LET YOUR BROTHER WIN: "My scowl displayed my protest at the unfairness. Mom's shrug was her way of asking me to keep my perspective: What was more important, winning or helping her keep the peace?".

• Author: Atchity, Kenneth
• Position: PSYCHOLOGY

IN THE GAME of life, we all are handicapped by always having to play against ourselves. I gained that insight, like many others, from my lifelong love for tennis. Pursued long enough, tennis reveals all the secrets of the mind. For the first few years I played, it was mostly physical: trying to learn the right moves and angles, frustrated that they look so easy and seem so hard to get right under the pressure of the game. It only takes a microsecond for the ball to hit my racket--or not--but that not only is the most important microsecond in which to practice focus, it is the most elusive.

Somehow my almighty brain, which has cooperated in "keeping my eye on the ball" from the moment it leaves the opponent's racket to that crucial instant when it approaches mine, suddenly goes somewhere else: crossing Park Avenue in Manhattan; waving for the Kibbeh Man on Ipanema Beach; ogling the bleached blonde on the next court; my recent altercation with a meter maid--the list is infinite.

I blow the point.

Year after year of playing, I learned a few things about myself. I learn in point scores how my unconscious and my conscious mind interact, vying for control of my body--or my ego taunting my calmly competent deeper self.

I can be playing against Hilton, who is in his late 80s, on gorgeous, blue-surfaced Beverly Hills courts; I know I can beat him but, to do that, I have to play normally and not blow my shots. Why Hilton's age and my doublethink are even factors: How important is it to beat an 86-year-old man? On the other hand, why should I let him beat me? I am having this exact dialogue as the ball approaches me, with the predictable result that, as easy as this shot should be, I blow it.

Before long, the score is 15-40, and again I need to concentrate on not blowing the next shot. I am, I think, fully aware and in control. He hits a surprise; I do blow it; and he wins the game--sometimes even the set. What is going on here? What's my story? Who's running my show?

I often have observed that I play better when I am behind--not only behind, but way behind: Love-40 is my favorite score. If I blow the next point, I lose. Time after time, year after year, the same pattern repeats itself: I let myself fall to Love-40, or 15-40, make a heroic comeback but, just as often as not, lose one more point and lose the game. Even when I became fully aware of this pattern years ago, I could not seem to overcome it. The same thing kept happening on the court.

One...