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"The Inner Game" is a series of teachings and books by sports coach Timothy Gallwey. His inspired teachings have been in various sports such as Tennis, Golf, and Basketball. But their impact has extended beyond sports into other fields such as personal coaching and the corporate world, with large companies like Apple, AT&T, and Rolls Royce using the inner game techniques to promote personal and performance excellence in their teams.

I adopted the title “The Inner Game of Writing” because like every other skill, writing is much of an inner game; it is largely influenced by what goes on in our minds. When we have headspace, when our minds are free of the clutter that often stands in the way, we do much better in writing, and in the acquiring of the necessary skills. Gallwey gives the following formula for excellence:

Performance = potential minus interference

The essence of this understanding is that: 1) We can do better when we stand out of our own way, 2) our potential to excel is an inherent trait, and when we remove interference, we find our capacity to perform and to learn is better than we expected, and 3) the inner game is about finding focus, concentration, and letting the natural process of learning take its course. You can learn more about the inner game at these two websites:

www.golfstateofmind.com/try-this-technique-to-remove-self-imposed-negative-interference

www.theinnergame.com

Two of the greatest lessons in my life, strengthened by the military training I underwent in 2017 and the struggle of trying to make my writing work in Zambia, are these:

1. We’re capable of more than we let ourselves.
2. We’re ALWAYS underestimating ourselves.

The inner game of writing is this: you don’t have to make yourself excel. You have to LET yourself excel. You have to step out of your own way, and let your inner writer shine. We live in an interesting time, where all the information we need is freely or cheaply available. If we want to learn the techniques and skills of writing, we can read books about it, watch videos on YouTube, take online courses, take writing classes, read blog posts, and attend workshops. We have online dictionaries to which we can subscribe to increase our vocabulary. There are many platforms to which we can showcase our writing, many opportunities to have our work published—at least compared with years gone. We also have platforms to self-publish.

It’s not the information that’s lacking for many of us. It’s the willingness to carve up time to sit down and write that book. It’s the willingness to step out of our own way, and let ourselves shine. It’s the decision to keep at it even in the midst of hurdles. We must learn to understand the interference in our minds, and find ways to silence it.

Here, I will introduce a simple “technique” to help you step out of your own way. The idea here is to provide an eye-opener to show you that the most important thing is to let yourself write. Even if you think you’re bad at it, the solution is to write and write some more. Even when you think you’re not talented enough, the remedy is to keep on writing. Even if you don’t believe in your voice, even if you think no one will want to read your stuff, the only way is to keep writing.

Are you ready? Here it is: Set a time when you know you won’t have much disturbance. An hour is ideal. Even half an hour is okay. If your schedule is scandalous, see if you can catch 10- or 5-minute throughout the day for this. Remove all distractions except the tools you’re using to write. Then: write or do nothing. That’s the rule.

If you’re stuck or do not know what to write, or the muse is giving you the cold shoulder, you are going to stare at the paper or screen for the entire time. You will not touch your phone, scroll on social media, read, go get a coffee, or anything else to distract yourself. It’s either you’re writing or doing nothing. You’re allowed to write gibberish or nonsensical things. But if even that proves difficult, you do NOTHING. Make this into a schedule, make it a discipline, show up every day (or as you’ve set it) and commit to the entire hour even if you produce nothing.

It's hard to do this, I’ll admit. Very hard sometimes. Because there’s a lot of interference between you and your writing, and most of it is from you. But when you get out of your own way, you will be surprised at what you can accomplish.

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