Ep. 305 - Ridiculously Optimistic

PICKLEBALL THERAPY — EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Ep. 305 — Ridiculously Optimistic Host: Tony Roig --- Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I hope you're doing well. My name is Tony Roig. I'm your host of this weekly podcast. This is the only podcast that is pickleball and your mind. We really want to focus on this podcast on you, your growth as a person, growth as a pickleball player. If you've listened to the podcast for any amount of time, you know those two work very well together, your growth in both areas. This week is no exception. I'm excited about this week's episode. We're going to be talking about optimism. And if you saw the title of the podcast, I believe it's Ridiculously Optimistic is what we settled on. We'll see what the final one is, but something like that. What I want to do is I actually want to start this podcast in a minute with a clip from a video that I saw, another content creator. I love the name of the gentleman's channel. It's Writer's Cramp. Really interesting content creator. And this message that he has about optimism, I think, is something that we can apply to our lives in general and also to our pickleball. So I'm going to run the clip, and then after that we're going to come back and we'll talk about it. And then in the riff, I'm going to share with you some updates. We're in the middle of our Tap Into Your Flow series, so in the riff I'll talk to you about that a little bit more. So let me run the clip now for the message. It's about a minute and a half, and then I'll come back and we'll talk about the messaging and how we can apply it to ourselves and our pickleball. [CLIP: Writer's Cramp, on being ridiculously optimistic about your future. Approximately 90 seconds.] I always find these kinds of messages fascinating, right? Where you hear them and they seem just so patently obvious when you hear it. It's like, yeah, why wouldn't I do that? And think about it for a minute for yourself. Why would you not want to live with an insanely optimistic perspective? Now, I can't say you can lead an insanely amazing life in terms of how it lays out. No one can control your life. You can't control every piece of your life. What you can control, and you have 100% control over, is how you choose to interact with the events that occur to you in your life, including in your pickleball. So you can't go out there and control the outcomes of games. You can't directly control the behavior of other players. I would submit to you that you can indirectly control it, and part of that is actually how you carry yourself, how you navigate the experience there. So there are a lot of things that you can do to indirectly control others. You can't directly control them. You can also indirectly control outcomes by directly controlling how you choose to engage with the game, including the decisions that you make mechanically and strategically. But more importantly here, you can control how you choose to interact with those events, with those experiences. And to have this really optimistic perspective, a really optimistic outlook, it's a no-brainer from my perspective once you hear it. I also liked his concept in there about being scared. You can be scared sometimes, but that's what makes you alive. And you can apply that to your improvement journey in pickleball. I like to think of the mental side of pickleball in three pieces or three parts. So you have perspective, which is the book that we wrote, Pickleball Therapy: The Book. That's about perspective. Then the next book that we're going to write is about play. And then the third book will be about pickleball improvement, which presents its own mental challenges. And so the idea of being scared particularly applies to your improvement. Because when you're improving as a pickleball player, it's scary. You're stepping out of your comfort zone. You're moving away from that and you're moving into areas that might be a little bit scary. But isn't that when you're alive? Isn't that when you feel more full as a human being, because you're growing? And the idea here also about, you know, we have one life. I mean, you can take that as maybe it's a little bit upsetting even, right? I only have one life. But it's the truth. You have one life. Then this is the life you have. And so why not live it ridiculous? Why not push it to the max? Just optimistically ridiculous there. And use this thinking of ridiculous optimism, of just pushing it to the extreme, to be the framework for how you choose to interact. So it's like your default. When you have a situation arise or whatever, you just look at the positive of it as much as you can. I'll give you a quick personal story. It just so happened this last week I'm playing in a group. It's eight players. And it's a normal mix. Even though I'm playing in it, the players that I play with are 4.5-plus. It's no different than a group that would be 3.5-plus in terms of how the humans are. Some players are having a good day, some players had a bad day, some players navigate bad shots better than other players, things like that. So I'm playing with my friend David. David and I have become good friends over the last few years, and I'd like to think that I've had a positive impact on his perspective when he plays. He's the kind of player that I can interact with in a kind of rough but loving way about some of these things. And so you can see changes in him in that way. So he and I partnered up for our last game of the session, based on time we were going to be done. And I'm not 100% sure, but we have a thing where basically you move up and down between two courts. I'm not sure whether David had moved up yet or not moved up. Not 100% sure. But he wasn't happy. He wasn't winning all his games. So we were playing two good players, Jeff and Patrick, really good players. And so I told David, just hang with it for a second and let me explain it. I tell David when we first get on the court, I'm like, "Hey, David, we're just trying to get two." He goes, "Two?" And then I said, "Four. Four. Let's just try and get four points." Now, I'm not being serious, okay? Like, I'm not seriously saying to David our objective is only four. But here's what happens, and it's interesting. I tell him, "Let's just get four points. Let's just shoot for four." And so he's playing away, and he's like, "Well, we want to win by four over them or something." I was like, "Let's just get four ourselves." So we start playing and we score a point. And I'm like, "Hey, we're a quarter of the way there." And then we score a second point. I'm like, "Hey, we're halfway there." Then we score a third point. Then we're stuck at three for a little bit. So we're three quarters of the way there. And then lo and behold, we get to four. Now, when you get to four, think about it functionally for a second. Obviously we want to get to 11. Well, I've got to get to four first. I don't know if you count the same way I count, but it's 1, 2, 3, 4, and then keep going all the way to 11. So I've got to get to four first anyway. So then we got to four. And then I'm like, "Huh. All right. Well, let's go for six. Maybe we get to six." And then sure enough, we get to six. And then we push it. I think I made it seven or eight. I can't remember. You just play with it, right? You just have fun with the idea. And we ended up winning the game. I think it was 11-7 or 11-6, something like that. Maybe nine even, but whatever. We ended up winning the game. But the trick, if you will, the way to approach it, it's more fun because you're making it about a metric that you need to get to anyway. I need to get to two even before I can get to four, before I get to six, before I get to 11. So by doing that, you remove some pressure. You just kind of make it more fun. You can play with it a little bit and have a good time with it. Very similar to the podcast a few weeks back where I talked about using time as a metric. That time I was playing with Jeff, the same player was on the court this time. And that time I think we were playing Tyson and Scott, and they were out of their minds. They just couldn't miss. It was crazy. I was like, all right, our chances of winning that game are very slim. I think it was the second game we played against them. They were playing out of their minds. And all credit to them, they played really well. So what I did is I pivoted the idea from score to time. And I think the score at that point was 8-2, and the clock was something with 25. Call it 10:25 or 11:25. And I told Jeff, "Hey, let's just get to 30." Right? In time, not in numbers and not in score. And so we did. And when we got to 31 on the clock, I put my hands up. I was like, "Victory." Because you can control that. You can control how you interact with what's going on around you, with the score, with what's going on on the court. So just a couple of different ways of doing it there. One time it was just picking a target number that, again, is just an arbitrary thing anyway. Let's just go for four. And once you get to four, then you can play with it and go up if you want. And then on the other side, let's say we had lost that game 11-4. I would have been able to tell David anyway, "Hey, I told you we were going to get to four." So you have a better time with that situation. The time thing with Jeff on the other one, even though we lost the game, we won on our metric, which was we were going to get to 30. I just think there's another avenue for you there. There's another way of approaching it. And listen, if you come up with something super cool, let me know. Put it in the comments to the podcast. Send us an email. You can send it to me. The problem with sending me an email, and I don't have a problem with you sending email, you're welcome to, it's an open email address, tony@tonyroigpickleball.com. It's just a question of whether I can respond to it timely because of other responsibilities that I have inside the work that we're doing. But you can certainly always email me. Let us know in the comments. If you're in the Tony Roig Pickleball Community, that's a great place. Pop it in there. Usually the podcasts are going to be linked in there, so you can put it under the podcast if you have another way of dealing with it. But try and bring more optimism into your personal approach to pickleball and also to your life. There's no reason not to. And if you want to bookmark this episode and come back and listen to the podcast and also to Writer's Cramp's idea on optimism, I think it's really encouraging. So we're going to be back in a second on the riff and talk about, I'll give you an update on what's going on with the new program, Tap Into Your Flow, which is a free program that we have with Tony Roig Pickleball that I think you're really going to enjoy. --- THE RIFF As we dive into the riff, a couple of housekeeping items. Number one, you guys have been asking us for our camp schedule for 2026 and the beginning of 2027. That's up and ready to go. So go in there and check that out. A really important principle that we have in our coaching and our training is that if you look at one of the camps and you go, "You know what, I just can't afford that right now. The number that's there just doesn't work for me, but I do want to do it and I want to grow and I want to get coached by Tony Roig Pickleball," you can just send us an email at camps@tonyroigpickleball.com and let us know what's doable for you. Now, that's not a guarantee that we can make it happen, but I will let you know we will do our best to make that happen for you. Now, I want to be clear about this. This is not a discount program. It's not "I feel like paying less than what the stated cost of the event is." Because I'm here to tell you that the value for value proposition is there. Meaning, if it's a $999 item, which is our signature camp, you're going to get plenty of value for the $999, including access to our online course and pre-camp experiences and things like that, a community. So there's a whole thing that goes around the camp. It's not just show up at camp and do your thing. So you're going to get plenty of value for what's there. So it's not a discount. But it is intended to allow players who, for whatever reason, and there's no judgment from us, we don't ask any follow-up questions, we don't say send me a bank statement or anything like that. If for whatever reason the cost of any of our coaching is not doable for you, then just let us know. Because for us, we don't want finances to be an impediment to your ability to grow as a player. So again, if you want to join us at one of our camps, if it's doable for you at what's stated, we ask that you do that. If it's not doable for you, please don't let that be an impediment to coaching with us. So feel free to go to tonyroigpickleball.com/camps, or you can just go in there and click on Camps at the top and find out more about the camp. All right. Let's talk about this project that we have. And this segues well, because I just talked about, you know, we do charge money for our camps. We have to pay for the courts. We have to travel sometimes depending on where it's at. We have supplies, lunches, things like that. So there are costs that are associated with the camp. Not even mentioning our time as coaches and our value as productive human beings in our current economic system. So there are costs for some of our coaching. This program that I'm going to talk about now is absolutely free. If you're on our email list, you'll get access to it every week. It's going to drop in a weekly, five-week drop period. The reason we're doing it weekly like that is because it's a big concept, and we're going to break it down into five pieces for you, a very specific part of the game, so that by the end you have an idea of how to access this part of not just pickleball, of your life, of your flow in life. So the series is called Tap Into Your Flow. It just started. We started with the idea that rhythm exists in pickleball. So that's the first piece, just establishing that connection between rhythm and the sport you play. And it's fascinating, because it's something that I've talked about for a while in general terms, that there's a rhythm to the game. You can feel it, you can hear it. In fact, at our camps that I just mentioned, we'll do this thing where we'll dink with each other and have you close your eyes, basically, and show you how it's like a metronome. If you listen to the rhythm of it, and then when you rush it, it sounds different. But what's been fascinating for me as a coach is, as I've been pulling together the pieces for this Tap Into Your Flow series, it becomes even more evident as I draw from music and draw from pickleball footage and put those pieces together. You can just feel how the rally flows with the music. It's just a fascinating piece. And so I'm excited to share it with you in this Tap Into Your Flow series. I think it'll be very powerful for you as a player, particularly if you don't feel like you're in flow, if you don't feel like you flow when you play. If it feels very forced, like moving from one position to another position, swing your paddle, getting your paddle ready. It feels very staccato. If you go back to a musical term, it's very tak, tak, tak, like that. There's a way that you can flow it better. And the interesting thing is this flow idea. All I'm showing you is how to access your flow. The flow already resides inside you. You're a human being who's made it to whatever age you're at, however many years you've been on the planet in existence as a sentient being. That flow is inside of you. What happens is that we have these interferences that just stop us from flowing. And we're doing it to ourselves. It's our mind, basically, issuing commands, issuing instructions in a way that doesn't allow us to just flow through the movement or through the shot that we're trying to hit. So the objective of this series is, and that's why it's called Tap Into Your Flow, it's not for me to teach you how to flow the way I do. It's to allow you to tap into your flow as a human being and as a pickleball player. So tap into your flow as a pickleball player and ultimately as a human being is really the way to think about it. Smaller to bigger. So I hope that you'll join me on the Tap Into Your Flow series. Again, it's completely free coaching. That is a big part also of our coaching philosophy here at Tony Roig Pickleball, delivering valuable, in-depth coaching that is at no cost to any player who wishes to participate in it, and then also giving you the opportunity to participate in paid coaching opportunities such as our camps and then ultimately the online course that'll be coming out in the next few weeks. And at all times, as I mentioned earlier, with finances never being an obstacle to your coaching or to your improvement, if you wish to do so and if you would like for us to coach you. So anyway, that gives you a kind of a view into what's happening inside Tony Roig Pickleball and our coaching, and specifically the Tap Into Your Flow series. Oh, and those are going to be, by the way, I mentioned this. There are written materials as well as some videos, even music for you to enjoy. And you'll also learn more about Johann Strauss and the Blue Danube, one of the most famous pieces of music in our music repertoire. So anyway, I'll see you over there at Tony Roig Pickleball, hopefully this week. If I don't, then I will see you next Friday on Pickleball Therapy at our next regular episode. If you have a minute to rate and review the podcast, please consider doing so. And as always, share with your friends. You can also share the Tap Into Your Flow series with your friends if you think it will help them free their mind and let them enter into a state of flow when they're playing pickleball. And if you share the podcast with your friends, it's always a good thing, because if you enjoy the podcast, they probably will too. Hope you have a great week, and if I don't see you inside the series, I'll see you next week. Be well. [music]