The Gloves Are Off
And so the story goes that the young player practised his dart skills diligently, watching videos, perfecting his stance and technical approach. He loved the feel of the dart in his hand, the sound of it landing in the board. He watched his heroes on television and dreamed of playing on the best stage in the world.
In the privacy of his own home, and maybe with a few safe friends, his averages would rise from 40 to 50 to 60 to 70. At this point, he found himself being entered into the inner circle of higher elite professional darts players. It was a joyous moment; people congratulated him, and it felt good.
When he got to the competition and, for the first time, had to play in front of spectators, judges, the bright lights, and the expectations, pressure mounted. Potential rewards, and recognition were now added to the experience. He started to experience sensations that were vibrant, powerful, new, bold, and confusing.
And then he saw something that he’d never seen before in his whole experience. He now saw for the very first time that the players seem to wear gloves. That was the first shock. The Greater secondary shock was that he suddenly realised he was wearing a pair of the very same gloves. Instinctively, he knew that he didn’t want anyone to know that he was now wearing this pair of gloves, and when he watched the other players as they played in competition, he was aware that they also did not want anyone to know that they were wearing these gloves. Then the other realisation came to him. No one could see the gloves other than the other players who knew that they were wearing them, that these invisible gloves were as real to the person who experienced them as they were invisible to the person who could not see them.
One of the gloves was soft, velvety, warm, and comfortable; it felt good but made it difficult to hold onto his darts as they were slippery and lacked the energy to launch them accurately.
The other glove was uncomfortable, spiky, rough, with a harsh texture.
The soft velvety warm and comfortable glove that so affected his throw had writing upon it along the fingers and around the palm and down the thumb, and he noticed that these were words that described apathy, aimlessness, and ambivalence.
The spiky glove with its bits of metal and abrasiveness also had writing on it in bold, aggressive fonts, and the letters were anxiety, agitation, and anger.
And so it was that he found that when he was throwing darts in competitions he would have his unwanted gloves on. He did not choose which one, but ninety percent of the time, they were there. They seemed more impactful at times of greater consequences on offer. With them on his averages would be inconsistent, his performance not as it was at home or in practice or in training or in the safety of familiar surroundings. He noticed that the gloves really affected the way he would throw, and at times, the dart would hardly reach the board, it would go in at the wrong angles, the energy levels were flat, and his ambivalence and his apathy aimlessness seemed to replace all of his talent. Or the other glove, and he was ferocious in his throw, the dart thudding into the board, rarely where it was wanted. Although he was there throwing darts, he just couldn’t throw his best when he was wearing these invisible gloves.
If the gloves were not interfering with his game enough, then he found more discomfort when he was triggered by injustices of the other players’ behaviour, or just judging or comparing his own performance against other people. The sense of embarrassment, shame, or guilt, all of these sensations and thoughts washed through him. His thinking mind and his narrative and the storytelling brain that would be on him would swap the glove over to one of agitation and anger and anxiety. When that glove was on again, he just couldn’t seem to get the dart to go in the right place; it would go in too hard or off to one side, hit the board, and it would just be unable to be that refined, precise, confident, casual, relaxed, in the zone type player that he was so familiar with. He hated these gloves, and yet every time he went near reward or recognition, they seemed to be on his hands.
One day, he learned that there was an antidote to this, which was alcohol. And it worked; the alcohol worked, that slow, comforting protector that would wrap around him inside and out. It didn’t matter which pair of gloves were showing up; they seemed to have no power to hurt him when the relief of alcohol was sought. Somehow, his muscle memory kicked in, and all of the training and the practice and the thousands of darts thrown in his life became available to him.
Not always perfect, and there was still some fluctuation, and if he didn’t quite get the amount of alcohol right, then he would get a little bit too much ambivalence, aimlessness, and apathy, and he would feel a bit down or depressed or flat. Sometimes that would show up, but with the alcohol, it didn’t really seem to matter quite so much. In other times, the agitation and the anger and the frustration and the stress would show up, and it would really be interfering, but somehow the alcohol would subdue that and put it into a silent state, and sometimes it would leak through a little bit, but when it did, it didn’t seem to matter quite so much. The rewards and the recognition and what people thought and all the hooks and the narrative didn’t seem to matter quite so much. Not in the short term and in the here and now anyway, and with that, he found compromise and accommodation of his invisible gloves that allowed him to be in the limelight, to have some kind of a career. However, deep down somewhere quiet, he knew the silent truth. He could not maintain this.
The alcohol, of course, didn’t just affect his darts. The accumulation of regular drinking for effect caused a build-up of tolerance. The more one drinks, the more one needs to. The perfect trap was that alcohol allowed him to survive, sometimes thrive. In turn this meant a large part of his life on the road, competing. This became an incessant grind. Poor lifestyle was the price he had to pay, to tame the gloves with alcohol.
He drank for effect, he drank for relief, and he drank in service of coping, but the side effects were starting to tell. At the end of every year when he looks back, the cost of his bank balance and the bar bill, the cost in his relationships and trust, the cost in his health and his mental and emotional state. He noticed that he was existing in the world of darkness, never really feeling the freedom and the joy that he felt as a young guy when he first picked up the darts and he loved them and he felt the passion for it and the pleasure and the fun went out of it, but the alcohol kind of hid him from that as well.
One day, as the story continues to develop, he noticed a couple of players that were performing well on the stage, and they didn’t have these gloves on. So he started to watch them behind the scenes. He noticed that they didn’t use alcohol either, and this was very confusing. The greatest surprise was that the invisible glove had not gone, that these players had them, like everyone else, just that they were not on their hands. They were tucked into their back pockets. The epiphany moment, The Gloves Were Off.
He asked. He asked them outright. How did they take the gloves off? Could I do that? They told him. They joined DartsGym.com.
He learned that he could take the gloves off, as long as he was willing to keep them in his pocket. The way to do this, he discovered, was the Third Wave Mentality skill of Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT- said as the word ACT.)
He went on a voyage of discovery and freedom. Could he really love, enjoy, compete and succeed without alcohol? Was there a new way? He learned how at DartsGym.com
HOW? Honesty, Open-mindedness, Willingness. He started to learn. He had a Plan B, one he chose to embrace without reservation or restriction. He started to learn the power of now, and focused on using mindfulness, the ACT element to practise freedom through Acceptance. Discovering the diffusion of unhooking from thoughts and feelings. Learning to play from values and identity, rather than goals based focus. He learned to be the best version of himself, where his best is good enough. He practised his values, doing the next right thing, no matter what. He started being his authentic self. He put his trust and faith in this program of change with the same commitment that he had to alcohol. In doing so, he found that his bare hands could throw the darts he desired. . He learnt to trust his hands. He found that increasingly one or both gloves were in his pocket. Accepting couldn’t get rid of them, so he found that he could mentally put them in his back pocket. The apathy, the anxiety gloves just went straight in the back pocket. From that position, he would step up on the stage.
He still had his gloves , yet they no longer had him.
He also realised that by not using alcohol he could accept the fact that he would have feelings, triggers, and in any moment. His use of mindfulness, of practising the breathing out of diffusion from his thoughts, of labelling them, of being in tune with his values, of accepting, aiming, and his maths and his potential, and leaning into the here and now gave him the freedom to play, live and thrive as desired.
His story is that he trusted his talent as a darts player, that his passion for throwing the darts was all that he needed. With that, his practice improved, his consistency improved, and funny enough, his averages under pressure improved. Now he starts to look around, and he saw a few other darts players that seemed to have their gloves in their back pocket. They weren’t drinking alcohol, and they weren’t getting hooked into the fight and the flight with all of their thoughts and feelings.
He realised he found something special. He found it through darts, using Acceptance Commitment Therapy, that was practice and persistence, and kept coming back to this place. However, he also noticed that it was a mindful experience. He had to consciously put those gloves in the back pocket. They appear on his hands almost every time he takes to the stage, and at any time in any competition. He just uses ACT to put them in his back pocket and throw the next dart.
So, if you ever ask yourself where the expression “the gloves are off” comes from, that’s what it means when you put your gloves in your back pocket, and you get the freedom to play your best game.