I see so many times kids today are focusing so much on winning. They are in the quest to be number one. They want to be at the top. As someone who played college tennis, played briefly on the professional arena, I realized one of my greatest faults was this thinking. Winning is not the ultimate goal. Mastery is. It dawned on me one day that in a tournament of 64 players there will be 63 losers and only one winner. So does that mean all of your efforts were in vain? I think not. The truth is, I figured out that I am not playing another person. I am really playing the ball and myself. I am my own worst enemy. If I can do everything I have been trained to do to get one more ball back, than I have accomplished a goal. What the other person does with the ball is irrelevant. I can only control what I can do. The key point I am trying to make today is, you are not competing against others in any aspect of life. I know there are people out there who will say that is just what people who have never won anything say. That is simply not true, it just helps you put your life into perspective. You are competing against yourself only. How many points can you win? How many obstacles did you overcome? What did you like best about the match you played?
I found that when I took the focus off of the external and focused on what I could control, I was more relaxed and able to play at a higher level. I also realized the anxiety of having to live up to an external expectation was gone. I now had peace and that is probably the greatest trophy of all.
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