“The journey is the reward” – Steve Jobs
Tennis resumed in 2020, after a few months of pandemic induced break. There were two Grand Slams, the biggest prizes in tennis, still up for grabs. Novak Djokovic’s tally of career Grand Slams was at seventeen, while his arch rival, Rafael Nadal had nineteen Grand Slams in his pocket. The debate about who is the greatest player of all time was hot. Both these rivals were staking their claim of being the greatest player ever. The stage was perfectly set for what many expected to be a toe to toe clash for the final of the French Open 2020, between the Serbian and the Spanish. However, the final turned out to be a one sided affair, with Rafa completely dominating Nole. This defeat for the Serbian, gave the critics a golden chance to speak about why Nole is an inferior tennis player than his arch rivals, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.
Two weeks from the French Open final, US Open, the last Grand Slam was to follow. This was Djokovic’s chance for redemption and prove the doubters wrong. As luck would have it, Djokovic was disqualified in the pre-quarterfinal stage of the tournament for accidentally hitting the lineswoman. Quite naturally, Djokovic was left dejected by the result. However, there is an interesting insight about the mindset of a champion we get when we look at his reaction to the press immediately after his heartbreak. About the US Open incident Djokovic commented, “I will use this incident as an opportunity for my growth.” True to his words, Djokovic didn’t let the failure get into his head but used it as an opportunity to propel him to become a better version of himself. This he proved to the world, by winning the next three grand slams, a truly remarkable achievement.
Most of the times, we are scared to pursue our dreams because we are scared that we may not succeed. We get scared of venturing on our own paths because we feel scared of the pain of numerous failures, we would have to endure on our way. However, what if we change our internal dialogue, just like Novak Djokovic did ? What if we make growth and not success as our metric for happiness ?
Allow nature to make the magic happen
Ultimately success is a poor metric for your happiness, because history proves that things that one deems as ‘success’, may not actually be the best for you. Christopher Columbus wanted to discover the route to Asia. When he set sail along with his crew, he deemed reaching Asia as ‘success’, however accidentally he discovered the unknown land of America, for the world. Alexander Fleming, who was often described by his peers as a careless lab technician, accidentally discovered Penicillin. Fleming on returning from a two-week long vacation, found that a mold had developed on an accidentally contaminated staphylococcus culture plate. Upon examination of the mold, he noticed that the culture prevented the growth of staphylococci and that’s how Penicillin, the most widely used antibiotic, was discovered.
Often times, nature has grander plans for us than we have for ourselves. We can only dream of things that we have some notion about. But for ground breaking accomplishments, things that humanity hasn’t conceived of yet, we have to trust the dictates of nature and not blinded by our pre conceived notion of what success is. The only way we can do this is by focusing on our growth along the path, we decide to tread on. Doing this makes the path more enjoyable and makes us live more in harmony with the logos, thus allowing the magic to happen.
If we set growth as our metric for happiness, then on encountering failures we wont won’t be so disappointed, because we’ll regard failure as an indicator of things that didn’t work. Such that, on encountering failures, we’ll know that we are still growing(in wisdom), by discovering things that didn’t work and so we can tweak our plans accordingly, without being dejected.
Therefore, the next time when you encounter an obstacle on your path, ask yourself, “In what ways can this lead to my growth?”
If you still doubt whether change of mindset can actually help you in life, you must read : How Mindset Massively Affects Your Life !
Subscribe to our Weekly Newsletter to get the latest from The Fitonation Blog delivered directly to your inbox.
Also, don’t forget to check out our YouTube Channel by clicking on the following link : Fitonation YouTube Channel.
You can connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn.
I would love to know your views on the above article. What can we do to improve? Your feedback is invaluable to us. Thanks for reading ! 