The Book That Changed My Life Part 2: Living the Inner Game
Inner Game principles got infectious quickly
*Note: if you haven’t read Part I, you can find it here.
After it came out in 1974, it didn’t take long for people reading Timothy Gallwey’s Inner Game of Tennis to realize that the book wasn’t really about tennis. Or at least that it was about a lot more than tennis.
Once the book was published, people in other arenas asked Gallwey how he would apply its principles to their fields. So Gallwey wrote “inner games” for skiing and golf, even music. He started getting invited to corporate retreats, and eventually wrote The Inner Game of Work and The Inner Game of Stress. He created an Inner Game Institute. Over time, the book slowly built a quiet cult following: violinist Itzhak Perlman, football player Tom Brady, football coach Pete Carroll, basketball coach Steve Kerr, politician Al Gore and others (see below).
As a teenage reader focused on tennis, I followed none of these developments. But when I reread the book recently, I realized how profoundly the book had effected how I approached almost everything, including my work and spiritual life. The principles I took away altered my DNA.
Observe, don’t judge. Particularly in politically-charged policy environments or discussions of key issues of faith, it’s easy to dismiss people you disagree with as insensitive, or naïve, or alien, or bigots or idiots. It’s harder to turn off judgment and try to understand their perspective. Learning to listen and hear where someone is coming from, and why, makes it easier for me to find some sliver of common ground and, occasionally, bafflingly, annoyingly, to change my mind.
In a column last year on The Inner Game, Bill Gates had a different observation on the “not judging” lesson. He told the story of when a group of Microsoft employees shipped a software update with a bug. Rather than scream at them, fire them or judge them for what they already knew was a screwup, he says he told them simply: “Today you lost (the company) a lot of money. Tomorrow, come in and try to do better.”
IGOT-ists Bill Gates and Trey Murphy III
New Orleans Pelicans forward Trey Murphy III, another fan of the The Inner Game, applies the principle of “observe” to his basketball, but change a couple of his words and it could apply to any field of work: “I can’t get mad about what a ref (boss/colleague/competitor) does,” he told HoopsHype.com: “I can’t get mad if my jump shot (presentation/sales pitch/strategy) isn’t falling. It is what it is.” *
Live in the present. To make the organizations we work with better, we have to learn from the past and be ready for the future, but there’s so much to relish if we learn to celebrate the small joys of each day – an employee brings in homemade cookies or sticks a presentation, a hallway conversation launches what could turn into a new product or breakthrough. Our spiritual lives devolve when we get stuck in the past or paralyzed by a potential future; they bloom when we don’t worry, but show confidence and faith.
Trust your instincts. I’ve subjected almost every big decision in my life to protracted analysis. The analysis is essential for me – I need to find all available numbers, list all arguments. But in the end, the scribbling never gets me to a final decision. The decisions come only after deep omphaloskepsis* – does my heart (or navel) tell me this is the right next job or the right new product or strategic direction?
When it came to understanding my spiritual beliefs, I spent two intense years as an adult arguing, studying, reading books and listening to talks before recognizing that analysis was not going to get me there.
At some point I simply needed to take a flying leap, to trust, to appreciate what Gallwey calls the most important word in the English language – “let.” I needed to let go of control and permit my faith to happen. The book that gave me a juvenile understanding of Buddhism set me up for my adult Christianity.
Fifty years after publication, there are some elements of The Inner Game that clang a bit – Gallwey assumes his tennis audience is all male; some of the language hits me as a little hippy-dippy. But mostly it is just profoundly reasonable, elegant, convicting, calming and comforting. I’m willing to hold up IGOT as an EGOT** of books for me – on tennis and life.
-Leslie
Questions: What ideas from play have you integrated into your work and spiritual lives? Or vice versa?
*The act of gazing intently at one’s own navel. More recently I have come to understand this act as “prayer.”
**Informal acronym for creatives who’ve hit the highest level on all four artistic stages – winners of Emmy’s, Grammy’s, Oscar’s and Tony’s.
References:
Gallwey’s extensions of Inner Game principles to other fields, including golf, music, skiing, stress and work: https://theinnergame.com/inner-game-books/the-inner-game-of-tennis/
Bill Gates on the Inner Game: https://www.gatesnotes.com/The-Inner-Game-of-Tennis
Trey Murphy on applying The Inner Game to basketball: https://hoopshype.com/lists/trey-murphy-nba-draft-interview-virginia-rice-sleepers/?fbclid=IwAR00djlC0xxAVgyU3m3bZW8tTF9teKO6yCRNnTJy4C2epXFkkHOJyRBjdF0
Don’t worry: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206%3A25-34&version=NIV
Do Not Worry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhbK2GpbKTY