How to Eliminate Choking On and Off The Court

We’ve all seen it happen, and maybe even experienced it. You are dominating your opponent and suddenly you miss a few “easy” shots. Instinctively, you attempt to fix it, try harder to execute, and then, become hyper-focused on your technique, “I need to get the ball deeper, accelerate more, don’t take such a big backswing.” But,…

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Don’t Let Your “Knots” Slow You Down

Pre-Covid, when we could safely go to the gym, I often remember pulling out my old headphones wondering how they could get so tangled, especially since I know they were definitely not tangled after my last workout. Each time, as I sat in the locker room untangling the cord, I remember being struck how our…

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The Best Athletes Behave Their Way into the Zone. So Can You.

If you tuned into the 2021 Australian Open, you probably heard how much the top players increasingly talking about their “mental” games. After Stefanos Tsitsipas defeated Rafa Nadal in a five set thriller he said: “How would I describe myself?” he mused afterward, asked to describe his mind-set after winning what proved a pivotal tiebreaker.…

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Find Pleasure in Pressure

1 Idea, 1 Anecdote, 1 Action adapted from Jeff’s book, The Best Tennis of Your Life I’ve been asked how the best players in the world compete so well when the stakes are so high. “How do athletes deal with the stress with so much on the line?” Answer: They learn to thrive in it.…

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What if The Right Expectations Could Transform Your Performance?

The King of Clay, Rafa Nadal, won his 13th French Open Title last Sunday and tied Roger Federer’s Grand Slam record of 20. Here’s what Rafa said about it immediately following his win: “When I lose it’s not a drama for me, and when I achieve something important I don’t see it as especially amazing…

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Two Techniques To Master Your Focus And Achieve Your Best Outcomes

What’s New? 1-1-1 with Jeff Greenwald Over the next ten weeks I will be sharing ONE Idea that can transform the way you think and live, ONE Analogy to drive it home, and ONE Action you can take to see its effects in your life. These time-tested ideas–drawn from 22 years working in the field…

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The Link Between Persistence and Contentment

While waiting to play tennis with a friend yesterday (I’ll call him Shane), I asked him how many of his friends were happy from his perspective. He said, “Most of them, actually.” “Because you probably don’t want to be around negative people, right?” He quickly responded, “Exactly.” But, he did acknowledge that many of the…

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When Success is Just Beyond Your Reach

A few days ago my son, Will, asked me to jump with him on the trampoline. He particularly likes it when I bounce him really high, which I do by using the well-known technique where I jump right next to him just before he lands sending him twice as far into the air as he…

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Finding the Music Inside of You

I know we can all feel low and sometimes our motivation, or even the belief in ourselves, can fluctuate. Clearly, we all have good reason to drag at this moment. But, we don’t have to lay down and give in for too long. That said, if you are struggling, as many people are these days,…

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Engage in the Learning Process

With our desire for immediate results and a lack of self-awareness, we often don’t even see the learning opportunities in front of our eyes. Engaging in the learning process is a critical step toward achieving goals on the tennis court.  Recently, I was practicing my serve for an upcoming tournament. On the court next to…

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Choosing Resilience in Adversity

In the near future, perhaps sometime next month or early June, this first wave of Covid will be behind us. This will be a relief for everybody. Will you be depleted and burned out when you re-emerge? Or, will you have a new appreciation for the little things in life, including your relationships with friends…

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Choose the Path of Engagement

This morning, as I was staring down the rabbit hole of a minimum of two more months with two home-schooled children living in my home 24/7, I felt that had a choice to make. Would l let the heavy blanket of despair envelope me and hold me in a state of inaction or would I…

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Minding your Mind in Challenging Times

Before reading my suggestions below, please understand that anything you’re feeling right now is completely normal. We are all facing the same external situation, but each of us will have different reactions based on our personalities, values and life experiences. Yesterday, I spoke with an anxious entrepeneur in his early fifties who had to close down all of his…

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Prioritize Your Focus

Last week a player at my club stopped to tell me, “Jeff, what I didn’t realize is how hard it is to sustain your focus in a match.” She was trying to tell me that she used my tools between points and that they were working, but was stunned by how much energy it required…

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The Inner Game of Tennis – by W. Tim Gallwey

In the past ten years I have witnessed tremendous progress in both the acceptance of the the mental game, or inner game of tennis, and the number of conversations about it. You will be hard pressed to go 15 minutes without a commentator at any Grand Slam event not expounding on the relevance of “mental…

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