Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Work is a great read for anyone interested in performing their best.
The book is based on The Inner Game of Tennis, where Gallwey made some interesting discoveries about how people learn. He observed that his tennis students who constantly put pressure on themselves to improve a specific part of their game did not improve nearly as well as those students he told NOT to consciously try to improve their game but to merely observe the ball closely when hitting it.
His theory is that we have two parts to ourselves. Self One is conscious and analytical, concentrating on what we do wrong and telling us we need to try harder.
Contrast that with Self Two. Self Two represents the learning potential inherent in all of us. It’s the thing that helps small children learn languages at an astonishing rate (even though they’ve never read a book on grammar). Children make lots of mistakes and learn from them but don’t get caught up in the self-doubt or analysis that adults do. For children this sort of learning is fun and easy because they are not concentrating on learning. They’re just doing something that’s interesting to them.
Self Two has an incredible amount of potential and it doesn’t necessarily go away as we get older. Athletes and musicians use Self Two when they are “in the zone” – performing at their best, but not consciously thinking about what they are doing.
Gallwey offers a simple formula for the Inner Game happening in our heads.
P = p-i
Performance = potential – interference
The potential comes from Self Two. Interference comes from Self One.
For an example of how this works I offer my own experience learning electric guitar. When I was feeling pressured to learn a new song during a session with the band I would invariably have trouble, because I was trying too hard (using Self One) to remember all the notes. When I was at home and learning by myself, I was more relaxed. Because I wasn’t as self-conscious, I didn’t feel the need to memorize, and the notes just sort of came to me. I was using the innate abilities of Self Two.
This is a very powerful tool, but one that can be difficult to use. You can’t use force on Self Two. It does what it does on its own time, but if you keep yourself interested and relaxed, and are willing to make mistakes, Self Two will figure it out.
Unfortunately we live in a fast and impatient world. We don’t give Self Two enough time or credit. We cram for exams, we “try harder”, we beat ourselves up over our “failures” and we ultimately cheat ourselves out of our own potential.
Living a Self Two life is not only more productive, it is also much more fun. We feel better about ourselves. Things come easier. Nothing seems like work.
However, there are some crucial elements that are needed for proper Self Two thinking that I sometime struggle with. That is trust in one’s inner self and trust in the areas of chance and fate. These can be difficult areas for people with chronic illness or adversity to explore. I will share my own experiences and examples in my next post.
addendum:
Shortly after finishing this post, I received the latest post from a great website called Lateral Action which discussed this same theory, but using different terms and examples.
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