Seattle Sports Insider

Zen

Ki and the Zone, I

more aiki-waza. Blame Nathan for this one!

Posted by

jemanji

12/1/16

Nathan sez, in response to Dr. Detecto's psychobabble shtick,

Questions For Doc But Any Of Ya'll Can Chime In

...Segura is a socially-awkward, rather shy person when he's in unfamiliar settings. ... Such people can do better-than-expected when comfortable and worse-than-expected when unappreciated. [Dr D]

Doc, this comment struck me because it describes myself to a T and I had never made the better-than-expected vs. worse-than-expected connection in my own life. From where did you glean the insight to be able to generalize this info? Experience? Suuuuper curious.

... [Next subject to follow in separate post]..

Nathan's comment popped up one of life's pleasant little surprises. Once in a while you run into an expert in a subject deadpan something like "so what's your approach to eBay?," you leap on the chance to brag like a panther onto a lame bunny ... and it's twenty minutes into the conversation that you uncover the fact that the questioner is a Top Rated Plus seller with 103,722 positive feedbacks. This happens to me about once or twice a year and it's always one of my favorite moments. Thanks Nathan LOL

C.S. Lewis, an eminently humble man, once deadpanned "if you ever meet a truly humble man you will probably find that he is more interested in what YOU have to say than in telling you what he things." Curiosity and humility are close bedfellows. Maybe we can get Nathan to play checkers and "King Us" with a hop over the humility concept as well ...

Point is, it's likely that you could answer your own Q's better than I could Nathan. :- ) But we'll play straight man for a second...

....

Where did we get the idea that some people can be better-than-average or worse-than-average depending on whether they are feeling safe and accepted...

My wife is in this category. She used to be painfully shy in school, but gregarious with her two or three best friends. Her utter lack of confidence in, e.g., the mandatory speech to the class, wrecked her performance. But these days she has literally 500 - 1,000 people who are friends enough to greet her with a hug ...

....

Jean Segura reminds me of this a little bit. Edgar did. Randy Johnson may have been that way in an overcompensating-bluster style. Ty Cobb. Stephen Curry. Some people, you just have to let them know that nothing is THREATENING them, that everything's going to be okay, and then the garden hose of their talent unkinks itself.

In a way, most AAA players upon promotion face this problem. Edwin Diaz was a notable exception, right? Larry Bird had true self-confidence, a sureness of foot that can be seen even in, let's say, his coaching career compared to Magic Johnson's and 100 other ex-stars who couldn't coach.

Like almost every virtue, this one can be twisted. Whether Hillary or Trump had won office, they would have assumed office as the least-popular President-Elects ever, almost precisely because of their Larry Bird-style "if the other bench likes it, fine; if not, that's on them" attitude.

You could soak a piece of writing chalk in dye, break it in half, and see how deep the dye penetrated ... if you broke Kyle Seager open, I think you would find "Let's Do This Thing!" all the way through. Robinson Cano, probably. Felix was so good, so young, that he got his Golden Boy thing on and it survived a couple of years of frustration in a way Dustin Ackley's didn't.

The Japanese approach to this is distinctive and fun to watch. Hisashi Iwakuma runs into a 7-ER outing but he focuses back on technique -- like the balance of his CG -- so strongly that it blots distractions out of his mind. There are many roads to Rome. Anything that fills the mind completely will blot out negative thoughts ... self-image, technique, habit, lots of things.

....

Talking about The Zone next ... obviously that is the antithesis of being in The Zone, to be self-conscious and in fear of what others' assessments are. It is all about attention, what the mind is occupied with at the decisive moment of competition --- >

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Comments

MisterJonez

... commented on the original thread before we had to delete and republish. His comment:

I was never a 'gamer,' personally.

That seems to be a phenomenon that intersects with this subject matter. Some people genuinely do perform better under pressure while others perform worse under pressure. In general, we value the former more than the latter because it's easier to create pressure in an environment than it is to reduce pressure. Think of the millions(billions?) we collectively spend each year in an effort to reduce stress in our lives, with everything from comfort food to music, or sports fandom to meditation. It's difficult to effectively lower one's pressure while encouraging them to continue producing at their maximum.

It's nowhere near as hard to crank the pressure up on someone in any otherwise pressure-free environment.

I run into this in my career as a science fiction/fantasy writer. I've got a dozen books e-published on Amazon.com, and each one feels like an emotionally exhausting grind since I never *quite* feel like I'm in The Zone long enough to get more than a third of a book written before I fall out of it again. For 'gamers' this wouldn't be as big of a problem as it is for me, though obviously in life there are no solutions--only tradeoffs ;-) Still, the grass all-too-often looks greener on the other side of the fence...

Honestly, I tore it up in high school wrestling practice. It took our multi-time state champions to rein me in--and they were 1-3 weight classes above me! But I'd be surprised if I had a >.500 lifetime record when it mattered ;-)

- MisterJonez

Nature vs. Nurture

There is much that can be done to teach "Quiet Mind" technique: Man, that's the bulk of the sports psychology stuff that bounces around out there. More and more, however, psychological study leads us to the conclusion that much/most of who we are is rooted at the genetic level. Much of our personality is born and not made. By the way, I think a lot of the imagery technique that is sports psychology (in books I've read) may serve to do the opposite of quiting the mind. Dut I digress.

Did Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus, Reggie Jackson, Wayne Gretzky "learn" the secret to finding The Zone, or did they just "have" it, intuitively.

Didn't Lady Gaga sing about that? Born This Way.

Doc, I just finished reading (two nights ago), for the 3rd or 4th time, a book called the Tao of Physics. I got it 40 years ago, or so, as required reading in a Physics class in college. The book examines Eastern Philosophy/Religion (Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu) and how their universal view (of an interconnectedness of all thiings and a "reality" that is not visible to the unenlightened) is becoming the dominant view of particle physics. Wonderfully good, but heady, stuff. Hadn't read it in 15 years or so.

My copy is dog-eared from front to back, as I've marked pages for my attention the next time I read. but I always dog-ear more.

One of the last 2 or 3 pages had a comment that said (paraphrasing) essentially, "You can not explain, you can only experience." I dog-eared that page the other night. Had not before.

I am sure that the mind of a Nicklaus or Bird observed and experienced, but didn't try to explain the final round back nine Augusta or the last minute of a Championship game. At least until the press corps asked about it later.

It isn't easy and such is the stuff of the greatest greats. The physical ability gets you part way there.....but something else separates you. Tom Weiskoph had all the physical ability of a Jack Nicklaus, but even he admitted he was light years behind in the other stuff. Do we, the unitiated, percieve that Quietness as Self-Confidence?

I'm a worrier in my normal life. I lay awake at night, fret, stew, decide and undecide. It is who I am. Drives my wife nuts. Couldn't stop it if I tried....and I've tried. My dad, too. I'm sure its part of my DNA. But in competion I am just the opposite. I get quiet. Don't know why. When I coached, the closer the game and the closer to the end, the quiter I got. Have done the same the several times I've been 1st on the scene at auto accidents. 18th hole, 6 iron in hand, pond to carry, I get quiet. On the 3rd hole I might not.

Lady Gaga called it for me. So does The Tao of Physics. In those moments where loudness should prevail I manage to get quiet. I experience/observe and don't try to explain/analyze. Weirdness. I can't explain it.....and certainly didn't purposely cultivate it. it just is.

So does a Segura get quiet when he's comfortable? Loses that comfort otherwise? And what does you Aiki say about the Nicklaus and Bird?

The Self and Mental Discipline

We certainly haven't yet plumbed the depths of conciousness. Your comment about personality being born not made has merit. Why are almost all of us petrified of spiders? Genetic memory? I recently heard about genetic memory on a much smaller scale: A male survives a harrowing car accident and then has a child -> the child is anxious about riding in cars. Interesting thought on the shape of personality.

I've also been introduced to the concept of personality as it relates to your collective. You have a gut microbiome and many other living creatures that make up the environment of your SELF. If you get cranky because you're hungry and you're hungry because your gut microbiome lacks the key ingredient to make a certain peptide - who is cranky? What control do YOU have over your own personality? We have neurons in more places than just the brain.

Of course, we recognize environment and its impact on personality, especially during the formative years. So it's not all nature. I think we've come to the conclusion that it's a healthy blend of the two. *dusts off hands* There. We did it. We solved nature vs. nurture. ; )

Moe, you say you didn't cultivate it, that, for you, it just is. Maybe you could, though. If there were a way to cultivate a state of quietness during those moments when it's not there, that'd be cool, right? If that's the case, could a professional baseball player?

We see Yasiel Puigs and Christine Michaels who have so much God-given talent but can't seem to harness it well enough. How could teams exploit this dramatic market inefficiency? Pete Carroll seems to be trying it. The Mariners upjumped Andy McKay to head of player development for a reason and we know his philosophy isn't rooted in the physical but the mental side.

Humility

Humility is an interesting concept in that how much is appropriate to be displayed in a given social interaction is based on the cultural norms of the time.

Japan has what I consider to be an extreme stance on humility - one can only accept praise by means of self-flagellation (so to speak).

Ancient Assyria, as far as I can tell, has passed down a history whereby the opposite stance had been taken. Ashurbanipal certainly wasn't shy about his exploits or his expectations about how you should feel about them.

Today's American perspective on humility is -moving- and I genuinely can't tell if it's moving toward being healthier or unhealthier.

I was watching my 8 year old daughter demand that her older sister sacrifice her anime watching so that she could judge her entire 'Just Dance' routine with the expectation of specific critiques on what was and wasn't perfect. I marveled - How can she have any kind of expectation that her older sister cares one whit? I then had a eureka moment - Oh, that's right, she has self-esteem -

I would whither in a ball of fiery shame if I thought I was inconveniencing someone for one moment.

My daughter has a self-image that, based on her upbringing so far, has led her to believe that she is important enough to accept the inconveniencing of others in pursuit of her goals.

I dunno, maybe she's just young and will grow out of it but I've noticed a persistent theme about entitlement in the younger generation. Whether it's actually true or not, how would we know? Maybe it's just a perception issue? I know plenty of youngin's with natural grit and humility. Maybe we're actually lamenting a culture that doesn't cultivate those values?

I've been thinking a fair bit about shared values and how they are important: The aspirational level of these concepts (humility, entitlement, grit, vice, virtue, etc.) vs. an acceptable level of the same in a given (specifically, OUR) society. How do we synthesize these on the scale of 3 million, 320 million, or even 7 billion? How could we ever figure that out?

Bah! I'm rambling. You asked for it! The Jean Segura trade was good.

Don't worry

Don't worry about deviations from baseball topics on this site! Some of the most interesting conversations have come on tangents.