Last week I talked about how stories can be used in coaching to cement ideas. This week I want to share another story. It’s an old Chinese proverb about a farmer and I use it to illustrate present thinking and perspective.
The proverb
There was once a Chinese farmer whose only horse ran away. His neighbours gathered around and commiserated. ‘What bad luck,’ they cried.
The farmer shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
The next day, the farmer’s horse came back home leading seven wild horses.
Again, his neighbours gathered. ‘What wonderful luck!’ they cried.
Again, the farmer shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
A few days later, the farmer’s only son rode one of the wild horses. He fell off and broke his leg.
Once more the neighbours gathered to commiserate. Again, the farmer replied with a shrug and a maybe.
Two days later, there was a knock on the farmer’s door and on his doorstep stood an army sergeant and five soldiers. ‘We are here to conscript your son into the army,’ the sergeant said.
‘My son has a broken leg,’ the farmer replied and showed them his son.
‘He is no good to us then,’ the sergeant replied and left.
What the farmer teaches us
I love this story because it so simply illustrates two things:
1. Consequences are not always easy to predict. Just because something seems bad today, it doesn’t mean it will be bad tomorrow.
2. There is little point worrying about the past or the future. It is better to accept the present and make decisions based on what you know now rather than riding a constant wave of emotions.
How does this apply to coaching tennis?
I use it to teach my players perspective, present things and the value of process over results.
Perspective
Competing at a high level in any sport is gruelling and a lot goes wrong. A lot also goes right. This story can help your players keep perspective.
Your player is injured. Bad?
Maybe.
But what if it gives them time to work properly on their mental game and they come back stronger?
A player wins a huge 40 rally point. Awesome!
Maybe.
But then they are so gassed they lose the next three points and the game.
Putting a good or bad label on events is rarely useful. When your players have perspective, they can see possibilities more clearly and not take the highs and lows so personally.
Staying in the present
Because the consequences of events are difficult to predict, staying in the present makes a whole lot of sense. Afterall, what’s important is what is true now. Not what was true or what might be true.
I’m sure you’ve seen it with your players before. They are up 4-0 in a set, lose a close game, then another easy game and now the score is 4 -2. They start to panic because they were winning 4-0! They crumble and end up losing the set. Instead of staying present and seeing what was true at 4-2 - that they were still up in the set, they worried about what happened and what might happen. Neither of which really mattered.
What mattered is what they were going to do at 4-2.
If you can teach your players to stay in the present, their decision making and ability to stay calm and focused will improve. And when players are calm and focused on court, generally their results will improve and more importantly so will their enjoyment of the game.
Reward the process
Another way to help cultivate this present thinking is to reward the process not the result. This took me a while to learn. I would clap and praise an awesome backhand winner from my player. Now, I don’t praise the shot, but rather the process they took to achieve the result.
‘It was great how to pushed your opponent into the backhand corner with that high and heavy ball to get that short backhand you could attack up the line.’
It’s not the final shot that is important. It’s the steps they took to get there, because as mentioned in an earlier blog – even when you win a match you will lose almost half the points. So, one great result isn’t what matters, it’s the ability to follow a process that leads to a higher probability of great results. And staying present is part of that process.
Because at the end of the day, the previous result good or bad may not affect the future result.
Will you hit another backhand winner up the line?
Maybe.
Regards,
Marc Sophoulis