Inner Lights or Spotlights?

Excerpted from
Body, Mind, and Sport: The Mind-Body Guide to Lifelong Health, Fitness, and Your Personal Best
By John Douillard, Ph.D.

We are conditioned to think that to win, to be the best, is the only legitimate goal. An Olympic gold medal, parlayed into Coke commercials and TV appearances, is the sign of the greatest achievement. A silver medalist -second best in the world, and not a small accomplishment -is considered a risky investment by the marketing wizards who exploit the achievements of world-class athletes. But as Colleen Cannon, a world-class triathlete, said to me, "I think the real race we're involved in here is the human race. The important thing is not whether you win in San Jose on Saturday, hut the process you're going through as an individual -how you develop as a human being."

A couple of years ago I worked with Steve Bennet, a Pan American Gaines world champion in karate and one of the kindest, most soft-spoken guys I'd ever met. Steve told me that during his training as a young boy his coach had brainwashed him into never entertaining the possibility of defeat. Thus, Steve became obsessed with winning. Karate was for defeating the opposition, and nothing more. Even as he trained his childhood away, he complained continually to his coach, "I'm tired. I'm tired." This was viewed as a sign of weakness. He was simply forced to train harder, and learned to keep his mouth shut.

The pressure on him to win became so great that he would panic before competitions. He developed insomnia and severe anxiety, which later manifested itself as aggressive behavior with his family. Before a match he would become uncontrollably nervous. First his hands would sweat, then his whole body. His heart would begin to race, he would start to tremble, then he would finally burst into the ring in a frenzied state born of nervous exhaustion.

Yes, Steve became a winner-but by the age of 24 he bad collapsed both physically and mentally. He could barely walk, would hyperventilate at the smallest stress, and was unable to drive a car because his legs shook uncontrollably. He was forced to take tranquilizers and was told that he would need to take them for the rest of his life.

Driven by his coach, Steve almost gave his life not to let his coach down. Steve derived little enjoyment or satisfaction from his efforts. And deep inside, he always knew he was destroying himself. Yet, he found himself going through the painful motions of training and competition only because he had a gift - he could win.

Steve somehow managed to become a world champion even while taking tranquilizers, thanks to his enormous determination and physical endurance, he is now off all medications and has devoted his life to teaching the true meaning of karate and sports and the deeper purpose of competition.

Competition is not for the sole purpose of defeating the opposition and becoming the winner. After all, who can remember last year's champions? For all its flash, this type of victory is short-lived. The more lasting victory has to be an inner one.

Inner victory comes from the knowledge that you have done your best. It is a feeling of respect for your achievements and for those of your fellow athletes. It is the essence of the word aidos, the ancient Greek athletic ideal, which includes modesty, respect, moral dignity, and good sportsmanship, coupled with valor and the "joy of battle," the joy of competition itself.

We all grew up believing that we can be happy, even elated, if we win, but if we lose, we have to be miserable and dejected. At the end of the World Series or the NCAA play-offs, the cameras routinely pan back and forth from the jubilant winners, leaping and shouting, to the dejected losers, sitting on the bench with lowered heads. This has a terrible effect, particularly on our children, who model this behavior and thus learn to trade anything in order to win.

But why should this be? Why shouldn't we enjoy the game, the action, the sheer joy of being our best?

I introduced my training principles to a small-town high school soccer team. At the time, they barely had enough kids to field a team. Earlier in the year, their coach had sent me a note about one of their games. They had lost 8-0. "but the interesting thing was that our kids were still able to enjoy the match. In fact, despite the fact that they were getting creamed, they were having a noticeably good time, to such an extent that the winning team began to get upset. How could these kids still be enjoying themselves in the midst of being shut out?

"As the match ended, our kids got together in what looked like a victory huddle, then went to congratulate the winners. The winning team was blown away at this unusual display of sportsmanship, and they asked our kids, how can you be so happy? We just shut you out 8-0.' Our boys said that they were happy because they felt that their playing was good, that they could see themselves getting better with each game. It was fun, and they simply loved to play soccer.

"This only served to anger the winners even more; in fact they challenged our little team to a rematch -in hopes, I suppose, of finally humiliating them and making them feel 'the agony of defeat.'"

This soccer team lost the match but won the game. They took home the inner prize because they found joy in the process, the path to the goal, rather than having their satisfaction depend on the game's outcome. If the process itself is fulfilling, winning will always be the experience, regardless of the final score. External victories will come and go, but internal victories are here to stay.

As we've seen, to the ancient Greeks, and lo the originators of the martial arts, the inner competition was regarded as the highest. Only there could a person be a true champion. Seen in this light, the purpose of competition is to display the athlete's skill. The opposition is there as a distraction, lo try to take the athlete away from himself, to tempt him to focus on the challenger instead of on himself and his performance. Distracted, the athlete loses the mind-body coordination needed to win from inside out.

Does this sound strange? For a moment, imagine yourself on a tennis court. You've been playing very well into the final set, calling the shots, making your opponent play your kind of game. Then suddenly you find yourself playing your opponents game, he begins dictating the strategy, the shots, and, ultimately, the outcome. A match you thought you were in control of suddenly slips through your hands because your opponent distracted you from yourself and your game.

Steve Briggs, a tennis instructor and former competitor on the pro tennis tour, put it this way: "In tennis you're going head to head with another person. So to a certain extent you have to pay attention lo where they're going to serve or hit the next shot. But if you think too much about what they're going to do, then what you're going to do becomes subordinate to their strategy, and then you lose. You have to strike a balance between being absorbed in what you want to do, flowing in your own zone, and a sense or intuition of how your opponent is planning to play you."

This is the difference between making all perfect shots in practice, when you are completely relaxed, and then going on the match court and wondering where all those great shots went. The trick is to maintain the composure and ease of practice even during the most stressful competition, so that you never lose yourself to the fleeting promise of an outward victory.

Winning from the inside out means being more dedicated to the cumulative development of mind-body coordination than lo momentary victories. And the way to gain this development is to focus more on the process of what you are doing than on the outward goal of winning.