Roger Federer – Give Your Best

Tennis star Roger Federer shares his story of personal transformation, and urges us to never stop improving and growing, no matter what.

Transcript:

“It’s enough. I can’t stand it watching me throwing rackets and embarrass myself in front of thousands of people in a live stadium, so I tried to change, had quite a transformation from a screaming, racket throwing, swearing kind of brat on the tennis court to this calm guy today. It’s very important to sort of move on. And I think also losses make you stronger. It’s important to learn out of those mistakes and then you become better and the better player, you work harder. A light goes up in your head, you go like, ‘You know what? I think I understand now what I need to improve.’

“I always questioned myself in the best of times, even when I was world number one for many, many weeks and months in a row, at certain times during the year I said, ‘What can I improve? What do I need to change?’ Because if you don’t do anything or you just do the same thing over and over again, you stay the same, and staying the same means going backwards. It’s important for me to actually hear criticism sometimes because I think that’s what makes me a better player and that means someone’s questioning me who really cares about me, and I think that’s really important in the business world as well.

“Because if you never set yourself goals, you can never question yourself, because you just move from one to the next and you say, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ When things are going great, what more can I do? How much better can I become? How much harder can I train? Almost every time I step on the court today I can maybe rewrite history in some shape or form. And all I can do is give my best. Then it’s going to be fine, regardless of the outcome.”