Doubt pretty clean

Definition  compare it to belief, one a state of mind, the other an emotion.. go figure.. but you can't discuss one without the other

Doubt is an underappreciated force shaping modern society. One of history's earliest doubters, The apostle Thomas wouldn’t believe Jesus was resurrected until he could touch the wounds himself, earning a moniker that still lives to lives to this day:  the Doubting Thomas. Philospher Bertrand Russell tapped into the ignorance-is-bliss paradox: the more we learn, the more aware we become of all life's complexities, the more unsure we become. And that's fine. I've met the ignorance is bliss crowd. Dunning-Kruger in spades

We live in an uncertain world. Optical illusions and sleight-of-hand magicians challenge our own reality. We’re easily bluffed at the poker table, does he have it or does he not. Bull or bear market, 50% chance of rain, the everyday paralysis of second-guessing, third-guessing, staring for days at a viral dress. I'm still unsure whether it’s blue or gray. 

We doubt our partners, our bosses, our friends. We scroll through the two-button meme, each option as unsatisfying as the next. Conspiracy theories infect public discourse, we trust nothing yet will believe anything. The moon landing, the shape of the Earth, vaccines that have been saving lives for decades suddenly hauled before the tribunal of suspicion. X-Files faithful whisper that “the truth is out there,” Siri and AI claim it be right here on your phone. 

Pop culture taps the vein: Mrs. Doubtfire, Pat from SNL, No Doubt the band, the ambiguous fade-to-black of The Sopranos final scene.  Imposter syndrome spreads through workplaces like a virus. And don’t get me started on sports: coaches torn between analytics and instinct, Monday-morning quarterbacks replaying every decision,  Every choice carries the heavyweight of what if? Why can’t past performance predict future outcomes? Flip a coin — red or black, hit or stay. We live in a society of calculated risk. Can’t a guy have just a little certainty?

Doubt has always run through civilization. In a world of unlimited choices and information overload, how could we ever be sure of anything? Every decision carries an opportunity cost, every path demands ten that go unexplored. Need another car? Used or new? Leasing or owning? Midlife career crisis?  stay or leap? Even scientific certainties evolve: what one century declares absolute, the next century revises, replaces, overturns. We operate in constant cost-benefit analysis mode, an arena of uncertainty  Our choices have consequences. Often serious ones. No wonder we can't turn our brains off for a nice restful night of sleep

On a macro-level, We live in the age of Alternative facts, the most toxic oxymoron of our time. Politics, religion, media, science — nothing gets a pass. We doubt elections, doubt proven science,  our capacity to process information has become overwhelmed. We're running Windows 2.0 in a 5g world. A little skepticism is healthy; blind faith has toppled more than a few civilizations. But when doubt becomes our default, we slide into cultural vertigo. unable to find stable ground, breeding so much of the paralysis and withdrawal we see today.

On the micro level, doubt gets personal. From our earliest ages, we're constantly being corrected, warned, reprimanded. Why can't I play with matches?  Why can't I take the car? The messaging is clear through all growing up.  you don't know what's best for you. By adulthood, that doubt becomes reflexive. We doubt our choices, our timing, our talent, our right to inhabit the very rooms we fought like hell to enter. Imposter syndrome isn’t niche; it’s practically a rite of passage now. And popular culture knows it — every sports movie and underdog arc runs  the same playbook; doubt is its most pronounced right before the breakthrough.

And yet doubt isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. In a culture obsessed with certainty, learning to manage doubt becomes a quiet superpower. Modern polling, with its margin of error.. Deadly Hurricanes bearing down on us with their cone of uncertainty  We can't erase doubt, that’s fantasy. But to deny it is delusional. Doubt is deeply intertwined with caring. If nothing mattered, you wouldn’t feel uncertain. The very presence of doubt means something is at stake. How can we learn to let it inform our actions instead of undermine our dearest goals.

 

DOUBT and TENNIS

Its not chess or mahjong, but man, the number of informed decisions one has to make.

And the complexity of it.

I present to you a passage from DFW String Theory 

I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is  and also the most demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and that weird mix of caution and abandon we call courage. It also requires smarts. Just one single shot in one exchange in one point of a high-level match is a nightmare of mechanical variables. Given a net that's three feet high (at the center) and two players in (unrealistically) fixed positions, the efficacy of one single shot is determined by its angle, depth, pace, and spin. And each of these determinants is itself determined by still other variables–i.e., a shot's depth is determined by the height at which the ball passes over the net combined with some integrated function of pace and spin, with the ball's height over the net itself determined by the player's body position, grip on the racket, height of backswing and angle of racket face, as well as the 3-D coordinates through which the racket face moves during that interval in which the ball is actually on the strings. The tree of variables and determinants branches out and out, on and on, and then on much further when the opponent's own position and predilections and the ballistic features of the ball he's sent you to hit are factored in [36]. No silicon-based RAM yet existent could compute the expansion of variables for even a single exchange; smoke would come out of the mainframe. The sort of thinking involved is the sort that can be done only by a living and highly conscious entity, and then it can really be done only unconsciously, i.e., by fusing talent with repetition to such an extent that the variables are combined and controlled without conscious thought. In other words, serious tennis is a kind of art. 

If you've played tennis at least a little, you probably have some idea how hard a game is to play really well. I submit to you that you really have no idea at all. I know I didn't. And television doesn't really allow you to appreciate what real top-level players can do–how hard they're actually hitting the ball, and with what control and tactical imagination and artistry. I got to watch Michael Joyce practice several times right up close, like six feet and a chain-link fence away. This is a man who, at full run, can hit a fast-moving tennis ball into a one-foot square area seventy-eight feet away over a net, hard. He can do this something like more than 90 percent of the time. And this is the world's seventy-ninth-best player, one who has to play the Montreal qualies.

---

Wallace posits that Joyce’s "artistry" is possible because he lacks the paralyzing self-reflection or "critical thought" that plagues the average person, otherwise known as doubt. For Joyce, there is no gap between the intent and the action;  

 

In the end, doubt is inseparable from tennis because tennis is inseparable from vulnerability. There's so much error in tennis. Roger Federer won 54% percent of the points he played. That means he lost nearly half the points he played,  yet he always believed in himself, amassing a record of achievement that may never be touched again. Doubt and belief.  The entire game is a meditation on how interchangeable those two states can be and mastering the dance between  them

As a coach, overheads can be the tricky shot. Not because they are technically challenging, but because you have time. And time in tennis isn't always your friend. We don't mind relying on reactions and muscle memory and instinct. With an overhead you have a couple seconds to ponder the shot, and lets just say the mind doesn't  overflow with empowering thoughts.

If the world is a laboratory for doubt, tennis is one of its most unforgiving experiments. No sport exposes uncertainty with such cruelty. Alone on an island of painted lines, with an opponent just looking for you to start hesitating. If you're not playing the ball, its playing you and that rarely ends well. Doubt shows up first in the body: tight chest, tight grip, shallow breath. The mind soon follows, our inner critic having its way with us.  Tennis players riddled with doubt often begin playing not to lose instead of playing to win. Balls land short, swings get guided. Decision-making slows, play gets ultra-conservative.  

And the line calls. How are we ever sure? When in doubt call it out crew. How far in do I need to hit it to get the benefit of the doubt 

In the FBTL lens, doubt is one of the purple emotions — clouded thinking, uncertainty, second-guessing. Left unchecked, it kills flow, erodes confidence, feeds frustration. But named and worked with, doubt becomes usable information: here is where a player doesn’t yet trust themselves, and why would they.   

Managing doubt begins with preparation. Simulate pressure. Practice reps with something on the line. On court, the tools get simple: one cue word, one process goal, strong body language, intentional tempo. Tennis careers are shaped by how well players negotiate this emotion. Its never not on court with you. Yet, Chronic doubt erodes development; courage in the face of doubt can change everything.

Doubt in my life

 

"And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight, isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result. Isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've ever experienced before..." 

Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

Passage from my memoir.. 

All it took was a little belief. But could I make it last? Could I store it away, to be used during my next important match? Or would my new found belief be as fleeting as the horizon on a passing train? 

A conundrum in a paradox. Winning spawned belief, but I needed belief in order to win. But not always. Frequently tennis was pure survival, where more matches were lost than won, where all it took to pick up the balls was to not collapse, to hold a little steadier in the storm. For I was learning the crippling doubt I'd long been afflicted by affected everybody on the tennis court.

On the cusp of a mental breakthrough. Just keep my shit together and compete a little calmer. I didn't have to woo the crowd, hit tweeners for winners, or make the evening news' play of the day. There were no style points in tennis, scoring was not by artistic merit or degree of difficulty, nor were there bonus points for being dazzling. Success seemed to hinge simply by not getting overwhelmed by the moment, something that shouldn't have been that hard. To not do something. But the pressurized air of intense competition. It revealed. My past experiences on the court felt oppressive, like I was competing 20000 leagues beneath the sea. But for once I hovered above it all, competing unaffected. A strange confounding feeling in this equally confounding sport.

Belief. What was it? A somewhat nebulous term. Hard to define, even harder to quantify. I learned at Ojai that much of belief was lack of doubt. I didn't have to think anything positive in particular. Just train the mind to quiet the doubt. Addition by subtraction again. Yet, because tennis, there was always doubt. You could employ all sorts of methods to tame the doubt. You could deny it, you could defy it. You could lean in to it, embracing the tension. Or compartmentalize it, keeping the increasing tension at bay.

Some played mind games with it, lying to themselves there's no pressure and that tennis is only a game. But you're always engaged with it, conversing with it, like talking to a snarling dog, soft assurances in the hope it didn't bite. Yet when it erupted, there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. Doubt was now a virus in your operating system. Past tennis traumas rushed to the surface. Your most memorable collapses raced to the forefront of your mind. Now you were playing two opponents. The one across the net, and the far more formidable one between your ears.

But there were valid reasons for the doubt. There was doubt in preparation (somethings was always a little off), there was doubt about performance (will I play well or not), and the ultimate doubt, the doubt of the outcome. Competitive tennis, the original steel cage match. Two highly skilled, athletic, uber-talented, fiercely competitive players entered a fenced in rectangle. Hours later, one picked up the balls to report the score. The vanquished other went home, grinding over what could have been. The cruelest of zero sum games. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, all hanging in a shared moment. And it could all come down to one shot. By you. In the heat of the moment, when it mattered most. 

But you can't think like that...

Against all evidence, you have to believe that in that moment against that opponent in that tournament hitting that improbably low percentage shot that you've missed thousands of times that this time you're going to make it. For though you've missed it thousands of times, you've also made it thousands of times. And whichever thought rushes to the surface of your consciousness in that precise moment of contact will often determine your fate.

Like the cornerback in football who keeps getting burned, tennis players need a short memory. Or no memory. We need Will Smith from Men in Black with the memory gun, zapping the mind clean each time. We need a shooters mentality. A shooter has to believe no matter how many he's missed in a row he's going to make the next one. Because you're battling the same kids who've been beating your ass year after year, who you know are better, tougher and more experienced than you, yet you still have to believe that today is your day. Like the late great Vitas Gerulaitis said after finally beating Jimmy Connors on his 17th try. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row...

I discovered there was a belief spectrum. A confidence continuum. I'd been a national level junior tennis player since I was eleven, so of course I had some belief. But what percentage of the time? Pretty much all the time in practice and matches where I was favored. Not so much trying to close out matches, even less with lots of people around, and major major problems trying to finish matches against the guys I looked up to in awe.

But I was also learning belief/doubt wasn't strictly about tennis. It had much to do with self-esteem. And as a perpetually fucked up socially struggling teenager, with so much conflict and negativity swirling about me internally and at home, I often didn't feel good about myself at all. (high on mushrooms on a mountaintop aside) 

And wherever I went, there I was, bringing that messy kid with me every time I stepped on the court. Because my secret life wasn't a secret to me. I knew what I was doing. I knew how out of control I'd been. How dangerous I had been dealing drugs. A felony a day keeping the serenity away, doing life always on the wrong side of right and wrong. 

For believing in myself transcended tennis. It was about feeling good about myself, about being a good person and doing right and living right and not having all this conflict and drama in my daily life. And for so long I simply wasn't. And a person can only compartmentalize so much bad behavior and ethical lapses, for that toxic shit has a half life that'll likely exceed my own. For the subconscious. Its not some hard drive easily erased. And that bill kept coming due at the worst of times. In tight stressful tennis matches that mattered mightily to me.

For abusing drugs messed with my karma. The lying, the cheating, the stealing. The self-destructiveness. You rot from the inside. Those same insides you mine for strength during tight tennis matches. Where grit, fight, toughness and belief reside. And I had some of those. But the recipe of my psychic stew was long on other ingredients too, making it impossible to compete happy joyous and free, for deep down, when I needed strength and resolve, I would turn inward only to find the twisted scorched soul of a teenage drug addict. The quintessential interference of the Inner Game.

So yeah, doubt is in the house. 

 

The intricacy of a well hit tennis shot. The precision, the power, to take a ball on the rise, coming at you in excess of 100mph and be able to hit it on the dead run right in the sweet spot to increasingly smaller targets shot after shot after shot. The probability is daunting. Some days shots fly a foot here, an inch there. And then there's those days of the zone. Where it doesn't matter what you aim, every shot hits its mark. 

My game had always been foot to the floor aggression on every ball. A high wire act of low percentage shots, where somehow in practice they would fall, yet during matches, Gallwey's interference would kick in. But for now I couldn't miss, racing out to a 6-1, 5-1 lead. Everything was working, the ball appeared like a slow-pitched softball. Serving for the match, I implored myself to continue to stay calm, quiet mind, focus on the ball. Yet my inner voice with the old tapes broke through my trance like state. For the confines of my sub-conscious knew all too well what winning this match meant. 

Back to thinking, with all my angst and doubt rushing forth, nearly paralyzing my play. Hoping my opponent would just go away (like all nervous players do), Pawsat kept fighting (like all great players do). He dug in, breaking me easily and holding comfortably himself. With one more chance to serve out the match, I felt the magnitude of the moment. This was it. I needed to hold right now or I may never recover from this. And to my credit, I didn't play a bad game. He just played better, saving a couple match points with winners. Either way, it was happening again. The interference once again attacking my performance, the silent torment of the inner game

The battle in my head, trying to remain calm and composed and quiet while feeling my hopes of a college career slipping away again. Quite the conflicting forces. The physiology of choking was overwhelming. Yet I was playing great, and I was still ahead, but I failed to serve it out twice.  Now I had to break to win, with all our match's momentum residing across the net on my opponent's racket. 

Back on serve with Pawsat serving at 4-5, I tried to reassure myself. I was hardly a mental giant, but I knew a few things. I kept talking to myself... You haven't lost anything. Matter of fact, you're still ahead. Just one more game. Keep moving. Keep focused. Stay loose. Move and swing, move and swing. This was still my big chance, but waiting around for him to hand it to me wasn't going to happen. So in a personal moment of bravery and courage I didn't think I possessed, I went for it. Reaching match point again, I got a look at a second serve, where a voice in my head said go for it, and I did, hitting a forehand as hard as I fucking could for a clean winner and the win, right in front of all the right people at exactly the right time.

Even playing my absolute best, my doubt came close to derailing me yet again.

 

Recovery didn’t erase doubt; it reframed it. Listening to people tell stories that sounded like mine cracked the certainty of doom. If they weren’t beyond repair, maybe I wasn’t either. Doubt turned inward on itself. Sobriety asked me to act in spite of it: get up, go to meetings, tell the truth, make amends. No guarantees. Just the willingness to keep going. Ashe’s line took on new meaning: maybe it really wasn’t about “making it.” Maybe it was about going for it — one day, one act of honesty at a time.

Today, doubt still shows up — writing vulnerably, launching new pieces of FBTL, sitting across from kids and parents who trust me to tell them how this sport works. I still have moments of who am I to say this? But I don’t let those questions make the final call. Doubt gets a voice, not a vote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post tennis doubt in life

Then addiction put doubt on steroids. Alcohol offered a temporary suspension of the interrogation — a few hours where I didn’t have to answer any questions about worth, trajectory, belonging. But when coming down or coming to,, doubt was waiting with a longer charge sheet: Why can’t you stop? Why did you do this again? Who are you becoming? I didn’t just doubt my talent or my future anymore; I doubted my basic ability to live a sane, honest life. Doubt stopped being a feeling and started feeling like a verdict.

The worst part wasn’t the external losses — jobs, relationships, opportunities — it was the internal erosion. When you wake up enough times in situations you don’t remember walking into, when you torch enough bridges and watch enough people step back for their own survival, you stop doubting your choices and start doubting your core. Maybe this is just who I am. Maybe I’m broken in a way that can’t be fixed. You doubt your worthiness, you doubt your value. That’s doubt in its cruelest form: the kind that doesn’t just question your decisions, it questions your right to hope.

Recovery didn’t magically erase doubt; it changed my relationship with it. Sitting in those first meetings, listening to people tell stories that sounded uncomfortably like mine, I watched doubt do something new. It started to crack. If they weren’t beyond repair, maybe I wasn’t either. I doubted my ability to stay sober, doubted I could rebuild, doubted I could ever feel steady again — but I also started to doubt the old story that I was uniquely doomed. Doubt began turning on itself. that gray zone between sickness and health.

Sobriety became a daily invitation to act in the face of doubt. Get up. Go to a meeting. Tell the truth. Make amends. Help the next guy. None of it came with guarantees. Doubt rode along: Is this really going to work? Are you just setting yourself up to fall again? But I started doing it anyway. Arthur Ashe’s line took on a new meaning: maybe it really wasn’t important that I “made it” to some perfect version of myself. Maybe it was more important that I kept going for it — one day, one conversation, one act of honesty at a time.

Today, doubt is still with me. It shows up when I write something vulnerable, when I publish this book. Will it connect, did I whiff. Its real. keeps me up at night. but also gets me up in the morning. when I sit across from a kid or a parent and tell them the truth about this sport and what it can do to you if you’re not careful. I still have moments where I wonder, Who am I to say this? Who am I to lead this conversation? 

But I don’t let those questions make the final call anymore. Doubt gets a say, it always will, but not the final say