Wooden's Wisdom | Leadership Resource Center

Issue 673 - "Approval and Disapproval Can Be A Distraction" (Timothy Gallwey and John Wooden)


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13	Issue 673
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"APPROVAL AND DISAPPROVAL CAN BE A DISTRACTION" (TIMOTHY GALLWEY AND JOHN WOODEN) John Wooden Video Clip (36 sec.): Coach Wooden is asked: "What is the greatest challenge you ever faced in life?" In his best seller, The Inner Game of Tennis, renown performance psychologist Timothy Gallwey discussed the importance of not distracting athletes with undo praise and criticism and thus creating performance anxiety. "I was giving a group of women a tennis lesson on footwork. At the beginning of the lesson, I told the players that I was going to hit each of them six running forehands, and that I wanted them simply to become aware of their feet. I told them that there was no right and wrong to think about. While I hit the balls to them I expressed no judgment either positive or negative. Similarly, the students were quiet, watching each other without comment, focused on the process. After the thirty balls were completed, Gallwey, by his own admission, made a coaching error by creating anxiety with unnecessary praise. *"Look,"* I said, "all the balls were hit over the net and to the proper spot." I was complimenting them and indirectly myself. I repeated the same instructions as before and hit thirty more balls without comment. This time there were frowns appearing on the women’s faces and they seemed a little more awkward than before. After the thirtieth ball, eight balls were not even hit over the net and most of the rest were not hit to the proper spot. Our results the second time were as bad as they were good the first time. I asked the women if they were aware of something different going through their minds during the second series of balls. Each of them reported being very concerned with just hitting the balls over the net. They felt anxiety because they were seeking my approval. They were trying to live up to an expectation, a standard of right and wrong, which they felt had been set before them." Coach Wooden's players were not distracted by undue criticism or undeserved compliments by his communication. He kept them focused only on their best effort by eliminating the anxiety of worrying about somebody else's approval.Without worry and in a relaxed but focused state of mind his players were able to deliver their peak performance. Do you create anxiety or eliminate it? Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 673. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 673. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE My Soul And I When winter shuts a fellow in and turns the lock upon his door, There's nothing else for him to do but sit and dream his bygones o'er. And then before an open fire he smokes his pipe, while in the blaze He seems to see a picture show of all his happy yesterdays. No ordinary film is that which memory throws upon the screen, But one in which his hidden soul comes out and can be plainly seen. Now, I've been dreaming by the grate. I've seen myself the way I am, Stripped bare of affectation's garb and wisdom's pose and folly's sham. I've seen my soul and talked with it, and learned some things I never knew. I walk about the world as one, but I express the wish of two. I've come to see the soul of me is wiser than my selfish mind, For it has safely led me through the tangled paths I've left behind. I should have sold myself for gold when I was young long years ago, < But for my soul which whispered then: 'You love your home and garden so, You never could be quite content in palace walls. Once rise to fame And you will lose the gentler joys which now so eagerly you claim. I want to walk these lanes with you and keep the comradeship of trees, Let you and I be happy here, nor seek life's gaudy luxuries.' Mine is a curious soul, I guess; it seemed so, smiling in my dreams; It keeps me close to little folks and birds and flowers and running streams, To Mother and her friends and mine; and though no fortune we possess, The years that we have lived and loved have all been rich with happiness. I'm glad the snowdrifts shut me in, for I have had a chance to see How fortunate I've been to have that sort of soul to counsel me. Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
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