1.- The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; he discovers a true basis for self-confidence; and he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying to hard.
2.- The first skill to learn is the art of letting go the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad.
3.- Read this simple analogy and see if an alternative to the judging process doesnt begin to emerge. When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as “rootless and stemless.” We treat it as a seed, giving the in the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we dont condemn it as inmature and underdelevoped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.
4.- The truth is that everyone who inhabits a human body possesses a remarkable instrument.
5.- It is much more difficult to break a habit when there is no adequate replacement for it. (…) there is no need to fight old habits. Start new ones.
6.- When we stop trying to suppress or correct the habit we can see the function it serves, and then an alternative pattern of behavior, which serves the same function better, emerge quite effortlessly.
7.- Anxiety is fear about what may happen in the future, and it occurs only when the mind is imagining what the future may bring. But when your attention is on the here and now, the actions which needs to be done in the present have their best chance of being succesfully acomplished, and as a result the future will become the best possible present.
8.- The obstacles are a very necessary ingredient to this process os self discovery. (…) So I arrived at the startling conclusion that the tru competition is identical with true cooperation. Each player tries the hardest to defeat the other, but in this use of competition it isnt the other person we are defeating; it is simply a matter of overcoming the obstacles he presents. In true competition no person is defeated. Both players benefit by their efforts to overcome the obstacles presented by the other.
9.- Competition then becomes an interesting device in which each player, by making his maximum effort to win, gives the other the opportunity he desires to reach new levels of self-awareness.
10.- Perhaps the most indispensable tool for human beings in modern times is the ability to remain calm in the mids of rapid and unsetling changes.