The phases you mentioned in learning anything seem especially relevant for sports.
1. To have a particular kind of feelings (felt senses) that represent something (control, balance, singing right, playing the piano right, everything being done) 2. A range of intensity that we should keep that feeling sense in, in some given context (either trying to make sure we have some positive feeling, or that we avoid some negative feeling) 3. Various strategies for keeping it within that range
Below the surface, every sport is an extremely complex endeavour for the body, and mastering it is a marvelous achievement of the mind. You realise this particularly when starting out. I had my first golf class yesterday, and it’s far from the laid-back activity I thought it was. Just knowing how to grip the club correctly is a whole new world: whether the hands overlap or interlock, where the thumb is pointing at, getting the right pressure...This is before even starting with the backswing, impact, and follow-through.
In fact, though, knowing is not the right word. It’s feeling. I have been playing tennis for my whole life, and as I was shown the techniques for golf I constantly compared them with those of tennis, with which it shares many postures and motions. It is astonishing how complex and how sensitive each stroke or swing is, and yet how it gets done seemlessly and almost unthinkingly when one masters it. If one tried to get each tiny detail exactly right, it seems impossible we could even hit the ball. Timothy Gallwey in The Inner Game of Tennis presented this same process of focusing and of being aware of your body and sensations in order to enhance these felt senses and let your mind adjust the intensity to the right felt standards.
On a different note, a failure mode of mine as a youngster, and which I’m still trying to overcome, was related to the fear of being accused of something, but with completely different countermeasures than the example you gave; it’s more like a contradictory failure mode.
My sister was often envious and critical of any dissonant action, so I became afraid of her disapproving anything I did, at any moment. At the same time, if I made the same choices as her, she would also accuse me of copying her. So this ended up making me try to settle in a neutral territory and almost become a yes-boy.
For example, in a restaurant I would be afraid of ordering salmon, because my sister might order it, or because even if she didn’t, it might seem like I was copying her predilection for healthy food. However, I would also be afraid of overcorrecting and of ordering something too unhealthy, or of asking for more food because I hadn’t had enough. And so I would end up ordering a middle-ground option, like, say, steak.
I had my first golf class yesterday, and it’s far from the laid-back activity I thought it was. Just knowing how to grip the club correctly is a whole new world: whether the hands overlap or interlock, where the thumb is pointing at, getting the right pressure...This is before even starting with the backswing, impact, and follow-through.
In fact, though, knowing is not the right word. It’s feeling. I have been playing tennis for my whole life, and as I was shown the techniques for golf I constantly compared them with those of tennis, with which it shares many postures and motions. It is astonishing how complex and how sensitive each stroke or swing is, and yet how it gets done seemlessly and almost unthinkingly when one masters it. If one tried to get each tiny detail exactly right, it seems impossible we could even hit the ball. Timothy Gallwey in The Inner Game of Tennis presented this same process of focusing and of being aware of your body and sensations in order to enhance these felt senses and let your mind adjust the intensity to the right felt standards.
Great example, thanks!
On a different note, a failure mode of mine as a youngster, and which I’m still trying to overcome, was related to the fear of being accused of something, but with completely different countermeasures than the example you gave; it’s more like a contradictory failure mode.
Yeah, it’s a very common thing that there are two opposite strategies that one can hit upon in order to deal with these kinds of strategies, one of them “approach/do” and the other “avoid/don’t do”. In this case, “do something bad” vs. “avoid doing anything bad”. It looks to me like the brain has a tendency to generate both options, and then some combination of external consequences and the person’s past history and genetic disposition decides which of those strategies becomes predominant.
People may also have the issue that both a “do” and a “don’t do” strategy have become reinforced for them, so some situations may trigger both and lead to significant internal conflict. (E.g. the example in the text about a person alternatively seeking romantic connection and then wanting to get out of a relationship, is a description of a case where “approach” and “avoid” strategies alternate in getting triggered.)
It also seems like a relevant difference that in your case, you knew what would trigger your sister’s accusations. Whereas in the case I was thinking of, the person was genuinely confused about where the original accusation came from (they were accused of stealing something they never even touched). That made the “don’t do things that would get me blamed” strategy less available as an option, since they didn’t know what they could have done differently to avoid the accusations in the first place.
Schema therapy also has a slightly different way of characterizing this kind of a thing which I like, of three different coping styles of surrender (giving into a negative belief), avoidance (trying to avoid situations where the belief would be triggered) and overcompensation (actively trying to prove the negative belief wrong). This page has some examples.
The phases you mentioned in learning anything seem especially relevant for sports.
Below the surface, every sport is an extremely complex endeavour for the body, and mastering it is a marvelous achievement of the mind. You realise this particularly when starting out. I had my first golf class yesterday, and it’s far from the laid-back activity I thought it was. Just knowing how to grip the club correctly is a whole new world: whether the hands overlap or interlock, where the thumb is pointing at, getting the right pressure...This is before even starting with the backswing, impact, and follow-through.
In fact, though, knowing is not the right word. It’s feeling. I have been playing tennis for my whole life, and as I was shown the techniques for golf I constantly compared them with those of tennis, with which it shares many postures and motions. It is astonishing how complex and how sensitive each stroke or swing is, and yet how it gets done seemlessly and almost unthinkingly when one masters it. If one tried to get each tiny detail exactly right, it seems impossible we could even hit the ball. Timothy Gallwey in The Inner Game of Tennis presented this same process of focusing and of being aware of your body and sensations in order to enhance these felt senses and let your mind adjust the intensity to the right felt standards.
On a different note, a failure mode of mine as a youngster, and which I’m still trying to overcome, was related to the fear of being accused of something, but with completely different countermeasures than the example you gave; it’s more like a contradictory failure mode.
My sister was often envious and critical of any dissonant action, so I became afraid of her disapproving anything I did, at any moment. At the same time, if I made the same choices as her, she would also accuse me of copying her. So this ended up making me try to settle in a neutral territory and almost become a yes-boy.
For example, in a restaurant I would be afraid of ordering salmon, because my sister might order it, or because even if she didn’t, it might seem like I was copying her predilection for healthy food. However, I would also be afraid of overcorrecting and of ordering something too unhealthy, or of asking for more food because I hadn’t had enough. And so I would end up ordering a middle-ground option, like, say, steak.
Great example, thanks!
Yeah, it’s a very common thing that there are two opposite strategies that one can hit upon in order to deal with these kinds of strategies, one of them “approach/do” and the other “avoid/don’t do”. In this case, “do something bad” vs. “avoid doing anything bad”. It looks to me like the brain has a tendency to generate both options, and then some combination of external consequences and the person’s past history and genetic disposition decides which of those strategies becomes predominant.
People may also have the issue that both a “do” and a “don’t do” strategy have become reinforced for them, so some situations may trigger both and lead to significant internal conflict. (E.g. the example in the text about a person alternatively seeking romantic connection and then wanting to get out of a relationship, is a description of a case where “approach” and “avoid” strategies alternate in getting triggered.)
It also seems like a relevant difference that in your case, you knew what would trigger your sister’s accusations. Whereas in the case I was thinking of, the person was genuinely confused about where the original accusation came from (they were accused of stealing something they never even touched). That made the “don’t do things that would get me blamed” strategy less available as an option, since they didn’t know what they could have done differently to avoid the accusations in the first place.
Schema therapy also has a slightly different way of characterizing this kind of a thing which I like, of three different coping styles of surrender (giving into a negative belief), avoidance (trying to avoid situations where the belief would be triggered) and overcompensation (actively trying to prove the negative belief wrong). This page has some examples.