The Inner Way of Tennis ft Randall Scott

Transcript

I’m Lisa Stone and you’re listening to Parenting Aces. Welcome to season 15 of the Parenting Aces podcast. I’m your host, Lisa Stone. And this week’s guest is Randall Scott. Randall is a former player, a coach, and now an author of this book, The Inner Way of Tess. You’re going to hear us talk all about Randall’s thoughts on what it means to be a tennis player and the mental piece of being successful in the sport from the perspective of the player, from the perspective of the coach, and most importantly, for our audience, from the perspective of the parents. So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Randall. There will be a link in the show notes for you to purchase your own copy of Randall’s book. And as you’ll hear, you can order through his website. He is offered to sign that for you and personalize it. So it makes great gift. Just putting that out there. Before I bring Randall on though, just a quick reminder, if you haven’t already, we’d love for you to subscribe to our free newsletter. Just go to our website, parentingases.com and sign up there. Make sure you’re following us on all of our socials, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube. And if you are so inclined, I would love to set up a one-to-one consult with you, which you can also handle through our website, parentingases.com. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with Randall Scott. Randall Scott, welcome to the podcast. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am so excited to dig into your book and the why behind it. But before we get started, I would love for you to give our audience a little bit of your story. Thank you, Lisa, for inviting me onto Parenting Aces. It’s something that I wanted to do and share this with parents. And so I’m looking forward to our discussion. So my tennis background is related to the book started actually in my junior playing days. When I was going through some very difficult experiences on the court, that weren’t really physically related. They were related to something that I later came to know as sort of an inner, inner way or inner game of feeling. And though I sort of had an idea about that, I couldn’t really, didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with it and understand it at the time, like most juniors. They’re not mentally developed enough to be able to deal with that. So, and I didn’t have, my parents weren’t into tennis, or a sport that much. And I didn’t have a mentor really at the time that was able to help me with that. So I had anger issues on the court, anxiety issues that I was dealing with. And later on, as I grew up and went to university at University of North Carolina, I ventured into philosophy and particularly, so Western philosophy was on the largely what I started with, but then I had an attraction to Eastern philosophy, actually. And it was sort of specifically Buddhism and Zen. And what I came to find out when I moved actually to Asia, because when I first got into tennis as after a player, I got into coaching through Peter Burwash International. And of course, Peter Burwash is well known and that management company. And I had the fortune to really get to know Peter well enough that we communicated and talked a lot about spirituality and tennis and how it really helped him. And then he shared that with me. And eventually through PBI, I went from Guam, where I first started my coaching career through PBI. And then I went to Asia because Peter had asked me, they were starting a tennis academy in Bangkok, in Thailand. And I had a choice between India, Japan and Thailand. And he sort of convinced me to go to Thailand, partially because, okay, that’s what the company needed. And he knew my attraction to Asia. And he also knew my attraction to Buddhism. And so that was something that I decided that I did. And my career in this book, my pursuit of this inner way and dealing with these distractions or these challenges I really came to understand how to do that on a personal level. But then at the same time, when I was training kids at the academy, which we were training kids for national teams to play in Asian games, we had Davis Cup, Fed Cup players. So that level of player we were developing. And of course, I could see that they were having similar issues that I was having as a junior. I could see that they were struggling as much as I was struggling. And then, of course, I put those two together and how they applied to tennis, Buddhism and these principles of mental development. Because ultimately, I discovered, and some people know this and a lot of people don’t, that Buddhism and Zen aren’t really religions. They’re more of mental training methods or how to live life more skillfully, let’s say. I learned that firsthand personally, both on the court as a player and as a coach as well. And so my background through this sort of journey led me to Asia. And then I spent 25 years there. So I’ve lived actually in Asia more than I’ve lived in the US. And I was born in North Carolina and grew up here and everything. And recently returned to North Carolina about five years ago. And are you still coaching? I am. So when I came back here, I took a sort of sabbatical because I’ve been in the game in that capacity for, I’d say, 35 years now. And my mom, my family had an incident and my mom passed. And so I came back to North Carolina. And while I was here, I live in the city of Burlington, North Carolina. And it’s between Greensboro and Raleigh. And so it’s a good tennis community. And they have a very large tennis facility in the Parks and Rec department. And the longtime tennis director there was resigning or actually retiring. And they had heard about me and they contacted me. And so long story short, I ended up taking that position as the tennis director and I’ve been there for five years. And as well as traveling with some players from Asia that I had coached in Asia that are on the tour. And when I have time to get away from the center, I travel with them as well. Very cool. Very cool. So your book is called The Inner Way of Tennis. I have read it. It is really thought provoking, I will say. And it’s funny that you talked about having this affinity toward the Eastern philosophy. I had the same experience and college where I was really drawn to that. I was a political science major, but I did take several philosophy courses over my four years in university. And I find this whole idea of going inside to be very calming and very grounding and centering. And the applications for junior tennis players are numerous because we’ve all seen whether it’s our own child, whether it’s ourselves or whether it’s somebody we’re just watching. We’ve seen those implosions on the court where you watch a player just basically lose it. Like they lose all control of emotion. Of steadiness, of focus. And so I’m really excited to kind of dig into what the inner way means and how not only junior tennis players, but parents of junior tennis players can use the lessons that you impart in this book. So let’s talk about that. Yes. Well, thank you. Well, the motivation, the inspiration for writing the book was I have to say it started 30 years ago. And I just never felt like I was ready to to write it. I always felt like, OK, I need to learn a little bit more. I need to have a few more experiences. I need to just go through some things first. And finally, I realized, you know what? I think I’ve got it. And the main reason one of the one of the reasons why I wrote the book was because I had witnessed so much gratuitous suffering, so much unnecessary suffering, both from the player, the parents and the coaches, actually, because the reality is that. And this is what I came to experience, and it was it was triggered actually by Timothy Galway’s book about the inner game of tennis, which I had read in Guam in when I was there in the 1990s. That was one of the first books that I had read and other sports psychology books that I had read. And it was it was insightful. And it sort of started the conversation, actually, on a conceptual level of how to address some of these inner inner issues. Yeah. And my feeling was that players and juniors and even senior professional players and their parents were just struggling with so much self-doubt, anxiety, mental blocks. You know, you could see physically that they were playing well. And then all of a sudden something just changed. And it wasn’t physical. And and so that suffering is what I wanted to help people address in a very practical way. So as much as I appreciate what what Timothy did in the inner game of tennis and what other people have done, what I found was missing in that book was a little bit of practicality and a little bit of direction in a process on how to develop an impact, for example, develop an empowering attitude. So one of the foundations of the book is two things. One is that the inner way is about looking and developing and cultivating certain characteristics of attitude. And alongside that, developing an awareness to address some issues inner and outer simultaneously. So what I what I realized was that the Western approaches, though they were. Though they certainly were beneficial. I discovered that they were missing a fundamental issue that wasn’t being addressed underneath, underlying where the superficial issues were being addressed and they were helpful, but still they would come back. And that what I discovered was something that I mentioned in the inner way of tennis is related to what most people would say in the West, ego and identification with that. I call it the lie of I in the book. And that’s so those are the two main reasons, one to address the suffering and two to show people how maybe to facilitate their way forward on dealing with that. One of the things that really jumped out at me as I was reading it was that. Instead of offering band aids to issues that come up in a match or in preparation for playing tennis. You offered. The band aid, but but also the long term fix. So it was I mean, each chapter you offer suggestions, practical things that players can practice, practical things that parents can do and that coaches can do to all work together to help create a much more positive on court experience for all three of the legs of the triangle. Right. The parents, the player and the coach. And you mentioned suffering, you know, my favorite all time players, Rafael Nadal, who talked about suffering all the time. Suffering doesn’t necessarily have to mean something negative. Right. In in Rafa’s parlance, suffering is a positive thing. You need to suffer in order to grow. And I think you build on that idea in a very concrete way throughout the book. Do you want to kind of dig a little more into that? I would because I think this is so the phrase that I use a lot with players over the years. And I mentioned during practice sessions, I will say this to them. Embrace the struggle. Embrace the struggle for the very reasons that you mentioned. And I look at players like Nadal as being the poster boy or player for that. And related to parenting, this is what I’ve witnessed. And I think it has sort of gradually in today’s society worsened in my career. And what I mean by that is the Molly coddling, the trying to I know I’m a parent. I know I know parents mean mean well when they are trying to prevent their child from going through some difficult times. And what I even tried to help parents understand is that you can be empathetic, but you also need to understand that this is a necessary part of the process of development. And as hard as it is, you need to allow your child to accept that they are struggling and allow them to go through that for not just physical reasons, not just to improve their forehand, but to deal with the struggle that they’re going to face in reality when they play tennis, whether it’s on a professional college, junior or just recreational level for fun. And the parent is that in my career, I have I’ve spent literally hours and hours and hours over dinners in my office, having conversations with parents about this one topic. Yeah, and it’s listen, it’s tough to watch your kids struggle. Nobody likes it. No, it’s painful. It’s yeah, you want to, you know, swoop in and fix it. I agree with you 1000%. And I when I work with families one on one, we have these conversations, you know, and the parents like, well, you know, my child’s too busy. They’ve got school pressure and this so I have to handle this. I’m like, no, you don’t have to handle it. It’s easier for everybody in the short term, if you handle it, I get that makes everybody’s life easier in the short term. But you are not doing your child any favors. And there’s going to come a time where you’re not there to step in and fix it or do it for them. They need to become self sufficient self reliant, and you’re doing them a favor, though in the moment, it won’t feel like that. But long term, that’s the case. And in terms of this embracing the struggle idea for parents, as hard as it is to sit there and watch your child perform, or maybe not perform as well as you all hope, you have to keep in mind how lucky you are that your child chose tennis, and that that affords you this time with them. Because not every sport affords parents the opportunity to have one on one car time, one on one hotel time, as you’re traveling to events. And it’s really special. It’s really special. And you may not have that, you know, again, that and it’s, it will, it will pass. I mean, there will come a time when you don’t have that, right? Hopefully you do. But you know, not on that level, not you know, mate, perhaps to that degree. Yeah. Yeah. Keeping it all in perspective is crucial and really, really, really difficult. Yeah. And as much as tennis, you know, okay, coaching, this has changed in my career, of course, coaching is allowed under certain, even at the professional level, right? It’s a certain, we, we, I host UTRs at our facility and we allow coaching between sets. Um, for, for just that time. So yes, that, that is, um, available now. However, ultimately the game is played by the player and it has to be done by the player and they have to learn to adapt and adjust through the constant flux and flow that creates these, these struggles. And so part of learning, part, part of practice for me, I conduct my practices is I intentionally put my players in difficult situations and create an environment, facilitate an environment that will enhance that struggle will, will perpetuate and develop that struggle and for them to deal with that. And I forewarn my parents and say, look, this is going to happen and it’s okay. Uh, just allow your kids to, you know, deal with that and address that the best way they can. Um, that you tell the parents that because now there’s a level of trust that they know what you’re doing. They understand the why of what you’re doing and hopefully they trust that their child is in the safe space to experience the struggle and that you as the coach aren’t going to let them spiral down to the bottom. You’re, you’re going to provide a safety net if you sense one is needed. But I just, I feel like a lot of times coaches will do things in, in practices, in, at tournaments and not fill in the parents as to what’s going on. And that adds to the stress that we feel sitting there watching this because we don’t understand what’s happening or why a coach is letting it happen. Right. Yes. Yeah. Oh, I’ve in the cat and the academies that I’ve run, I’ve always, when we first started doing them, I always knew that I was going to have to be involved. The parents were going to have to be involved. Like I wasn’t trying to, I never tried to exclude parents from the process. And the, and here’s another reason this is related to part of the, what I say in the book about, um, there’s a section in there called the perception projection loop. And I talk about how, you know, sociology and psychology, this is well established that, uh, a child’s attitude, uh, is developed, uh, pretty much, uh, fully almost, uh, between the ages of two and eight supposedly. So clearly, uh, even if I was involved with a child at that early of an age, I, or any coach is only going to be with them for a very small portion of their time of the day. So their attitude, their level of awareness, who is cultivating that? Who is nurturing that? It’s the parents largely. And in today, it’s unfortunately, I think in some ways it’s social media and there’s some other, there’s some other program influencers coming in now more so than there used to be. Um, so there, I always realized that as hard as I tried to develop these inner skills, there was a limit that there was, I was not fighting, but I was up against a huge number of other influences. So I had to involve one of the key influences to help guide them, the parents in order to, uh, empower the child, empower the kid instead of disempowering them, which is largely what I feel like they’re getting in a lot of cases. And one reason why I wrote the book was that I feel like there’s a lot of disempowering influences on not just the kid, not just the players, but the parents as well. Yeah, absolutely. And I, I agree with you about the impact social media is having. Um, I think it’s going to be very interesting in another 10, 15 years to see the studies that come out. Um, and you know, the pandemic, uh, played a huge role in that. We’re seeing a lot of issues. Come up in, in kids now graduating high school, going to college who kind of went through those formative years in lockdown. And, um, and so I think there, there’s so much that has changed in our world, but what hasn’t changed is children’s reliance on their parents or the, the primary adults in their sphere. And, uh, so there’s a big responsibility on us to work on ourselves so that we can help our children become their best selves. Yes. And this is related to, and you talked about helping the parents. And I think this is another key theme in the book that I’m hoping that everybody, um, it’s a metaphor, but it’s something that is relevant, not just in tennis or sport or in life, but it also in life. And that is the passenger, the pilot metaphor. That I use in the book. Um, this is a sort of a metaphor that I’ve used throughout my career because for me, it paints a clear picture on, um, and Zen and Buddhism talk about this as well as that the mental, your mental development, your mental, um, capacities is where you’re going to be a pilot or a passenger. So if you’re allowing other people to dictate or influence which we all have that, but if you’re not aware of the influences that are coming and affecting your mind, then you are going to be a passenger and somebody else is going to drive your game. And you, we, we have to cultivate and nurture kids to become their own pilot, their own coaches. Um, someone from California, the great Robert Lansdorf, you know, who coached some of the greatest players, Davenport, Sherrifova, um, he’s well, well known to have said that, you know, I don’t need to see your kid every day of the week. They have to figure out these problems themselves. They have to become in essence, their own coach and Peter Burwashy was my, one of my mentors. That was one of his big themes in his, in his tennis book and his tennis career and how he helped, um, uh, the coaches of the PBI coaches develop players was that, look, you have to help people facilitate the skill of becoming their own coach. So we had a bit of a technical snafu there. Not sure what happened. Um, Randall got booted off of soon, but he’s back. So we’re going to jump right back yet. Yeah. Okay. Um, so I think what last off was get what last off was getting at and what I’ve tried to get it through my career was helping the players become more self-reflective helped by, and, and having the parents encourage that instead of giving them the instruction, giving them the answer, uh, coaches as well is let sort of guide them, facilitate them in sort of the Socratic way by asking a question instead of giving them the answer. And this helps cultivate and nurture that becoming your own coach, becoming a pilot instead of a passenger, listening to someone all the time and helps them perform better ultimately on and off the court by encouraging that self-awareness. And I can tell you as someone who is married, to a litigator who employs that method, not only in his communication with his children, but also with his wife, that it can be very frustrating to be on the other end of that way of doing things. So while in the long run, it is an incredibly beneficial method of helping our kids become more self-reliant in the short term. You’re going to get pushback from that. They’re gonna want you to just tell them what to do to give them the answer. And it’s very easy to give into that and to just throw your hands up and say, okay, fine. But if you really want to help them grow as human beings, the gift is to not give it, to not give the answer, to stick to your guns and say, I know you’ve got it in you to figure this out, to find the solution and to move forward from this. It doesn’t help you grow if I just feed you answers all the time. Yeah. And that’s a hard one for the parents because they too just want to, you know, look, everybody’s busy. They want to get on to something else. They got another kid they got to deal with. So they got to, you know, so I get that and I understand that. But if you want to be a better tennis parent, then this is like you say, for the long-term development of your child, both in tennis and when they leave tennis. I have found this in my own experiences because the players that I have worked with, you know, all the players I’ve worked with, they all came back to me and said, you know, I really appreciate your helping me become more aware, you know, in general. And so, you know, I know it works. And this is just the path that I, that’s the, that’s the inner way. The inner way is about cultivating awareness enough that you become your own coach. And that has to come from inside out. So the whole, you know, the whole subtitle of the book is playing the game from inside out. And ultimately we all know and whether we want to acknowledge it or not, is that every game is ultimately played from inside out. Absolutely. And this whole idea of passenger to pilot, I love because I just, you know, one of the issues that comes up all the time in junior tennis is the idea of cheating, right? We know that there are bad line calls that happen during matches, whether they’re on purpose or by accident, whatever. But if you’re the recipient of a line call that you don’t feel a spare, it can derail you very quickly. And if you’re the passenger, you allow that bad line call to derail you because you’re allowing your opponent to be the pilot, right? If you’re the pilot, you take control. You have control in how you respond to that bad line call. It’s in your hands, in your court. Yeah. And that’s, and that’s very much an Eastern way of dealing with it. And if you look at the best player, the, I say best players, I say the most developed inner skill players that people would recognize right now. And you have a kid from California, a learner, Tien, if you watch him, his, the word is equanimity, and he has a level of, of equanimity, no matter what happens, his reaction or response to that is very much neutral. And that allows him to again, embrace the struggle in a way in which it doesn’t disempower him. It actually empowers him. And that is actually affecting the other players, because one of the things that some players say against players like that, is that it’s very disturbing to them that they can’t get the other player upset or emotionally involved, that it’s, it’s disturbing, actually, to look across the net. So not only does it have a tactical maybe advantage, but more, more in a real deep, deep sense for the player doing behaving that way, it has a real advantage. Absolutely. Can we, can we talk a little bit about the car ride home? Because I know you write about that book. And it’s another one of those issues that comes up over and over and over again, right? Where, you know, we’ve seen the polls, the studies of junior athletes across all sports. And, you know, what is one thing you wish you could change? about your sports experience. And, and more often than not, it’s that car ride home. From the parents perspective, I can tell you from personal experience, and you are a parent, so you’ve experienced this as well, Randall. When you watch your child perform, and you know, in your heart, they can do better. It’s very difficult to keep your mouth shut. Yeah, no question about that. Yeah, I have a I actually have a perfect example of that right now. I have I’m helping two young players, a 10 and eight year old, and their parents are very involved in their tennis. And the mother in particular, is a tennis player, a competitive tennis player, USTA leagues and things like that. So, you know, she understands competition, just to a degree, you know, and this exact issue is part of a common dialogue that we have. And I’ve had to help facilitate and guide them through this whole process during tournaments, after tournaments. And one of the main main things that I tried to, I think helps and, although it’s not easy, but it helps is that keeping focused on the long term development, rather than immediate outcomes and results. And so this is not new. A lot of a lot of this is, you know, been said before I get that. But it’s worth mentioning again, because it’s related to another big theme in the book that I talk about that I think has become a lost aspect of tennis and sport in general, is that this playfulness is that I think we’ve lost in in tennis particularly, but in sport in general, in the US, especially, that has become way too serious and way too outcome and result orientated, which, which prevents the kids from playing tennis in and enjoying it like play to play is the word I the phrase I like to use just play to play, just play to have fun. You know, you can grow growing is fun to learning is fun, too. But de emphasizing outcome and results is difficult in this society, because the entire society is focused on outcome and results. So again, if I’m a coach, and I’m emphasizing this long term process, and let’s focus on enjoying the process of development, and having fun just playing the play and just see what happens. This sounds like to parents and coaches and other people like philosophical mumbo jumbo, not based in reality. But I actually see it just the opposite. I see it as that is the reality. And what we’ve created, and I say we as a society, particularly in the West is that we’ve created a situation where statistically, and this is known is that a lot of kids quit sports in their youth, because I think and I’ve witnessed it firsthand is because either the other coaches, the parents, society, whatever, is making it’s just losing the playfulness of the game itself. It’s a game and we have to maintain that balance of playfulness that so that’s another thing I mentioned to parents say, Look, maybe we’re maybe we’re taking this a little too serious. Your kid is eight and 10, nine, 10 years old. Let’s just let them play. Yeah. Yeah. But the reality is that UTR is a thing that we agree, USDA rankings are updated weekly, I can’t bring up all the rankings and ratings are updated and online for everybody to see. Yeah. And it adds that pressure to be on an upward trajectory. And if you’re not on upward trajectory, then you failed, right? That’s the mindset. And it’s not a helpful mindset. It’s not helpful to the player. It’s not helpful to parents. It’s not helpful to the coaches even because now, you know, parents are pulling their kids from coaches if they don’t see that upward trajectory. Yeah. Instead of understanding that it’s development doesn’t do this. Development does this. Yeah. Yeah. And so that’s part of, I think, facilitate having the interaction with the parents. And some get it and some don’t. Like I’ve had lots of parents leave because of this very issue. And I say that’s perfectly fine. I understand. And I have to, as someone who has helped facilitate the development of lots and lots of players, I’m okay with that. I’m okay with parents just saying to me, Hey, I think we need to go somewhere else. Perfectly fine. Things change. People change. I can accept that. I feel, and sometimes even if it’s not an issue of what we’re discussing about, they understand long-term development and they’re enjoying the process, but they just feel like it’s a change. That’s different. If someone’s changing because they are so focused on short-term outcomes and results and the kid’s not enjoying the sport, that I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for the parent and for the kid, but I still accept that they’re going to leave and go somewhere else. That’s fine. But I do feel sorry for that because like your son still plays tennis sometimes. He still enjoys it. Okay. And the fact is that most kids are not going to play at the highest level. And so we have, I think there’s a loss of perspective here. And again, even the best players, and I give some examples in the book about a player that was top 10 in the world in Asia from Thailand, Paragon, Monfies, of course, everybody loves to watch him play. Because he’s fun, he enjoys it. And he’s played at the highest level. So it isn’t that you cannot enjoy the game and still be performing at a high level. That is just not the case. And I think we also have to look at the, again, the mental dis-eases that these players are all facing. I mean, look at all of the problems, anxiety issues, players are talking about now on these different tours. Well, that’s not an accident. There’s a reason for that. And maybe they need to lighten up and enjoy the game. And we’ve had players recently mentioned that actually, that they’ve gained a new perspective on it and said, I’m just going to try to enjoy the game more now and not take it. So life or death-ish is the scenario, right? I shared this before, but a few years ago, I interviewed a junior player and we were at a big national tournament and I asked her, why do you love tennis? And she said, Oh my gosh, nobody’s asked me that in a really long time. And I haven’t really thought about it in a really long time. So I’m glad you asked me that question. 17, 18 year old, who’s at the end of her junior career, but hadn’t thought about what she loved about this game, why she started playing this game in first place, what drove her to go to practice every day, to make difficult choices in her life and prioritize the training and the competition. And I think that was really sad that that hadn’t been part of her day-to-day kind of mindset. I love this game because, right? Yeah. That’s a powerful exercise to go through. Yes. And, and I think from parents as well, like I love that my child plays tennis because, and list those reasons because I get to spend this incredible amount of time with them, right? Because I get to see them utilize their talents in a way that, you know, is beautiful to watch whatever it is. Yeah. And, and that’s something that in my training sessions, we do, we usually start or end the session with what I call a fun game. And just to either start, if I feel like it’s getting too serious, I’ll start that day off. With a fun game, and it could be like a serve competition game, or it could be what I call the net game and all kinds of variations that are all in the session with that just to end it, to let them know, Hey, this is a game. Let’s have just fun being silly for a little bit, you know, and play this fun little game. Okay. So things, I mean, that seems like a small thing, but actually it reinforces the idea of playfulness to the kids. And when the parents see it, they’re laughing on the side there because they see the kids are you know, they’re laughing. And so they lighten up too. So these are the kinds of things that coaches I think need to incorporate. And I think parents can reinforce that with their kids is like the joy of learning. Like you’re asking about the ride home. Well, when you’re having the conversation about the matches or the weekend and how it went, what about just discussing? Like I tell the parent, this particular parent, I was telling you about the 18 year old, I say, don’t even talk, don’t even ask them about the result and outcome. If they want to talk about it, you talk about it, but then maybe you redirect the conversation. Well, what did you learn today? How did you enjoy the whole process of learning for something from playing the match about yourself? Redirect the conversation without, um, and allowing them again to become sort of self-reflective and aware and try to, it’s not that the result doesn’t matter. It’s just that we have to, I think balance out the priorities a bit. Yeah. I think from experience, it will feel awkward doing that redirecting conversation, asking them about, you know, how it made them feel or what did they learn? It’s going to feel awkward at first, but stick with it. It becomes less awkward. It may not ever become comfortable, but I promise you it becomes less awkward. Yeah. And again, this is like repetition. It takes, it takes repetitions of this, like hitting a thousand four hands. You’ve got to repeat this sort of process, you know, over and over again, because again, the parents are sort of looped into their way of reacting or responding to matches or outcomes or tournaments. They, they have their loop. They’re running their mental loop, you see. And that’s sort of what I try to help the parents become more aware that you’re sort of running a loop here about this. So let me, can we, can we try to sort of, of adjust that loop a bit and see how that works a bit. Oh, this brings up something. Cause I had the kids, those two particular kids, the eight and 10 year old that I was mentioning earlier, they had a tournament last weekend. And again, they were having sort of performance anxiety. Practice was fantastic. They were doing exactly what the things we were developing and working on. And the weekend before they had a tournament and the mom came back and said, you know what? He just collapsed. He, you know, he didn’t, the Friday we practiced, it was fantastic. Saturday morning he played and it was like, he didn’t know what he was doing that, you know, this is, yes. So, and then for the next week he had a tournament. I said, you know what? And I had a conversation with the kid and the parents together on court. And I said, why don’t we do this miles? I said, why don’t we, is it possible that you could play your match tomorrow and just see it as a practice session? Like your person that you’re playing is like your practice partner. Is it possible for you to do that to go into the match and just see it as a practice session? Could you try to do that? And I said, mom and dad, would you be okay with that? And they said, yes, let let’s try that. And in fact, it did work. He didn’t win, but she noticed that he played, able to execute the things that we were doing in practice better in that match than he was able to do the previous week. And just because we sort of changed the perception of what competition meant, which is sort of something else I mentioned in the book about how the perception of competition, I think is a bit out of a bait, not based in reality again. It’s a little out of whack. Yeah. Yeah. Because every tournament match becomes life or death. Yeah. And it’s not that way. And this is the thing that, you know, we talk about people love to talk about all sport. It’s so great for kids because it teaches them life lessons, you know? And then I go, well, what life lesson are we trying to guide these kids to believe that, okay, that this notion of what’s this notion of competition actually mean? It actually means a coming together. It doesn’t mean, does it actually mean a war? Does it, does it have to mean that it’s a, it’s a battle and you have to crush your opponent. But what, so what kind of anxiety do you think that creates just that perception? So that’s part of the problem is that the approach to the notion of competition is the primary source of the anxiety, I think, to a lot of players. I had this conversation with the player that I’m coaching on tour now. He’s like 500 in the world. And I said, what about if you saw your opponent, not as a threat, but as someone who you’re sort of doing a dance with and you need that person, don’t you? I mean, you need that person. You can’t play a match by yourself. You have to have, it takes two to tango. So why not just see this person as a practice partner who’s helping you develop your game and do something you love rather than as a threat, who’s trying to kill you or crush you or whatever it may be. So I spend a lot of time trying to reprogram this notion of competition with parents and the players. Well, and it’s, it’s that whole element of respect as well, right? Comes into this. Yes. Respect the game, respect the opponent. And again, going back to Rafa, who I just have the utmost respect for, that was always a thing for him that he did exactly what you’re saying. He looked at the person across the net as a necessary component of his ability to grip. Without that person, he doesn’t get better. He doesn’t move on to the next round. He doesn’t, you know, achieve all of this great stuff that he achieved. So you need each other. Yeah. This is, this is, this is what the word competition means is Latin for come, come together. And we have developed this notion that it’s, that the, it’s sort of a separation of a thing here that, that, you know, I, and I think it just causes writing this down because I want to make sure I remember what you just said. No, and this is what, you know, in, in the, this is related to Eastern philosophy too, is that there’s an interconnectedness to everything. And I think if this attitude was cultivated a little bit more in sport, in the West, that there would be less anxiety because there’d be less identification with you versus me. It’s more of like a we think. Right. And, you know, even when you’re off the court in life in general, if you saw, if you see someone as sort of just, you know, part of, part of the whole experience of you, instead of separate from you, it’s a very different experience that you have when you interact with people in that way. This is the same with tennis. It’s exactly the same. So I think this is a key, key element that parents can really help their kids with and not be influenced by the media and not be influenced by commentators who say outlandish things. I heard this the other night, Oh, they’ve just got to get more violent. They’ve got to get more angry to be better, better, better than that. And I’m listening to this and I’m going, you see, this is exactly why I wrote the book, because to counteract that, that, that perspective, because it’s not true. It’s not. Well, and we, as parents can use this lesson as well. Right. That the parent of the other player is not our enemy. We’re all in this together. Yeah. Right. We can work together to help everybody have a more positive experience, which you know, my goodness, it’s why parenthesis exists. Right. This is building a community of support, not antagonism. We want to work together to help all of us have a better experience of this journey. Yeah. And I feel like that, you know, again, the parents’ role ultimately to me, and this is mentioned, there’s one quote in the book there from Federer about his kids that are playing tennis, Roger Federer, and he actually uses, he says, you know, let the coach be the coach and let your kids learn how to fly on their own. He actually uses the word, you know, fly related to the metaphor, passenger pilot. So, you know, here’s a guy, of course, right, that is giving insight, you know, to parents as a player at that level. And he’s saying, look, identify your role and make sure that you can, you, you contribute in the role and do it well, but also understand that we have your responsibilities. Each element of this triangle has responsibility. So make sure that ultimately you’re letting your kid learn how to be your own pilot, be your own coach, learn how to fly on their own. I love it. Randall, I’m going to wrap us up before we do. Can you just tell us how we get your book? Yeah. There’s a couple of ways. I have a website that I put together for the book and you can order from there. It’s www, innerwaylife.com. Of course, you can purchase it on Amazon as well. If you get it from my website, I can sign it. And if you’re into that kind of thing, but yeah, that’s, that’s the way that I love to hear feedback from, from people and let me know if they liked it, didn’t like it, what they didn’t like, what they liked about it. But I appreciate you, Lisa, for hosting me and allowing me to share the ideas. Here on parenting aces. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on. And we’ll have a link to Randall’s website on in the show notes on parenting aces.com. And, or wherever you’re consuming this and really appreciate your time and appreciate my copy of the book. And it’s something I feel like I’m going to go back to over and over and over again, just to remind myself of some of the things. And even though I’m not necessarily attempting this parent anymore, once a tennis parent, always a tennis parent, but I am still a parent and I am a wife and I am a friend and I am a daughter. And there are skills in your book that will help me do a better job in all of those roles. And so I appreciate your book and, and your work and your willingness to share it with all of us. Thank you so much to my audience. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time on parenting aces. I’m Lisa stone and you’ve been listening to the parenting aces podcast for tennis parents. If you like what you heard, please subscribe to us and write a review on iTunes for more information on navigating the junior and college tennis journey. Please visit us online at parenting aces.com. Thanks for tuning in and sharing us with your tennis community. [inaudible]