Timothy Gallwey in is book “Inner Game of Tennis” described the war. He identified the “Self 1″, the logical, judgemental, mathematical, verbal, competitive, time orientation LEFT BRAIN hemisphere that constantly battles against the “Self 2″, the creative, spontaneous, intuitive, emotional, orientation in space, and in charge of life support RIGHT BRAIN hemisphere.

via Tennis Super-learning Program Stretching Is Important Part | Healing Sports Injuries.

via Sports Psychology | Snowboarding And Sports Psychology – The Inner Game.

via Tennis Server – Turbo Tennis – Confidence and “Slumps”.

“Read this simple analogy and see if an alternative to the judging process doesn't begin to emerge. When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as 'rootless and stemless.' We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don 't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care and nourishment it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is “(p.21).

via Positive Expectations: Learning to Play Free of Judgment.

It all goes back to Timothy Gallwey. Before Gallwey, coaches were people who wore whistles around their necks.

Coaches helped people get better at physical tasks. That meant they mostly dealt with sweaty people, except for swim coaches who dealt mostly with chlorine-blind people.

That changed in 1974, the year Gallwey published The Inner Game of Tennis. He shifted the focus from what was happening on the outside, to what was happening in the mind of the tennis player.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Gallwey tells the story of the Inner Game on his web site. It’s compelling, but it won’t answer the question about whether you should hire a coach.

What’s important about the Gallwey story is that The Inner Game was the faint beginning of what is now a hot field: coaching. Now there are coaches for all kinds of things that don’t involve sweaty physical activities or even whistles.

via Three Star Leadership Blog: Leadership Development: When to hire a coach.

The inner zone of excellence is a key part of what is known as the “inner game” of business. The concept of the “inner game” was developed by Timothy Gallwey as a way of helping people to achieve excellence in various sports (e.g., tennis, golf, skiing, etc.), music and also business and management training. Fundamental to the inner game is our ability to stay in a high performance state when confronted with difficult circumstances.

via Robert Dilts « Nadine36hypnotherapy’s Blog.

Inner game is what enables you to act. Nothing less, nothing more.

The Longer Answer

Timothy Gallwey first coined the term ‘inner game’ in his book The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance. He wrote that “every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and an inner game”; where the outer game is fought against another opponent and the inner game is fought against your own inner doubts and fears.

via What is Inner Game?.

This equation has important implications for managers and coaches as it recognizes that the working environment can have a major impact on individual performance and productivity. It also provides the pathway for Self-coaching. Tips on Self-coaching follow:

1. Learning the Lessons of Self- Talk and tool for controlling it. “There is always an inner game being played in your mind no matter what outer game you are playing. How aware you are of this game can make the difference between success and failure in the outer game.” Tim Gallwey.

via Constructive Living–Performance=Potential less interference « The Wick.

Getting in the zone either happens by chance, on any given day and there aren’t really any events that trigger it. It just happens. Sometimes you do everything right to prepare and have the worst day on court. Other days it feels like you’re not ready and then all of a sudden it clicks.

There are certain ways to trick your body, or rather your mind into helping you get into the zone. Mostly its about thinking about one thing and letting the body do other things by itself. I don’t wanna make this post long, so I’ll make a quick suggestion. Buy and read the book Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey. Amazing book and will answer many of the questions you have.

via Controlling when youre “in the zone” – Talk Tennis.

Gallwey was a tennis coach who was frustrated by the limitations of conventional sports coaching methods. He noticed that he could often see the faults in a player’s game, but that simply telling him what to do to improve did not bring about lasting change.

For instance, if a player were not keeping his eye on the ball, most coaches would give advice such as: ‘Keep your eye on the ball.’ When a player received this sort of instruction he would try to do what the coach was asking him and watch the ball more closely. Unfortunately, no one can keep instructions in the front of their minds for long, so players usually slipped back into their old habits and both coaches and players grew increasingly frustrated.

So one day, instead of giving an instruction, Gallwey asked:

`Can you say “bounce” out loud when the ball bounces and “hit” out loud when you hit the ball?’

In order to do this, players had to keep their eyes on the ball but no longer had a voice in their heads repeating the words ‘I must keep my eye on the ball.’ At this, their play started to improve markedly and the Inner Game method of coaching was born.

From then on, whenever Gallwey wanted a player to change, he no longer gave instructions but would, instead, ask questions that would help the player discover for himself what worked and what needed to change.

The first stage in this process would be to set a target for the player. For instance, in a situation where a player was serving out a lot of the time, Gallwey would ask him how many first serves out of ten he would like to get in. In this way, together, they created a clear Goal.

Then he would ask the player to serve ten balls and see how many he got in. In this way he helped the player define his Reality.

The next stage might be to ask him to observe what he was doing differently when the serve went in from when it went out, thereby helping the player to get in touch with his Obstacles. The player for instance might observe that when he threw the ball up to a certain height it tended to go in whereas if he threw it lower it tended to go out. Once an Obstacle was identified it became straightforward to identify Options to get around them.

In this way by really looking at what was actually happening, rather than getting stuck in trying and getting frustrated, players learnt for themselves what they needed to change in order to meet their serving targets. This gave players a clear Way Forward.

In the example using Gallwey and his tennis players, the basic methodology of GROW was present from the start.

A number of principles have been developed out of Gallwey’s experience with tennis players. While they originate from sport, the same principles can be applied to many learning situations. For example:

1 It is more effective to focus your attention on a relevant aspect of what is actually happening while you are learning, instead of what you ‘should’ be doing or trying to get it ‘right’ according to someone else’s perspective. This may seem blindingly obvious; however, in practice it rarely happens. In our tennis example the player would probably be focusing on trying to remember what the last coach said about serving and would then become more and more frustrated if his attempts at improvement did not work.

2 The best learning happens when we are focusing on the present. This means we are not struggling to prove or remember something but rather making discoveries as we go along.

3 We can easily interfere with the learning process by, for instance, trying to look good or using a lot of unfocused effort. The less we interfere with our learning, the faster we progress