The Resilient Mind - How To Train Your Mind For Greatness - Venus Williams

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Venus Williams is a trailblazing tennis icon, known for her powerful playing style, resilience, and profound impact on the sport. With seven Grand Slam singles titles and a career spanning over two decades, she's not only reshaped women’s tennis but also advocated for equal pay and gender equality.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalSpecial thanks to Lewis Howes, subscribe to his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/lewishowesWatch the full interview on Lewis's page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3qbzEDESDY Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to How to Train Your Mind for Greatness with Venus Williams. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. My whole world was my family and my parents and my mom and my dad. So whatever they told us was golden. It's like, believe in yourself. Okay, believe in yourself.

Have confidence. Okay, have confidence. You're going to be great. Okay, I'm going to be great. And obviously there's a lot of work that went behind it. but it was almost like drinking the Kool-Aid, right? We drank the Kool-Aid, and so there was no room for any other kind of outside influence to get involved or get in the way.

So I was lucky in that sense. I think there's a difference between having self-belief at your core and having situational moments where you don't feel good about it, right? There's a hundred times more that I've walked on the court and just didn't feel great. You know, like, I don't know if I can do this, right? So that's different than ultimately deep down knowing I have what it takes to do it. So those are two different things, right? So I would say, yeah, there have been plenty of times that I was like, you know, oh my God.

But at the end, I always felt like I was worthy and that I deserved it. And that's purely my background. It was purely my parents who just gave us that from the very beginning. Like there was nothing else I ever heard since I could remember. So I was very fortunate in that sense. And I think as an adult, I've definitely faced some moments where I have felt like, I don't know if I belong here. And you know, that was, yeah, that, that felt. Like what situations do you mean?

I guess they call it imposter syndrome. Yes, I've had different moments. I'm working with a new AI company in interior design. I'm thinking, should I really be here? I mean, I have a background in interior design. And then I had to fundraise for the first time. was a nightmare for me. And oh my God, like the anxiety and the issues going into it was horrible. And that's the moment where I understood imposter syndrome. So I went through my whole life of like,

pretty much feeling like, you know, king of the court. And then I get there and have to raise money. I'm like, I don't want to be here. I'm so afraid. What's happening? So I think that was a great experience for me. And I think that I saw it for what it was. And I knew I had to push through. But it was extraordinarily uncomfortable. My parents are once again, back to them. My mom said, never ask for anything. So just for me that have to ask, like, you know, we're raising money. We need you to give us this.

Oh, no, I have to ask for money. This is out of my DNA. I don't ask for anything. I'm used to be able to doing everything for myself. Also, just a pitch, like in AI. I don't know anything about AI. I had to learn new to tell. What am I doing here?

just in general, I think on the second call, the person I was pitching with, they fell off. So they asked me, okay, yeah, what are next steps in the timeline? And I'm all by myself and you have to, you have to say something. You know? And so those kinds of things happen and you're completely unprepared and it's like, how do you deal with it? But I absolutely think that my experience in sport helped me to deal with that kind of dealing with ambiguity. It's just, it's not easy, but sometimes you don't know what's going to happen when you walk on the court, but you have to deal with it. So I think that helped.

But my binomi, it was a tough situation. Do I ever want to fundraise again? Absolutely not. I hope I don't have to. It's not a place I'd like to be, but it was, it was good to be very humbled. I'm a workhorse. I don't mind working day and night. I'll work all day, work all night, and start over again, repeat.

I think that lack of fear of laying it. on the line, blood, sweat, tears, leave your heart out there, walk off on a stretch, or not even walk off, be carried off on a stretcher. So, you know, that kind of thing, not being afraid of hard work. I think a lot of people are afraid of that level of intensity, but that's honestly what it takes to succeed. The people who are succeeding, a lot of times you see folks when they get to the finish line, the trophy's up, right? They played a beautiful match or created an unbelievable business. Now you see them, and they're at billions. You never heard of them before. You didn't see them the 10 or 15 years that they put it. You didn't see them.

see their failures beforehand. No one sees, you know, the injuries that you have are on the court when you just can't get it right and the frustration and the back and forth and the losses. So all of those things really teach you all the lessons you need in life. And the failures, too. The failures that you have to get back up and you still have to believe in yourself just as much. And if you don't, so pretend at least that you do. Sometimes just faking it is enough. Sometimes you don't know how you're going to get there. And I think being okay with not knowing, but knowing that there is a point A to point B and you got to get to point B, and it's okay not to exactly know, but you know you're, you're swimming through the water, you're climbing the mountain, whatever you

face, you have to do it on your terms. People have always said fear is a devil. And also, you have to think about the decisions you would make if you weren't afraid. You know, like if I wasn't afraid, what shot would I actually go for? You know, what would I try? What would I give up also if I weren't afraid. A lot of times it's not even about going for or actually what would you let leave behind. Interesting. A lot of times we hang on this stuff that's just holding us back. And also if you aren't afraid, then you can actually look at yourself. I think sports teaches you self-awareness. And I have a real thing for not being self-aware and being around people who aren't self-aware bothers the heck out of me. Right. You know, so if you're not self-aware,

if you do not tell yourself the truth, you will not win. Wow. That's what makes about winning and being honest with yourself. You know, this is going to sound weird, but I'm a person who's always involved in the arts. And when you are buying art, for me, I buy or look at art that I love because it makes me happy. And I find it beautiful. There is no category. I don't buy just this or that.

And so over the years, when you look back, you're like, should have gotten that piece. I thought about it or I should have invested in this artist. And it's about buying work that you love and you get to live with it, right? And so I would walk through art fairs and everywhere you looked with someone else that I just didn't get that has like blown up now. And I think finally once I let it go, I felt such peace. You know, just like such peace and like it's fine. That was hard. And I know that's a weird answer. I had to let that go. And now, free. I don't hold on to things. I think that's one of my strengths that I can, I do let go outside of

that art thing. But you, things happen as they happen. I think I would hold on to things if I was continuing to make the same mistakes over and over. But I'm human. I make mistakes. Sometimes I make a decision that could have been better, but I learn from it immediately. I set responsibility for it, and I move on. And I think that's all you can do, right? Right. So you can't hold on this stuff. Unless you have a time machine and you can go backwards. But otherwise, there's no point. What would you say, you know, your parents, obviously, I think a lot of people know about your parents making a big impact in your life.

You speak about them a lot. What would you say it was the greatest lesson that each of your parents taught you growing up that you still hold on to today and implement today in your life? Yeah. You know what? That's hard because there's, there were so many. lessons. You have to understand everything was a lesson. Even watching a cartoon was a lesson. Like, there was nothing that wasn't a lesson. So I'm so grateful for that. And as I've, you know, had time to spend around my nieces, I just feel like I've just totally failed because I feel like I've

made anything a lesson yet. Like, I got to bring my parents energy to this. But I think one of the biggest gifts my parents gave me was spirituality. It's so important to have something to believe in. it's so important to have hope. The world's a beautiful place, but it's a tough place too. And if you don't have belief in values, you will do anything and then you'll get anything. If you don't have hope, it's going to be hard to get through this world where so many things happen. And it's not even to you, but to other people that you hear about that's so disheartening. So all that is very grounding.

And I think it helps you to let go of stuff. It helps you to play better in your game. It helps you to realize, like, I'm going to give my everything to this. And if I feel that's fine, I have something bigger and better that's backing me up. And I think it just lets you be happy. So to me, that's the biggest gift that they gave me. It is. I'm just like my mom, though.

My family jokes transformation complete. We're exactly the same. And I'm proud of that. I love being just like her, but we have our weaknesses. We definitely have weaknesses. Zero patience. It's bad. I can't always read the room as well as I like. My emotional intelligence is as high as I'd like it to be. And that's not something I can fix. You're born how you are. And I just tell people I'm empathetic, but I don't always pick on it. Just tell me I'll be there. Just me not know. So you got to let me in some things. And I think once I became aware of it, because during COVID, I had a friend's day with me. And like, the friends. came and like ate all the food, drank all the drinks, didn't get groceries. So I'm like buying food,

buying drank, buying groceries. And I think it was everything, you know, because we just, we thought it was going to be a few weeks and it lasted once, right? It was a fun experience, but I had to learn how impatient I was. And also the standard I hold for myself is so high, but because of the standard my parents held, like we weren't even allowed to walk slow. My dad would say a slow walk or slow thinker, you can't walk slow. So everything was fast, quick. So I learned to do things so quickly, so fast, so efficient, that then, you know, someone else is in your house

and you see that they're moving so slow. You're like, this can be done in a minute. Like, what are you doing? And, you know, my house is someone else. I never complained about it, but it was like, buy some groceries. Like, you can't just eat all the food, you know? So I learned a lot about myself,

and I realized that I needed to work on my EQ. And then I realized that some people had more of it and others don't. So always my family helps me understand things and situations. They're like my crutch. Do you feel like you're just overly generous and not, you're not thinking, oh, is this person just taking advantage or just maybe they weren't thinking about contributing? No, not even that. But like once I was at a party and I was talking to some friends and then one of my friends came over. And when she left, everyone said, what's wrong with her?

She seemed horribly sad. and I never saw it. And so I said, wait, let me go check on her. So I, those are things like I will never see. And it's not because I don't want to. It just goes over my head. So those kinds of things I've seen. I can't improve on.

That's why I tell people I care about. I was like, I have this, you know, this thing that it doesn't work as well as other. So just tell me everything. Sure. I'm curious about your, you know, your mindset, you know, again, with someone like yourself who is accomplished so much at the highest level in the world of what you do. Can you break down a little bit

on how you think before entering a big moment in your life, in your sport or in the business you're building? Like, is there a process that you think about when you're going to enter the arena of whatever you're working on? Is there a mantra, a process? Do you visualize something? Do you release something?

Can you just walk through a little bit about that process? I think the process changes depending on the moment you are in life, right? I think you have these moments as an athlete or in business or in life where you're on top of the world. You can do nothing wrong. Everything's golden. Then you're like, okay, it's great. You're in a flow, right? And then you have other moments where it's not great.

And so you have to be more cognizant of that process, be super self-aware and really extract out what you're feeling and figure out what parts real and what is it because we can get the feels, right? And you have to distract like what's what is just a feeling and what is the what is the issue. And I do that by journaling. Really? I just start writing what I'm feeling. And then when I say I start writing out all the things I'm feeling that I'm able to recognize this is actually the one thing that's real is the issue. The rest is just a bunch of other stuff that's just floating in my head and I can get rid of the fluff and then focus on the real thing that's bothering me. I think also a lot lot of being about being your best is just preparation. You cannot be great without the preparation

and you can't feel good about what you're doing unless you've done the work. So the grates are doing the work. They're putting in the work day in, day out. If you're in finance, you're up all night reading, whatever that is that it takes to do that, being on top of your industry, thinking, literally just sitting and thinking and meditating about what you like to accomplish. And it's the same in sport too. You sit and you meditate about what you'd like to accomplish. So being great is intentional. And then when you're in a bad place, also getting out of it is also intentional too. But it's just realizing where you are and applying what you need to succeed no matter where you are.

And I think when you're in a bad place, you just have to realize that a lot of it is also mental too. What I try to tell myself is that this, moment I'm anticipating what might happen that could be bad. But anticipation is just that it's not even real. What if something great happened? What if something amazing could happen? What if I could make that happen? And it's like changing your thought around things is so powerful. And it's not easy and you have to constantly work on it. But if you put in the work, your mind will change. It's like anything else. If you go to the gym and do those biceps for six weeks, you're going to see some improvement. So if you flex your mind in a different way instead of saying I can't for six weeks,

if you say I can for six weeks, your mind goes on a completely different pathway, and it's so powerful and so true. And it's not easy, and you have to continually do it once you do it just once, it doesn't just stick. You just have to keep training your mind. And I think sometimes people forget that part, that training your mind is so important. If you want to be strong mentally, train to be strong mentally. First is preparation, right?

Doing the preparation. That's ground zero. Doing the work. Part of the reps. Yeah, yeah. Putting in the work. Whatever that may be, you have to put in the work. So if you don't do that, you're never going to be great.

You're never going to be mentally strong or whatever it is you'd like to achieve. Once you put in the work, then you realize what you're good at, what you're not. I mean, me personally, I think there's probably a lot of people who are smarter, who are going to get that's 1600 on the SAT, I'm probably not going to get the 1600. But my strength is that, you know, I'm extremely logical. And, you know, I notice patterns. I'm very quick in those sorts of things. So then I have to set myself up in a way that plays in my strengths.

Not everyone's going to have the same strength. Everyone's going to be good at everything. But once you've done your work and you see your strengths, then you've got to figure out a way to play to that. And then always, of course, work on your weaknesses over time. At some point can come up, too, until you're like this complete player, you know, ready player one. Let's go. So it's just, yeah, it's like, let's play this game to win.

If we're going to play, let's win. Or else there's no need to play. I think I was aware of the pressure. I started really young. My first pro match was, we're teens. So a lot of it, though, the youth and inexperience is in some way of protection. You just don't really, really. get it. You don't know. Yeah. But also it can go the other way too. And I think there were some

matches where I felt pressure to perform up to maybe what I was supposed to be like this hype. But at the end of the day, I failed sometimes. And then the failure was a lesson. And I learned from it. And so that was like, you know, even though I failed, it was still a step up. Yeah. It wasn't a step down because I learned something. And I got more determined. So I think that a lot of what people want today is based on what they think other people have and social media. I think that's a lot of pressure for young people, too, to be successful, like, immediately. No one's successful that young.

I was successful young, but I started playing tennis at four and I put in a decade before I even, like, went pro. So, yes, it was young. But there was, you know, millions of hours of work that happened before that happened. Nothing happens that fast. And really, the process is the most joy I find, right? When you can't figure something out or you do figure it, once you've put in the work and you find the right process and you're able to repeat that process over and over and over again, the sense of pride and accomplishment that you get, not from the success,

but the work you put in to get there, that's where the happiness comes from. Wow. And I think there might be a generation now that doesn't understand that, that there's so much pride in your work. Like what you do, work is a part of your happiness. You don't want to circumvent that.

That's a part of who you are, that accomplishment, accomplishing things, gives you confidence and happiness. And so if you are empty, because you haven't, you skip that process, then it's something to look at. Because when you're winning, everybody's texting you, there's people that I call them the finals mongers. They're like, oh, if you get to the finals, I'll come. And I'm like, you absolutely will not be coming to the finals. We'll come to the first round.

Like the first rounds have to be played, you know? There's the first and a second. And there's, there's moments for the final. It's like, no, you won't come to the final. Show up in the beginning and then you can stay at the end. Exactly. So everyone's there for you when you're winning. When you're winning, everyone's sending you a text. You lose a match. There aren't that many people who are there. And those people were my family. Those people were my sisters who believed in me every time. And they said, you'll get the next one. When you're feeling sad and low and you feel like you could have done better, those moments, they were there for me. And I knew that it didn't matter what happened. I had something else to fall back on. So a strong support system is so important. And knowing that, that like the effort you give is so much more important than the result. Right. You could sleep at night if you just left it all out there, you know? Absolutely.

Those are the values that are super important so that way you don't feel like, you know, that sort of confusion where you kind of lose it. So I had that and like I said earlier, this strong spiritual background. And my dad, when we walked down on the court, he would always say, have fun. He would say, sometimes he'd say look at the ball too, which weirdly enough is extremely important. You in the pros will not look at the ball because you're like looking where you're hitting because you want to hit a good shot so bad. You have to look at the ball. But sometimes he'd say look at the ball, but I always say have fun.

And so I had that support of, you know, that I could possibly have fun. More fun you win. But like that was the only expectation. And I knew that they wanted more for me. But to know that I didn't have you come off the court and like, you know, hear yelling or I've seen players where they... You should have done this. Yeah, yeah.

Brints and, you know, and it's crazy. None of that. It's just a hug. And that's all we need in life is that love, you know. Nothing was worse than the punishment that I felt like internally, you know, that my expectation of myself. And I think that's a good thing and a bad thing. You've got to temper it, right?

Sometimes your expectations can be so hard on yourself that you never pat yourself on the back enough. But some people aren't hard enough on themselves. And so that they never make it. You've got to find the middle, the middle ground of like being hard, but also like recognizing the things you accomplish too. Yeah. And not holding on to it for like days or weeks of, you know, a loss or something.

Yeah, that's easier said than done. Like we hold on to our losses, whether we realize it or not. And you just have to think about this, a new day. Like, it's a new possibility. And that's not easy. We were once playing like a Wimbledon doubles final and so he was playing the Wimbledon final. And I had such a stomach egg. And I just thought, it's going to pass, I'm going to pass.

I just kept taking medicine. So I warmed up for the doubles before her match. I couldn't even eat my stomach hurt so bad. I was in her match. Like, I didn't even realize it was match point because I was like out of my mind. And I'm thinking it's going to pass, it's going to pass, it's going to pass. So finally, you know, we had two hours to prepare for the match after her singles. And I'm just thinking it's still going to pass this hours later.

And she was smart. I don't know why I didn't figure this out. She got the doctor. made sure I got the right medicine and needed unfortunately for our opponents and, you know, it would have been better if there was like 50% of the team there

and I couldn't figure it out. I didn't even know what was wrong. I just thought it was going to pass. Normally it did if I had just taken the normal medicine I took and she fixed it for me. And that was huge. We got another title.

And I was actually finally able to eat something so that we would have some energy for the match. So, yeah, those kinds of things. And, you know, that's a huge example, but other things, too, like small ones, just a small text or, or, you know, how do I play this person? Like sending extensive notes, those kinds of things. Will she give you those notes and kind of feedback? Yeah, we're like, how did you play her? How did you beat her?

Let me know, those kinds of things. Identity is a lot of things. It's being proud of who you are and your heritage, right? Knowing who you are is so important, knowing your history. That can be as simple as knowing your family. For me, as African American, there was a time where it wasn't easy to be African American. Maybe it wasn't easy to be proud of who you were. So different kinds of people have different experiences that could make it more challenging or less challenging to be proud of who you are.

Or depending on where you are, you might get teased because of who you are, right? So first of all, it's just embracing unapologetically who you are and what you look like. this is me, this is what you get, this is my brand. You know, sometimes that joke is like, you knew what brand you were getting when you entered this, you know? And you still decided to come. Just knowing who you are and not having to apologize for it. And I think that's so important, knowing what you like and what you love. I think if you don't know who you are, I think get out there and experimenting, try new stuff.

Expose yourself to new things. maybe you aren't in the right calling for your work. Maybe your identity will be easier to know if you're doing something that you love. I think continually to try new things and have new experiences, meeting new people that you can learn from. I think is important too. It helps you get closer to who you are. I mean, I personally will always identify as a tennis player,

even when I'm in a cane, God willing, I'll get old enough to you walking with a cane. There still be hidden that. We identify as athlete, you know. That's who I am at the core. And as much as I would say, oh, I'm more than an athlete, I'm a human being, that's who I am because I found my passion. I think finding your identity, too, is finding your passion. When you find what you're passionate about, it just clicks, right? So it's important to get connected to what you love.

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