‘Winning hurts’: Andre Agassi’s surprising take on life, success
Tennis legend Andre Agassi has revealed how his ‘dysfunctional relationships’ helped to redefine his approach to success.
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“Sometimes winning hurts the most. You think it’s going to change something and then it doesn’t.”
Tennis legend Andre Agassi who has won eight grand slams, an Olympic gold medal and was the former world number one tennis player speaks of success in a very different way than many world tennis champs might.
After reaching number one then plummeting to ranking 141st in the world, he had to rebuild his “dysfunctional relationship with tennis,” and redefine his motivation from fear to love to come back to winning grand slams.
Agassi was the keynote speaker at REA Group property industry event Ready24 in Sydney on Tuesday and spoke about how nurturing relationships was key to success and resilience.
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“Success is relational at heart,” he said. “You can learn a lot of life lessons, but its usually through relation.”
Agassi has used his wealth and success from tennis to create the Agassi Foundation, which has opened 130 schools, transforming public education for tens of thousands of children across the United States.
“87,000 children help me everyday,” he said through tears. “It’s not risk, it’s play … I bet on those children,” he said.
But it wasn’t a straight forward journey to get there.
Agassi is the son of Iranian born Olympic boxer, Emmanual ‘Mike’ Agassi, and said his father saw tennis as “the quickest way to the American dream”.
“It (tennis) wasn’t something I did by choice,” Agassi said.
He said he was forced into tennis by his father who was “angry and loyal” and likened the feeling to fear.
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“Love and fear are both hell of motivators,” he said.
Pushing him into tennis as young as he could remember, then sending him away to a tennis school in California, Aggasi said he “built a muscle that helps you get through whatever”.
If he were to say anything to his younger self he said would be that he was “worth being cared for”.
“Advice doesn’t help as much as a kind word of love,” he said.
“I’d probably tell myself that I mattered, I didn't feel like I mattered, that the only thing that mattered was what I could do.”
He warned the room full of real estate professionals to be “careful” when defining success
and spoke of his hate-love relationship with tennis and how getting to number one felt.
“I’d feel empty because I didn’t feel what I thought I’d feel,”
After reaching the number one ranked tennis player in the world, Agassi turned to recreational drugs and alcohol and dropped down to number 141.
To overcome the hurdle and get back into tennis, he said he had a “light bulb moment.”
His long time coach sat him down and told him he would have to make the decision that night to quit or start over from scratch.
That “light bulb moment” was due to frustration of not having a choice, and helping those who also didn’t.
“None of us really have a lot of choice, there’s so much that’s not in our control but that doesn’t mean you can’t take ownership and find your reason for life,” he said.
This prompted him to rebuild his career with a new found motivation.
He took out a $40m mortgage and opened the Andre Aggasi Foundation, which has now invested over $1b into improving American children’s public education.
“I was tired of being a victim of not having choice,” he said.
“I’m going to use this gift that so many times I wish I didn’t have, for them (children) to have choice.”
“They don’t have the luxury of b*tching about being number one in the world,” he joked.
When fighting his way back to being a competitive player he said it was a lot harder the second time round, but his new found motivation was far more powerful.
“It didn’t matter that it was twice as hard because I was motivated by something twice as strong,” he said.
“Each day I just thought, today I’m just going to try and if I do that, I succeeded,” he said.
Agassi returned to love and relationships when defining success.
“It’s important you learn how to love well,” he said.
Over 1,200 real estate professionals attended REA Group’s Ready24 event which
raised over $400k with the proceeds contributed to community organisations including Orange Sky, The Big Issue and Launch Housing who are working to end homelessness.
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Originally published as ‘Winning hurts’: Andre Agassi’s surprising take on life, success
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