It’s hard to think of someone better placed to talk about this topic. Adam Blicher is an international award-winning tennis coach from Denmark. During the last 5 years he has travelled with players to more than 20 countries for tennis tournaments ranging from Tennis Europe & ITF Tournaments to Nordic and European individual & team championships. He also hosts the highest rated tennis coaches podcast on iTunes.
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A lot of aspiring professional tennis players have this romantic idea that along your tennis journey, you will feel joy all the way through. They think that you should not lose the joy of tennis, and that if you do, it is better to go spend your time doing something else.
But if you are an aspiring young tennis player, you are competing in the world’s biggest individual sport with 75 million players worldwide and only a little more than 100 males and females being able to make a good living from it.
So, it is not going to be joyful all the time, and to be quite honest, it is probably not joy that is going to be the dominant feeling for you on your journey to the top.
In your everyday practices, you are going to feel pain as you will of course practice hard and give your best effort. You are going to feel doubt and have worries when you find out that you might not make it as a professional tennis player. And you will feel anxious when you step out on the court and want a win really badly.
Some players are seeking pride from the fame and money, but that feeling will wear off quickly again as well. So what you really need to be seeking is meaning.
It is always meaning over joy and there will always be two sides of the coin.
On the one side, there is going to be the joy, the love of the game, and the feeling of accomplishment. However, on the other side, there is going to be doubt, anxiety, pain, and all of the unpleasant thoughts and emotions.
The question is not whether you can avoid all of these unpleasant thoughts and emotions. The question is whether you are willing to commit to something that is important to you, knowing that you are going to get both sides of the coin on your journey.
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