The tennis coach naturally enters flow while speaking—Joe can see the shift happen in real time—but the moment he questions “is this authentic or am I in my head?” the flow evaporates. This is identical to what happens on the tennis court: questioning your performance destroys the performance.
“What happens when you’re playing tennis and you question it? More often than not it gets worse.”
The head wants to verify, validate, and authenticate the body’s experience. But verification is itself a head activity that displaces the body awareness it’s trying to verify. You can’t think your way into confirming a feeling. You just feel it or you don’t.
His own tennis coaching wisdom applies perfectly: “Don’t guess. Just do it.”
Related Concepts
- Doubt is leaving your heart
- Knowing your patterns doesn’t free you from them
- Flow state in sports is the same skill as embodiment in life
- Apply your embodied skill from one domain to all of life