Just Keep Coming Back

As many of you know, Profit+ is a project, like many around the world, that was born out of the COVID crisis. Without that rather jarring, unexpected break, I’m not sure I would have ever slowed down enough to hear and feel so clearly what presents now in hindsight as a clear calling from life. Things happen for a reason, right?

I would have never gotten into tennis either. After it became clear that the lockdowns were going to be more than just a 3-week break, my wife and I started jonesing for something athletic to do. Zoom workouts, home gym calisthenics, and running were fun for a while, but it wasn’t long before we were missing the infectious energy of competitive sports and group fitness. 

Thankfully, we found tennis. We had to wear our masks at first, but only upon and entering and leaving the court and had to stay 6-feet away from each other. Yes, looking back it was all very silly, but that’s a story for some other time!

Now 4 years have gone by almost and tennis is a very regular feature of our routine, not only for my wife and I, but also for the kids. In addition to having a lot of fun trying something new, I’ve learned something really valuable by playing tennis.

The Keep Coming Back Mindset

You see, tennis is a sport with a lot of breaks, stops, and starts and, as such, it’s one where the quality of your mental state is highly determinative of how things will go. If you come into a match stressed out about something or behind on a big to do list, you are almost certainly going to play poorly. In all the stops and breaks, automatic thoughts will flow into your mind and after a few errant shots or missed opportunities, it’s not too long before you’ll find yourself caught in a negative downward spiral.  What makes tennis so fun and addicting is that it can all turn around in an instant. All it takes sometimes is one good shot or one perfect serve, and you can turn it all around.  In an instant, you find yourself completely back in the moment and all those pesky automatic thoughts are nowhere to be found.

After playing for a while, I realized there’s a secret principle at work here, one that is very similar to what you learn from meditation. The key to successful tennis is to just keep coming back to the moment, no matter what! You cannot think about the mistake you just made or worry about the future. You have to just focus on precisely what you are doing in the moment and nothing else. This is the key to meditation as well. No matter how diligent you are, no matter how disciplined, if you meditate for long enough, eventually you realize that you simply cannot stop the mind from wandering. In the beginning, it’s easy to get discouraged or even mad at yourself. “Why can’t I just get my mind to stop wandering!” You may even grit your teeth and try to will your way into a calm mind. But that never quite works. Eventually, you realize that the practice of mediation is really about learning the art of coming back. 

The way to produce a calm mind is not by willing away your automatic thoughts with sheer determination, but rather it’s about just accepting what comes without judgment and then simply letting it go and coming back to the moment. What’s so cool about tennis is that it forces this realization upon you rather quickly through the immediate feedback mechanisms of the kinetics of the game.  A good tennis shot has a way of jolting your system back to the moment. It manifests an instant realization of a profound truth, one that in meditation takes quite some time to figure out. No wonder tennis has been around for so long!

There’s a great clip of Novak Djokovic—I know, not the fan favorite but an undeniably incredible athlete—discussing this exact point. Like him or not, he’s really on to something here and his own impressive track record of success stands as solid evidence for the power of this mental practice. 

The Keep Coming Back Mindset is something I’ve been experimenting with in the rest of my life as well. What good is it if it only helps in tennis or meditation, right? I’ve found it to be a super useful mantra for keeping my highest self at the table throughout the long day. It’s especially helpful for parenting, where it’s very easy to get off track trying to manage behavior or dealing with whining or bickering kids. But it’s useful in general as well. In this age of multitasking, constant switching, and distraction, life is challenging us to master the art of coming back.

Just think of a typical moment at work. You’ll be focused on something important when, all of a sudden, the phone will ring or an email or text will come through and then you are on to something else, some new demand on your time and attention. Often, some considerable time will pass before you remember what you were trying to do in the first place! At the same time, we are being bombarded with a continuous stream of opportunities for distraction, a deluge purpose-built for time-wasting. It’s amazing we get anything done!

Given this cultural backdrop, the ability to come back to the moment, without any kind of judgment, is a true superpower for modern life. 

Ps. 

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Nick