Meditation is like tennis

Do you find meditation difficult? Maybe it’s because you look at meditation as a winner’s game, when in fact, it’s a loser’s game.

What on earth do I mean by that?

The terms “loser’s game” and “winner’s game” come from the book, Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Player, published in 1970 by the engineer and economist Simon Ramo. Ramo studied hundreds of tennis tournaments and carefully recorded how points and games were won. He found that in amateur tennis, 80% of the points were lost by unforced beginner’s mistakes, and only 20% won by skillful play. In professional tennis, however, the numbers were reversed.

This is what makes amateur tennis a loser’s game: whoever loses the least points wins. Professional tennis, however, is a winner’s game because the beginner mistakes have been weeded out, so simply avoiding them does not win. These two games are completely opposite and require completely different strategies.

The interesting thing is that this also applies to a number of other “games” in everyday life.

How often are good results and satisfying moments not about weeding out beginner mistakes?

Meditation is also basically a loser’s game, where you win by not making the most common beginner mistakes. To get you started toward “winning” in meditation, here are three…