In the late 1970s, sports psychologist Jim Fannin was coaching
Adriano Panatta, one of the top-ranked tennis players in the world
and a former French Open champion. He tells the story of Panatta's
quarterfinal match with one of the newcomers at an ATP tournament.
“As the match unfolded, this low-ranked, left-handed, red-headed jerk
of a guy has no respect for a top-ranked player in the world. He
stalls. He berates an umpire. He yells at a ball kid. He crushes my
player! We are humiliated!”
“Fourteen years later I’m at my home in Chicago having dinner with my
best friend Peter Fleming and his doubles partner, John McEnroe Jr. I
turned to John that night and said, “Do you remember when I met you
back in San Francisco?” He smirked and replied, “Oh, you mean when I
crushed your Italian boy?” We all started laughing.
And I said, “Yeah, how did you do that?” Your ranking
was so low. How did you play like that?” McEnroe
looked me cold in the eye and said, “I was number one
in the world. My ranking just hadn’t caught up yet.”
Wow. That’s self-belief.
Too many of us have it backwards. We think it’s when we reach the
milestone goal – the ideal weight, million-dollar income, major
promotion or championship trophy -- that we will finally become the
person we want to be.
In fact, it’s the opposite. We have to embrace our vision before it
actually happens. As Wayne Dyer says, “You’ll see it when you believe it.”
Quoted from The Flow Factor - Renita Kalhorn
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