Like Phllies' Rollins, Seahawks' Jackson in touch with his 'Inner Game'
Instead of wrapping his ears with headphones and bouncing out to Eminem's "Till I Collapse" and "Lose Yourself," Jackson instead lost himself in "The Inner Game."
"Dude," asked roommate Alex Morrow, "what the heck are you doing, reading a tennis book before the game?"
"I can't put it down," Jackson replied.
He picked it up at 3:30 p.m. The bus left at 5 p.m. He was still reading.
He collected three sacks that night. He got 14 1/2 over his last 18 games of 2006 and 2007.
He was the 28th overall pick in April. He has two sacks in seven games with the Seahawks.
W. Timothy Gallwey, the book's author, recommends that the reader separate the "I" from the "Self."
Jackson and Rollins did that. For both of them, it boils down to not overanalyzing, to not trying too hard and to not being judgmental about the results.
"The 'I' is the inhibitor. The 'I' doesn't trust the 'self' to get things done," Jackson explained. "The 'self' is the 'doer.' The 'I' slows the 'doer' down."
Rollins said he was so impacted by the book when he read it before the 2007 season that it helped him win the National League MVP award and lead the Phils to the playoffs for the first time in 14 years.
Rollins reread part of it Friday, after he went 0-for-10 in the first two games of the World Series: "It simplified me."
He went 5-for-9 in the next two games, both Phillies wins.
Contacted yesterday in Paris, Gallwey was flattered, but hardly surprised.
"Not at all; I'm only surprised, and pleased, that he spoke about it publicly," Gallwey said.
He was in France conducting a demonstration for French coaches. His roots remain in tennis. The book was first published in 1974, when he was a young tennis pro in California.
However, Gallwey stressed, "Most of the readers of 'The Inner Game of Tennis' apply the techniques to something other than tennis."
In fact, most of Gallwey's clients are large corporations: he lists, among them, AT&T, Anheuser-Busch and IBM.
His next stop: England, next week. There, he said, for the fifth consecutive year, he will conduct a 3-day workshop with Rolls Royce employees based on his 1999 helper, "The Inner Game of Work."
Apparently, the "Inner Game" message is timeless and universal. Gallwey has written three other "Inner Game" books: golf, skiing, music. A sixth, "The Inner Game of Stress," is due next year.





