By Jerry Sander, LCSW
A few weeks before our April NYC Boot Camp, I went back to tennis.
Tennis was a joy in my life when I was a teenager and I hadn’t really played it for over 50 years. To call me “rusty” would be overly-generous.
I flat-out didn’t know what I was doing out there in my first group lesson. Everything had changed; the “Continental” grip I used was considered a sort of cute, quaint relic of the past – and my one-handed backhand was smiled upon graciously as well.
Even though the teacher handling our class was exceptionally kind, there were so many things to remember, seemingly all at once: “Change your grip! Hit from low to high! Pivot your hips and use less of your arm! Get your arm ready before the ball comes, hiding your shoulder! Follow through up to the other shoulder! ‘Effortless strength!’ And – above all – RELAX!!!”
It was hard for me to keep 2 or 3 of these things in my head at once, and impossible to remember them all at once in the moment, because the ball was coming at me fast and decisions had to be made. I was tense and determined not to screw up. But– in fact – I managed to fall, flying onto the ground in search of a forehand hit, scraping my knee and bleeding just a little. That falling incident turned everything around for me: I didn’t have to worry about something ridiculous and embarrassing happening in front of my colleagues, because it just did.
I didn’t put it together until after co-leading the Boot Camp this weekend that everything we concluded the program with – the recommended practices participants walk away with as instructions for “working the program” – might be seen in the same light as my new tennis challenges by people who were brand new to a different way of doing things themselves. How can they possibly integrate 11 things into their daily and weekly life with success at once? How can they master relational loving, “fierce intimacy” when there are so many things to remember at once?
To quote a Doors’ song, “Impossible, but true.” You can. You do it slowly and with much practice. One or two of the changes start feeling more natural after, well, falling and bleeding a little and making mistakes. Don’t kid yourself; if you try to do it, you’ll make mistakes. Then you find yourself breaking on through to another set of suggestions that seem easier the more you do them. Then you repeat this all (allowing for mistakes and forgiving those you make as well as those of your partner). And it gets even easier. And eventually it becomes second nature. You are no longer thinking of 5 steps to returning a ball or communicating more generously with your partner, you are just doing it.
And it feels good.
My tennis teacher made that point today, after trying to explain five or six things that pro players who seem to hit effortlessly are actually doing. “It should feel good,” he said. “And it does feel good when you connect like that.”
My lesson tomorrow with Coach Carlos is at 3:00 o’clock, and I expect we’ll hit so many forehands that my mind will quiet some and the “thwack” of a successful connection will start replacing some of the fear of repeating past mistakes.
And that it will feel good, the more and more I do it.