"If You Can Hit One, You Can Hit a Thousand"

My dad first taught me how to play tennis when I was five. He played at the Columbia Tennis Center in the northern tip of Manhattan. Tennis was one of the few ways we bonded and I have played on and off my whole life. I'll always remember what a beautiful sight that place was in the summer: there were outdoor har-tru courts facing the river, and a hill landscaped with bedrock sitting areas and stone benches so people could sit and watch the players. Even today, from the grounds you can still see Columbia's monumental "C" painted in blue on the rock face of a huge cliff across the river.

This is where I met Dan Rivkind, one of Columbia's tennis coaches. Thanks to my dad, I was lucky enough to get some lessons with him.

Dan had a true passion for his craft, an insane level of discipline, and zero tolerance for BS. Every ball Dan hit would land deep inside the baseline, and he would run down anything you hit. He fought like hell for every point, and he was willing to do that all day long. Dan played like his life depended on it. As a kid, I was always in awe of his solemn intensity and his razor sharp focus on the court.

I still remember my lessons with Dan. Whenever I would hit a good shot, Dan would look me in the eyes, stick out his clenched fist, and with a deathly serious expression, he would say, "You see that? If you can hit one like that, you can hit a thousand."

If you can hit one, you can hit a thousand... If you can hit one, you can hit a thousand... If you can hit one, you can hit a thousand...

I can still hear his voice in my head! These days I have been reflecting a lot on Dan and that piece of advice.

Now - Years later, it makes more sense to me than ever:

With any skill or craft you are trying to learn, take the time to learn how to do it correctly and with your full attention. Through mindful repetition and practice, you can internalize the skills you're learning, and then you will have the confidence you can do it again and again.

• If you were successful once, you can be successful again.

  • Sometimes the little victories we have can give us the confidence to tackle something bigger.

  • How can you repeat success or build on something you were successful at?

    • What is something you were successful at? Why do you think you were successful?

    • What is something you failed at or fell short of your goal?

    • What was the difference between success and failure for you?

      • When I have recorded songs or albums, the best stuff was where I was truly connected to some purpose about the work, and was fully invested in making it come to life. There have been other situations where either I worked with people where the chemistry was off, and I was conflicted about the material, and I believe it showed in the final results. One time my bandmates kicked me out right after we finished the recording! (We were not aligned in some fundamental ways, so it was the best for everyone... really.)

      • Years ago - I completed Spartan races but I never ran a marathon. In truth I do not think I wanted the marathon as badly. Somehow when I met the goal of completing the Spartan races I felt like I had proven what I was looking to prove - that I could do something I never thought possible. I also planned out races and milestones to work towards, to keep momentum.

  • What drives you forward? Are there any themes from your successes that you can carry over to other things you are trying to learn or achieve?

    
    

• Break down what you are trying to learn into manageable pieces. If need be, slow down until you can really absorb what you are learning.

  • As a kid learning guitar, I was the king of getting ahead of myself, always trying to play things I could not play yet. I still smile at the passion I had for it. When I got (much) older and I started recording, through experience I found that practicing slowly, working through the parts methodically, and yes, even using a metronome, it makes a huge difference when you actually get into the studio, when you play with other people. In a separate post I wrote about recently learning a piece I never thought I would be able to play by slowing it down and taking it section by section, and that worked out really well (it was a lot of fun too!)

  • Playing tennis as a kid, I would practice against a wall and see how many balls I could hit in a row. I would take a nod from "The Inner Game of Tennis" and say "bounce" each time the ball bounced, and "hit" each time my racquet made contact with the ball. It completely put the focus back on that moment and my body in relation to the ball, and it also brought a certain quiet to the constant inner chatter of my mind.

    
    

• Be willing to put in the work (or re-work) to get it right.

Put in the work.

Here are some thoughts on this:

For many years I was an "intuitive" guitar player. I did not want to "learn the rules" - I learned by ear, lessons and some books. (No judgmenton this) When I finally did learn music theory in college, my playing skyrocketed. After many teachers through college and beyond, I eventually found a teacher at The New School named Howard Morgen. I studied with him for about ten years. He completely changed the way I approached the guitar as well as songwriting - and he changed my life as a result. Put in the work, it will pay off tenfold.

• In Songwriting, sometimes we may have an idea that sparks a great song. On rare moments of inspiration we may find the words flow out of us effortlessly. More often we have to rework the material to make it more powerful, or more aligned with what we are really trying to say or express. "Yesterday" by The Beatles, started out as "Scrambled Eggs." With any song you write, do the words convey what you really want to express? Do the chords and tempo bring to life the mood you want in the song? You may have to break apart, rewrite, and rework the song over and over again until you get to something that fully realizes your intent. Put in the work.

  
  

• Persistence and Perseverance

  • With anything you are trying to learn, particularly with something new, you will have to persist through failure. You will make mistakes, tweak what you are doing, and then incorporate that into your practice. Again, and again and again. You may even find that sometimes you feel like you are getting worse as you practice something more. Many people quit out of frustration, but try to learn from your mistakes. Yet there is a certain confidence that comes from pushing through the mistakes - they are a natural part of learning anything. Part of growing as a person is to be able to reflect on what you are doing and adjust what is not working.

    
    

If you can understand your connection to your purpose for doing something, it will greatly help your motivation and will to persist.

• There is a reason why I still play guitar to this day - there is something that I can manifest when I play, even if it simply brings me peace and joy at home. Having a craft, a relationship with the process of playing, learning, writing, has been everything to me. My purpose may have changed over the years, but I am still playing 40 years later(!)

  
  

• When the pandemic hit, there was a shortage of jobs and I knew I needed to keep mine. I had kids relying on me. I decided to get my PMP certification. I had a definite "why" in mind for getting the certification. That "why" really helped push me through some tedious study and prep sessions, and a lot of late nights studying (and probably one too many lattes !). Months later I took the test - I failed! I felt horrible but eventually I picked myself up again. Three months later I passed the test and I will always feel good that I stuck with it.

  
  

• Sometimes showing up is winning.

  • Sometimes we need to show up in difficult situations but are afraid. We may perceive there will be conflict, or we'll be rejected. We may have to admit we are wrong. We may have some form of imposter syndrome. If we do not show up in the first place, we will never know what we were capable of. And when we do show up, there is a shift that takes place from the world of our perceived ideas to the reality of the situation (it's usually way worse in our head.) There is a certain confidence we get just from showing up. The more we practice "showing up," the more likely we are to do it.

  • Show up for yourself. This can mean different things for all of us. Whether it means facing the difficult things, resisting taking an impulsive action or having the courage to walk away, I wish you strength whatever it is.

    • What does it mean for you to show up for yourself?

      
      

• Be Nimble and Open to Change

  • Life will require us to adjust and change course every now and then. You may expose a gap in what you have learned, or realize there is something that isn't working for you anymore. Or the conditions have changed and you may realize you need to pivot and take a new direction.

    
    

Perhaps you learned how to play a piece of music sitting down but standing up with a guitar strap, you can't play it as well. So you may need to change the way you practice or hold the instrument.

In videos I have seen of guitar great Joe Pass, I noticed that he would angle the position of the guitar when he wore a guitar strap where the neck of the guitar was at about a 45 degree angle - this enabled him to keep his left arm close to the fretboard, and likely gave him more ease of control with his left hand to execute the complex things he was playing on the fretboard.) Likely Joe had to experiment until he found a position that worked for him.

• Unlearn bad habits and be willing to recognize and change them.

  • Sometimes over time we can develop habits that impact what we learned and we have to course-correct. Often these habits can creep in to what we are doing when we least realize it.

  • Can you think of an example of this in your life?

  • I recall studying for the PMP and developing a pretty heavy coffee addiction. (I'm still working on that one.) Or developing neck pain from bad posture practicing the guitar.

  • We may need self-awareness either in the form of cues our body gives us, or perhaps we need to be open enough to criticism from other folks, and yet be nimble enough to reflect on what we are doing, and change it.

    
    

• If you love it, make it a consistent part of your life.  If there is something you really love to do, find a way to do it. Let it nourish you spiritually in your life. Make the time for it. You are actually bringing more joy into your life - again and again. If you can hit one, you can hit a thousand.

• Self-Awareness is the key to a more authentic life

If we can really learn who we are as a person, what makes us tick, what inspires or ignites us on a deep level, we can make choices and potentially create a life that is more aligned with our own values. We may start by incorporating one thing into our lives that gives us joy. Perhaps we then start to look to relationships and friends that are aligned with our values as well.

• We need to have a willingness to learn about ourselves, and a willingness to honestly look at and see ourselves - then we can make a real difference in our own lives.

• Psychologist Abraham Maslow: "What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself".

• Author David Goggins: "The most important conversations you'll ever have are the ones you'll have with yourself".

  
  

• Change the narrative, from the inside out

• From Carlos Castaneda's Journey to Ixtlan:

  • We may need a fundamental shift in our perception in order to make fundamental changes in our lives.

  • We may need to break free of a habitual way we have of interpreting reality that may be preventing us from creating a different life for ourselves.

  • We may need to disrupt an internal dialogue that could be reinforcing a fixed worldview, in order to perceive reality in a new and more fluid way.

  • We may need to overcome social conditioning and see beyond our own ordinary interpretations of life in order to engage life with greater clarity, unconstrained by rigid beliefs from culture or society.
    

• We may need to change a narrative we have created that is limiting us (the hypochondriac who always gets sick, the tennis player who deep down believes he is clumsy, the musician who may want to perform but believes his/her material will never be good enough, or somehow has to have "hit song material" in order to perform or be heard by others.) There are countless examples of unlikely folks who ended up doing something really great. (Some of my favorite bands and artists, actually.) These people changed the narrative. Maybe you and I can too.

  
  

When I look back at my own life, from the ups and downs of being a parent, career/job troubles, suffering grief and loss, surviving both good and failed relationships, financial hardships, I can attest that life will test, push and stretch us. Life will require all the strengths and skills we have and many we don't. Yet it’s often during these challenging times that we learn the most about ourselves.

To me, Dan Rivkind has always represented "digging in" and fighting for every last ball, regardless of our "internal and external weather." He was a symbol of living like your life depends on it. Lately that attitude has been helpful for me whenever I find myself struggling, I feel overwhelmed with too many demands, I feel imposter syndrome creeping in, or even simply if I am just anxious about what the future holds.

It starts with the first ball. This mindset completely refocuses the sense of agency and control back inside of ourselves - so we can focus on what we have the power to change right now..

What about you? Who is your "Dan Rivkind"? What are some moments in your past that may have offered some deeper cues to who you are now, or to ways that you could improve your life now?

Live like your life depends on it. Because it does.

And remember:

If you can hit one, you can hit a thousand.

Here is a web page in the memory of Dan Rivkind: https://gocolumbialions.com/news/2018/1/4/211691398

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Fun Facts

• Columbia Tennis Center

  • My dad, Herbert Hendin, was a driving force in raising money to build the Columbia Tennis Center in 1951. This lead to a lot of successful recruiting efforts for the Columbia tennis team.

  • The beautiful bedrock gardens at Columbia (no longer there) were built by a groundskeeper (more like a landscape architect) named Johnny Egan.

  • The Columbia "C" painted on the cliff was actually painted by the Columbia rowing team back in the early 1950s.

  • The Columbia Tennis Center was later named the Dick Savitt Tennis Center, after the 1951 Wimbledon and Australian Open Champion, Dick Savitt. Savitt became the first Jewish tennis player to win the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 1951. He used to come to the center and I remember watching him hit balls - it was a real treat. Today this center is called the Philip & Cheryl Milstein Family Tennis Center.

    
    
  
  

• Journey to Ixtlan - My High School teacher got in a lot of trouble with the parents of our school for having us read Journey to Ixtlan for english class. There was no actual drug use in the book, but other books by the author were more controversial to people. The book was really about awakening to your own reality, and my friend Nick and I used to talk for hours about the book. I even got a tattoo of the book cover on my back. Here's to you Stephen Diner!