Book Review: The Inner Game of Tennis: Author: W. Timothy Gallwey

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. 

Mr.Gallwey analyses the human mind using the game of tennis as a proxy. A typical tennis player plays two different games on the court. One is the outer game - the physical game that he plays against the opponent. The other is the Inner Game - the game played between two different aspects of his mental self.

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.