{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Pickleball Therapy","title":"Ep. 305 - Ridiculously Optimistic","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1205,"description":"Episode 305: Ridiculously Optimistic\n\nThe clip\nI open this one with a message from a content creator who goes by Writer's Cramp. The theme: be ridiculously optimistic about your future, aim higher than seems reasonable, and do not let other people talk you out of what you want. Worth the ninety seconds.\nThese messages always strike me the same way. You hear them and think, well, yes, obviously. So then ask yourself the real question. Why wouldn't you live that way?\n\nWhat you actually control\nLet's be clear about the limits. You cannot control how a game turns out. You cannot directly control how the other players behave, though you have more indirect influence there than you might think, mostly through how you carry yourself.\nWhat you control completely is how you choose to interact with the events that happen to you. On the court and off it.\nThat is not a consolation prize. That is the piece that determines your experience.\n\nOn being scared\nThere was a line in the clip about being scared being part of being alive. That one applies directly to improvement.\nI think of the mental side of pickleball in three parts. Perspective, which is what Pickleball Therapy: The Book covers. Play, which is the next book. And improvement, which is the third, because improving carries its own mental weight.\nImprovement is scary. You are leaving the thing you already do well and moving toward something you do not do well yet. That is uncomfortable by design. It is also when you feel most alive, because that is when you are growing.\n\nThe story: let's just get four\nLast week I was playing in an eight-player group. My friend David and I partnered up for the last game against Jeff and Patrick, two good players. David had not had a great session.\nBefore we started I told him: let's just get four points.\nHe looked at me. Four?\nI was not being serious about the ceiling. But watch what it does. We score one, and we are a quarter of the way there. We score two, halfway. We get stuck at three...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/iDTey2-80na-9J2STIk9eypfXCFZMooGvju_gM84J4k/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jYTM1/MTQzYzU5NDI0ODU5/MWNhNzRiODA0Yzlh/MmIwMS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}