Ep. 231 - Reframing Situations to Improve Performance

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Tennis IQ Podcast. I'm Brian Lomax. - And I'm Josh Berger. And in today's episode, we are gonna talk about how to reframe different situations that come up, whether those be in the moment, certain specific moments that come up and finding some new ways to look at those situations or reframe those situations in the moment, but also big picture as it relates to a player's career or even tennis journey, how can that process be reframed? And then we'll also talk a bit about perspective and how sort of the connection between reframing and perspective and shifting perspective and how finding a new perspective and make a big difference in terms of how a situation is viewed ultimately. But first, before we fully dive in, we wanted to take a moment to mention our sponsor, GoSport, and that's G-E-A-U Sport. And as a listener of the Tennis IQ Podcast, you can get 10% off of GoSport products at gosport.com by using the discount code TennisIQ10. So you can visit gosport.com, that's G-E-A-U Sport.com, and be sure to check out their selection of premium gear bags for tennis and pickleball. Ryan and I both use their bags and they're really great. So again, you can use the discount code TennisIQ10 to get 10% off all products at gosport.com, G-E-A-U Sport.com. So when you proposed this topic, Josh, I was really excited because I think that this is a really important cognitive skill, not only for tennis. Tennis is a great place to practice this for the rest of life. Tennis is constantly throwing obstacles and challenges at us and they can trick us into thinking in different ways. And so a couple of initial thoughts came to mind. Number one was, this is a great way to move from reacting to things to responding to situations. And the difference, I guess in my estimation, is that reacting is often a very emotional look at the past. And that's it. And you're either judging it one way or another. It could be really great, it could be really poor, but we are reacting emotionally to something that has occurred. And I think responding is understanding what has happened, but moving forward, what would I like to do? The match moves forward, time always moves forward, so we wanna make sure that we are doing the best we can to move our focus forward to what is coming next, the next point, what I have to do next. So that was like the initial thing, I think we can create some sort of perspectives off of that. And then the other part that came to mind was from the intergame of tennis and the idea of the different perspectives on say, a mistake in the net. The player who hits it in the net, that's bad. The player on the other side of the net, that's good. And then the observer, the chair umpire, somebody in the stands, it's more just like doesn't really affect them, this just might just be an interesting thing that occurred. So same event, ball in the net, at least three different ways of looking at it. And so can we be better at observing this, learning to respond to it, seeing it in ways that help us stay connected to the mission when we're on the court. In general, I think the mission when we step on the court is to win the match. And that we want to be thinking and doing things that are in service of that mission. But it's very easy, as we've discussed many times, to get disconnected from that mission and get distracted by points, opponent behavior, fans, a lot of things outside of our control and we lose focus on what the actual mission is. So I think a good part of when we're discussing cognitive reframing or reframing situations is can we also do a good job of staying in touch with the mission to stay connected even to our purpose for why we play tennis. We've called it a tennis project. We've discussed the idea of trying to become the best player you can become. If that's something that resonates with you, well, that's your purpose. And this is an opportunity to practice such reframing. So I'm curious if you have some thoughts to that, Josh, or additional thoughts, like when you first thought of the idea to discuss this idea of reframing, what were some of the things that came to your mind? - So first of all, I like that you're bringing up the point from the interview of tennis because I think that's a clear example where Tim Galway, the author, speaks about those different perspectives, right? It's that one side of the net is viewing it one way. Okay, this is great. The other side of the net is viewing it in a negative way. I can't believe I missed that shot into the net. And then there's a third perspective of sort of seeing it more objectively, just sort of seeing it as it is, right? Which are three different perspectives, three different ways to view that same exact situation. And I think this comes up quite a bit within matches. And again, we will talk big picture as well, 'cause I think that's a really important piece of this. But I think this happens a lot within matches, right? And I think it actually starts before a match or before a tournament takes place. The draw comes out and somebody sees who they're playing. And maybe they're playing the number one seed. And that reaction, and maybe it's a reaction or maybe it's a response sort of based on how they view it, but it's often a reaction to that piece of information. And again, seeing that you're playing the number one seed can be viewed in different ways, right? It can be viewed as, ah, this is so unfair. This always happens to me. I always have to play the number one seed. I'm trying to get more points and build up my ranking. And for me, I have to play the highest ranked or highest seeded player in the tournament, right? Or we can say, oh, this person has a higher UTR than me. This is gonna be really tough. Or I don't think I'm gonna have a chance here. Or that situation could be reframed. And I think there's different ways that that can be reframed. I think it could be reframed as I've been working on my game. I've been trying to take things to the next level and here's a opportunity in front of me to see how I match up against a really strong player. Or say, you know what? I know that long-term, I'm trying to work on beating better and better players. And I know that that doesn't just happen by playing people my level or weaker than my level. So here's somebody who's ranked higher than me. Doesn't mean that they're necessarily better, but let's see what I can do out there. Maybe I can surprise people. Maybe I can surprise myself, my opponent, et cetera, et cetera. And I think there's other ways that we can view it as well. Again, maybe taking the focus off of winning, trying to focus on playing the right way, mentally and physically, focusing on your process, I think is a way to reframe as well. So I think that reframing can take place before the match even starts. And then in the moment, I think there's a lot of ways to reframe, right? Perhaps there's a double fault, right? And again, one way of viewing it could be, oh, I always do this. You know, I always double fault in these big moments. I should have practiced my serve more or I'll never figure this out. Or again, it can be reframed into, you know, that's one point. Let's put it behind me. Let's, you know, learn from it and let's move on. Let's use my tools and let's move on. I know I'm gonna have some double faults, you know, whenever I play, let's put it behind me, it's just one point. So I think, you know, and I think there's countless situations that come up during a match. But, you know, when I thought about this topic at first, it was more about those in the moment situations that happen constantly, right? Okay, it's deuce. Multiple different ways to view that. You could say, uh-oh, I can't lose this next point 'cause then it's gonna be at, you know, my opponent's ad. And, you know, I need to just get the ball in, right? Or somebody can say, okay, this is a big moment. Let's commit to playing my game. Or reframe as a reminder that perhaps my opponent might feel tight in this situation. This is actually an opportunity to, you know, to play my game, to take chances to go for it. So I think there's a number of different moments that can come up, you know, within a match. Curious, you know, what some of your thoughts on that might be, or if you had other points that come up either leading up to a match or during a match where reframing can be helpful. So I also thought maybe the op, not the opposite, Josh, but I went to like the other part of like, oh, what are the cognitive training things we need to do such that we can respond better? Yep, because I think without some of that, it's very hard for your mind to tap into that wisdom without some sort of prompting working with a coach or even a parent or, you know, somebody else that has helped you to think about this stuff differently. 'Cause I think, what are we trying to overcome? I think we're trying to overcome perhaps irrational perspectives that I should, I need to, I have to, I must, which can then lead to awfulizing or catastrophic type of thinking, catastrophizing the situation. And that just takes us down a rabbit hole where, you know, we're stuck, we're in that reaction piece and we're not, we've lost connection to the mission. So I think we're trying to deal with that irrationality and part of that irrationality is also some of the cognitive biases that we naturally have as humans. Loss aversion being a huge one for tennis players. Also, we do tend to be a little bit more on the negative side because our brains are scanning for threats. Again, that might be loss aversion as well in terms of safety, life, et cetera. So I think those are some of the challenges which then need some training off the court such that a player is then better equipped with the tools to cognitively reframe. And this made me think of a couple of authors and practitioners who've talked about this. Like, so George Mumford, who talks about how mental toughness lives in that space between stimulus and response. Similar, Victor Frankel talks about the exact same space but it's an opportunity to choose your attitude in that moment. And much of this is connected to your purpose and your mission. So I think there's some training that goes along with that. So I wanted to talk about two examples. Maybe I'll share one then I'll share another one later. The first example is from a video that everyone can watch. It's on YouTube. It's from USTA Player Development and it's about confidence. And part of that segment is a story with CeCe Bellis who at age 15 was able to beat Dominica Sybilkova at the US Open. And she's telling the story of the match and it's very close, they're in a third set. She's down a break and she's thinking about losing. She's like, oh, maybe this was a great opportunity but it looks like I'm gonna lose now. And so that's a very normal reaction, right, Josh? We start to let the score come into our head. But then she did something that maybe is a little bit unusual and I think indicative of being a very good competitor. She decided to more or less change the mission to, well, let me just play clean tennis and show great body language. And that's what she did. She just kind of changed what her focus was, what her plan was, and she ended up winning the match. You know, Sybilkova at the time was 11 in the world. CeCe Bellis, I believe was 15 years old. At the time, that's a huge win for somebody that age. And the video is actually getting CeCe to talk about it. And so I think it's a really good first person narrative of how one can change the perspective, even in the middle of a very difficult match and then see how it turned out. I like the idea of clean tennis, great body language, fully controllable, focusing on the score, less, you have influence, but a lot less control there. So that's an example of she just changed what she wanted to do into behavior and a plan and it really worked out. So I would recommend that people watch this video. It's maybe five to seven minutes long. It's not really that long. And you also get a good perspective on confidence in general from Dr. Larry Lauer. And so I think that that's also worth watching in that video. - I think that's a great example. And I think what CeCe managed to do there is, yeah, completely shift her perspective, both, I would say both in the moment, but also sort of a bigger picture perspective that it's not all about winning right now and focusing on, okay, I'm gonna lose, right? Let's shift that focus to something else, right? Let's shift that to, what do I wanna, you know, how do I want to be out there, right? What is my process? How do I wanna be mentally and physically right now? And let's try to focus on doing a great job of executing that process, right? And what do you know when you can manage to do that? The result piece tends to take care of itself, but I like that in the moment, in a big moment, she was able to stop, pause and think through the situation so that she could respond, right? And I like that you're bringing up that difference between reacting and responding and reacting is a lot more instant, right? It's more instinctual, it's more just, you know, somebody hits me and I hit them back, right? There's not a lot of, there's not really any thought that goes into it. Where responding, we have time, we create that time. Maybe there's a deep breath that we add in after the situation takes place to sort of slow it down. And then we're choosing what sort of response would be ideal in that situation. We're choosing how we want to handle it. And, you know, that I think tends to lead to a more, a more thoughtful, you know, something more, more thoughtful that we can actually use. We're able to think it through, we're able to use our tools in that situation. So I think that's a great way for people to be thinking about it. And we can even ask ourselves in the moment, okay, was that, did I just react there? Did I really think it through? Or did I just, you know, just sort of react instantly? Or did I stop? Did I pause? And was I able to respond in that moment and sort of choose the right response for me in that moment? I think that's a great example where a player is able to shift that way of thinking. You know, if we think about a long three-set match, right? If all three sets are long, and obviously it varies, but that's often upwards of two hours, right? Could be upwards of three. That's a lot of time to be on a court. And for most people, their perspective and sort of the way that they're looking at the match, you have time for that to shift multiple times out there. So maybe, you know, the match goes a certain way and in the, towards the end of a second set, you're feeling a certain way, right? You're really focused on winning. And okay, I'm up a set and it's the end of the second set. Let's say it's a tiebreaker. Okay, I am so close to winning at this point. And then you lose that set and now all of a sudden you're in a third set. And it's easy to stay stuck in that place. But again, you have time, right? We're talking about being out there for hours ultimately. So there's time for that perspective to shift. There's time for you to reframe how you view that and say, okay, you know, maybe me being so focused on the score and on winning and on how badly I want to win this match. And again, there's nothing wrong with wanting to win or preferring to win, but maybe that perspective that I had wasn't really helping me. Maybe I was playing more tight. Maybe I was playing not to lose. Maybe I was trying to avoid errors, right? So maybe for this third set, I want to take a different approach. I want to focus on hitting out on the ball. I want to focus on my breathing. So I feel a little tense and a little tight physically. I want to focus on staying on my toes and watching the ball, right? Or whatever it is. But I think when that perspective shift can take place and when somebody's able to often go from more of an outcome-based way of thinking to being more process-based or focusing on certain specific goals or specific ways of playing mentally and physically, I think that's, I think it's a great example of reframing in the moment where players are able to ultimately take a lot of pressure off of themselves and focus on going about things in the right way. - So you were talking to me earlier about a player who was injured that you helped reframe that. 'Cause that's also something that many of our listeners could experience is being injured. And regardless of your age, maybe it isolates you from your team or your tennis community. You don't get to see them as often. Yeah, if you're on a team that maybe you do, depending on the coach, but very often it can be an isolating thing. Can you talk just a little bit about how you went about that process and perhaps some of the ways your athlete decided to look at it so that he could move forward? - Yeah, and we did an episode where we talked about that injury recovery process with Harry Jackson. So it would definitely encourage people to check that out. But the conversation was actually yesterday, the conversation that I had with this athlete and it's a soccer player who's a freshman in college and had an injury, right? Sort of right at the start of the season, which is not ideal, not something that I think anyone would really choose. But we worked on getting from a place of, being really disappointed about the situation, sort of feeling bad about himself, about the situation, which I think is a natural feeling, a natural reaction, you could say, when an injury takes place. So sort of getting from that place to being able to shift that perspective. And I think we did this in a couple of different ways. We were able to sort of zoom out and understand that, okay, this three week or so injury is obviously not ideal, but ultimately, it's a very small piece of my soccer career and of my college career as well. And even of this season, so we're able to sort of zoom out and sort of look towards the future in order to build a bigger picture in terms of where this situation fits into the big picture, viewed it also as an opportunity to learn and maybe absorb different aspects of college soccer, which is a transition. So viewed it as a learning opportunity and even connected to that piece of gratitude, that grateful to be able to play the sport, grateful to be able to play the sport at a high level so that you can play in college and still have a future in front of him. He has aspirations of going pro at some point and maybe transferring as well to a higher level university. So even connecting to that gratitude piece where, okay, even though I wouldn't have chosen this situation, I'm not necessarily happy that it's happening, I'm grateful to be in this position in the first place and for everything that the future can entail because I'm in this position. So yeah, I think that was, and again, it's a fresh example 'cause it literally, this conversation literally happened yesterday, but I think it's very easy for athletes to fall into that trap of almost like a tunnel vision, focus on a situation, right? This is the situation in front of me right now, this is all that I can really see. I had this injury and I can't play and it's the start of my freshman year or I'm going into this tournament that I'm excited about and oh no, I'm playing number one seed, right? And it's really easy to be sort of stuck in that place, but I think if we can get really good at recognizing that there's always a different way to view the situation, right? We can't change the situation, we can change how we approach it and how we view it, right? We talk about controlling the controllables or controlling what we can and obviously cannot control the situation, but our perspective on that situation and sort of making it a habit of being able to look at things differently and able to reframe in a more productive way, I think is honestly one of the most important tools that a tennis player or a person can have because for everybody, no matter how high of a level you get to in the sport, right? So, including the very best in the world, the number one in the world on the men's and women's sides or let's say top 10 players, they lose matches all the time. They lose points all the time, right? We talk about how the best in the world win, let's say 54 to 55% of their points. That's a lot of lost points, right? Or you go into a tournament, right? In a Grand Slam tournament in singles, 128 people enter it, 127 of those people lose. So, one way of looking at it could be that all 127 of those people should be really disappointed and really frustrated, but that's gonna be a tough way of looking at things for a player's career, where if there's ways to reframe that and that maybe starts to bring us to this sort of bigger picture piece, which I think is important as well. I think if we can reframe that as, maybe looking at that in a little bit of a different way, which we could talk about, I think it tends to have much more of a, I think it tends to lead people to viewing the situation better and feeling more proud of themselves in terms of how the tournament went, but also helps them more in the future. So, I know we're kind of, I'm kind of going towards the big picture a little bit here, but wanting to see if you had any thoughts on some of the pieces that I brought up there. - Well, I think we can move to that bigger picture. I think you covered it well. I think as sports psychology professionals, and maybe if we look at your conversation, this is a core part of what we try to teach and train athletes on. So, that means we have to work on it too. And through our own careers in training and education, we have learned to do this reframing, to see other perspectives. And I think there's a process for how one does that, or there can be ways of doing that, because when we work with a player, part of what we're doing is helping them see these different ways, and we might throw out examples. You could be completely socratic and get them to say something, and they might come up with it, but they also might just say like, "I don't know. I don't have any ideas." And although that's probably just a conversation stopper, and they don't want to think hard, there's still an opportunity for us to throw out some things. And it's almost like, I kind of phrase it like Josh, trying on some shoes or sneakers. Some will fit and some won't. Some you'll like, some you won't. And so there might be different things that we could use to look at it. So one sort of practical way that I take that training, bring myself to the moment, but also be there and co-collaborate with the athlete, is to go through something called a mindset plan. I know I've described this in the past, but I had a recent example that I wanted to share, where I've been working with a player who has been struggling with being up a set in a break, and in that moment, she makes one mistake, and then everything seems to fall apart. And then that started to become a pattern. And the mindset plan allows us first to understand the current way that we're responding or reacting to that situation. And we look at, well, what's the attitude going into that? What emotions have been generated? What are you really focusing on there? All right, if we look at those three things, what's that adding up to in terms of actual performance? So we see a bit of false sort of logic there, or logical flaws, and our attitude towards the situation is negative, our emotions are not all productive, and that our focus is not all on the things that we can control. So the idea then is, all right, how do you wanna perform in this situation? Start with the end in mind. Tell us a little bit more about that. It can't just be winning, but it's, you know, what's the quality of the performance? Describe that. All right, if that's how you wanna play, well, what do you need to change your attitude toward when you get in that situation? What emotions do you wanna use to help create that ideal outcome that could be, you know, a part of the attitude? And then what do you really wanna focus on there? And the focus part is really the plan. So with this particular player, we got down to how she wanted to play in those moments, which was really, let's not change winning game, that's not the idea that they're supposed to continue to play the way we've been playing, continue to make the opponent uncomfortable. So, and then we came up with a very simple plan. Now for her, right, this really is where her input was needed, for sure. She was certainly giving input all along the way, but what could she commit to focusing on? And for her, active feet, great footwork, and simply watching the ball. And since we've had this conversation, she played a practice match, wasn't perfect, but she recovered in the third set and was able to close it out. Then had played a tournament and was again, I think went three sets, but were able to pull it out. And then since that time, she's still playing in this tournament, two straight set wins. And, you know, she noted that in those moments, her ability to focus on the simple plan seems to be getting better. With that, so I think that's one way to begin to cognitively reframe the way you're looking at something. Break it down into how do you wanna perform in this situation? What do you want your attitude to be? That's kind of the reframe part. Instead of, oh no, here we go again. All right, opportunity, let's do this. You got this, you're capable. You've done this before, kind of thing. Breaking that down then into emotions and focus. I think when it comes to players learning to do this for themselves, there's a bit of a journey here. And I can talk about how I've done this, Josh. And maybe you can talk about your own way of coming to some of these perspectives. For me, I started to read and listen to some books on stoicism and other philosophies. Which were really helpful. So they could be, some of it could be primary sources, meditations by Marcus Aurelius, selected writings by Seneca or Epictetus, then other philosophers. Or you could look at books that are kind of about stoicism. Anything by Ryan Holiday. Or Donald Robertson writes a lot about stoicism. Massimo Pigliucci has some books on stoicism, very helpful. We've often quoted from Arte. The Brian Johnson book was a huge collection of basically notes on different philosophical and even modern psychology perspectives. I think the goal is to just expose yourself to different ways of thinking and see what resonates with you. And so over the years, I have taken some of those ideas and put them in a notebook. And I will periodically review that notebook. And then I have created just really a core set of like perspective or little tenants of wisdom that I think are important for me. I'll share a few of those. So for me, I remind myself nearly daily of these things. And I'm not playing as much as I used to, but these apply to life as well. Everything is practice. Embrace the challenge. Enjoy the fight. Learning is winning. Play with courage. Make yourself proud. Better people make better competitors. Be the example. Find a way. And these are just very simple phrases, but to me, they like resonate like beyond that, right? I know what these mean. I know how to put them into action. So I think really actively working on exposing yourself to new ideas from great thinkers or modern psychology, both. And then seeing how you can integrate those into your own life. I would also say using Ryan Holiday's daily stoic journal has also been helpful because it gets me to reflect each day on some sort of stoic principle. I will say that some of the reflection questions, some of them are better than others. Sometimes the question is like, eh, I don't really know, that doesn't apply. But a lot of other ones are really good. Today was about how can I see today's difficulties as a lesson and a test? I was like, oh. - That's good reframing, yeah. - Yeah, and that's a great question, right? 'Cause definitely facing some challenges right now and on the personal side, and that was like, oh, awesome. This is a really good way for me to look at this because I'll probably have something similar occur in the future. And all right, how do I wanna maintain kind of my equanimity and respond to this? So you could use that same question for anything in tennis and have it be beneficial to you. So, curious Josh, what have been some ways for you to successfully integrate and educate yourself on new ways of thinking? - I would say there's different ways. I mean, I think it's, in a lot of ways, a lifelong process, right? I think, you know, for me, it started sort of as I started playing junior tennis and started playing in different tournaments, training more, things like that, and starting to have the first sort of perspective shift that, okay, maybe this sport isn't all forehands and backhands and serves, right? Seeing players that seem to have it all in terms of their game, right? They'd have a great highlight reel, but they weren't winning. They weren't winning nearly as much as I thought. And I had my own moments of matches where I, you know, played and, you know, lost to players that I thought I should be beating and also beat certain players that I thought maybe on paper, you know, should have beaten me or could have beaten me. And so I think that that first perspective shift took place then, started to realize, okay, maybe this, maybe there's something more to this. It's how we approach the game. It's how we handle big moments, how we handle our emotions, right? You know, certain players that I would play with that would be breaking rackets, you know, regularly. And that would say that was the first one then, you know, sort of through a learning process, right? It started with me reading the book, "Winning Ugly," starting to just have my mind open a little bit more that, okay, there is more to this. You know, that's not exactly a sports psychology book, but it is connected to different things that we certainly talk about and different sports psychology concepts. So definitely connected to it. And, you know, then reading "Intergame of Tennis" and then going through the, you know, majoring in psychology and doing my masters in sports psychology. So sort of, you know, and then other learning, right? Other, you know, other books, other conferences, other different educational opportunities, you know, have learned, feel like I've learned and sort of shifted my perspective that way. Also in the work that I do, sort of, you know, day to day with different athletes is certainly a learning process. I feel like, you know, I learn from as cliche as it sounds, I do feel that I learn from each person that I work with. And I think it causes me to shift the way that I go about things. And this podcast as well, right? We're 200 plus episodes in. I know I learn a lot from each episode, from interacting with you, Brian, from the different guests that we've had, you know, that everything is practice point that you brought up. I know it's something that we, you know, we talked about, you know, Christina Rolo brought that up. It was a few years ago at this point when we had her and Dave Dahan on an episode and they talked about that very concept, which I, again, I think is a perspective that can apply to all sorts of things, right? I think similar to the Daily Stoic Journal prompt from this morning, right? That you're talking about, you know, how can I view challenges more as maybe a test or maybe even as an opportunity, right? Okay, how can I view this as practice, right? I will be in other tough situations in the future, right? Or I'm playing in a match and I'm down love 40. One way to look at that is to be frustrated that I'm down love 40 on my surf. Another way is, okay, I can view this as practice because I'll be in tough situations like this many times in the future. Or I'll be in, you know, a concept I've been thinking about recently and even, you know, sharing this with certain athletes that I work with is that Rafael Nadal video where he talks about how to train mentally. And he talks about, you know, especially during practice, right? There's a interview question where they ask him, you know, how do you train mentally and how do you handle tough moments of practice, right? And he says, well, when I'm not feeling my best, you know, if I'm injured during practice, I'm not feeling my best or if I'm not playing my best, I remind myself that I'm gonna, you know, be in this situation in the future. And I, and this is practice for how I handle tough moments, how I handle me not playing my best, right? So instead of me just getting mad about it, if I can view it as practice and try to handle me not playing my best in the best possible way, then I can learn from it, then I can grow, right? Practice is not just a chance for me to get better at my serve and forehand and backhand. Practice is a chance for me to practice handling tough moments. 'Cause guess what? Those tough moments will happen in future practices and happen in matches. So I like that perspective of Nadal, which I think is one that people can certainly use. And I think that, you know, sort of everything is practice mentality, which I think ties into what you're talking about with being able to view challenges as, you know, more of a test or perhaps even more of an opportunity in some way, or maybe it's an opportunity for the future in terms of, you know, getting those reps and getting those practice in at handling this situation well right now, I think is all really important. And I think we all have the opportunity to look at things differently, right? We have the sort of default state of how we might tend to look at a situation or how most people look at a situation, right? It's a double fault, that's bad. I am playing the number one seed for me. But if we don't wanna be like everybody else, if we don't wanna stick to that default state, if we wanna be strive for excellence, we can get better and better at shifting that perspective and reframing and being able to look at it in a different way and in a better way ultimately. - And everything we're talking about in terms of training your mind to do this better is totally accessible. Lots of articles out there, lots of videos. The video just mentioned, again, accessible on YouTube and about Rafa saying, you know, don't complain, change your attitude, practice with passion. Yeah, it's an opportunity to work on how you handle difficulties. You know, all of that's out there. A lot of the books that we're talking about are out there. It's just a willingness to learn and maybe cultivating that character skill of love of learning, wanting to be better, knowing that part of being a competitive tennis player is to see this as a process of learning and improvement. It's not just learning tennis skills, it's also learning about how your own mind works, becoming aware of that. Meditation could certainly be a part of that program to help you be better at being the observer and the watcher of what's going on. So, you know, I think this process of developing the cognitive reframing skills is something that everyone can engage in. It's just a matter of do you want to? Is it important to you? And it's a long process, you know. I started like, I'm glad you brought up sort of the way that tennis does it too, Josh, right? Because I realized a lot of things when I was younger as well through the experience of playing different little lessons, you know, 'cause you do judge your opponents at times. And I remember playing some junior tournaments and playing some guys who were, they were bigger, they might have had really nice clothes. I remember one particular match, like, wow, this guy's got, he's got like pro level clothes and equipment. And I was like, I'm in trouble. And then he'd get on the court, he couldn't keep balling the court. And he's like, huh, I guess this doesn't like match, you know. I was only maybe 13 or 14 at the time, so I didn't really know that's how it was. So there are lessons learned, right? You maybe don't judge somebody by just how they look kind of thing and you figure these things out. So the game itself can be teaching you these new things if you're looking for them and willing to kind of listen to the game, teach you some of this wisdom. But then, of course, there can be some of the off court stuff. And that's a big part of like what I've enjoyed 'cause I know for me, one of my character skills that is a strength is this idea of love of learning, loving to read and philosophize and understand more about sport and performance psychology, which has really helped me in this profession, but it's also really helped me on the tennis court to respond more than I react, to follow the discipline, to stay connected to the mission of winning the match, you know, losing a set 6-0, I'm still in it, right? Yeah, it's not good. It necessarily doesn't look good on the scoreboard, but I'm 100% still on the match. The probability of me winning the match may not be 100, for sure, but I'm still 100% in it. So these are some things that I've learned over time through practical experience, but also through outside learning. And I think this is just such an important skill because we are often beating ourselves and we beat ourselves because we let, as you like to phrase it, Josh, the default mind or perspective kind of take over. And that tends to generate emotions which are not productive toward the mission or it generates thoughts which are not productive toward the mission. And those lead to actions that are not productive toward the mission. And that's what tennis is teaching us because it's so challenging to stay focused on the mission when so many things outside of your full control are going on at the same time. Absolutely. Tennis is a sport where it can be really hard to do that. Where it can be really hard to focus on sort of that mission and that mission might be I wanna win this match or that mission might be something bigger than that. Right, I wanna be the best player that I can be, right? But after every single point, we win it or we lose it. And I would say after every single point, there is a potential chance to move away from that mission and to over identify with one or lost points. And that leads to us sort of riding this emotional roller coaster of going up and down and up and down based on our results. And we see this happen within matches. We see this happen more long-term as well, right? I've been, you know, let's say somebody's been losing in their last few tournaments or in their last few league matches. Easy to over identify with that. Easy to, again, sort of lose the plot or forget about the mission here, which is to be the best that we can be long-term. And, you know, so it's, again, I think that that takes a reframing, right? Okay, I've lost my last four matches. Do I want to just be angry about that? Do I wanna try to learn from that? Do I want to try to zoom out and understand this is just a blip in time in my life and in my tennis journey ultimately? You know, how do I wanna look at it? And that's where the choice piece comes in, right? You know, I think part of this idea of reacting versus responding, part of responding is taking a step back and seeing it with perspective, you know, looking at it in different ways, seeing the different angles, being able to reframe and look at it in the right way. I think once we're able to reframe it, and I think that that is part of responding in itself, then we can choose what comes next. So I think there's a lot here, and I think that we have countless moments during a day, during a tennis match and beyond to practice this tool, to practice looking at things differently and being willing to do that. And as you said, I think that starts, you know, that's not just something we can, well, I'm not sure if that's something we can just decide to do or if there are some requisite skills that lead to that. But I think, you know, especially through, if you've gotten to this point in the podcast and sort of listened to this episode up to this point, you know, I think it should be clear that there is choice at play in terms of how we view any sort of moment or situation in front of us. And that ability to reframe, to look at it differently, which is a skill that we can get better at over time, by the way. So if we're not used to doing that, it can be challenging. But I think it is something that gets easier with time and, you know, we're able to, you know, it's something that we can be able to get better at. And then over time, it becomes sort of habit where it's like, okay, I'm in this tough moment. How do I want to look at this? Not just, okay, I'm in this tough moment and how is this looked at or how do I look at it? It's like, no, how do I want to? And to me, that's reacting versus responding. It's not just situation happens and I just react or I just look at it a certain way. It's situation happens, I pause, I stop, I think, for a moment, maybe more. And I decide, okay, what is the best way to view this thing in front of me? - Yeah, and if we can look at it in the long term, this is sort of the evolution of cognitive reframing such that it becomes more and more accessible and automatic to you on the court. And it becomes less and less work. But the willingness to be open-minded to this stuff, to be open-minded to the possibility that it can improve, even though it might feel like your mind is so negative and it's not allowing you to do that. As you said, Josh, it's a choice, it's a hard choice for many. But I think if you can choose that, choose to figure out ways to move forward to find a way, then it will only help your career on and off the court, for sure. So that's our show for today. Thank you for listening. For more on today's episode, please check out the show notes. If you have any feedback or questions for the two of us, especially about this episode, please email us at [email protected]. Also, if you're enjoying the content that Josh and I discuss on the show, please rate and review the podcast so other tennis enthusiasts can find it more easily. Additionally, to be notified of new episodes, please subscribe to the show on your podcast platform of choice, including YouTube, and you can also check us out on Instagram. Thanks again, and we'll talk to you soon in our next episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)