Controlling the \’T\’

Howdy Campers,

I’m having a bit of a prolific spell with newsletters at the moment, so I’ve got no idea when you’ll be receiving this, but sending you vibes through the dimension of time to whenever these words land in your retina.

For this particular instalment, I’m going lean into the world of squash for inspiration.

Once upon a time at the beginning of Uni I played squash with a mate, Chris, I’d met travelling through India and Nepal and turned out we were going to Nottingham together. I was way, way fitter than him and almost carried him to Annapurna Base Camp the year before, and I was quite a handy sportsman so I fancied my chances, but he absolutely throttled me 5-0 and had me running around that court like a deranged lunatic. In all my years of playing sport, I don’t think I’d ever been so comprehensively humiliated. It had been so bad I began to question my identity as a person of relative sporting prowess!

What was so humbling was the way that Chris had just been stationed in the middle of the court, where the lines meet, commonly known as the ‘T’, and just directed the ball wherever he liked whilst I chased after it like a tenacious dog, crashing into walls left, right and centre as I made my shots.

I’ve recently discovered that this is a well known trick within squash, to try and always return to the ‘T’ after every shot, so you can always reach the ball and control the play, with minimum effort exerted.

And this reminds me of how we can use mindful meditation to always control the ‘T’ of our own lives.

Learning meditation for beginners shows the light. Every time we meditate, we reset our brain and wider nervous system. We set ourselves up for the day by doing it before we become too active, and we do it again sometime in the afternoon to reset ourselves after all of the dragging and distorting effects of the day – we return our brain to the ‘T’ and we go into the evening much more sorted and balanced and this enables us to seize the day in our personal lives as well as our professional ones.

You see, we all have a choice. We can play the game of life, chasing all over the court like a mad dog, sweating and straining and crashing about, seeking some kind of validation from how much effort we are investing, albeit ultimately losing the game because of how ragged we are.

Or we can use meditation to return to the neurological ‘T’, get ourselves centred, and play the game masterfully, with far less fluster, and far more efficacy. Metaphorically stroking the ball around without really breaking a sweat and yet still winning with ease.

That’s what meditation benefits can and will do for you if you practise super consistently.

There will still be challenging passages of play, you may lose the odd point here and there, but ultimately you will win far more games, far more matches, and you’ll enjoy the game so much more!

However, as every squash player knows, as soon as you cede the ‘T’, you run the risk of getting the runaround. You might think to yourself, ‘I’ll return to the ‘T’ after the next point’, but of course you’re no longer coming from a position of strength. All your good intentions may go out of the window because you’ve let your advantage slip.

And so it goes with meditation. You might think that just letting that meditation slip is no biggie, and if you’re very disciplined, you’ll get it back again without too much struggle. But if you’re not of a disciplined nature, it might be harder to regain the ‘T’, and then progressively you’re no longer playing life from a position of strength, and you’re running the risk of turning into the busy, flustered mad dog once more, no longer feeling that life is being played with relative ease.

The choice is yours. You can control the ‘T’ of your life and absolutely boss it. Or you can be like 20 year old Will being ripped a new one by a lazy, out of shape mate who just happens to be playing life smarter, not harder.

With love and effortless ease

Will and the Team xxxx