Keep Your Eye on the Ball

I recently took a tennis lesson and the coach, knowing I wasn’t feeling too confident, told me a story about an 89-year-old player who, when asked her secret to playing so long, said, “I keep my eye on the ball.” Sounds simple enough, right? 

On the court it’s very straightforward, the objective clear, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. It can be as hard to maintain focus on a tennis court as off it where there are many competing forces. Focus takes practice. And we don’t always get served a ball that’s an easy return. 

We juggle a lot of balls—thoughts—at any given time. Sometimes I’m playing dodge ball with mine. No, not those again! They say energy flows where our attention goes, so if we become obsessive about things we cannot control, we’re burning fuel and not getting anywhere and likely making matters worse. It can be challenging to come out of that kind of doom loop and as daunting and frustrating as repeatedly hitting balls into the net.

We’re confronted with more distractions than ever before, being asked to consume and digest a lot, to weed out heaps of misinformation from the truth. It’s exhausting. Which balls should we have our eyes on any given day or moment? Some are obvious like our loved ones, family, kindness, gratitude, acting on good intentions, nature, justice, art, Willow the cat. But just like on the tennis court, it takes practice to keep our focus on the goodness. (No practice required for Willow.)

Energy flows where our attention goes. Impatience, anxiety, obsessing over assumptions, are all byproducts of fear. And fear loves attention and power. Franklin D Roosevelt famously said in his 1933 inaugural address “… the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…” Don’t give it attention. 

Focus strips away the clutter and clears the clouds in our minds. It is enhanced by meditation and prayer. Practice allows us to more readily find the sweet spot, to be in flow. The more we practice, the more effortless and natural it becomes. And there’s nothing more satisfying than hitting the sweet spot.