I’ve been thinking deeply about W. Timothy Gallwey’s “The Inner Game of Tennis” recently, largely in the context of Smash, but also my life as a whole. While I don’t completely agree with every point of advice mentioned in the book (some of the ideas about how anger/emotion can be an effective competitive motivator, and the view that “childishness” is necessarily at the core of free-form self-expression), there are a plethora of valuable insights that are worth considering and thinking about that can contribute in adding dimensionality and perspective to your mental game. Here are a few ideas I found to be particularly potent:
1) “Let go of ego.”
Only by realizing the involvement (and interference) of your ego in your actions can you begin to let it go. Your body is already a well-tuned machine, with thousands of hours (likely more) of practice, observations, and experience. There is no need for your ego to become involved in what should be pure processes of decision-making and execution.
This may sound abstract and Zen, but many of the things we may believe are important are quite small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Things only seem large because our egos exaggerate their significance, and as such, our egos attempt to equate attainment and achievement with success and self-importance.
We should attempt to curb judgment from what we observe, and refrain from judging things as good or bad. There only exists reality and outcomes, and we should not employ judgment to feed our egos or put others down. We are all just people, and our egos, in their constant thirst for recognition and acceptance, interfere with our already proficient abilities and invariably makes us less than what we could be.
2) “Live in the present.”
In an attempt to remove your ego from the game, a natural progression from those ideas is that you should live in the present. It does not matter who you were in the past, or who you’d like to be in the future. Focus only on what is in front of you. In the middle of the match, don’t think complacently about who you’d beaten during the tournament; similarly, try not to think about how people will think of you if you win or lose against your current opponent. None of these thoughts actually help you to play your game, and will only work to involve ego into your body processes. Thoughts like “Falcon is a dumb character for dumb players,” “My friends would never let me live it down if I lost to another Falcon,” and “It’s happening, I’m gonna lose to Falcon again” all interfere with your perception of the present. One thought that is particularly poisonous to maintaining motivation is “I’ve done well enough already, it’s fine if I lose now,” as it takes your mind so far beyond the game — you will be simultaneously wrestling with projections of the past and future, as well as inviting ego to enter the conversation.
This is not to say that brainless play is encouraged, or that reflection is not important. There is plenty of time to do that during down-time, but in the midst of a match, it’s preferable to trust one’s body to make the adjustments and self-correct. Trying to force things often leads to worse results. What is important is that one can play with a clear mind free of judgment and distractions.
Society also shares the same views about the present. If one thing can counted upon, it is that the majority of strangers we meet will be judgmental and default to shallow criteria in assessing us, if only because it takes less effort than to try to truly know people. This is an issue that reflects greater problems inherent in the social norms we’ve come to accept, and not a viewpoint I’d want to promote, but sadly, it’s how things generally are. Few people truly care about your past achievements or about your complex pipe dreams. What is important is that your hard work and focus are pledged towards the present, which is the only thing you can truly control. Understand that your present will become your future past.
3) “Worst-case scenarios are rarely as bad as they seem.”
As an immature and idealistic person deep down, it’s often challenging for me to truly conceptualize the ramifications of worst-case scenarios. In the literal sense, I can, of course, perceive hypothetical projections for what bad situations would be like and how they might unfold. But there always existed an immovable barrier within me that prevented those projections from being considered as “possible realities.” I have been actively trying to dissolve that barrier, and to think further and more deeply about how bad things would really be if I had to embrace failure. This was once again, a myopia that derives from ego. If I could somehow distance myself from considering the possibility of failure, I could delude myself into thinking that I am somehow superior, infallible, and immune to failure. In reality, I often fail, and in the process, disappoint myself and others.
What might be a worst-case scenario in Smash? You enter an event, go 0-2 drop, and be out of the running. That may seem like an intolerable thought, but in time, that too, can be a reconcilable possibility. If I were to use a mathematical analogy, that would be akin to a local minimum, but would hardly be a global minimum. Realistically, following a loss, you’d be out of the tournament, which is certainly not an unlikely outcome for many people. Given the size of many tournaments, eventually, almost everyone loses. It’s good to set feasible tournament goals, but sticking to them is not the end-all be-all. Beyond the inevitable loss, there’s an entire day of friendlies still waiting for you, and as miserable as you might be in the short-term, you can still make much of your tournament day.
One of my greatest regrets concerning my money match with Tafokints during Apex 2014 was that I thought so deeply about the speech I would make if I had won that I was unable to impart a powerful or meaningful message when I ultimately lost. In my hubris, and in my attempts to protect my engorged ego, I could not rationally weigh the possibility of defeat. I defaulted to an extraordinarily silly and shallow line: “If there people you want to beat, F*CK ‘EM UP!” While it summarized what I wanted to say, about not being afraid of pushing yourself as a competitor and challenging others as an underdog, that was hardly the way I wanted to convey it. Thankfully, that line hasn’t caught on or defined me as player, but it still serves to remind me of an important lesson: Always prepare two speeches.
4) “Competition, in the purest sense, is not a life-or-death struggle, but rather a dialogue between two people looking to bring out the best in one another.”
The act of beating your opponents should not be thought of as a means of dominating others, or as a validation of your superiority and self-worth. These power trips do little to actually help you win. Competition, in its purest sense, is neither an outlet for aggression towards others, nor an externalization of one’s insecurities and self-doubts; rather, it is a challenging journey of self-improvement and growth. On that journey, we encounter difficult and worthwhile opponents who are capable of pushing us to the brink. These opponents are not to be feared or disparaged. Even if they are hostile and unsociable in person, by playing you earnestly as a competitor, they are forcing you to proofread your style and re-evaluate your habits. Your exchanges with them serve to shape you as a stronger and more well-rounded player as they are showing you, either directly or indirectly, the limits of your current play.
Worthy opponents are your best friends. They are trying to bring out the best in you by providing the best play they are capable of. In challenging you, they hope, too, to discover new vistas of potentiality within themselves. In that sense, while you are antagonists in pursuit of the same results, you are compatriots in your goals of self-improvement. Competition is often thought to be divisive and rivalistic, but in truth, it is a form of refined cooperation.
5) “Results are not a reflection of your self-worth.”
Your results may define what others may think of you, but they by no means define what truly is, and that is that you are you, whether you win or lose. To that end, you will encounter players who believe strongly in the opposite, and who perpetually allow themselves excuses and wiggle-room. Perhaps, they may disrespectfully pick their secondaries, or otherwise claim that they are not trying or playing hard. But at the heart of that lies a pervasive and crippling fear — by “purposefully” not playing at their best, they sidestep the possibility that if they tried their hardest and still lost, it would count. Therein lies another flawed ego-trip, one that assumes that we are only worthy of respect insofar as how we stack up against others. This could not be further from the truth. Giving your opponents the best you have to offer every game is one of the greatest kindnesses you can offer. That is why I almost never play my secondaries against any opponent in tournament, regardless of which round we are in. By playing my strongest character and by inputting a great amount of effort, I deny myself the ability to make excuses and thereby force myself to take full responsibility for the outcome of my matches.
A more stable form of strength is internal, focusing on one’s pride, dignity, and self-love, all of which fosters self-sufficient and non-predatory confidence. Your evaluation of self should be clear and unclouded, and seeing yourself as you really are, flaws and all, should help to form a well-rounded sense of your personal baseline. In understanding yourself more, you will find that you have less to prove and less of a reason to over-compensate for your imagined deficiencies. You can be grounded by your baseline, and wild fantasies of winning or losing will stop becoming as alluring or as humiliating.
Ultimately, a match is simply just a match, and should be seen as a small event in our individual competitive journeys, and as an even smaller blip in the larger continuum of our lives. And from there, how significant are our lives really in the greater picture? Are we so important that our carefully-groomed social media personas should so hugely impact our perceptions of self? Does how many Likes, Retweets, or Upvotes we receive offer us anything other than a transient and disappointingly virtual sense of validation? Even if we are so-called “experts,” “community figures,” or “personalities,” there is so much more that makes up who we are than the limited amount we publicly display to others. It is easy to lose sight of this fact, in both our assessment of self and others. Regardless of the feedback we may receive, comments over social media, or the lines we hear following a match, these distant reflections of how others perceive us to be should not define our personal baseline. The only person who can define your “self” is yourself.
Thank you all for reading this.
Your friendly neighborhood Sheik main,
Tian
formatting plz
Great article. I know I can use these ideas to further myself as a person and as a player