THE RECOVERY SERIES 4: Why You Need a Code

A blog by Brendon Booth, Fair Dinkin Pickleball Academy

Everyone has a code. Whether they know it or not.

Some people’s code is written down somewhere. A philosophy, a framework, a set of values they’d actually stand behind if someone asked. Most people’s code is messier than that. It’s just the quiet accumulation of how they were raised, what’s hurt them, what they admire in others, and what they keep coming back to when the noise gets loud.

Mine happens to be called the Pickleosophies.

I know. The name is a lot. But stay with me.

When I first started pulling the five pillars together, I wasn’t trying to write a coaching manual or build a brand. I was just trying to articulate something I’d felt for a long time: that the way you show up on a pickleball court is basically the way you show up everywhere. The stuff that trips you up in a close game is usually the same stuff that trips you up in a hard conversation. The things that make you a good doubles partner are, with a bit of squinting, the same things that make you a good colleague, a good mate, a good parent.

So the pillars aren’t really about pickleball. They just happen to live there.

Always Be Learning is how I try to approach pretty much everything – with the assumption that I don’t have it fully figured out, and that’s fine, and something useful is probably about to happen if I stay curious enough to catch it.

Play with Purpose is the difference between showing up and actually being present. Having an intention. Knowing what you’re trying to do, even if the plan falls apart immediately, because at least you had one.

Be Predictably Unpredictable is about staying interesting. Not just to opponents, but to yourself. If you’re totally clockwork – same reactions, same patterns, same approach to every situation – you become easy to read and easy to beat. A little variety goes a long way.

There Is No Spoon is the one I had to explain the most early on, and it’s still my favourite. It’s about not erasing what makes you you in the pursuit of some idealised version of how things should be done. Your quirks aren’t bugs. They’re usually the thing that makes you actually worth watching.

Have Fun Failing Fabulously is the one I believe in most deeply, and the one most people are most resistant to. We’ve been trained to treat mistakes as evidence that something is wrong with us. They’re not. They’re evidence that we’re doing something hard and actually trying.

And here’s the thing: my best tournament experience isn’t the one where I won.

It’s losing a finals match to two exceptional humans. We played hard, we competed properly, and they were better on the day. But the hug at the end – that proper, genuine, we-just-shared-something hug – that said everything I needed to know about why I play this sport. That moment didn’t happen despite the loss. It happened because of it. Because we were all in, all vulnerable, all present, and the result didn’t change any of that.

That’s what failing fabulously actually looks like. Not laughing off a bad shot in a casual rally. Giving everything you have, coming up short, and walking away richer for it.

Here’s the thing about codes like this: they only work if they’re genuinely yours. You can’t borrow someone else’s and expect it to hold under pressure. The Pickleosophies work for me because I built them out of real experience, real failures, and real observations about what actually makes people better – not just at pickleball, but at the general business of being a person.

If you don’t have a code, I’d genuinely encourage you to think about what yours might look like. Not a list of things you’re supposed to value. The stuff you actually come back to. The things you’d still believe in on a bad week.

That’s the one worth writing down.

Boothy

Brendon Booth is the founder of Fair Dinkin Pickleball Academy, coaching across Bendigo, Castlemaine, and the Loddon Mallee region. He coaches because he loves it, plays because he can’t help it, and once wrote to Graeme Base because he couldn’t figure out a particular code in the 11th Hour - and Graeme wrote back (in crayon)