Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.
The greatest efforts in sports came when the mind is as still as a glass lake.
Concentration is not staring hard at something. It is not trying to concentrate.
Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal, but the value in winning is only as great as the value of the goal reached.
Like one’s own children, golf has an uncanny way of endearing itself to us while at the same time evoking every weakness of mind and character, no matter how well hidden.
When the mind is free of any thought or judgment, it is still and acts like a mirror. Then and only then can we know things as they are.
It is said that in breathing man recapitulates the rhythm of the universe. When the mind is fastened to the rhythm of breathing, it tends to become absorbed and calm. Whether on or off the court, I know of no better way to begin to deal with anxiety than to place the mind on one’s breathing process.
The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; he discovers a true basis for self-confidence; and he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.
The ability to focus the mind is the ability to not let it run away with you. It does not mean not to think – but to be the one who directs your own thinking.
Not assuming you already know is a powerful principle of focus. One.
But who said that I am to be measured by how well I do things? In fact, who said that I should be measured at all? Who indeed? What is required to disengage oneself from this trap is a clear knowledge that the value of a human being cannot be measured by performance – or by any other arbitrary measurement.
Letting it happen is not making it happen. It is not trying hard.
But of course the instant I try to make myself relax, true relaxation vanishes, and in its place is a strange phenomenon called “trying to relax.” Relaxation happens only when allowed, not as a result of “trying” or “making.