Your future may depend on learning like your 1-year-old self
“It’s not because I don’t know what to do, it’s that I don’t do what I know”. This is a sentence in the first chapter of the book, The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey. A vision of me skiing instantly came to my mind when I read this sentence. Interesting how the brain makes connections. And it made complete sense!
Gallwey was a tennis coach and split the learning of the sport into the outer game and inner game. The outer game is the physical aspect of the game. How you hold the racket, place your feet, swing your arm, etc. The inner game is everything that goes on in your head when you play the game. This has more control than the outer game.
This is true for any sport or anything we do. It is, I believe, always a game of halves. We can all relate to this. I can relate to it with the sports I do and the goals I want to achieve.
I love skiing. I started skiing when I was 16, on a boarding school trip to Austria from England. I am good but not great. I was young enough to be daring and learnt the skills to be a relatively good skier. But not young enough to ski ‘naturally’. I get down the slopes with good skills but at times not very elegantly. I blame this on my ‘adult’ inhibitions. And here’s the thing, I know what I am doing wrong, but I find it hard to apply it. So, the quote above is spot on.
Theoretically, in my mind, I know what I must do but applying it to correct old habits is hard work! Especially in skiing where the new habit can be counterintuitive. Having to lean your weight into the downward slope.
When working with his clients Gallwey noticed that when he gave them instructions that made the client think, their performance got worse. The client ‘thought too much’ and that directly impacted their performance. Gallwey then changed his technique. He stopped giving verbal instructions and told clients to watch him instead. He noticed that their performance improved. He believed that watching, without instructions, allowed his clients to learn and improve more naturally without ‘overthinking’.
This really resonated with me. Because I do that with skiing. When my ski instructor told me what to do, I did ok or worse. But when all I had to do was follow him/her, I did some of my best skiing. One, because all I had to do was follow them and two, I was letting my body follow by watching. I skied better when I just let myself ski.
Most things we do are a game of halves, the doing (outer) and the thinking (inner) whether in sport or the board room. The inner game is the tougher game. Sometimes, when what we do is not aligned with our thoughts, cognitive dissonance, we induce stress. Focusing on the inner game is the way out of stress.
So, what does this mean for our goals and future? It is about learning and adapting. It boils down to how we learn and know what to change! In chapter 6 of the book, Changing Habits, 3 sentences stood out for me.
‘When one learns how to change a habit, it is a relatively simple matter to learn which ones to change’.
‘Once you learn how to learn, you have only to discover what is worth learning’. His definition of learning: the realisation of something which actually changes one’s behaviour’ (not a collection of information). This can be external, a skill, or internal, a pattern of thought.
‘The time for change comes when we realise that the same function could be served in a better way’!
We learnt so easily when we were a child. We went from crawling to walking to speaking without being taught. It was natural and instinctive. We did not go to walking or speaking school. We walked, we spoke, we did not judge ourselves and just tried again when we failed. When we eventually went to school, we lost some of those innate instincts. Learning became unnatural. The inner game way of learning is to return toward a childlike way.
Perhaps it’s time to rekindle our one-year-old learning selves? I am trying to learn German as a child would. To listen and speak. No teacher, no language school.
I shall leave you this week with 2 questions:
Where are you not doing what you know you can do?
How can you rekindle your one-year-old learning self?
As always, you can reach me at yoga@yoganesadurai.com