Have you ever wondered why, in the movie Matrix, Morpheus kept insisting that Neo was 'The One'? What did he mean by 'The One'?
Well, I did wonder for a long time. It remained a mystery till I read the the book 'The Inner Game of Tennis' written by Tim Gallwey.
The competitors that play the inner game are Self 1 and Self 2. Self 1 is the judgemental, criticizing, part of the personality. Its focus is on finding faults and pointing out the mistakes made by Self 2. Self 1 suffers from recency effect. It is only focused on the here and now and has forgotten the lessons learned over the life time.
The real player, who plays the outer game is Self 2. Also called the 'body' or 'intuition', it carries all the lessons that has been learned over the life time and knows how to handle every situation. In a way Self 2 is the real boss. But like a tamed elephant, it has forgotten its power and meekly surrenders to the criticism by Self 1 and hides back in the shell.
Since Self 2 is the repository of all the experience and wisdom that one has learned over the life time, it should be the real 'boss'. Ideally the Self 1 should be the meek one standing on the sidelines while Self 2 drives the agenda.
Self 2 is a quick learner. It learns through pictures, videos or imagery. Another great tool for learning is visualization. Self 2 doesn't care for words. If you want Self 2 to do something, show how to do it. Suppose you want to hit to the far corner of the court, visualize the ball clearly in your mind as it hits your racket and flies over the net to the backhand corner. And then start hitting without judgement and ego. Let the body be, let it adjust the reality to the imagery. Learn to trust the body. You will see that over a very short period of time, you are able to consistently hit the target.
The body refers to Self 2. It knows what to do and how to do it. One has to just trust the body and let it do. It will deliver results quickly. That is the power of Self 2.
Observation and visualization is how children learn all the time. I remember when I was a child, I saw a tailor sewing a handkerchief. I saw him choosing the thread of the right colour, threading the needle and converting the raw piece of cloth into a beautiful hanky. I came home and took the cloth and sewed my first ever hanky. It came quite good. No one taught me the rules. No one taught me the 'process' of threading a needle. ("now you make sure that the thread goes through the hole in the needle at a 40 degree angle"). I just observed, learned and let go.
As we grow older, we allow
self 1 to take control. We become slaves of 'SOPs' and 'Processes'. We learn to inhibit our spontaneous Self 2 and it become meek
and timid and goes into its shell. This has a paradoxical effect of
actualizing Self 1's criticism.
Ego and pride are the realms of Self 1. They have no place in Self 2. In fact they weaken Self 2 by taking the focus away from 'the actions' (what Self 2 does) to 'the outcome', which is the ken of Self 1. Self 2 will do an excellent work if you do not let your ego take any
credit. He gives an example where he let the body play the game and he got 90% of the first serves in. He was so proud of the way he did it
that he boasted to a friend about 'how his serves have become awesome'.
The moment he said it, he found that he had 'lost it' and it took months
to get it back.
The concept of multiple personalities is not new. Freud called them the id, the ego and the superego. Transactional Analysts called them child, parent, adult. Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahnemann called it the 'System 1' and 'System 2' thinking.
(Do not mix them, mind you. Especially do not fall to the temptation to mix Self 1 of Gallwey with Kahneman's System 1 and Self 2 with Kahneman's System 2. These are different. System 1 thinking refers to impulsive, emotional way of thinking. System 2 thinking is also called 'Deliberate Thinking'. )
Now coming back to the question that I asked at the beginning of the post. Who is 'The One'? 'The One' is who have integrated both Self 1 and Self 2. He is neither judgemental not critical. His entire 'person', the body and the mind react together to any challenges. If he overcomes the challenges, he is not proud, he doesn't go bragging. If he fails to overcome, he is not sad. He reflects on the failure, integrates the lessons to his pool of knowledge and move on to the next challenge.
While reading the book, I couldn't help wonder how the ideas are very close to the Indian philosophy as explained in Bhagavad Gita. Mr.Gallwey says that Self 2 works best if the focus is on the game rather than on the outcome. This is what lord Krishna told Arjuna in 'Gita'. 'Do your work. Credit is not for you to take. You job is to do your duty'.
Gallwey also says that for self 2 to work, a clam mind is required. The way to achieve it is by focus. And focus is what Indian tradition of yoga is all about. Gallwey talks about 'feeling' the shot. 'Feel how the racket sits in your hand, feel how it hits the ball', he says.
This is what Dr.Sanjeev, our Yoga teacher tells us every time. As we do our asanas, he tells us to observe how each part of our body 'feels' (That 'feel' word, again)
Always observe, without any judgement, how your body feels. For example, as I write this my pen 'feels' cosy in my hand, I feel my grip tighter as I write a few words, I 'feel' the ink forming new words on the page. As I focus on my feeling, I feel myself totally immersed in the present. Focusing on how body feels at any moment is what is meant by living in the present.
Eureka!
As one focuses on how the body feels, one becomes more relaxed allowing Self 2 do even better. And that becomes a virtuous cycle.
Earlier we discussed how visualization and imagery are important for Self 2. Even these have their roots in yoga. Bihar school of yoga that Dr.Sanjeev taught us is primarily about visualization. The single most lesson for me was about why visualization is important for Self 2. Understanding this was like finding the last piece of visualization jigsaw.
The beauty is that you don't have to visualize for a long time. Even visualizing for a minute is effective. Spend five minutes visualizing how the day would pan out and it will. Of course, the more the time you spend on visualization, the more vivid the imagery, the better. But even a minute of visualization is helpful.
The best part of the book is when Mr.Gallwey discusses different mind games that people play on a tennis court. The games vary based on your motive. You can either play to win, play to make friends or play for health or enjoyment. Since the concept of different mind games is important, let me dwell on the games a bit.
The first game is called 'Good-O'. The aim of this game is to achieve excellence and the motive is to prove oneself 'good'. There are three sub-games to the main game of Good-O. These are Perfect-O, Compete-O and Image-O. The aim of Perfect-O is to achieve perfection. The external challenge is the never closing gap between one's idea of perfection and one's abilities. The internal challenge is self-criticism and loss of motivation.
The second sub-game under 'Good-O' is 'Compete-O'. The aim of the game is to do better than others. The performance is measured against the performance of others. The motive is to be at the top of the heap. The external challenge is that there will always be someone who plays better than you. The other challenge is that you are growing older everyday so there will be someone younger coming up who has more energy and enthusiasm than you. The internal challenge is you are always comparing and hence are never satisfied. You will move between inferiority and superiority. You lose spontaneity.
The third sub-game is 'Image-O'. In this, you try to win through style. The objective is to impress others. Challenge is one cannot impress everyone.
The second main game is called Friends-O. The general motive is to make friends. There are three sub-games to Friends-O. They are 'Status-O', 'Togetherness-O' or 'Spouse-O'. The objective of Status-O is to keep up with the Jonesses. The challenge is the fear of losing the social position. The objective of game 'Togetherness-O' is to be with friends. The challenge is social ostracism. The objective of the game 'Spouse-O' is to spend time with the spouse. The motive is to overcome loneliness. Internal challenge is the constant doubt if loneliness can be overcome with tennis.
The aim of the third game 'Health-O Fun-O' is to improve health or to have fun. The sub-game 'Health-O' is to improve one's health. The external challenge is to find someone who shares your views. The internal challenge is the doubt if this is working. Another internal challenge is the shift to Perfect-O. The objective of Fun-O is to have fun. Winning or losing is not important. The challenge is that it will degenerate into Self 1 games.
The third sub-game is 'Learn-O'. This is played to meet Self 2's need to learn. However, this could soon degenerate into self-criticism.
The challenge is that one game can quickly degenerate to another game. For example, you start at Fun-O and suddenly it shifts to 'Compete-O'. So Self 1 is on compete mode while Self 2 is on fun mode.
Guess who wins.
The theme of the book is how you allow the wise Self 2 to guide your life by keeping the temperamental Self 1 at a safe distance. The entire focus is on winning the 'Inner Game' . So a natural question is, if the outer game is not important, why should one try to win the outer game? Mr.Gallwey says he has struggled with this for many years.
This question if fundamental to the ideas covered in this book. If
Mr.Gallwey has 'struggled with it' for a few years, I guess he must have
lost a few years till he resolved the confusion in his mind, much like
how my confusion about the role of money pushed my career back by a few
years. Author Michael Simmons calls it 'Junk Learning', which is defined as 'any learning that is harmful and impedes your growth'.
The answer to this question is that high level of competition strengthens Self 2. They expose it to crucial challenges and teaches it how to handle them. This learning then gets applied to similar challenges in future.
This book elaborates on Self 2, but does not say anything about the role of Self 1. There is no doubt that there is genetic role for Self 1. Without that it would not have survived generations. So what is its role?
I don't know.
* * * * * *
Even though this book is about tennis, it has brought up remarkable understanding about how I work as a person.
For example, Mr.Gallwey talks about how one starts on one game, say 'Fun-O' and how quickly it shifts to 'Compete-O'. This happens to me all the time. I start off by wanting to enjoy, wanting to 'nurture and nourish' my soul and before I know, I am in the compete, self-critical and tense mode.
But game of 'Compete-O' is made up of different set of rules. The reason I am tense is that as I shift my mental state from Fun-O to Compete-O, I still play by the rules of 'Fun-O'. My racket is made of Cheap rubber (good for Fun-O, but in Compete-O, you get taken to cleaners) and I continue to take too many risks (again good for Fun-O, not for the other game).
This is the dichotomy that has been holding me back all these years. In everything. Take Udemy course for example. I started off by enjoying preparing all those slides and presentations. That was 'Fun-O'. Wanting to publish it in Udemy portal shifts my game to 'Game-O', to win. This game has different rules that I must learn and adapt. The game 'Publish Udemy-O' has rules like 'Create Great Videos', 'Be Professional' etc. I cannot sit at home and prepare casual videos. I understand that.
Do I?
Game-O has different rules. I have a disinclination to understand them and practice them. Because I am afraid that I will fail.
Oh my god. It is fear of failure after all.
That is what has prevented me from putting the full effort (learning the rules and playing to win) in any task. My entire adult life has been a litany of things I have tried, excelled even, but did not take to the next level of 'Game-O'
In summary,
The root cause is fear of failure. Self 1 is messing with me.
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