm of the belts? Your abdominal muscles still had to contract in order to become shapely and strong, just as they do with sit ups and crunches. The difference was only in what drove the muscles to work. With the belts, your muscles were driven by external electricity whereas with normal exercise, the electricity had to be supplied by your brain. And people were willing to pay to escape having to use their brains.
To be maximally successful you must work towards your goals with your eyes wide open. Hard work is helpful but not enough. Lowering one’s head and simply grinding forward is apt to be inefficient. You must make a special effort to work with your head
up – alert and concentrating so as to soak up the available information. Absorb and employ ALL information so that you work not just hard, but also “smart.”
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Comments
3 Responses to “CHAMPIONS ARE ALERT AND EXTREMELY SENSITIVE TO ACTIONS THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS”Leave Comment
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As always dr. Allen fox deliver the right articles
For us to read and learn from. Thank you for sharing.
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Thanks, Marc!
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Dr. Fox – Have enjoyed and benefited from your books/articles over the last two years. Would you consider adding an article on how to improve ones’ mental approach when playing with a weak partner in doubles? I see it a lot with my fellow recreational players that play subpar with a weak partner, but oplay well/up to their normal potential with a stronger/competent partner. I know the simple answer is “be more selective about choosing your partner” but with teams/leagues, you often have no control over the pairing. And sometimes its mixed doubles where the woman can;t sustain long rallies, etc.
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