Last Sunday I got invited to ‘church’with some friends.

No, not this kind of church…

But PICKLEBALL CHURCH! 🙂

One of my pickleball buddies, Gaylan, is the shop manager for an equipment repair shop. The shop is huge and deals mainly with over-sized farm equipment.

Gaylan (on the right in the picture below) is an excellent PB player and aside from the fact that he’s an excellent athlete, the reason he’s excellent is that he’s a student of the game. And he’s as addicted to PB as I am.

Gaylan sets up for indoor pickleball play each Sunday during the cold winter months.

Because it’s each and every Sunday morning, it feels like going to church… 🙂

Gaylan cleans the floor with an industrial floor cleaning machine so that there’s nothing to interfere with the ball.

He puts up three nets to stop the ball from travelling far and wide. They are hard to see in this picture, but, trust me, they are there. They are each about 60′ x 50′ and they are hung on cable.

And the cool thing is that he’s devised a special winch to retract the cable after church is over.

We played for almost four hours, taking turns with each game after game after game.

All of the players are very good, so the play was intense and highly skilled.

At the risk of being irreverent, it was a great church experience. 🙂

It’s really cold here. Really, really cold!

I took Sophie for two very, very short walks today, and I wished I would have talked with Melissa BEFORE I had gone on those walks.

The wind chill this afternoon was 7 degrees. Yep, a whopping SEVEN!

Melissa had made a commitment to walk Olive, her Schnauzer, for at least a mile every day after work.

But as she was walking late this afternoon she decided that from now on the ‘feels like’ temperature has to have at least two digits in order to talk Olive for a walk.

While the dogs might not mind the cold, their walkers do!

So if the wind child is nine or below, no walking.

Sounds like very good advice to me!

Thanks, Misslissa!

Joel, one of my pickleball buddies, is, in my mind, a zen master.

He’s a thinker and a studier while he plays, and yet he’s very physical as well.

I got to talking with Joel about my journey to become more competitive when I play. Unless I’m in a tournament, I could care less whether I win or not. I just want to sweat, learn something, and have fun.

I explained that I don’t think I’m focused enough on the outcome of the game. So I’m working on increasing my competitiveness–beating my opponents being my goal.

He asked, “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

I said that I thought it would improve my game.

He disagreed and quickly began to explain to me how wrong I was. (Joel is very good at that! 🙂 )

Joel played competitive tennis in high school and  college, so much of his musings start with tennis and then finish in pickleball.

Tennis players are taught to be ‘process oriented’ which means that they work on the mechanics of the game, perfecting the process.

By focusing on winning in my pursuit to be more competitive, I am ‘goal or results oriented’.

As much as I wanted to disagree with him, the more Joel talked, the more sense he made.

If I switch my focus to being process oriented, I will play more in the moment. I will work on EACH shot so that it’s the best shot.

Instead of focusing on beating my least favorite opponent (Herb), for example, I will focus on the process of training and the process of mastering pickleball.

While waiting for our next turn to  play, I asked him for some specific exercises to do. He mentioned one to start with.

And as I played, I focused on using his ‘process’ while playing.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much my play improved and how ‘in the moment’ my play became. I chose which shot to try based on the situation,–trying to achieve the best placement, speed, and timing.

I’m hoping to become more process oriented in other areas of my life, not only on the pickleball court.

Here’s a good definition of process orientation (in regards to human resources, but I think it will help me) :

Process Orientation places a priority on “how” things are done. It is a willingness to remain open and follow in new directions. It means setting aside mainstream ways of achieving results and instead following culturally respectful processes that also produce results. It is letting go of agendas or the need to control, and trusting that the appropriate outcome will emerge from a good journey together. It means accepting that both the use of process orientation and a “good relationship” are concrete deliverables.