Inner balance

“When you’re in the zone, you’re not thinking. The body acts without the mind.” —Jerry Seinfeld

A book from the 1970s called The Inner Game of Tennis helped me pitch one of the best softball games of my life this week.

That might sound strange.

But both sports demand something that feels paradoxical—what author Tim Gallwey calls “relaxed concentration,” a blend of total focus and deep ease.

Gallwey’s central insight is that within each of us, there are two selves. He writes:

“The key to better tennis—better anything—is improving the relationship between the conscious teller, Self 1, and the body’s natural ability, Self 2.”

Self 1 is the inner critic. The judge. The part of us that wants to control everything and get it “right.”

Self 2 is the body’s knowing. The part that breathes without thinking. That walks, that feels, that performs miracles every day without our conscious input.

The reason this book has endured for 50 years is because it’s about more than tennis.

It translates to life.

The relationship between those two parts of us—the controlling mind and the intuitive self—is what defines how we show up in everything.

It’s the balance between controlling and allowing.

And when you pay attention, you see that it shows up everywhere in our daily life.

Awareness of that balance—and how often our personal scale tips too far toward control—is the first step.

Once we notice, we can realign. That realignment is key to unlocking our potential.

Flow

You’ve likely heard of and, maybe experienced, a flow state.

The father of flow, Hungarian born psychoolgist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes it:  “Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one.”

Artists and musicians talk about it when something pours out of them without conscious effort.

Athletes experience it as peak performance without thought.

It’s why I love playing softball, and pitching in particular (at least when it’s going well).

When you step out on the field, you become fully present to the game. I’m able to forget every minor indignity and trivial frustration of the day that manages to twist my brain in knots.

But finding flow is rare because there’s a mental tug-of-war going on between thinking about what to do versus trusting that your body will do what it knows how to do.

The more I think about how to perform, the more likely I am to fall short.

That’s why Tuesday night was so fun.

Gallwey’s insight—to mentally envision what I want to happen, then relax and let my body figure it out without my mind interfering—resulted in a joyous evening of dropping strike after strike onto the plate.

The key to accessing this experience, on and off the field, is nonjudgmental awareness.

Observe and Allow

Finding this place of nonjudgment is the key to mental strength.

We mess up all the time—in sports, in relationships, in life.

Roger Federer won 80% of his 1,500+ career matches. But he only won 54% of the total points he played.

He lost almost as many points as he won.

But he didn’t waste his energy on negative thoughts. He observed what happened and moved on without judgment.

This freed him to perform when the stakes were highest. That mental edge made him arguably the greatest of all time.

And that’s the lesson for all of us.

To observe and acknowledge that we’ve fallen short—and not beat ourselves up for it.

To not waste our energy on negative thoughts that keep us from showing up for the next point, the next play, the next opportunity to be at our best.

So often, we repeat the same mistakes because we get stuck in a loop of negativity, which only creates more negative outcomes.

The Mental Teeter-Totter

Our emotions are in a constant state of up and down.

And life in 2025 seems designed to keep us stuck down unless we build the strength to push back up.

With the constant barrage of information, almost all of it designed to trigger and outrage us, it can feel like an elephant is sitting on the other end of the teeter-totter.

I found myself completely weighed down several times this week. Challenging days at work. Horrifying headlines. The existential dread of the looming AI revolution. Sometimes it’s tempting to just curl up in the fetal position.

How do we find the strength to lift ourselves back up?

It starts with noticing that we are down. And being okay with that. It happens. It’s impossible not to be down sometimes.

But staying down is a choice.

When we’re down, it’s like Self 1 has put blinders on us. All we see is the negative. We get tunnel vision.

Lifting ourselves up means widening the aperture. Seeing the bigger picture. Recentering ourselves in the much larger story of life.

Remembering how temporary any given state is. That change is always coming.

Maybe not as fast as we’d like. Patience is required.

And remembering that trying to force and control is often what causes our suffering in the first place.

Reset and Respond

When we notice we’re in a state of anxiety, anger, fear, or overwhelm, we reset with our breath.

It sounds too simple to be effective, but that’s where everything starts.

Those agitated states come from our emotional brain being flooded. Triggered by forces outside of and within us.

They happen without permission, in response to the noise around us.

We acknowledge and let go of the thoughts that brought us there.

It helps to say it out loud. Name it to tame it.

That redirects the energy to our pre-frontal cortex.

The breath calms us. It brings us back to baseline. It helps push us back up on the teeter-totter, no matter how heavy the weight on the other side feels.

As we recenter, we can tune into the magnificent symphony of life all around us.

I’m writing this on a cool, sunny Sunday morning in my backyard. A chorus of birdsong fills the air. A gentle breeze stirs the trees around me.

I am at peace. For the moment.

And that’s all there really is.

It won’t last. The balance will shift quickly.

This is the cycle of our days, our weeks, our lives.

The key is coming back. Over and over until the visits start to last a little longer.

May you find and visit that place for a while on this beautiful summer day.

-Coach Kris