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The Best Intentions . . .

9/14/2016

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I drove to Northern California a little more than a week ago to help my son and daughter-in-law with their two children. Elizabeth is pregnant again, and the baby, who was due on the 6th, still hasn't made its appearance. I thought I'd be able to squeeze in time to get a new blog post ready in between playing with trains, feeding, cleaning up, and all the rest, but it isn't happening.

What I will do, though, is direct you to a couple of super posts by Sarah Ansboury. If you don't know about Sarah, give a glance to her website (http://www.sarahansboury.com/) which has a lot more great information—but I love these posts as they contain great information for players of all abilities and levels. 

Sarah's Article #1: Your Journey to Pickleball Mastery
Let me begin by explaining what I believe about: Your Journey to Pickleball Mastery
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We begin with the understanding that this is your journey.  It is wholly yours.  As unique as you are.  It is a journey, process or path.  It is not a destination, a ranking or a gold medal.  But unlike some journeys, no special ticket (i.e. athletic ability) is required.  It can be achieved even though some will start later in life.  It is available to anyone:  male or female, young or old.  
And though we may have difficulty defining pickleball mastery, we know it when we see it.  We believe it will bring us joy. Because throughout our lives we have taken on new challenges.    As a child, we may have learned how to ride a bike.  Perhaps we learned to play a new musical instrument, or pursued a professional education.   And like learning anything new, there were moments when we said “I got it” .  And those moments were often followed by exclaiming, “Oh no, I don’t.“

Learning pickleball is a perfect metaphor for this.  Let’s follow Sally as she takes up pickleball. ​
​Read more . . .


Sarah's Article #2: My Pickleball Mantra: Balance, Breathe, Believe
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I am often asked how I am able to appear so relaxed when I am playing competitive pickleball. For me, the key is my pickleball mantra…

Competing with Your Mind
As I discussed in more depth in my ebook, Be the Best Pickleball Partner You Can Be, we need to learn to control our minds to be successful in pickleball. It is so easy to lose focus or have difficulty closing out a game.  We get jumbled up with too many choices:  “Should I go for an easy winner?”, “Should I play it safe?”, “Will they come back?”  Instead of focusing on the game we focus on “what’s if’s”:

  • What if I lose,
  • What if I mess up,
  • What if my partner loses it…
Our only real competition is ourselves.  And learning to win the competition within our minds takes practice and discipline.  To help me, I have adopted a pickleball mantra.
​​Read more . . .
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    Gale Leach lives in Arizona with her husband, two dogs, and one cat. When she's not singing or playing music, she's writing the second in a new series of novels for young adults, a fifth book in the "Bruce" children's series, and updating The Art of Pickleball.

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