Mindset of Champion - Rafael Nadal

On Sunday, Rafael Nadal won the Australian open and with that winning, he broke the record of winning 21 grand slam titles in a competition with his powerful comeback.

By achieving this milestone he made history. Undoubtedly Rafael Nadal is one of the greatest athletes we have ever seen. It's always great to understand the mindset of such world-class athletes.

In today's article, I would like to share some of the things that we can learn from the sports journey of this athlete, which we can apply in our life also. So Let's begin...

The mindset of Rafael Nadal -

One word that describes Nadal is 'intensity', when you see him playing in the field you will understand how he plays the game with high intensity. Because of his intensity, it becomes difficult for the opponent to win against Nadal.

The moment any athlete starts playing with high intensity his complete focus is on the game and he easily overcomes all the limitations in his mind and plays the game with full energy.

Because of this ability, Nadal is very good at the defensive game because I have seen in some of the games that when we thought this match will end now due to opponents dominance.

But from that moment Nadal starts playing the defensive game and makes it difficult for the opponent to do a single point on him. He follows the same technique in most of his matches which differentiates him from the other players.

What happens when we do things with full intensity? As per Nadal, he believes that when he plays the game with a full intensity he easily overcomes all the limitations in his mind while playing the game like fear of loss, self-doubts, lack of focus, etc.

Lesson -1: (Intensity)

"Whenever we do any work with full intensity, then we cross all the limits and discover new things within ourselves. It becomes easy for us to push ourselves beyond our limits and finish our work with full concentration."

From 2008 to 2018, this 10 years time period was considered the most competitive era of tennis. In this time period, you find that all the tennis players were playing at their peak.

During this time period, Djokovic and Federer won the 12 and 8 Grand slams titles. In the same time period, Nadal won the most number of Grand slams i.e. 14. On average, the tenure of a good tennis player is almost about 10 years.

But Nadal proved that if you have the determination to work hard on goals you can break any records and standard facts. Because he won the 9 french open titles continuously for 10 years.

He dominated tennis like Michel Philips dominated swimming. From seeing his records one can understand the level of Nadal's game and his consistency in winning the tennis titles.

But more than this we can understand his passion for the game by seeing his injury records. Unfortunately, Nadal faced a lot of troubles due to physical injuries during his entire career.

Because of these injuries, he was not able to play the total 9 Grand slams. Some injuries were too worst that even affected Nadal's tennis career. But due to his never-give-up attitude he was able to bounce back from his injures every time.

Rafael Nadal made every serious injury a milestone in his entire career and climbed it to grow ahead. This is the best quality everyone should have. There are many matches in his career where he showed the world what a bounce-back is.

For example, in 2009, Nadal was seriously injured just days after becoming the world's No. 1 tennis player for the first time, but he not only returned a year later but also won three Grand Slums back to back in 2010.

Last year, Nadal went through a serious foot injury, after the recovery from foot surgery left him wondering if he would even make it to Melbourne, and a month after he had Covid, which also interrupted his preparations for Australian open.

Even after so many difficulties still, he came back and defeated Daniil Medvedev in the final of the?Australian Open and made history.

Lesson - 2: (Enjoy the pain and suffering)

Nadal says in one of his interviews that "I learned during my career to enjoy the problems and suffering." This single line teaches us one important lesson

"Every time there are problems in the way of reaching your goals, you must overcome those problems with full enthusiasm and you must enjoy the path of such problems and suffering. Because when we overcome the problem we become strong and when we begin to enjoy the pain and suffering, we become invincible. These things lead us towards success."

One more thing we can learn from Rafael Nadal is a strong work ethic. Work Ethic is nothing but your belief system towards your work, which you live every day, which is reflected in your behavior and in your work.

Stronger the work ethic more powerful the results we get. The important thing is we can make a good belief system for ourselves and we can also break the bad belief system. Both these things need huge efforts.

But once you succeed in making a good belief system your work ethic automatically becomes great and hence you get great results.

Nadal also created a strong belief system for himself which helped him to come out of every suffering and physical injury. That belief system is "Always keep frustration and negativity out of your mind."

Nadal says after winning the 2019 Rome Masters

"I go to the tennis court every day and practice every day. Sometimes I lose one tournament finals after another Sometimes I have to leave matches midway due to injury. But still, I can't let the negativity and frustration enter my mind. I focus on practicing every day."

That's what mental training means to me. Nadal believes that "if we can control the frustration and negativity even after losing the match then we are mentally strong enough to overcome the failure and bounce back again."

With this belief system even after losing matches due to physical injuries still, Nadal performed extraordinarily well and became the world's number -1 tennis player in 2019.

Lesson - 3: (keep frustration and negativity out of your mind.)

"We all face failure many times in life, during those tough times we should never allow the frustation and negativity to enter in our mind, because this is only thing we can control during toguh times. By controlling these we can swtich the focus of our mind towards new start."

Nadal has lost a number of major tournaments in his career, so after a while, Nadal began to have self-doubt and so he forgot how strong a tennis player he was and also his strengths in the game.

To combat this self-doubt, Nadal took a short break from the game and introspected himself. During this time, Nadal thoroughly tested his game, discovered what he needed to improve, and decided to work on it.

During this time, Nadal worked to change his entire mentality. Nadal completely changed his mindset of being upset and thinking negatively after losing a game. Instead of that, he again started learning tennis as a student.

It was a difficult journey, but Nadal did it with all his hard work, and with all the necessary improvements he needed to make in the game, then he returned to the game and won back-to-back Grand slams.

Lesson - 4: (Always be a student)

"There will be occasions in everyone's life when you will fail even if you work hard and at that time you will have self-doubt. The only thing we should do at this time is introspection. With the help of this, you can improve yourself. To do this you have to be a student always and ready to learn things from scratch."

Nadal lost badly to Djokovic in the final of the Australian Open. During the interview after the end of the match, Nadal says that -

"Even while playing the match, I was watching it from a distance, which means I did not have an ego in it. I knew that Djokovic is playing at his peak today, he played better than me throughout the match. Then victory was certain."

This quality of Nadal separates him from the other athletes. He plays tennis without attaching to the end results. He believes that "if you can detach from the end results while playing, then the meaning of victory and defeat changes."

Lesson - 5: (Do your work without attachment to end results)

"Focus on your work and the process that you are following to achieve your goals. You should never attached to the end results. Becasue results are not in your hand, only thing in your hand is to do your best."

Let's summarize this -

1. Do your work with full intensity and involvement.
2. Enjoy pain and suffering because it is part of the process.
3. Keep frustration and negativity out of your mind.
4. Always be a student.
5. Do your work without attachment to end results.

Check out this amazing biography of Rafael Nadal -

RAFA - My story

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