Photo from Dave Carlson at Powerplay Photography
“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”
-Alan Watts
Verse 57 from Derek Lin’s interpretation:
Govern a country with upright integrity
Deploy the military with surprise tactics
Take the world with non-interference
How do I know this is so?
With the following:When there are many restrictions in the world
The people become more impoverished
When people have many sharp weapons
The country becomes more chaotic
When people have many clever tricks
More strange things occur
The more laws are posted
The more robbers and thieves there areTherefore the sage says:
I take unattached action, and the people transform themselves
I prefer quiet, and the people right themselves
I do not interfere, and the people enrich themselves
I have no desires, and the people simplify themselves
A great player is similar to a great chef. They don’t need recipes and know when a dish they create is not good enough.
An In-Powered Coach recognizes the genius in his players and doesn’t need to tell them they messed up the dish. The chef already knows. They allow the chef to remake the dish and serve it better the 2nd time.
In hockey, you cannot simply send free appetizers to the table while the chef remakes the order. There are no do-overs in the game.
But there can be an ‘allowance’ for mistakes.
Interfere and tell them what they already know and they might become angry, resentful, or disengaged from the game.
They know they messed up the dish. They are already planning to right the wrong and fix it next time.
Allow, don’t interfere.
I know you want to ‘be seen coaching’ but sometimes the best action is NON-action.
Tune in again to the last section of text in this verse:
Therefore the sage says:
I take unattached action, and the people transform themselves
I prefer quiet, and the people right themselves
I do not interfere, and the people enrich themselves
I have no desires, and the people simplify themselves
They know what to do, your interference and having to ‘tell them’ is a lack of trust on your part.
Allow, they’ll be better themselves.
To throw in another cooking analogy, let’s end with the first section of verse 60:
Governing a large country is like frying a small fish.
Too much poking spoils the meat.
For coaches, one might say it like this…
To poke a human repeatedly in one area causes irritation and redness.
To poke a player repeatedly in one area causes the same.