A great self-help book, in my opinion, because it has an action plan you can follow. Basically, it will help you achieve total self-confidence if you don't already have it. The author talks about each person having a self1 and a self2. The former is your conscious ego and the latter is your potential. Self-confidence comes when we suppress self1 and allow the excellence in self2 to come out. We should trust ourselves to do what we want to do because everything we need is in self2. It is when we allow self1 to judge, we doubt ourselves. An important concept in getting rid of self1 is the art of being able to focus. If we focus on the here and now, this place and time, self2 will have a better chance to perform. How many times have we start to wonder about our cat or our past mistakes or day-dream how nice it is for something to happen when what we should be doing is to focus on the task at hand. In a way, self1 and self2 are similar to the conscious and subconscious mind. Whichever way you choose to believe is not what's important. What is important is that by conceptualizing this way, the complexity is reduced, and results can be produced quickly. How else can humans conceptualize confidence? Confidence without doubt, is nothing. Just like you cannot have hot without cold or fast without slow.
Lastly, we should cherish competition and our opponents. Our opponents are not our enemies but can be viewed as obstacles that allow us to grow and become better at what we do. Humans love to accomplish great things because they like to test their limits. Although this is fine, those who set out to overcome an obstacle should find out if the result they get is what they really want before they go about trying to overcome the obstacle.
But, his first book is extraordinary. It changed the way people approached their lives.
The author is an excellent tennis player, and his knowledge and love for the game also come through big time in this book. This is obviously an element that is missing in all his other books.
If you are a tennis player, you will really enjoy this book.
While reading this book I was amazed at Gallwey's description of mental aspects of competition, and how I had experienced the exact same things. His explanations of how a competitor sabotages his own outcomes showed me what I had been doing wrong. His tips for getting into the correct mindframe made perfect sense, although were probably not the sort of things I would have come up with on my own.
After putting these tips into action I really saw a big improvement in my shooting. I won my first major championship within four months, and have been the overall world champion in my sport for three of the last four years. It was the things I learned from this book that allowed me to perform at my top level when the pressure was on.