I’ve never been great at tennis.
But in the past month, I’ve played more than at any other time in my life. As you might expect, over that span, my game has improved.
In one recent game, I found myself consistently hitting shots I’d never been able to hit before.
My serves were on fire. I was able to hit both forehand and backhand shots with speed, topspin, and accuracy. I hit drop shot after drop shot that left my friend Jordon sprinting up to the net to no avail. The game felt effortless like I didn’t have to think about making the shots, I just had to swing, the ball and racket understanding my intention and complying.
Through the first two sets, Jordon and I both played with this kind of loose, easy confidence, winning one each and setting up a winner-take-all third set.
But with the added stakes, something changed.
From the very first point, I was timid. and began overthinking every one of my shots. Where I had been swinging from a place of ease, fluidity, and confidence, I now found myself tensing up. The feeling of effortlessness had dissipated, each shot now requiring focused, concerted effort.
The result wasn’t pretty.
Shot after shot after shot went long, wide, or into the net.
We hear about this type of tension affecting a player’s game at even the highest levels of sport.
With the game, medal, or championship on the line, even the best players are prone to abandon the ease and flow that got them there, tense up, and choke.
In Canada, we refer to this phenomenon as “gripping the stick too tight” as it commonly occurs in hockey players who get into a rut and can’t even seem to put the puck into an empty net when presented with the opportunity.
Of course, it being Canada, we need a hockey analogy for everything.
But the problem of gripping the stick too tight also shows up in creative work.
Just think of the safe sophomore album that fails to meet the expectations set by a breakthrough debut, the sequel that flops, or the sales call with a potential high-end client that you botch.
We often find ourselves gripping the stick a little tighter as our audience grows, bringing with it more attention and scrutiny. Or, we may experience it as we feel ourselves approaching a major milestone in our creative careers. Regardless of the trigger, when the stakes feel high, we begin second guess ourselves and our work, slipping into analysis paralysis and perfectionism, and grinding our creative process to a halt.
Ironically in these cases, it’s the very fact that we’re moving closer to our goals that makes it harder to actually achieve them.
The problem is rooted in loss aversion, the fact that humans are psychologically wired to prefer to avoid losses rather than acquire equivalent gains.
When we’re first starting out and we have nothing to lose. We feel confident experimenting, creating freely and easily, testing the limits of what we can create, and exploring broadly in search of the work that will resonate both with us and our audience.
As we acquire an audience, however, and the attention on us grows, we retreat.
We find ourselves playing not to lose instead of doing what is needed and extending ourselves further than we have yet, pushing through and reaching for the win.
The answer, when we’re gripping the stick too tight is twofold.
First, we need to use the anonymity we have in our early days to its fullest.
When we have nothing to lose, we need to act like it and create anything and everything that we feel called to create, without worry of what anyone else will think. At this stage, chances are no one’s watching anyway, and if they do, they almost certainly don’t care.
Secondly, when we start to have some success, we need to dial down the pressure we put on ourselves.
Creative work is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to come from a place of ease and flow and intuition, not tension and analysis.
Like my recreational tennis match with a friend, when we take a step back, the stakes are almost never as high as we make them out to be. Big breaks rarely exist, meaning that although we might feel as though we’re on the precipice of our one and only opportunity to achieve our goals, we’ll have plenty more in the future.
What got us to this point was our ability to swing freely and easily, to disengage our mind and let instinct and muscle memory take the wheel.
What will get us to the next level is to continue swinging effortlessly.
Perhaps even more effortlessly than we have yet.
• • •
I ended up winning my tennis match.
It wasn’t because I was able to get back into the flow I had experienced during the first two sets. Rather, under the pressure of the (pseudo-) stakes, Jordon had tensed up as much as I had. He just happened to have a few more misfires than I did.
There was one bright spot in that final set, however.
A lone shot where I was able to get into position, push my timidness aside, plant my feet, and swing freely.
For just a moment, the feeling of ease returned. The racket connected and the ball exploded back across the court in a tight arc, landing just inside the far corner for a point.
While I wasn’t able to make a shot like that again, it was a reminder that no matter how tightly we’re gripping the stick, (or in my case, the racket) that ease, flow, and instinct is still somewhere inside us, waiting to be tapped into.
We just need to relax, recenter ourselves, and swing.
Explore how to navigate a creative life that matters
This article originally appeared in my weekly Creative Wayfinding Newsletter. Each issue is the product of a week of work, and contains something not available for sale.
A fresh perspective, a shot of encouragement when you need it most, and maybe even some genuine wisdom from time to time.
Each week, we explore a different facet of the question “How do we navigate the wilds of creating work that matters?”
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to share it with you.
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