Another excellent piece. As usual, I could feel the visceral truth of your words as well as of those in the quotes you included.
Right off the bat, the subhead "It's a relief that good thoughts aren't necessary for good performance" reminded me of reading the transcript of an interview with a tennis player who won a major back in the late 90s or early 2000s -- I think it was Marat Safin, for whatever that's worth -- who said (I'm paraphrasing) that at no point before or during that major final did he ever think he was actually capable of winning it. If a professional athlete doesn't need confidence or good thoughts in order to perform at his/her highest level, the rest of us surely don't.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, at least in a sports context, not only are good thoughts unnecessary for performing well, thinking at all is generally unnecessary and is often actually counterproductive. This assumes we've acquired enough skill to be competent at whatever level we're at, of course, and practice does require conscious thought. As long as we have that baseline of competence, though, the state of flow / being "in the zone" that produces our best performance is, at least in my experience, characterized by an absence of thought. I've sometimes heard it said of an athlete's performance when he was clearly in the zone that "he was unconscious," which is more accurate than I think most people realize when they say that, as the athlete in that state is not consciously thinking, but rather sensing and intuiting, seeing the whole rather than a disconnected subset of parts, and making the right choices & physically executing with no experience of having made any conscious decisions.
I hadn't thought of it this way until reading this piece and trying to make sense of my thoughts about it by writing this comment, but it now occurs to me that the flow state is simply complete, unfettered presence. In that state, the ego -- which as you point out is no help, and even an active hindrance -- is quiet, the internal monologue is paused, and what's left is our essence: pure awareness.
I'm reading a series of books by the Zen teacher Cheri Huber, and she echoes something I think you've pointed out a number of times, which is that our essences, our authentic selves which are so often hidden beneath the ego and its conditioning, are expressions of goodness and love. It seems to me that being "in the zone" is a direct experience of that. To me that state feels like ease and effortlessness undergirded by a subtle, understated bliss. I'm a tennis player myself so my excursions into the flow state are usually in that context, and when I reflect on them afterwards, I find it truly amazing how that degree of presence facilitates my best play without my even feeling like I'm trying. I can't conceive of how the sub/unconscious mind can take in so much information at once, extract what's relevant, and have me physically execute the right move at the net or the most appropriate shot, as though my body is being controlled by some benevolent puppetmaster. Occasional mistakes still happen, but without the ego piping up to assign some negative meaning to them, they roll off of me and don't disturb the background feeling of contentedness, that all is as it should be and all is right with the world.
Part of one of the Bagger Vance quotes you selected read "There is a perfect shot out there trying to find each and every one of us and all we have to do is get ourselves out of the way. Let it choose us." I think that gets at two very important and related things: trying vs. letting / forcing vs. allowing, and getting out of our own way. It seems fair to say that trying [too hard] or [attempts at] forcing are pure manifestations of ego, given that the egoless flow state feels like autopilot with little to no perception of effort, in which we allow ourselves to be carried by the unseen and unfelt power of our unconscious mind's processing ability in tandem with our awareness. It follows, then, that clearing our own path to our best performance means being as present and in-the-moment as possible and letting go of / disidentifying with the ego as much as we can.
Thanks again & as always for your writing, and for indulging me in this long comment that enabled me to create some structure and organization for what had felt like a stew of tenuously connected thoughts.
Thank you for taking the time to develop your ideas and enrich my essay, and thank you, too, for the kind words.
Your tennis example is excellent. Pete Sampras said one of his advantages was that the other guys paid attention to their emotions during the match, and he didn't.
Cheri Huber's books are indeed outstanding.
About presence. I was once delivering a series of workshops for an organization for which the project manager was required to sit in. This organization had ongoing workshops, and so she sat in on many presentation styles.
She said to me one day, "Barry, you are the master of the pause." I responded, "What's the pause?"
She was puzzled that I didn't know and explained that I seemed to know the exact moment when providing some dead air would elicit a great question that engaged the audience. She added, "The other guys who present just blunder ahead, often oblivious to the needs of the group."
I didn't know because I never calculated when to pause. The pause arose because I was out of the way, and presence could guide me.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your wisdom.
Another excellent piece. As usual, I could feel the visceral truth of your words as well as of those in the quotes you included.
Right off the bat, the subhead "It's a relief that good thoughts aren't necessary for good performance" reminded me of reading the transcript of an interview with a tennis player who won a major back in the late 90s or early 2000s -- I think it was Marat Safin, for whatever that's worth -- who said (I'm paraphrasing) that at no point before or during that major final did he ever think he was actually capable of winning it. If a professional athlete doesn't need confidence or good thoughts in order to perform at his/her highest level, the rest of us surely don't.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, at least in a sports context, not only are good thoughts unnecessary for performing well, thinking at all is generally unnecessary and is often actually counterproductive. This assumes we've acquired enough skill to be competent at whatever level we're at, of course, and practice does require conscious thought. As long as we have that baseline of competence, though, the state of flow / being "in the zone" that produces our best performance is, at least in my experience, characterized by an absence of thought. I've sometimes heard it said of an athlete's performance when he was clearly in the zone that "he was unconscious," which is more accurate than I think most people realize when they say that, as the athlete in that state is not consciously thinking, but rather sensing and intuiting, seeing the whole rather than a disconnected subset of parts, and making the right choices & physically executing with no experience of having made any conscious decisions.
I hadn't thought of it this way until reading this piece and trying to make sense of my thoughts about it by writing this comment, but it now occurs to me that the flow state is simply complete, unfettered presence. In that state, the ego -- which as you point out is no help, and even an active hindrance -- is quiet, the internal monologue is paused, and what's left is our essence: pure awareness.
I'm reading a series of books by the Zen teacher Cheri Huber, and she echoes something I think you've pointed out a number of times, which is that our essences, our authentic selves which are so often hidden beneath the ego and its conditioning, are expressions of goodness and love. It seems to me that being "in the zone" is a direct experience of that. To me that state feels like ease and effortlessness undergirded by a subtle, understated bliss. I'm a tennis player myself so my excursions into the flow state are usually in that context, and when I reflect on them afterwards, I find it truly amazing how that degree of presence facilitates my best play without my even feeling like I'm trying. I can't conceive of how the sub/unconscious mind can take in so much information at once, extract what's relevant, and have me physically execute the right move at the net or the most appropriate shot, as though my body is being controlled by some benevolent puppetmaster. Occasional mistakes still happen, but without the ego piping up to assign some negative meaning to them, they roll off of me and don't disturb the background feeling of contentedness, that all is as it should be and all is right with the world.
Part of one of the Bagger Vance quotes you selected read "There is a perfect shot out there trying to find each and every one of us and all we have to do is get ourselves out of the way. Let it choose us." I think that gets at two very important and related things: trying vs. letting / forcing vs. allowing, and getting out of our own way. It seems fair to say that trying [too hard] or [attempts at] forcing are pure manifestations of ego, given that the egoless flow state feels like autopilot with little to no perception of effort, in which we allow ourselves to be carried by the unseen and unfelt power of our unconscious mind's processing ability in tandem with our awareness. It follows, then, that clearing our own path to our best performance means being as present and in-the-moment as possible and letting go of / disidentifying with the ego as much as we can.
Thanks again & as always for your writing, and for indulging me in this long comment that enabled me to create some structure and organization for what had felt like a stew of tenuously connected thoughts.
Thank you for taking the time to develop your ideas and enrich my essay, and thank you, too, for the kind words.
Your tennis example is excellent. Pete Sampras said one of his advantages was that the other guys paid attention to their emotions during the match, and he didn't.
Cheri Huber's books are indeed outstanding.
About presence. I was once delivering a series of workshops for an organization for which the project manager was required to sit in. This organization had ongoing workshops, and so she sat in on many presentation styles.
She said to me one day, "Barry, you are the master of the pause." I responded, "What's the pause?"
She was puzzled that I didn't know and explained that I seemed to know the exact moment when providing some dead air would elicit a great question that engaged the audience. She added, "The other guys who present just blunder ahead, often oblivious to the needs of the group."
I didn't know because I never calculated when to pause. The pause arose because I was out of the way, and presence could guide me.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your wisdom.