What if the key to performing under pressure isn’t avoiding mistakes, but learning how to reset after them? In this episode of Scalpel and Sword, Dr. Lee Sharma explores the hidden psychological match beneath every conflict, from medicine and leadership to relationships and elite sports. Drawing inspiration from The Inner Game of Tennis and the emotional intensity of the French Open, this episode introduces the transformative concept of “informed amnesia” which is the ability to remember the lesson without carrying the emotional weight of the last point.
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What do elite tennis players, surgeons, leaders, and negotiators all have in common?
They all perform under pressure, and their greatest challenge is often not the external opponent, but the internal narrative running beneath the surface.
In this thought-provoking solo episode, Dr. Lee Sharma connects three powerful ideas: The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, the emotional demands of the French Open, and the psychology of conflict in high-stakes environments.
Dr. Sharma explores how “Self One”, the critical, fearful inner voice hijacks presence and escalates conflict, while “Self Two” represents instinct, flow, and natural performance. Through examples from tennis and medicine, he explains why emotional residue from previous interactions can destabilize teams, damage leadership, and impair decision-making.
The episode introduces the concept of informed amnesia: retaining the lesson from past conflict without reliving the emotional injury. Rather than suppressing memory, informed amnesia allows people to reset psychologically, stay present relationally, and perform with clarity under pressure.
Three Actionable Takeaways:
About the Show:
Behind every procedure, every patient encounter, lies an untold story of conflict and negotiation. Scalpel and Sword, hosted by Dr. Lee Sharma—physician, mediator, and guide—invites listeners into the unseen battles and breakthroughs of modern medicine. With real conversations, human stories, and practical tools, this podcast empowers physicians to reclaim their voices, sharpen their skills, and wield their healing power with both precision and purpose.
About the Host:
Dr. Lee Sharma is a gynecologist based in Auburn, AL, with over 30 years of clinical experience. She holds a Master’s in Conflict Resolution and is passionate about helping colleagues navigate workplace challenges and thrive through open conversations and practical tools.
[00:00:00] Hello, my peaceful warriors, and welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Leigh Sharma, physician and conflict analyst. And today, I wanna take you to Paris. Not just to Paris, I want to take you to the French Open, and even not then just the French Open. I wanna take you to the invisible match happening underneath every match you see.
Because while the world watches athletes slide across red clay under impossible pressure, there's another game unfolding . The game between memory and presence, between fear and instinct, between ego and performance. And surprisingly, this has everything to do with conflict. Conflict in medicine, in [00:01:00] leadership, in marriage, in negotiation, in surgery, and in parenting.
Today, we're going to connect three ideas: The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, the psychological warfare unfolding at the French Open, and the concept I call informed amnesia, the ability to remember the lesson without carrying the emotional weight of the last point. Because the people who succeed under pressure are not the people who never fail.
They're the ones who know how to forget correctly If you've ever read The Inner Game of Tennis, it's one of the most important books ever written about performance psychology. And the irony is, it's barely about tennis. Gallwey proposes that every person [00:02:00] has two selves. Self one, which is critical, an analytical, fearful voice, and self two, the natural performer, the body, the instinct, that beautiful flow state.
Self one says, "Don't miss. You're always gonna choke. Why did you say that? They're judging me. You're losing control." Self two just performs fluidly, naturally, without overcontrol. And conflict works exactly the same way. Most conflict escalation is not caused by the original disagreement. It's caused by self one, the commentary, the narrative, the replay.
Someone questions your decision in [00:03:00] a meeting. Immediately, self one activates. "They don't respect me. I always have to defend myself. I can't look weak. This always happens." And suddenly, you're no longer responding to the actual moment. You're responding to accumulated memory. That is the inner game of conflict And nowhere do we see this more clearly than at the French Open.
Clay courts are psychologically brutal. The points are longer. Momentum shifts slowly. Errors linger. You can't overpower clay the way you can on grass or a hard court. Clay exposes impatience. It exposes emotional instability. And the athletes who survive Roland-Garros [00:04:00] are rarely the most emotional players.
They're the ones with the shortest memory, not because they don't care, but because they understand something profound. The last point is informational, Not existential. Think about the greatest clay court players. Rafa Nadal built an entire dynasty around emotional reset rituals, towel placement, breathing, stepping patterns, and people mocked the rituals, but the rituals were never superstition.
They were neurological interruption patterns, a deliberate return to the present moment. Elite performers know something medicine often forgets. You cannot execute under pressure while [00:05:00] emotionally carrying previous mistakes. And yet this is exactly what happens in healthcare conflict. A surgeon carries resentment from a prior operating room interaction.
A resident carries humiliation from a prior attending encounter. A nurse carries emotional exhaustion from three prior patient interactions. And now everyone is playing the current point while emotionally replaying old matches, and that is how systems destabilize So let's talk about the concept of informed amnesia.
This is not denial. This is not pretending conflict never happened. This is not passivity. Informed amnesia means I retain the lesson without reliving the emotional injury. That distinction changes [00:06:00] everything because unresolved emotional memory distorts perception. You stop seeing people as they are. You start seeing them as representatives of prior pain.
This happens constantly in medicine. A trainee gets publicly embarrassed once, and now every correction feels like an attack. An attending gets challenged repeatedly, and now every question feels like insubordination. An administrator gets burned by conflict and now avoids hard conversations entirely.
Past points begin controlling current performance. Galway would say Self One becomes too loud. Conflict analysts might call this narrative fusion. Neuroscience might call it predictive coding. Spiritually, we might call [00:07:00] it bondage to memory. But the principle is the same. If you cannot reset psychologically, you cannot perform relationally At the French Open, players understand something deeply.
You do not win by emotionally litigating the previous point. You win by preparing for the next one. And in conflict management, this becomes transformational. Imagine saying, "I learned from that interaction, but I refuse to emotionally drag it into this one." That is informed amnesia. And interestingly, the healthiest teams often aren't teams with zero conflict.
They're teams with rapid emotional reset capability. That's very different, because psychologically mature people [00:08:00] know how to metabolize tension. They repair quickly. They don't store every grievance indefinitely. One of the most dangerous things in medicine is accumulated emotional residue, because medicine trains memory relentlessly.
Remember the anatomy, remember the protocol, remember the complications, because nobody teaches physicians what to forget. And some things must be forgotten properly, not erased, integrated. There is a difference. Elite athletes understand this instinctively. You can watch a player double fault on championship point and somehow return composed two minutes later.
That's trained cognition. But in [00:09:00] medicine, a difficult patient interaction at 8:00 a.m. can emotionally contaminate an entire day. One hostile email can dysregulate a leadership team for weeks. One harsh comment during residency can echo for decades. Why? Because many high-achieving people become historians of emotional injury, and conflict cannot improve in organizations where everyone is archiving grievances.
At some point, leadership requires selective release. Again, not ignorance, not naivete, informed amnesia So as you watch the French Open this year, watch the space between points, [00:10:00] not just the winners. Watch the recovery. Watch the reset. Watch how elite performers let go without losing awareness. Because that may be the single most important conflict skill any of us can learn.
Not avoiding mistakes, not dominating opponents, but refusing to become psychologically trapped by prior moments. The inner game of conflict is rarely about the other person. It's about whether self one is hijacking your ability to remain present. And peaceful warriors understand this. Every conversation is a new point.
Every interaction is unwritten. And wisdom is not having no memory. Wisdom [00:11:00] is knowing which memories deserve permanent residence. Thank you for joining me on the Scalpel and Sword podcast. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a physician, leader, coach, athlete, or anyone learning how to perform under pressure without becoming imprisoned by the past.
And remember, the strongest people are not the ones who never lose points. They're the ones who know how to reset before the next serve. Until next time, stay sharp, stay peaceful, and keep practicing the inner game