Mental toughness is a waste of time, And it’s a lot of effort.

US Open Tennis Winner Iga Swiatek showed us a better way to win at Saturday's US Open 2022 Tennis Finals.

While her competitor Ons Jabeur viscerally grimaced and kicked mis-hit balls into the audience; or gleamed with joy while pumping her bicep in celebration of a winner, Iga played it differently.

With a light, joyful ever-present glow --
Whether another seemingly impossible retrieval,
Or a double fault on a key point,
Ida played each point with no attachment to the result.

Traditional “mental toughness” might be repressing one’s emotions and impulses, or keeping a steely face.

Iga exhibited an effortless flow state.
Like a deep meditative trance,
Iga tuned into her Higher Self and let the shots flow from this infinite place,
Allowing the points to unfold exactly as they were meant.

I watched with a feeling of panic on her behalf when on Match Point,
Her strings popped! A broken string!!!
The horror. As any racket sport player will tell you: when you’re in the flow with a racket and the string breaks, it’s like having to play with a whole new racket for a few points... very compromising if you're focused on winning.

With a new racket, Iga blasted the next shot return out of bounds, letting her opponent back into the match, and setting up a white-knuckle tie break.

I thought “If only the string hadn’t broke - what might have been?” So chatters the ruminating mind.

But through all of this, what my mortal mind perceived as a disaster and a death spiral,
The gentle calm never left Ida's face.
She stayed in the zone, playing one shot after the next.

“Toughness” implies a lot of effort / control;
Flow is merely surrendering to your higher self, and having faith that channeling it will lead you to the right result over time.
A match’s outcome is determined by millions of micro-factors out of a player’s control.

You can elect to have faith, or you can spend all your energy judging interim outcomes as good and bad and letting your physicality get whipsawed moment to moment.

How are you spending your energy?

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