Here's to the Mavericks - The Magic and the Mayhem

I've written about him before. Along with millions of others no doubt, I find him intriguing. I've offered to coach him. The deafening silence would indicate he's not yet interested. Well Australia, we've fallen in love with the bad boy again. With some qualifications, to be sure. We don't want him to make us cringe, or embarrass us or him. We find the rivalry with Rafa tantalising as long as it doesn't get nasty. Because Rafa is not nasty and let's face it. He's a dab hand at tennis if his World Number One ranking is anything to go by, and for all his quirks and rituals and slow-going, he's a good sport. But Rafa is still young relative to Roger. He's still got time and how much do we love Roger, so who on earth do we barrack for this tournament? We're torn. But not as torn as the tortured mind of Nick Kyrgios.

When my kids were school-age the word "gifted" was thrown around like confetti. Most people don't understand the clinical/psychological/ etymological definition of the word "gifted". It doesn't just mean uber clever.

I like Lesley Sword's description of the gifted child. She says that giftedness has both an emotional and an intellectual component. Several personality traits define giftedness. They are:

1. Emotional intensity - feeling things deeply (which can be experienced as/mistaken for emotional immaturity)
2. Emotional lability - lurching from high to low and back again ("best day of my life/worst day of my life" syndrome) and often within seconds or minutes. (Please note, I am not talking about anything in the mental health sphere like bipolar disorder)
3. Proneness to perfectionism
4. Intellectual capability and capacity for deep and novel thinking about the world which can seem paradoxical to the fluctuations in mood and exaggerated reactions to small things we might assume a "smart, thoughtful" person would not give in to often.

I believe Nick Kyrgios is gifted in the psycho-educational sense of gifted. Yes, he is a prodigious talent. We don't know how much work he does off court but his tennis can be sublime. His inventiveness, his non-conformity, his maverick-esque way of hitting low percentage shots on key points puts him, for me, in the maverick category. At times, he really seems to play for his own idle amusement, except his brain is anything but idle.

While Jim Courier can annoy me (Has he toned it down or am I becoming habituated?), I thought he summed it up beautifully the other night. He said there was a real risk in trying to get Kyrgios to pull back, to stifle his ingenuity and risk-taking on court so much that he ceases to be instinctive, loses interest altogether and stops playing. How do we harness the talent of truly original thinkers and unconventional employees if they must play to the beat of their own drum? There must be a place for them. Perhaps though, not in the orchestra but their contribution can be stunning. We just have to make sure no-one pays too high a price. It's not the maverick that must be contained. It's any collateral damage.

By the way I don't think Kyrgios is a lone wolf or a non-team player. I think he wants to belong. He loves the intimacy of Melbourne arena in preference to the kudos of Rod Laver. I believe him when he says he loves Davis Cup and the camaraderie of being part of a squad. I think he cherishes his country (and playing for it) and has clearly grieved along with the rest of us at the loss of human and animal life and the environmental destruction of our summer fires. He has rebuffed offers from the great John McEnroe, a reformed hell raiser, to mentor him. But he almost cried when John told him this week, in the most paternal of ways, McEnroe was proud of him (and would be donating money to the bushfire appeal for each set Kyrgios won in the tournament). Allowing himself to show his feelings, to be vulnerable, not explosive or irrational ("John, you're going to make me tear up again") rather than full of bluff and bravado ("I hate tennis, I'd rather play basketball") masks the fact that the guy really cares and wants to excel but without Kyrgios paying too high a price by losing himself in the process.

There are two typical routes for the gifted perfectionist. Stay with me. The common one is to accommodate the perfectionism, strive excessively, see anything but perfection as failure, struggle to adopt the 80/20 rule and in some cases, lie (to self and/or others) about the time and effort taken to produce what they did.

The second route, less commonly talked about is the "latent perfectionist" (my phrase) who convince themselves they'll never do well enough to satisfy themselves or others such that it's easier not to try. This is particularly tricky if they pride themselves on being bright or have been told incessantly while growing up that they are. I recall once seeing Bart Simpson wearing a t-shirt that read "I'm an underachiever and proud of it". (I must have been changing channels because I never let my poor children-of-a-psychologist watch that show).

Try to follow my logic. The unhelpful distortion goes something like this....

"They say I'm bright/talented. So I should be able to do well without doing the work." (Some do until they get to VCE and then not so much unless they're doing left brain subjects with right/wrong answers)

"If I don't work, and I don't do well, then it's because I didn't do any work." ("Maybe, I'm still bright/talented")

"If I work hard, and do well, then maybe it's because I worked hard and not because I'm bright/talented. Hmmm. And furthermore, would that mean I would have to keep working hard all my life to do well? I liked it better when it all came naturally."

"If I'm bright/naturally talented and I work hard and others who may or may not be so bright work hard too and do well, then I'm not special/unique." Does Nick like being unique? Cue his haircuts and 'tweeners' on set points!

I have seen this self-destructive pattern in many perfectionists I've coached. Mostly they just look as if they don't care a lot when in reality they can care a great deal.

In other words, it can be preferable to sabotage ourselves than risk violating our beliefs about ourselves.

Not all such perfectionists decide not to have a go. Some will try, but will give up easily and 'beat' themselves (thus maintaining control and safeguarding against fear of failure), rather than let their opponent beat them. Kyrgios has reportedly in the past, according to tennis experts, given sets away too easily, kept playing but given up after losing tight sets or retired hurt in the early days rather than risk losing (badly).

This is the funny thing about human beings. We're complex! All may not be as it appears.

The person who fears conformity, excessive regimentation and "beige" may not want a coach if they're frightened this person will try to snuff out their authentic self. I think in the past this has been mistaken for arrogance on Nick's part and perhaps when he was a few years younger, it was.

The person who can behave badly, even atrociously by the dictates of sporting etiquette still has a heart, still loves his mum and his extended family (see Nick's Twitter avatar), maintains special friendships (e.g. with De Minaur), still weeps at human tragedy and can use their celebrity and their sphere of influence to do good.

Many people go to work dutifully every day. But why do we assume they automatically love what they do? Kyrgios wasn't the first. Andre Agassi is said to have hated tennis with a passion and trying to ensure his secret wig did not fly off mid-match was an abject misery.

Haven't we seen children or adolescents push us away with their behaviour to see if we'll keep coming back?

Don't we see examples all around us of people who feel deeply (think some actors, artists, painters) and friends or family members whose mood seems to turn on a dime? Even a 'like' on Facebook can be enough to buzz the pleasure centre of the brain and result in an instant high, five seconds after someone was feeling the blues.

Because these sporting greats have graced our living rooms on telly for years, we can forget how old or rather how young they are. How many of us know people in their early twenties (or indeed ourselves if we think back) who do stupid stuff because their/our cerebral context still has/had some maturing to do? Some of the most conservative parents I know admit they were hell raisers when they were young, but they're not now nor do they want their children to be.

Everyone can regress to their own unflattering, self-sabotaging persona under acute stress. Some of us will play victim, others aggressor, others manipulator, others quick to anger. Nick won't flick a switch such that the "bad boy" will never reappear. While he's young, his legs may feel like concrete today. His last match was gruelling. In it, he became distracted and his loud internal voice started screeching at him for many minutes, but he found his way back and played out the whole five sets. Sometimes we know where his mind must be at. He's glaring, vocal, sarcastic and hostile towards his player's box. But if you doubt the volume of his internal voice, watch him when he's not vocalising at all, and see him burst into a spontaneous laugh, pull a smirk, grin seemingly at no-one in particular. There is always a lot going on. He's in a spirited conversation with himself.

I hope if the chips are down tonight, he won't give up or give in to the amygdala hijack in his brain resulting in petulant, aggressive or antagonistic behaviour directed at the referee, his opponent, the crowd or his "people" as he calls them. But, please. Don't bother calling me or ringing my doorbell tonight. Because I have a date with the couch.

Leanne Faraday-Brash is an organisational psychologist, coach and media commentator. She is Principal of Brash Consulting, a Melbourne-based practice specialising in organisational psychology, organisation development and "workplace justice" (Equal Opportunity, ethics and employee relations). Leanne is the author of “Vulture Cultures: How to stop them ravaging your performance, people, profit and public image” published by Australian Academic Press. Leanne can be reached at www.brashconsulting.com.au