Fear of choking and having an unpleasant experience

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Fear of choking and having an unpleasant experience

by Larry Praissman
(United States Ca.)

I play for the possibility of experiencing the thrill of peak performance when the conscious mind does not interfere with the natural athletic ability and learned skills that my physical self possesses.

I fear the times when my ego / conscious mind tries too hard to avoid losing and interrupts the natural flow of my strokes and tactics. This happens more often when I fall behind in a match and the threat of losing is more apparent.

I can sometimes overcome this by focusing on the movement of the ball and trying to time my breathing to my strokes, giving my mind something to do that isn't distracting to the task at hand.

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Fear of choking and having an unpleasant experience

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Be smarter than your ego
by: Tomaz

Larry,

If I understand correctly, then you fear that your ego will take control and that you will start playing with fear and hesitation.

I see two approaches here:

1. Battle your ego and your fear with logic. You have undoubtedly experienced many losses once your ego starting to control too much. If you agree, then this is your PROOF against your ego that its approach won't work.

So next time the ego starts to control again, you have the power to fight it because you say to it: "Hey, I listened to you many times and lost almost every time. I don't think you're right. I am going to do it my way now."

You'll have to fight your ego many many times (i fought it for about 7 or 8 years in almost every match) but eventually the ego will be defeated and it will NOT talk to you again! I know that from my own epxerience.

2. Talk to your fears and calm them down. Your fear of ego taking over starts to affect your performance even BEFORE ego takes over. You're already hurting yourself.

To deal with this fear, the #1 answer will help you. That's because you now have a WEAPON against the ego.

So when this fear of the possibility of ego starting to control your game comes up, you can calm it down by telling it, that you can deal with the ego if it happens to become too loud.

You need to talk to your fears in the same way as if you were coaching someone else and wanted to take their fears away. You need to do the same thing to yourself; coach yourself, talk to your fears, either calm them down by explaining that you can deal with problems or defeat them by logic.

Response
by: Larry Praissman

Yes, ultimately taming the ego permanently would be ideal. Lately I have had success by going to the tennis court with no expectations of winning and a feeling of freedom to play at any level that occurs naturally. This seems to free my ego of worries.
The choking I define as the inappropiate tightening of muscles caused by mental interference with the natural athletic motions. This used to plague me tremendously before I found the inner game. Now that I understand what it is, it only crops up infrequently and can usually be banished by refocusing on inner game techniques. Nothing works 100% of the time because we are human and have volatile emotions. I doubt that my ego can be permanently controlled ( but I applaud you for achieving this) but at least at this point mine can be reasoned with. I am 60 years old, been playing for 35 years (the last 20 with the inner game) and for the last 6 months playing some of the best and most consistent tennis of my life. I have even managed to enjoy myself and play well in losses which is one of my goals.
Of course, there is always room for improvement and I am grateful that i have found your website and it's wealth of tennis wisdom

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Fear of choking and having an unpleasant experience

Comments for Fear of choking and having an unpleasant experience

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Fear of choking and having an unpleasant experience