“1. Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself. 2. You make the job; it doesn’t make you. 3. Your real life is with us, your family. 4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.” -Toni Morrison
I’ve been pretty hard on you.
(Yes, you.)
One of the reasons I love Moneyball is that it forces us to confront the subtle yet predictable nuances of the human mind.
But this insight creates a paradox:
If we’re constantly focused on the flaws in our leadership, how do we build the confidence to aim high and accomplish great things?
This isn’t a trivial concern.
Too many leaders in Jewish institutions are irrationally confident in their abilities, especially in comparison to others. Leadership failures often stem from people who overestimate their intelligence or charisma, without evidence. But I’m equally concerned about the opposite: how many potential leaders hold back because they’re too afraid to believe in themselves?
Both overconfidence and underconfidence are learned. And unlearning them—shifting our mindset—is essential to achieving real impact. That work starts by wrestling with this week’s big idea.
Post-Traumatic Growth
What do you fear?
Don’t worry—I won’t tell.
Take a moment to consider the gap between the leader you aspire to be and the leader you currently feel you are. What do you secretly hope no one notices about you, because you fear it means you’re not up to the task?
Do you worry that you don’t know enough about Judaism?
That you’re not smart enough?
Perhaps you didn’t attend the right college, camp, or youth group, or you don’t run in the “right” circles.
Or maybe someone important once chipped away at your confidence, and you’ve never fully recovered.
I know—it’s not a fun exercise.
However, I suspect that many of us can name something that resonates with us. We contain multitudes, and every leadership journey includes stumbling blocks. Still, the obstacles we avoid confronting are the ones that persist the longest, making it a perfect time to learn about post-traumatic growth (PTG).
The Clinical Psychology Review defines PTG as “the subjective experience of positive psychological change reported by an individual as a result of the struggle with trauma.”1 Let’s be clear: no one should self-diagnose. If you believe trauma may be part of your story, talk to a qualified mental health professional. However, PTG is a poignant reminder that we can make choices about how to respond to our most challenging moments.
PTG, first developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, centers on the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory—a tool they created to measure to what extent “survivors of traumatic events perceive benefits, including changes in perceptions of self, relationships with others, and philosophy of life, accruing from their attempts to cope with trauma and its aftermath.”2 Similar to our recent discussion on the focusing illusion,3 PTG serves as a reminder that even the most unwanted experiences can, over time, lead to growth.
In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Tedeschi argues that, fundamentally, trauma is a “disruption of core belief systems.”4 Our worst moments feel that way because they shatter something foundational to who we thought we were. Bruce Feiler calls this a “lifequake”—a seismic disruption to our identity. PTG begins when a person is ready to entertain the possibility of growth in the aftermath of trauma. Growth is not guaranteed, and ultimately it depends on the person. But it happens every day.
Does your biggest fear qualify as trauma? I can’t answer that.
But many of us live with deep doubts—ones that may not meet a clinical definition, but still hold us back. PTG reminds us: if people can grow through trauma, then surely we can grow through our own brutal, if less extreme, experiences.
The Inner Game of Tennis
For some of you, the inner doubt holding you back may stem from clinically diagnosed trauma. But for others, post-traumatic growth (PTG) might feel too dramatic a framework for what you're experiencing. Your doubts might be more ordinary—leaving a job, asking people for money, or daring to share your vision with the world.
That’s why PTG pairs beautifully with a very different kind of book: The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey.
Don’t worry—you don’t need to play or even like tennis to get something out of it. Leaders and performance coaches across disciplines widely use the book to help people overcome anxiety and self-doubt. Gallwey’s central idea is that every person has two “selves” at play in any performance.
Self 1 is the “conscious teller”—the inner monologue that judges, critiques, and narrates our performance in real-time.
Self 2 represents our “natural capabilities”—the part of us that simply does the thing we’ve practiced.5
The problem, Gallwey argues, is that when Self 1 gets too loud, it interferes with Self 2’s ability to perform:
“It may begin by complaining, “What a lousy serve,” then extend to, “I’m serving badly today.” After a few more “bad” serves, the judgment may become further extended to “I have a terrible serve.” Then, “I’m a lousy tennis player,” and finally, “I’m no good.””6
The more we judge ourselves, the harder it becomes to execute—even if we’ve done the work. Every point, Gallwey says, should be treated as its own event, unburdened by the last one.7 That’s how we keep Self 1 in check and let Self 2 do what it knows how to do.
Crucially, Gallwey is not arguing that learning how to correct mistakes is unimportant; only that we need to be vigilant about allowing errors to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like a tennis match, our leadership narrative builds over time through countless small experiences. We start labeling ourselves:
I’m a great fundraiser.
I’m a terrible interviewer.
I’m not a visionary.
These labels feel like truth, and while for some of them they come from severe trauma, in other cases they are just a story we’ve told ourselves too many times. Gallwey writes:
“When love and respect depend on winning or doing well in a competitive society, it is inevitable (since every winner requires a loser and every top performance many inferior ones) that there will be many people who feel a lack of love and respect…But who said that I am to be measured by how well I do things? In fact, who said that I should be measured at all? Who indeed?””8
Your value isn’t defined by performance, at a moment, in a meeting, or even in a job. And just as one bad serve doesn’t make you bad at serving, one misstep doesn’t define your potential.
I don’t pretend to know your full leadership story or what stands in the way of your goals. However, I hope you’ll take Gallwey’s advice to heart: “The player at peak performance stops caring about the outcome and plays all out.”9
As you look ahead, I hope you’ll find ways to quiet your inner critic, trust what you’ve practiced, and play all out, moment by moment, one point at a time.
Tennis I.Q.
1982
The year was when Lenny Solomon and Shlock Rock began performing “Minyan Man,” a song that my children and I sing together every Shabbat (really). Like many people, this is our favorite version:
What I Read This Week
When A Nazi Hunter Was Killed in the Lockerbie Bombing: I found this article a poignant story about weaving one man’s career hunting Nazi criminals with a one of the worst terrorist acts in the United States before 9/11. Read more here.
Clearview AI and Other Worries: Clearview AI is one of the most terrifying companies I’ve heard of in the AI space, and you can read about it in this article. In a world where one LinkedIn Executive is shocked at how AI is breaking the bottom of the corporate ladder, while Nate Silver cautions that ChatGPT is shockingly bad at poker, we need to stay informed.
How the Best Leaders Transform Conflict: Chad Ford, formerly one of my favorite basketball writers, now works full-time in religious studies and conflict resolution. He’s a fantastic writer on conflict resolution.
Faith Becomes Fashionable: I prefer faith as counterculture, but we are seeing an increasing number of places around the world where religious observance is growing, including Silicon Valley, India, and France. We will continue to hear more about this.
Amazing Stash of Guitars Heads to the Met: Anyone want to go with me? Lena Dunham might be ready to break up with New York, but I’m not giving up (at least not yet).
W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance (New York: Random House, 1997), 10.
If you are a close reader, you may wonder if there is a connection between Gallwey’s Self 1 and Self 2 and Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 from Thinking, Fast and Slow. To the best of my knowledge, these concepts were developed separately, and while there are some similarities, we should not conflate the two.
Ibid., 19.
Ibid., 2.
For any Ted Lasso fans, this is why he says “be a goldfish”:
Because the goldfish has a short memory, it cannot focus on the past.
This is also what Maverick means when he says, “Don’t think, just do.”
Returning to tennis, Gallwey argues that the best athletes achieve “the kind of spontaneous performance which occurs only when the mind is calm and seems at one with the body, which finds its surprising ways to surpass its limits again and again.”
Ibid., 108-109.
Ibid., 132-133.