The Time Andy Murray Made Me Cry
Alexis Castorri and Practical Micro-Opportunities for Direct Subconscious Conditioning
Andy Murray made me cry once. It wasn’t quite uncontrollable sobs, but there were significant gasps to hold back more tears. It was ugly and I’m very glad you didn’t have to see it. We are actually approaching the twelve-year anniversary of the event. Trying to become the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936, he fell short in the 2012 final against Roger Federer. Murray had yet to win a grand slam, so losing to an all-time GOAT at his favorite tournament seemed like a reasonable moral victory to me. Take it with your head up and move on, I thought. His post-match speech left me stunned though, a hitherto unexpressed revelation of authenticity and vulnerability. I double-dog dare you to watch it without tearing up.
I remember being surprised at the time, but then something really strange happened: Murray leveled up and broke through. Four weeks after that speech, he beat Federer on that same All England Club Centre Court for Olympic Gold in 2012; later that year he won his maiden slam at the US Open; and the following year he did the unthinkable beating Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final, ending the country’s 76-year drought. If I was surprised at the beginning, I was absolutely shocked by the end. I’m always intrigued when players make breakthroughs like Murray’s. What changed that yielded such dramatically different results?
Open and confused, I started doing some digging and came across Alexis Castorri in the Telegraph article: The psychologist who Andy Murray put on winning path to US Open success. It turns out she had been introduced to him by his then-coach Ivan Lendl, who she helped make a similar breakthrough in 1985 when he beat John McEnroe in the US Open final and reached Number 1 in the world (PSYCHED TO WIN LENDL LEARNS MIND-OVER-MCENROE). If you are in an elite performance field, both those articles are well worth the price of admission (happy to send a copy of the articles directly to those who subscribe).
In my experience, there are few signals more meaningful than lightning striking the same place twice, so I immediately bought a copy of Castorri’s book: Exercise your Mind: 36 Mental Workouts for Peak Performance at Work, at Play, In Relationships. Her philosophy is based upon Logotherapy (founded by Viktor Frankl - Man’s Search for Meaning) with an emphasis on integrating mind, body, and spirit, all buzzwords that everyone in my personal life is quite tired of me repeating. Without giving away specific spoilers, I did want to share how I incorporated some of the themes from the book with one of the points she makes in the Murray article: beginning a process of change away from your craft.
"It’s natural that when someone puts their heart and soul into what they’re doing, they sometimes forget how much enjoyment they once took from it. Andy has lofty goals and he is hard on himself. In that situation, you need to remember that you love the battle, that’s why you are out there. … When I looked at early films of him playing, he played with such happiness and excitement, so my initial thought was that he needed to bring back the zest. But I believe you start that off the court.
Your subconscious is smart. It won’t change ingrained identities without ample evidence and it won’t hold any of those changes unless they are consistently reinforced. The following mechanism ensures authentic internalization and maximizes the effort-to-impact ratio for your subconscious. I don’t believe how you do one, you do all; no human being is that simple. But I do believe how you do one, you do others and leveraging that momentum can help you when stuck at a plateau.
Select ONE underlying quality that would help you improve the most. Ask yourself, “What one underlying trait, internalized agreement or quality is holding me back the most from achieving success?” It’s not a habit, action or outcome, but rather the manner in which you do things. You want to choose the one that would have the most leveraged impact on your results. Think of this quality as a “muscle”.
Step away from the craft. It’s hard to begin change within your field of expertise, because a weak muscle will inevitably be drowned out by existing programming and processes. By changing the context and environment, you can get reps using this muscle with lower stakes and depersonalized outcomes.
Find brief, naturally arising situations to exercise the muscle. The easiest way to ensure you will do the exercise is to place it within tasks you would have done anyway. Train your mind to look for opportunities (ideally less than 2-5minutes) and give your subconscious green shoots of evidence that show you are changing.
Compound laterally – that is frequency/familiarity instead of intensity. Because this is a quality and not a habit, compounding the diversity and frequency of application yields more sustained transformation. You’re trying to use momentum to change an underlying identity, not develop a particular use of this skill in a specific context.
Don’t let your conscious mind interfere. No tracking. No process. No credit. No reward. BUT THAT ALSO MEANS no guilt. No pressure. No workload. Anything that requires the intellectual/conscious mind to step in (example doing multiple qualities at the same time) will complicate the process and diminish the impact on the subconscious.
Here’s an example from my life of what that looks like in practice. I’m someone who can easily get stuck in his head with entrenched patterns and concepts, often forgetting to update the details and changing facts. For disciplines like trading that involve compounded results, the difference between the first and the third best expression becomes very significant over time. For a while, I had tried to make a rigid process mechanism that ensured a solution for this. But what I gained in specific correction of these mistakes subtracted from my biggest strengths, blunting the net impact. Instead of trying to force a result within my trading process, I tried working on the skill “away from the court”:
When ordering food at a restaurant, I read the entire menu word for word out loud before considering what I wanted to order.
When starting a game of online chess, I would say my opponent’s name, rating and country out loud.
During extended walks around the city, I would read the names, addresses and signs of stores, treating each detail with equal importance.
Did I feel self-conscious and look stupid in public? Most definitely. But did my attention to detail and observational patience improve? 100%. It took several months for the impact to really feed back into my trading, but I found myself consistently taking the time to optimize my decisions to the specific thesis I held. Perhaps most importantly, I didn’t have to exert additional effort or focus to do so. Checklists are great for shallow, binary processes but are an illusion of protection for deep work. For that, your subconscious identity must change.
Alexis Castorri’s Exercise Your Mind is probably one of the ten best ROI purchases of my life, not because of grandiose ideas or life-changing information, but because the objective procedure and simplicity ensure anyone can practice the fundamentals of integrated applied psychology that are very easy to overlook. Life is not about copy and paste though, so take the time to tailor lessons and teachings to yourself specifically. ‘“It’s a simple lesson but if you can learn to be yourself – the most positive form of yourself – then good things tend to happen,” Castorri adds.’ We all have different strengths/weaknesses, disciplines/aspirations and environments/routines. I needed to work on appreciation for details; Murray needed to work on perfectionism/joy; Lendl had to work on rigidity/flexibility. But don’t forget that other people can help you understand just who “your best self” truly is. When you find people with both performance and character you admire, do some digging! In the case of Andy Murray, I’m still learning plenty about perseverance and managing external pressure. I’m just glad there are fewer tears involved.