One Thing: Drop / Soften / Return
Reclaiming attention between serves.
Hi friends,
With the French Open wrapping up this weekend, I’m reminded how hard tennis is. Objectively, it’s two people playing one point at a time. In reality, it’s two people doing that under enormous pressure.
Under pressure, most of us default to two unhelpful moves:
Try harder: more force, more control, a tighter grip.
Time travel: replay the last point or live in the next one, drafting a whole story about what it means.
The edge for elite mental performers is not that they don’t feel pressure. It’s that they can return to clean, present attention. They keep playing the point they’re in.
This isn’t easy. And it’s absolutely a muscle that can be built through practice.
Drop / Soften / Return
In tennis, you have 25 seconds before the next serve. In work and life, sometimes we get even less, but we can still sneak in a rep:
Drop the story. Notice what’s here (anger, sadness, elation, disappointment) without becoming it. Yes, this happened. Yes, this feeling is here. And it doesn’t determine who I am or what happens next.
Soften your grip. Unclench your hands, drop your shoulders, release your jaw. Let your body send the signal: I’m not bracing anymore.
Return to now. Come back to the next point. The next meeting. The next step.
Take good care,
Lisa
Helpful, thanks!