How’s Your Game? 4 Key Skills for Playing a Winning Game in Business and in Life
Hows your game?
Timothy Galwey struck a cord in 1974 when he wrote The Inner Game of Tennis. The inner game is the game we play against internal opponents – the opposition to your greatness that lives within you.
These opponents are all reflections of fear. They show up disguised as inner experiences such as the inability to focus or maintain your focus, nervousness, anxiety, indecisiveness, hesitancy, self-doubt, self-condemnation and insecurity. And they show up as shoulds.
The Inner Game goes far beyond tennis. It is the most important game we play in our businesses, and in the the rest of our lives. It affects the vitality and success of any and everything you desire and undertake.
The Inner Game is really about our relationship to Spirit, to our selves, to each other and to all of life. The game metaphor works exceptionally well, and core skills of the Inner Game are based in spiritual principles.
4 Key Inner Game Skills
The following 4 Inner Skills are essential for the success & fulfillment of your Outer Game – of every area of your business and your life, from relationships, to creative expression, to money:
1. Let go of judgments! When you judge anyone or anything – including you – you create tension in your mind, body and spirit. This blocks the natural flow of life energy and divine right ideas. Judgment always sabotages or inhibits right & effective action.
Instead of judging:
Notice and accept what is. Simply observe and experience – without judgment – a disempowering habit, behavior or an unsuccessful outcome. Sometimes the simple act of observing without judgment is enough to make a successful change.
2. Imagine Your Success! Create & practice images of successful outcomes in your imagination. Einstein once said that your imagination is the predictor of your future. Your subconscious mind cant tell the difference between past, present and future so it seeks to bring to you whatever you imagine.
Great athletes train their minds as well as their bodies. Mental training works in business or any area or your life, and with anything you desire, or want to achieve.
Create a mental image of the result you desire. Use all your senses, including your inner feeling and who you are being. Let this be your mental practice until you feel a click or experience the successful result.
3. Act as if! This is like role playing. Assume the qualities of someone who is already successful in the dream or outcome that you desire. Act as if YOU are already successful!
Dress, walk, communicate, make decisions, play and act with a sense of confidence, competence and ease.
4. Allow! This is a powerful feminine principle at work. It taps into your inherent faith that the Divine, the universe or your higher self is always working on your behalf.
Refrain from trying to make something happen. Act wholeheartedly in favor of the outcome you desire, but act in faith and leave the ultimate outcome to the Divine. There may be something greater in store for you than you have yet imagined.
Take time daily to practice your Inner Game. It ultimately determines the success of your Outer Game.
Step Into Your Greatness!
Practice Your Inner Game!