The Tennis Mindset: Express, Forget, and Refocus
Express yourself daily to clear your mind, listen better, and build stronger relationships.
Of all the sports I’ve ever played, tennis demands the most mental toughness.
In tennis, maintaining a positive and aggressive state of mind is crucial throughout the match. If you’re not positive enough, your muscles tighten, leading to overthinking and missed shots. Conversely, if you’re not aggressive enough, you won’t take the necessary risks to win points.
The key to staying in this optimal mindset is learning to forget points quickly. Each point in tennis carries emotional weight, whether it’s a win or a loss. However, carrying these emotions from point to point disrupts the flow state essential for a tennis player. Therefore, it's vital to let go of previous points, regardless of whether they were good or bad.
The moments between points in tennis are crucial for resetting your mindset. This brief pause is the only opportunity to unload emotions and regain focus. To move on effectively, a tennis player must express all their emotions—whether positive or critical—between points, ensuring no lingering feelings disrupt their game.
The essential lesson here is to express, forget, and refocus on the point ahead.
This lesson from my time as a boy who grew up playing sports has profoundly impacted my adult life: the necessity to express myself every day, even if it's just in my journal. This need to express is a significant reason I’m committed to writing on this blog weekly.
Expressing myself allows me to calm down and gain the mindset required to truly listen and pay attention to those around me—whether it’s my family or my team at work. This ability to express and unload my thoughts is critical because if I can’t listen, I can’t love. If I can’t listen, I can’t solve problems. If I can’t listen, I can’t support others.
Even a five-minute free-write or singing songs from my karaoke favorites playlist on the way to work helps me to express, forget, and refocus.
I am so grateful for the chance to play and watch tennis because this lesson has been so impactful in my life. To anyone whose interest was piqued by this post, my advice is simple: express yourself every day. Whether it’s writing in a journal, talking to an old friend, or taking a few minutes to draw, do something daily that allows you to embrace the tennis mindset of express, forget, and refocus.
This simple lesson from one of the world’s great sports - to express, forget, and refocus - is the key to truly listening. By listening, we create the space to solve problems and form loving relationships with those around us.