At a recent board meeting of the LATC while reporting on the Fusion Tennis Clinic I noted that it has become more clear to me that the formula for performance is:

mind x body x emotions x skills= performance

To make a statement like that seems to be saying something exceedingly profound, exceptionally insightful, and extraordinarily noteworthy, when in fact it is something that we already know and to some degree grapple with every day to accomplis the things we do in our life's activity.

I think it is helpful though to be aware of the formula and accept it as a simple truth so as to identify components of performance and to set standards of our own performance and to recognize when things are going well and when they are not going well.

If we are aware of a component that is not functioning at the standard level, then we can direct attention (the energy of the mind to get things done) to that component and make adaptive adjustments.

So here we can see a subte distinction between these two capacities of the mind in awareness and attention and how the two capacities complement each other. One recognizes and receives stimuli while the other directs energy to initiate action upon the stimuli.

Working with awareness and attention as complementary capacities of the mind enables us to monitor the energy of the mind so that we can get things done. When our attention slips away we find that our performance slips away with it.

So we have to ask ourselves this tough question for the sake of performance, is it possible to be aware of our attention and at the same time to give attention to our awareness?

Isn't that question a tough one to answer?

I tell you we grapple with that question regularly at the Fusion Tennis Clinic and our answers are not at all definitive.

Come around sometime and grapple awhile on the tennis courts and see what you come up with for answer.