Impersonal

The Practice

I recently touched base with a young cricketer (we’ll call him Tom) whom I hadn’t seen for about 8-9 weeks. In that time the season had begun and he’d been involved in quite a number of matches and practices at his own club and at school. Prior to that we’d worked together on a weekly basis through the winter, where – through his application and dedication – his skill levels, expertise and confidence had grown by considerable degrees.

His Mum had said to me, “Tom’s not comfortable with his bowling. He’s unhappy with what he’s doing; the coaches at school have changed part of his technique,” and so on, etc.

Now, his Mum’s description of things was probably not his – but instead her interpretation of how he’d described it to her. Interpretations, such as these, are re-personalisations – and we all do this kind of thing perhaps many times a day in the course of our conversations and thinking. So, as we walked to the practice area, I checked out with Tom what HE felt like and what HIS thoughts were – and there was a marked difference between the two versions I’d heard!

Next, along with a number of other players, we just launched into a very informal practice session. Tom looked happy and comfortable enough, and as far as I could see the technique changes (ironing out a small, yet common enough, quirk) looked very well in place and established. And then he bowled a wide ball...and then he bowled a short ball...and out came all the negative body language!

“So what are you thinking right now?” I asked him.
“I’m thinking about getting it wrong,” he replied.
“And what are you thinking about doing next?” I continued.
“To try and not do it, again.”

Now this is a very regular and common conversational scenario for any coach. However, while these are very predictable answers, I’d invite you to consider what he might have said had I asked him, “So – HOW ARE you thinking right now?”
To be honest, as he's an 11/12 year old I’d probably still get the same answer from him – though, I might not. There might be a pause, a gap in time, a space where he might go on an “inner search” for the words so his unconscious could assemble an answer to this somewhat different question.
I might casually put it another way, “So – WHAT IS your thinking right now?” The implication here is less specific – more along the lines of “tell me about your train of thought”.

Curious, isn’t it, how we might put (what is for us) a question to hopefully elicit a specific answer – and yet the person we’re asking can interpret it in as many different ways as we can ask it.
Although I’m digressing slightly here, I’m inviting you to just consider the level of personalisation we are capable of bringing to any and all proceedings.

The practice continued, as did our conversation.

“Tom, with the wide ball and then the short ball, can you change what’s just happened, what’s just gone?” I asked him, and he shook his head.
“There’s some useful information in those mistakes,” I said, “but most of us are usually so niggled or upset with ourselves at having made them, that we never get to notice the useful information.” He smiled, relaxing a little more.
“The other thing is – as you have said – we THEN start trying to correct what we are about to do next. How weird is that?” I asked.
“Before we actually do the next thing we are going to do, we are already trying to correct it. Doesn’t that mean we know what we are going to do – i.e make a mistake – and try not to do it?!”
He was chuckling at this stage – a very nice unconscious response!

I explained to Tom what I could see from what he wasn’t telling me verbally, and asked him to notice what starts to happen for him when he stops trying. 

“With the things your coaches have helped you change – the body, those muscles, they need time to adjust to doing things in a different way. And from what I can see, they’ve made all those adjustments very well already. All you need to do now is let them get on with what they do best – by not thinking about all of that. Just put your focus onto WHERE you want the body, those muscles, to put the ball when you bowl next. And the best way to do that is to put ALL your seeing power, your focus and inside attention onto THAT place. You can help that by switching off, or turning down other things to do with your senses - like, what you can hear and feel around you, AND that voice inside your head that is part of your thinking.

The linguistic level of impersonalising, especially his body, his muscles, was not done without purpose. So "your body, your muscles" becomes "the body, those muscles".
In my experience perfectionists are perfectionists, even in practice – and are very good at beating themselves up, and perpetuating that self-berating. By tinkering with the nature of THEIR own particular mind-body link, then changes of their self-perception can be brought about.

Yes I AM my body, but minds only think and bodies only act. The mind is where I see and think perfection, or imperfection. Bodies carry out actions initiated from the mind, and they need to “learn their lines”, so to speak, when it comes to sequences of action.

Viewing the body as a separate partner helps “I” to realise that the errors, the imperfections, are perpetuated by the thinking in the mind and not the actions of the body. And that the responsibility for the actions lies with the thinking.

Good quality thinking = good quality actions;
imperfect quality thinking = imperfect quality actions.

Calling practice – and their own particular practice – work in progress, can also open doors for players in this regard. Again it disengages the structure of “I’s” thinking from their previously held propensity for making incessant self-judgements and demands of getting it right.

I’m pleased to report that Tom’s body language and self-dialogue soon got into a much more grounded place, and he was then able to make a much better use of the conditioning nature of the practice session. The proof of the pudding is always when he is away from the ‘comfort zone’ of our session and in the different kitchens of practice elsewhere and – most of all – the cauldron of competition!

“The Zone”

This particular session was also useful for me on reflection – in regards to “The Zone”, being in it, and how to get to it, and how to stay in it. For sports persons in particular it’s a place where the level of detachment from thinking is total; where IMPERSONAL is at 100%.

It’s always deemed to be the “Holy Grail” of performance, and as such there are many chronicles of the search for it!
I’d invite you to consider this small linguistic artifice:-

I’M PERSONAL
IMPERSONAL

Now if we want to get to 100% Impersonal, where there are no breaks or joins in the word, then the level of thinking needs to be 0%. And we all know, because we’ve all been “in the zone” at some point in our life’s performance, that our memory of such an event is that we were not thinking – just doing. Everything seemed to just flow with a thoughtlessly smooth quality. For some it was like watching ourselves from some detached place.

Getting back to :-

I’M PERSONAL
IMPERSONAL

The only visible difference is one apostrophe and one space; the pronunciation is different; but the letters are the same.

The moment we let “I” into our thinking there is a trade-off somewhere else. Percentage points start to drop off IMPERSONAL until, if we are so inclined, we become completely bound up in our own “I” thinking and it becomes totally Personal. And we all know what happens when we take things personally, don’t we! Do these sound familiar...?

What do I look like? What will they think of me? Don’t they know who I am? She told me I was stupid! They said awful things about me! I want to make an impression!  And that perennial classic, I said to myself, you can’t do this!

So getting into The Zone is arguably a much more straightforward thing than the Holy Grail hunters would have us believe, and staying in it is not the feat of epic proportions we might have once thought it was. 
In essence - WE needs to get out of OUR thinking. It needs to become IMPERSONAL and then things start to flow. The moment we start to get in our own way by allowing “I” to get in there, the flow begins to get slower and stagnate.

To use another modality – stagnant water smells pretty rank. So if we want the sweet smell of success that comes from performing in The Zone, then we need to get the water flowing again by dredging out all the personal stuff.

It's just a thought, of course!