PPMD improved in a region where there were not many people around and not many good people. Here PPMD discusses how he found motivation to improve and how he learned the game.

Emotions are a warning sign of something being off-kilter. Learn to deal with this through focused self-awareness allowing you to find the source of that emotion. Then you can work on treating the cause.

The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey

(janky pdf link)

This is a book written to address the mental side of performance in sports, specifically tennis. A strange suggestion, but its praises are sung far and wide by smashers who have read it.

“The thesis of this book is that neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving at least some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt, and self-condemnation…

The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; he discovers a true basis for self-confidence; and he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard. He aims at the kind of spontaneous performance which occurs only when the mind is calm and seems at one with the body, which finds its own surprising ways to surpass its own limits again and again. Moreover, while overcoming the common hangups of competition, the player of the inner game uncovers a will to win which unlocks all his energy and which is never discouraged by losing.

There is a far more natural and effective process for learning and doing almost anything than most of us realize. It is similar to the process we all use, but soon forgot, as we learned to walk and talk. It uses the so-called unconscious mind and more than the deliberate “self-conscious” mind… This process doesn’t have to be learned; we already know it. All that is needed is to unlearn those habits which interfere with it and then to just let it happen.”