Chapter 12: Trust the Wobble

If you’ve ever used a guided meditation app, you’ve probably heard something like this:

“Find a comfortable seat. Gently close your eyes. Take a deep breath in… and slowly let it out. Bring your attention to your breath. Notice the sensation as air moves in and out. When your mind wanders, gently guide it back. Don’t judge yourself. Just acknowledge the thought and return to the breath. Try to stay present with each breath. Remember to be kind and compassionate with yourself…”

This probably sounds familiar. You may think that this is what meditation sounds like, what it’s supposed to be.

But these instructions—this constant stream of guidance and correction—might be exactly what’s making meditation hard for you.

Imagine my dad teaching me to ride a bike by running alongside me, shouting instructions the entire time:

“Okay, lean right! No, too much! Now left! Not that far! Pedal faster! No, slower! Look straight ahead! Keep your hands steady! Lean right again!”

I’d crash. Constantly. Because I’d be in my head trying to execute each instruction instead of letting my body figure out the feel of balance.

What I actually needed was a safe stretch of empty street and permission to wobble. To fall. To get back on and try again. My body had to learn through doing it, not through following a stream of instructions about how to do it.

As it turns out, a professional tennis coach figured out the same thing.

In 1971, Timothy Gallwey was teaching tennis. He’d captained the Harvard tennis team and was coaching using the standard method: watch a student hit the ball, give feedback on what they did wrong, tell them how to correct it. Bend your knees more. Follow through on your swing. Keep your eye on the ball.

One day he left the court briefly. When he returned, a student who’d been struggling with a technical problem had improved. Without his coaching.

That stopped him. How had the student gotten better while he was gone?

He started paying closer attention. He noticed his students talked to themselves while playing. They’d miss a shot and mutter: “No, that was terrible. Keep your elbow up. Come on, focus.” They were coaching themselves the way he’d been coaching them.

And it was getting in the way.

Gallwey started to see two selves at work. Self 1 was the conscious voice—the one giving instructions, judging performance, issuing corrections. “That backhand was weak. You need to rotate more. Try harder.”

Self 2 was the one actually playing tennis. The body-mind system that could watch the ball, feel the racket, adjust the swing. The part that had learned to walk and catch a ball and balance on a bike without anyone explaining the biomechanics.

Self 1 thought it was helping. But all that judging and instructing was interfering with Self 2’s natural ability to learn.

Gallwey’s first move was simple: stop coaching. He’d just feed balls to students. No feedback. No corrections. Let Self 2 figure it out.

It didn’t work. He’d watch students hit balls in silence, and they’d still be talking to themselves. Still judging. Still correcting. Self 1 didn’t need his voice—it had its own.

That’s when he realized: you can’t eliminate Self 1 by removing instruction. It’s always there, monitoring, assessing, trying to help. The question wasn’t how to silence it. The question was: what job do you give it?

So he tried something different. Instead of telling students how to hit the ball correctly, he’d give them something simple to observe: “Watch the seams of the ball as it comes toward you.”

That’s it. Not “hit it in the center of the racket” or “keep your wrist firm” or any technical instruction. Just: watch the seams.

It worked. Students’ shots improved—not because they were following better instructions, but because their attention was focused on observing rather than on judging and correcting. Self 1 got quiet. And Self 2 could learn.

Gallwey’s book “The Inner Game of Tennis” became a bestseller, selling over a million copies. He went on to write about golf, music, skiing, work—consulting with major corporations on the same principle. This wasn’t just about tennis. It was about any skill where there are two things that need to work together instead of fighting each other.

Like learning to balance while pedaling on a bike. Like what Alan Watts described with attention—when your spotlight is frantically judging everything, you can’t perceive the floodlight’s natural awareness. When one interferes with the other, learning stalls. When they work together, learning flows.

Gallwey put it simply: Performance = Potential - Interference.

Self 1 isn’t the enemy. The conscious voice isn’t bad. But when it’s judging—monitoring, evaluating, assessing—it interferes with Self 2’s ability to learn. The question isn’t how to eliminate Self 1. The question is: how do you stop the interference?

The answer: redirect it from evaluation to curiosity.

“Am I hitting the ball correctly?” That’s Self 1 evaluating. There’s tension in that question. A right answer and a wrong answer. A way to fail.

“What do the seams of the ball look like?” That’s Self 1 being curious. There’s no tension in that question. No right answer. Just observation. Just information.

When you’re curious, you’re not judging. You can’t do both at once. Curiosity and evaluation are mutually exclusive states. That’s why the redirect works.

So what does this look like in meditation?

You sit down. You close your eyes. And almost immediately, Self 1 starts its job.

“Am I present? Let me check. No, I was just thinking. Okay, back to the breath. Am I doing this gently enough? Is this the right kind of attention? Wait, was I present just now? Let me check again.”

Every thirty seconds, you’re taking your own spiritual blood pressure. Monitoring. Evaluating. Checking if you’re doing it correctly.

That checking is the wobble. That’s Self 1 trying to help by monitoring your performance. And just like on the bike, it’s making everything jerky. Each check creates tension. Each evaluation pulls you out of the experience. You’re fighting the meditation instead of being in it.

But you can redirect Self 1. You can give it a different question.

Instead of “Am I present?” ask “What’s happening right now?”

Instead of “Am I doing this right?” ask “What does this experience feel like?”

Instead of “Was that return to breath gentle enough?” ask “What am I noticing about the lean?”

Same Self 1. Different job. Not assessing. Curious.

When you ask “What’s happening right now?”, there’s no right answer. You’re not checking if you pass. You’re observing what’s present.

If you’ve explored different meditation practices, you’ve probably encountered questions like this. “What does this moment feel like?” “Where in your body do you sense the breath?” Some traditions go deeper: “Who is it that hears this sound?” These aren’t different techniques—they’re all doing the same thing. Redirecting Self 1 from evaluation to curiosity.

Maybe there’s restlessness in your body. Maybe there’s thinking. Maybe there’s a lean away from discomfort. Whatever’s there—that’s what’s happening. You’re not judging it. You’re curious about it.

And when Self 1 is curious, Self 2 can learn. Your system starts to recognize the patterns. The lean toward pleasant. The lean away from unpleasant. The wobbling between them. Not because you’re monitoring it correctly, but because you’re observing it openly.

This isn’t passive. You’re actively paying attention. But the quality of attention is different. It’s spacious instead of tight. Open instead of controlling. You’re asking “What’s here?” not “Am I measuring up?”

Try it right now, if you want. Ask yourself: “Am I sitting correctly right now?”

Notice what that feels like. There’s probably a subtle tension. Your body might shift slightly, checking its posture. You’re evaluating.

Now ask: “What does sitting feel like right now?”

Notice what that feels like. There’s probably more space. More openness. You’re observing, not judging.

Same moment. Same body. Different question. One creates tension. One creates space.

This is how you get comfortable with wobbling. Not by monitoring whether you’re wobbling correctly—that just makes the wobbling worse. But by being curious about the wobbling itself.

What does the lean feel like when it’s happening? What does your mind do when it wanders? What’s the quality of attention when you return to breath? Not “Is this right?” but “What’s this like?”

When you redirect Self 1 to curiosity, Self 2 can learn. The wobbling teaches you to wobble. Just like the bike taught you to balance.

But here’s where it gets tricky.

You sit down to meditate with this new understanding. You’re going to be curious, not judgmental. Simple enough.

And then Self 1 finds a new job.

“Am I being curious right now? Or am I still judging? Wait—that feels like evaluation. I should be more open. More spacious. Am I doing curiosity correctly?”

You’ve just turned curiosity into another performance to monitor. Another thing Self 1 can judge. The redirect itself becomes the problem.

So what do you do then?