How to Become a Tennis Samurai
Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) was the greatest Japanese sword fighter to have ever lived. After an unusually long life of sword fighting, Musashi retired to a cave where he wrote down his wisdom of how to defeat one's enemies. His words were collected on five scrolls and compiled into a book, The Book of Five Rings. (FYI: Avatar: The Last Airbender was based on these five scrolls: Air, Earth, Water, Fire, and Spirit.) As I read them, I came across powerful statements about mental preparation, which I felt applied to tennis. Here they are:
(See also: Sun Tzu, The Art of War — Another timeless work on how to victoriously behave during conflict, 1913)
“There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.”
“Nobody is strong and nobody is weak if he conceives of the body, from the head to the sole of the foot, as a unity in which a living mind circulates everywhere equally.”
“You can only fight the way you practice.”
“If you do not control the enemy, the enemy will control you.”
“When your opponent is hurrying recklessly, you must act contrarily and keep calm. You must not be influenced by the opponent.”
“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.”
Re: A Ready Position “...I recommend the guard without a guard. Whatever the situation is, you hold the sword so that you can slash your opponent.”
“A thousand days of training to develop, ten thousand days of training to polish. You must examine all this well.”
"When you are quiet, your mind shouldn't be quiet; when you are moving fast, your mind shouldn't at all be moving fast."
“In the strategy of my school, keep your body and mind straight and make your opponent go through contortions and twist about. The essence is to defeat him in the moment when, in his mind, he is pivoting and twisting. You should examine this well.”
“If you wish to control others you must first control yourself.”
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”
Spiritual Application
You are good enough. I don't ever want to catch you saying, "I'm just not good at tennis." You can be the best you can be every single time you show up on the court. Just because you haven't mastered a certain tennis skill doesn't mean that you will never get it. You will discover this motivating truth for yourself as you diligently and optimistically hone your abilities through repeated practice [read: failure].
This same confidence is applicable to your spiritual life. You are enough. Period. Just because you may not be godlike today, doesn't mean that you can not become like God one day. But to get there, you must show up each day with confidence in your goal and endure to the end. You are in control of your destiny. If you want to be a [tennis] god tomorrow, practice like it today.
Matt 5:48 — "Be ye therefore perfect [eventually; not in this life]"
Psalms 82:6 — "Ye are gods, children of the most high,"
Romans 8:16-18 — "We are the children of God: And if children, then heirs."