Into the Zone
The kind of mental conditioning that makes athletes into superstars also helps ordinary folks become extraordinary
The most honest, articulate, and (not coincidentally) influential specialists will tell you forthrightly that they are drawing on the collective wisdom of the best proven minds in the field--the great coaches of past and present. Many of them are or have been coaches themselves, and most are athletes, former or active. Bob Rotella, former director of the sports psychology program at the University of Virginia and now a full-time consultant to golf professionals and other athletes, says that so much of the formal psychology that he read in graduate school focused on dysfunction and problems that he "turned to people like Vince Lombardi or [UCLA's] John Wooden and studied their philosophies."
Rotella has taught what he calls "learned effectiveness" for years, which means, he says, "teaching about being in the best state of mind, basing your thinking on where you want to go, not where you've been." Doing so, Rotella found himself in strong sympathy with the work of at least one theoretical psychologist, the great turn-of-the-century thinker William James. James, whose work is making a strong comeback these days because of its emphasis on the conscious mind and the will, spoke clearly to Rotella. "He seemed to fit with what I learned from the coaches." That might sound like a dubious distinction to some intellectuals, but James probably would have taken it as a compliment. The power of the mind to shape reality was one of his lasting beliefs.
Just as James is the quintessential American thinker for having created a serious philosophy of human potential, so the best sports psychologists, and not just Rotella, extend that philosophy in popular form, often in an eloquent popular literature that includes books by Rotella himself (many written with Bob Cullen) and such modern classics as Michael Murphy's Golf in the Kingdom.
Obsession. Proponents of peak performance see it as laudably consistent with the American dream of self-betterment and the pursuit of happiness. "To me, pursuing excellence is why we came to America," says Rotella. But John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor who has written often about the dehumanization of sports, sees the emphasis on performance as part of the contemporary obsession with competitiveness, an obsession that crowds out other human and civilized values, "including," he says, "moderation and balance."
But do critics like Hoberman ignore the possibility that peak performance might entail leading a richer, more balanced life, one that can allow more attention to others, including family, friends, and community? Being in the zone or the flow may be in fact a supremely human value, particularly if it is, as many sports psychologists contend, a state in which our peak capacities are exercised almost without thinking. After all, competition is a reality that cannot be wished away; why not learn to manage it as best as one can? As Woods commented after he'd won, "I had a--a weird feeling this week--it's hard to describe--a feeling of tranquillity, calmness."
Csikszentmihalyi, who now directs the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University, sees peak performance state as a concept or ideal that can approach his notion of flow, but only with difficulty. "In my work," he explains, "I'm trying to understand how to make life better as it goes. The question is, why are you experiencing the peak performance state--for its own sake or in order to win? If winning, the goal, takes over, the pleasure of the doing fades."
advertisement
