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Losing sucks…There are many reasons for losing your will to win, none more painful that when you are punishing yourself.
Andre Agassi knows this all too well.
Losing to Pete Sampras at Wimbledon in 1993 was so shameful for Andre he began his downhill slide to from number 2 to number 141 in the world.
Why?
Because Sampras just was not very good in the early years.
Beating him in Rome in 1989, Andre remarked, “He seems like a good soul. But I don’t expect to see him on the tour, ever.”
Think one loss can’t make you this upset?
Think again.
If you conclude something serious – like you are not as good as you thought or don’t have the right stuff, it can do major damage to your tennis psychology.
And you won’t even know it.
Of course to solve a problem like this, you need to drill down and uncover the conclusions lurking in your brain.
And then you need to fix the damage to your tennis mental game.
You start by getting over your tennis perfectionism. This is your desire to hit every shot perfectly and completely dominate your opponent. Tennis is a game of angles, percentages, and smart shots.
You don’t need to win every point.
You also don’t need to complete dominate your opponent to win and feel good about yourself. You can let your opponent make mistakes and profit from them.
The bottom line?
Instead of out-muscling your opponent, set a goal to out-smart him. This is fun and the first step to overcome your tennis perfectionism.
If you would like some help, I suggest you immediately download my Ebook, The Courage to Win in Sport: Perform Your Best Under Pressure. It’s full of sports psychology and mental toughness tips for winning.
You can check it out FREE for seven days, click here.
Light it up out there,
Lisa B.