Mindfulness essay EXCELLENT !!!! CONTINUE TO WORK ON!!!

 

There was a movie out some years ago called A Beautiful Mind. If they ever made one about the everyday competitive tennis player, it might be titled A Not-So-Beautiful Mind. Because let’s be honest: the strokes aren’t always what take us down. It’s the head. The spin cycle between the lines. The anxious, edgy, manic thinking that shows up right on schedule—when the match gets tight, when the body gets tired, when the score starts talking. The esteemed Dr. Allen Fox once said to me, “You won in spite of yourself.” I’m pretty sure he wasn’t just talking to me.

Tennis is a strange sport that demands composure while practically manufacturing stress. We run around at full speed for extended periods, under uncertainty, under judgment, under consequence—so of course the emotions intensify. Of course the thinking speeds up. And the brutal part is how invisible it can be from the outside. The iceberg effect: everyone is feeling it; some people are simply better at not showing it. Some players look “calm,” but inside it’s a full-band rehearsal—worries, what-ifs, doom loops, old tapes, future fear, past pain, and a running commentary that would get any sideline coach ejected for verbal abuse.

This is where mindfulness steps in—not as incense and whispering and a weekend retreat, but as a core component of high emotional intelligence. Because EQ, at its highest level, is executive control: the ability to notice what’s happening inside you, regulate your response, and stay functional when your nervous system wants to hit the panic button. It’s “Don’t cry over spilled milk” in the middle of a match. Not because milk doesn’t matter, but because your reaction to it matters more. A spilled glass is a short-lived annoyance. A spiraling minds can derail careers

Mindfulness is how we stop making our minds liabilities and start making them assets. It’s the skill of being present on purpose. It’s the discipline of noticing the And in tennis, that’s everything—because the biggest challenge isn’t getting into the moment; it’s sustaining the moment. Tennis doesn’t ask for a single burst of focus. It asks for repeated focus, under fatigue, under doubt, under the constant friction of uncertainty. It’s tiring. That’s why burnout is so often mental before it’s physical. The emotional intensity comes up first. Your legs might still have gas, but your head has had enough.

Now layer in our modern world. I think I speak for a generation when I say we’ve entered the Age of Distraction. People of all ages can’t put their phones down for even a moment to be present. And it’s not just the length of our attention span that’s under attack—it’s the depth. The depth is the tragedy. I see it in myself. I don’t read as deeply as I once did. My ability to watch and analyze a show isn’t what it used to be. The gadgetry affects the focus. I still enjoy things, but the connection is different—more lateral, more surface, easier to disrupt. And if that’s true on the couch, what do we think happens on a tennis court, where the mind is already under siege?

As a tennis player from the pre-distraction era, being able to remain deeply engaged for hours and hours, day after day, was normal training. Today, that level of deep engagement can feel like a near impossibility. Even the little tennis I play now, my concentration isn’t anywhere near what it needs to be to perform consistently at my highest level. So if you’re wondering why your match focus feels fragile, why your attention scatters, why the mind wanders into the past and future like it’s got a side hustle—that’s not you being broken. That’s you being human in 2025.

And here’s the simple, sobering question: name me one activity we perform better at when we’re not focused. Why would learning and competing at something as complex as tennis be any different? Tennis is information-rich. Footwork, spacing, timing, patterns, wind, opponent tendencies, emotional momentum, score management—there is so much happening right in front of us that can enhance performance if we’re paying attention and know what to look for. If we can’t focus, improvement gets throttled. And nobody wants to keep investing time and energy into a hard sport if they’re not getting better. That’s not laziness—that’s reality.

So the goal of mindfulness in tennis isn’t to become some serene monk floating cross-legged on the baseline. winning the Tibet Open every year.The goal is a quiet, focused mind—calm enough to observe, present enough to process, steady enough to compete. That’s high emotional intelligence in action: noticing your internal state, regulating it, and choosing behavior aligned with what matters instead of whatever the anxiety is barking about.

Again, This is also where we have to talk about the inner voice—the critical self, that admonishing voice that pops up when the pressure rises. It can be a real Achilles heel. In our formula: Performance = Potential – Interference. The interference is often not your forehand. It’s your internal commentary. If my coach on the sidelines spoke to me the way my critical voice sometimes speaks to me, I’d tell him to shhhhh. Zip it. Yet we let that voice run wild because we confuse harshness with motivation, panic with urgency, self-attack with standards. Mindfulness is how we notice that voice without obeying it. It’s how we catch the spiral before it hits rumination speed—because once it gets rolling, it’s a fast talker.

And this is where mindfulness becomes practical, not theoretical. The “trick” isn’t discovering some exotic secret. The trick is consistency—getting players to execute the simplest rituals that quiet the mind, because the panicky mind’s default setting will always be unease. We didn’t get into the age of constant distraction overnight; we’re not getting out overnight. There is no switch to flip. Mindfulness has to be trained like anything else: reps. Rituals. Routines. Anchors.

That’s why mantras matter. Not because they’re cute, but because they give your mind something clean to hold. Gallwey used Bounce / Hit. I like Low / Loose for shots, Shuffle / Recover for movement. Simple, physical, present-tense cues that keep you in the job. Your body can do battle while your mind stays aligned with the moment at hand. That’s the whole play: quiet the voice, focus the mind, reduce interference, unlock potential.

And here’s the quiet miracle: players can improve quickly and dramatically in this area. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. I’ve reflected on my own collapses—painful in the moment, funny only in hindsight—and I know how much meaningful tennis I lost to an untrained mind. As a coach, I struggle when I see my students succumb to anxiety, because we all know better. Nobody wants to be panicky on a tennis court. But emotions can be volatile and involuntary. That’s not a character flaw. That’s nervous system reality.

So mindfulness becomes the bridge. It doesn’t remove uncertainty—tennis will always have uncertainty. It changes your relationship with it. It gives you a way to stay inside yourself when the match tries to pull you outside yourself. It turns the mind from a conspirator into a collaborator. It gives you a chance to play the match you trained for, not the match your anxiety writes.

A quiet mindful state isn’t just a nice add-on to tennis. It’s the foundation of high EQ: awareness, regulation, perspective, choice. And when you train that—when you build it into your tennis life the same way you build fitness and technique—tennis gets better. Learning gets better. Competing gets better. The whole experience gets better. Because yes, playing well puts us in a positive state of mind. But a positive, regulated state of mind also gives us the best chance to play well. Our goal is to work on both simultaneously.

That’s the promise: not perfection, not a stress-free existence, but a better relationship with your mind. A quieter cockpit. More runway. And a game that feels less like an anxiety experiment and more like what it’s meant to be: a challenging, beautiful, demanding place to become more of who you ar