Think of a perfect world as one that includes adversities because things will occur to us that are not in line with what we would hope or like. That in and of itself is the perfect world. 

How do you deal with adversity when you're working on your game or when you're playing? 

i) If you're working on your pickleball improvement, let's say you're working on your serve and you have a tendency to pull your paddle across your body (a very common mechanical flaw in players' games), understand that that's part and parcel of the game 

ii) Allow yourself to not lose sight of the positives of the journey itself. You're going to have to deal with obstacles as part of your process to get to where you want to go, but that's just how it is.

I'll relate this to a personal story that we'll tie it into pickleball where a lot of times we focus so much on the final painted room, and lose sight of the moments that we're painting, the seeing it develop and trying to do your best.

In this episode I also share with you ways of thinking about your process that make it seem more manageable and use it for your benefit if you haven't done something before.

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Have a great week and we will see you this Friday for our regular episode - Pilling: It is a thing :). 

Obstacles will naturally arise and are the reasons why you cannot reasonably say that you will not miss a single shot the next game you play. If obstacles are unavoidable and they generate the percentage, then that percentage is unavoidable by extension. 

This week we drive home the conversation we're having last week about 15% volley and setting reasonable expectations as we try to figure out the best way for us to approach the invariable situation where we miss a shot. 
 
If you understand what goes into your shots like shot variability, and removing variables, you can work your percentage error rate down.

You can improve your shots by;

i) Working on them
ii) Drilling 
iii) Playing more 

But no matter what, you're gonna have a number that is higher than 0% as there's no 0% error rate. Not even the pros have a 0% error rate. 

So set the number you want then get it down from whatever your number but recognize that you're always gonna have a number at the end of the day, and how you decide to react to the missed volley relative to that number is going to be relevant to, how you feel and also just dealing in the real world.

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When we're playing a match and we miss a shot, particularly one that we consider 'easy', we can get down on ourselves. Missing shots is usually the most negative feeling that we have besides losing.

How do we process when we miss a shot when we play? This week I'm gonna share with you a technique of dealing with misses because they are going to occur .

And it is a normal part of overall execution and strategic decision making in pickleball for us to miss shots when we play, even the easy ones. 

We need to change our mindset from 'I should not have missed that volley' to 'Okay, I missed a volley. That's just simply part of the deal.'
 
This approach will help you stay in the real world and not create some discord between the words you're trying to tell yourself and the reality you're dealing with. And it allows you to avoid needlessly beating yourself up. 

The key is to avoid the negativity of always classifying your shot or expecting that you should not have missed and accepting that the shot is within the parameters of your overall game, which includes, by definition, missing shots when you play pickleball.

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This week we dive deeper into a recent episode by Tony on a very powerful perspective that had me reflect on my journey about learning. 

What I discovered about the reality of the struggle during practice is that, first of all, it's unavoidable. The absolute only way to master a skill to proficiency is through repetition where you will inevitably face both success and failure, no shortcuts.

Now practice is about finding joy in the process and being fully present in that moment. There is just something so satisfying about the rhythm of drilling, practicing and the repetition of hitting a pickleball. 

What helps me to stay grounded a majority of the time is a really simple tool that I use after every practice, or after playing a session, called 3, 2, 1;

👉 Writing down three things that I did well that day that do not have to be result-based. 

👉 Taking on an awareness about myself on the two things I learned about myself to bring back the things I can control. It can be as simple as noticing that I play better when I take a deep breath before serving. 

👉 Then one is one thing that I'm going to do with that information in the next 24 hours. 

This exercise is a way to shift the focus back onto the process and away from the results, and ultimately, from where I feel the struggle and the frustration. 

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A distraction pulls our attention away from the main thing that we're trying to focus on and it could either be physical or mental. 

For instance, if you're trying to paint something, and somebody keeps tapping your paint brush right on the end, it becomes hard to paint because you're distracted by it. 

Same thing happens when we play pickleball and we're trying to focus on the shot or we're trying to focus on ourselves and what we need to do better the next rally but we're distracted by a number of things.

How should we approach and deal with distractions in a way that is more productive or constructive for us?

Think about challenges and distractions in pickleball as puzzles. So when you're facing a challenging opponent, good dinker/shotter or challenging situations such as the wind or sun, look at those as pieces of the puzzle.

And the more complex the puzzle is, the more challenging the game that you are playing is going to be for you. 

This will help you generate more challenge for yourself and create more reward because you get to work through the challenges as you play.

At the end of the day, is that not why we play pickleball? Do we not play pickleball because of the challenge that it presents to us? 

If it was easy, then you'd probably grow bored with it.

I got to play in one event at the USA Pickleball Nationals in Mesa, Arizona, that I'm going to be using as the centerpiece for today's conversation- How do we play better pickleball?

It was a mixed doubles match where me and my partner, Ken, got to play hybrid which is one standing player and one player in a wheelchair. 

We were going to play Troy and Ryan in that Bronze Metal match where they won the first and second game. In the third game, we're getting hammered but we put on a run and beat them in the last match. 

So what changed between when we were getting hammered and when we ended up winning? Here are the tips for success based on that game;

i) Play at a tempo that makes sense for you, slow yourself down, and you're going to play better. 

ii) Smile. I know that sounds so simple that it can't possibly work but smiling gives you additional calmness leading to better play.

There's a lot of things you need to improve your play and that's fine. But all things being equal and having done the other stuff to the best of your ability, consider taking your time and consider smiling to enjoy the situation more. 

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Let's talk about the concept of clicking when it comes to knowledge acquisition. How do we acquire knowledge and how do we know that we've acquired it? 

Sometime there's frustrations of not acquiring knowledge as quickly as we would want it to. So things may not be clicking for us and there's something that we're missing right now. 

i) Something as simple as listening to the podcast is a click, because you didn't do that before, and now you listen to the podcast.

ii) Looking back and knowing, 'I've already learned a lot in the past' or that things clicked in the past gives you a sense of comfort and a sense of confidence that you will be able to learn the new things you're working on. 

iii) Understand or embrace the fact that you will never learn everything that pickleball has to teach. It's just not possible so keep at it, as long as you're curious and want to keep growing as a player.  

We also talk about gratitude because playing pickleball is a wonderful opportunity and we get to enjoy or experience a positive moment every time we're on the pickleball courts with our friends. 

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On a pickleball court, there are four factors that affect the outcome of the game; us, our partner, and our two opponents. 

We'll use an analogy where factor A is going to be us, factor B is going to be our partner then factor C and D are our opponents-the two players across the net. 

The input in a pickleball game is going to be the game, the rules, the ball, the wind conditions, the court size which is standard and all the things that are happening to play a pickleball game or affecting the court conditions. Those are inputs while the output here is win the game or lose the game. 

Of the four factors, the only thing you can control is you and your play; how you did relative to you or what you're able to do, relative to your baseline, and relative to what you can bring that day to the court, nothing else.

This means I can't look at the results of the game to determine how I played so play pickleball as a contest of you against you. To test yourself against yourself. 

The best way to think about competition in this game is to view it in terms of our journey as pickleball players. Look at your play and determine whether your play is improving or not improving during a session and also over time. 

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 Pickleball, in its essence, is a zero-sum activity because it's built around the concept that there's going to be one winner and one loser.

In a zero-sum world, our opponent's victory is our loss. Their positive is our negative. But it doesn't have to be that way. Think about your losses as simply learning opportunities so now you have a positive and a positive.

Let's go into an analogy metaphor where you, or a loved one or a partner of yours, drops a dish that means something to you and it breaks or cracks. That's the reality. That is the thing that happened.

How we react to that reality is 100% entirely within our ability;

i) We can just get upset about it and despair over it
ii) We can acknowledge that these things happen and it's human nature to make such sorts of mistakes and drop things
iii) When an opponents overpower us or plays a really good rally, we can celebrate their rally rather than getting bogged down.
iv) Embrace the beauty of the cracks and understand losses are just a natural outcome.

We have a certain amount of control over the way we react to and handle adverse events when we play pickleball at the different levels of events; from the end of the game to the rally, all the way down to being inside of a rally.

Turn potentially negative loss into a positive, which is a celebration of your opponent's win.

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