In case you missed the sports headlines, there was serious drama in the US Open Tennis Women’s Final over the weekend.
Serena Williams was facing off against Naomi Osaka, the excellent contender from Japan. Osaka out-played Williams… but that’s not the news. The dramatic news is that the referee penalised Serena Williams on THREE separate occasions in the match:
The 1st was a code-violation for ‘receiving coaching’ from the box;
The 2nd was a code-violation AND point deduction for smashing her racket (which men do all the time but don’t get points deducted);
The 3rd was a Game Point Deduction for ‘verbal abuse’ to the ref (because she called him a ‘thief’, for taking away a point for the 1st 2 violations).
The big point of contention which kicked the whole thing off, was that her coach was trying to signal instructions to her from her box. This is illegal in the US Open, but it’s a new thing that’s being introduced in some tennis tournaments.
The way I see it… Serena’s whole match got thrown because her coach was just lame. Here’s why…
- He was trying to give her instructions from the side-line, BUT, didn’t communicate with her before the game that he would do that, or what his hand symbols or gestures were supposed to mean. So, he was waving his hands around, Williams wasn’t paying attention to him, and she still got busted for cheating.
- Serena was very clear during the match, with the ref, and right afterwards with the public that she wasn’t being coached, that her coach never said anything to her about hand signals & that she was innocent. Sounds good… all the coach had to do was agree or just remain silent… but then her coach, as if in a last-ditch attempt to sabotage her… immediately after the match tells the media that he WAS trying to signal instructions to her!!
Here’s what really happened…
- Serena was losing – and the coach lost his cool. Plain & simple. You know why? Because the coach had a lot of emotional attachment to her performance and hadn’t been through The Paradigm Shift – so he didn’t know how to handle the intense feelings.
- Then, the points got deducted… and Serena lost her cool… and because neither she nor her coach had been through The Paradigm Shift, it was like the blind coaching the blind…
What Serena needed was someone who would never lose his cool, no matter how intense the circumstances of the match got. And, she needed someone who could coach her to be fully focused in the moment of each point of the game… not wasting her mental & emotional energy on the referee.
She was lost in the illusion that her angry feelings were coming from the ref, because she hadn’t been trained in the Inside-Out Paradigm, so she couldn’t see that her angry feelings were an inside-job. (If she knew that, she might have been able to deal with the ref in a way that may even have won him over.)
The point is… she needed some Inside-Out Coaching.
So, Serena if you’re reading this, don’t cry over broken rackets, just bounce over here and you can get a free ticket to The Paradigm Shift, included with your Ocean Membership…
The Paradigm Shift – Free Ticket For People Who Join The Ocean This Week.
