Before we jump into the podcast, a quick note, I wanted to lay the framework for this podcast. This is a podcast about your journey potentially becoming hijacked, and it's such an appropriate podcast given the time of year that we're in. As we move into 2024, really keep in mind this concept of your journey and avoid your journey from being hijacked, and you're gonna have a much better 2024 that said,

happy New Year and enjoy the podcast. Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your Pickleball improvement. It's the podcast with you in mind. I'm your host, Tony Roy. I'll be having a great week. And this week what we're gonna be talking about is we're gonna be talking about something that comes up pretty often or more often than you think it would or should.

And it comes, it, it, it arose from a couple weeks ago. I asked you to, you know, your listeners, to, to write in and let us know phrases that resonated with you from the podcast and appreciate you sending those in. It's, it's always great to hear what, what's, you know, what's connecting out there and,

and just to hear from you in general about the podcast and any kind of experience you're having with the podcast. So the, a lot of the, the words that were sent in had to do with agency in terms like intentionality, journey, things like that. So it had to do with, with us in our, in our, in our journey and our,

and our progression through this sport of Pickleball. And it got me to thinking about something that happens again more frequently than you would think. And it's the idea of having your journey hijacked, of having someone granting someone too much control over your own journey. So what I wanted to do this week is talk about that and, you know, bring together some of the phrases that,

that, you know, that resonated with you into one subject or to under this umbrella of, of not getting, not having your journey hijacked. And so that's what we're talking about during this week's podcast. As I jump into the podcast, if you're interested in joining one of our camps, we still have some spots open. We've opened some additional camp locations,

so if you go to better Pickleball dot com slash camps, you'll be able to access all of the dates and locations where we have currently have camp spots open. I'll put a link down in the show notes below, so you can check that out. Check that out as a, well, all right, let's talk about what we mean, you know,

in terms of getting hijacked. And the way to think about, it's like this, you know, you're on your journey, you're doing your thing with Pickleball, you're working on your game, whatever that may be, wherever you are in your game, whatever you're working on with your game, as an example, if you're assistant member, you know, you're,

you're in the system course, the system course materials are providing you clear guidance in terms of what you need to be working on right now. And there's two different ways that you, that you can get hijacked. One is through the YouTube algorithm, and what happens there is you'll open up your, your app on your phone or on your computer, your YouTube app,

and you're gonna get fed a, you're gonna get fed a video, right? YouTube's gonna say, Hey, I know you, here's a video you might like. Now it's kind of curious, right? Because when you think about how that happened, it wasn't as though the content creator, whoever the content creator may be included, could have been me or Cche,

right? Whoever the content creator is that happens to come across your screen, didn't really, like, they didn't say to themselves, okay, this is a, this is a video that you know, Mary or John or Bob or, or, or Susan need today. We just loaded the video into YouTube and then YouTube said, you know what, I'm gonna send this video out to see if,

if one of those players wants to check it out. And then you watch the video. And what can happen is you are then, you basically start following this path down the video that you just happened to get fed from the YouTube algorithm. And what you do is you, you have essentially lost control over your own journey because your journey has been hijacked.

And I wouldn't say it's been hijacked by the content creator, that's not fair to the content creator because the content, whoever that may be, the content creator didn't, again, send you the video outta the blue and say, Hey, why don't you do this instead, YouTube algorithm is hijacking your journey. Now you have control over that, and we're gonna talk about that in a minute,

but, but just we understand the source of it. The source of it. There is YouTube sending you a video. Another area that can, another way that your journey can get hijacked is through a player at the courts. So you, you, again, you're, you're on your journey, you are working in a certain part of the game, you're focused,

you know what you're doing, particularly if you're inside the system, again, you know what you gotta be working on and you go out to play and someone at your courts as well intentioned as they may be, say to you, you know, another player says to you, Hey, you know what you really need, you really need this, or whatever this is.

And now you end up wondering, is that really what I need, right? Or should I stick to what I was working on, or should I do this thing? And some players, actually, again, more often than should be the case will follow this new thing, right? That's been proposed to them by just someone, random person at the courts or who doesn't really understand where you're at in life in your skill set,

your background, what makes sense strategically, you know, not just strategically in terms of your play, but strategically in terms of where you are as a player. None of that, right? Just, just a piece of advice you got at the courts. And next thing you know, you know, three months later you're wondering what happened for the last three,

the last three months, where'd they go? And what happened was you were following this, this, you know, you were chasing after this thing that again, was just something said to you at the courts. And so in those, and, and, and a, a less common, but, but can also happen, you know, we've, we've had some of our students had this experience where you're,

you're working with a certain approach, okay? And again, I'll use the system because that's the approach that I'm most familiar with. It's the approach that we teach, so we know that works. So you're working inside the system, you know, there's a clear focus and a clear delineation of what's next, and you join a local clinic or go out to hit some balls with a local pro or whatever.

Next thing you know, right now you're doing something else. And you know, and so what ends up happening is you're, you're, again, you're, you process is hijacked. Now you contributed to the hijacking, but nonetheless, your process has been hijacked. The reason is hijacked is because you, you are not in control of that process. Let's go back to YouTube for a second.

It's not like when you opened up your, generally speaking, right, when you open up your YouTube algorithm or your YouTube app that the algorithm fed you whatever, it's not like you were in there specifically searching for the exact thing that you need right now, assuming that you, you would know how to prompt that correctly, right? Safety deal with the player at your local courts.

It's not like you went to the local courts that morning wondering what exactly do I need? And I bet you so and so can give it to me, right? It just, they brought it on to you, right? They, they kind of put it on you. And that's what we mean by hijacking your process. So the question is, okay,

what can I do about it? Well, the very first thing to do is to fully embrace the idea that this journey that we're on, that you're on is yours. It is your journey to walk. It is your path to walk, your journey, to take you own it. And you have ultimate control over that journey. Super important to understand that,

because if you don't fully embrace that, then it's gonna be really hard the next time you get a video to resist it. Because you're gonna say, well, what am I supposed to do about it? I got a vid, I got a video from a professional on YouTube, I should do it. And here's the interesting thing, it's, this is gonna happen more and more.

CJ and I were talking about this earlier. CJ Johnson was my partner at Better Pickleball and I were talking about this earlier, and she said that she had some video had come across her desk with like 20,000 views, and she clicked on it and watched it, and it was AI generated, artificial intelligence generated content on the, on the, on the,

on YouTube with 20,000 views in like two days. We don't get 20,000 views on our videos in two days. That's, that's a high number of views, right? But it's artificially intel, artificial intelligence content. It's not even, you know, it's just, it's, it's getting out there in terms of the type of content that we're starting to see on YouTube and,

and in written form, hopefully not in podcasts yet, but eventually probably. And so you, you need to be careful about the information that you let into your journey, whether it's, again, from an online type of source or from a another player at the court. 'cause no matter what the player, the no matter what the player of the court's intentions,

no matter as how, however good they are, most of the players out there, no offense to any of y'all, you are not trained in this sport. In other words, you don't have any kind of training. You, you know, when I say you, I mean the, the players give you the advice, you know, don't really understand how to properly frame the training or the,

even if you had the training, frame it within the context of, of teaching to somebody else, you know, meeting 'em where they are and things like that. There's a lot that goes into teaching anything. And Pickleball is no exception. So if you're allowing, let me frame it differently. The first line of defenses don't allow your journey to be hijacked,

whether it's by YouTube or by someone else at your courts. Because when you think about your journey, not only do you own it, you want to be in intentional. And that's that word intentionality that we use a lot here at the podcast and also know of our teaching. You know, intentionality is something that you can use when you're playing Pickleball. And what I mean by that is you can decide,

I'm gonna hit the ball here or hit the ball there or lobb it or drop it or whatever. That's your choice. But intentionality has a much broader application, which also applies to how you interact with Pickleball big picture, right? How you, how you walk your path, how you take the journey that you're taking. And you can use that intentionality both to pro to,

to proactively receive information so positively and also negatively. In other words, to protect yourself, to defend yourself against information that may not be for you right now where you're at. If you want to see more about the processing of information and how to decide whether to bring it in or not, you could check out the video at Intu Pickle. I'll put a link in the show notes where we ask,

we give you the three questions that you need to ask before you bring in information into your journey and before you allow that information into your, into your process. Now, I know I've already maybe said this a couple of times, but if you're assistant member, you don't need to worry too much. As long as you're, you know, sticking to the program,

you're gonna get the benefits of the system. If you decide to stray outside the system or outside of whatever it is that you're doing for your game, understand that there's commensurate risks that, that attach to that decision. And understand that at some level you may end up getting hijacked and lose control over the journey, which again, is your journey. And the last rest that I wanna leave you with regarding your journey and regarding agency and intentionality,

I want you to understand that you can in fact improve as a Pickleball player. If that is a desire of yours to improve, to get better, to know the game better, to understand Pickleball more than you currently do, you are 100% capable of doing that. Getting hijacked is a good way to not do that. In other words, getting hijacked or allowing your process or your journey to get hijacked is a way to get distracted,

get distracted away from your, your improvement, right? Your advancement as a player. So understanding that you can in fact, advance and that hijacking is not what you want for your journey. Now you have some more information that you can use to apply that agency that we were talking about to apply your intentionality, to control your journey, to protect your journey,

and to make sure that you are walking the path that you do in fact want to walk and not the path to some algorithm or some random player at the courts has picked out for you. All right? I hope that this week's podcast will help you on your journey as always. And, and as I mentioned at the beginning, if you're interested in joining us for one of our camps,

check us out at better Pickleball dot com slash camps. And last but not least, in January, you have a lookout for our academy. If you're on our mail list, you're gonna be getting some information about it coming up in terms of some classes we have coming out that are super exciting and are really gonna help you continue on your journey. I hope you enjoy the podcast and as always,

rate us and review us, share with your friends. If you join the podcast, they probably will too. Have a great week and I'll see you next time.