I was recently playing pickleball with a friend who is far better than I am at the game and when
I’d hit a really good shot she’d holler, “feast on that one Sandy!” What she meant was not to
pat myself on the back, but rather to savor the feel of the shot, replay the way it felt when the
ball left my paddle, the sound it made, the effortlessness of it. So, I actually started to take a
moment when I hit an exemplary shot (though they were rare) and recreate it in my head, my
body, in my self-talk. I’d even start telling myself “Hey, if you got that almost impossible ball
and returned a great shot once, you can do it again! And guess what? I did. I started hitting
more and more good shots!
Taking that to our riding lives, when you execute a great stop or turn on the fence or have a
higher scoring run than usual, take the moment to “feast” on it. It’s been proven that it takes
30-60 seconds of savoring a moment to create a pathway that can be followed internally to
duplicate that more and more often, in other words to make it “stick”.
Likewise, if we mess something up, “Forget about it”. We don’t want to deepen that moment
into a rut in our subconscious by ruminating on it and having that be what “sticks”. It’s fine to
be honest with ourselves though, if we understand what didn’t go well and replace it with what
we’ll do better next time. That’s what the great tennis players do when they miss a shot. You’ll
see them swing their racket a time or two like they should have to “replace” the error with the
correct stroke. If we dwell on the error, we just make it stronger in our subconscious rather
than making the desired motion get more firmly entrenched. So, forget about those errors or
better yet replace them and feast on those good ones for a minute to make them stick!
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Right on!!!!!!