Roger Federer´s Mental Secret

We all admire Roger Federer´s magnificent tennis and his effortless flow. And it´s no surprise that he has now won Wimbledon for a seventh time and is back to N° 1 in the world.

However, in the year 2003, at 22 years of age, Roger Federer was very good at tennis but he could not beat the top players of the world.

And what occurred that transformed Federer into the dominant player of the last decade ?

Simple: A mental decision to believe in himself.

According to Federer he learnt to stay calm when he was down in a key match, or when he was under pressure.
He learned to be patient during the key points of a match and to never, never, give in.

In other words, Roger Federer, at that point in his career started to believe in himself, and to visualize himself as a true Champion. Popular belief has it that tournament wins make one believe in oneself. But, in reality, it´s the other way round: one has to see oneself as a Champion, and, only then, we start winning.

In an excellent article on Federer, written a few years ago by Craig Townsend, an expert on hypnosis and on the mind, Townsend states exactly that: first comes the belief that we are Champions and only then, come the wins.

And how do we achieve this belief ?

As with almost everything in life, through hard work. Some of Townsend´s suggestions are the following:

1. Through visualization. What we should do is regularly visualize (imagine) ourselves winning matches and tournaments. These images should be as vivid as possible, very detailed, and in them we should see ourselves playing brilliantly.....in all areas of our respective sport or game.

2. We should never "pull ourselves down". Our self talk must always be  positive and optimistic. We must never allow ourselves to think about negative things that happened to us, nor about fears we might have.

3. We must reinforce our belief in ourselves on a permanent basis, reminding ourselves over and over again about our wins, instead of forgetting them quickly.

4. We must apply the Federer Method and never, ever give up on a game or match. We must fight on till the end because, in all probability, something positive will happen for us.

After all, positive things always happen to Champions.