G (74:51)
Yes, and more than that. And at the same time, I still want to do more. And I know that that comes in a big part from a good place, meaning from a place of purpose, inspiration, motivation, love for the sport, passion for the sport, passion to make people happy when they watch me, if I'm doing that, and I have a feeling that I am, by still actively being on the tennis tour and having my tennis career, active tennis career, I'm still spreading that light by playing tennis and inspiring younger generations. That's something that comes from a good place. But what comes from maybe I'd say not necessarily a bad place, but less of a good place, I have identified that as well, is my feeling of not being enough. And that goes back to my very, very beginning of my life and my relationship, particularly with my father, other and not doing enough, not being good enough, et cetera, et cetera. So now that I'm talking about it, I kind of get emotional about it because it's still deep inside of me. And it's kind of the battle that I also go through often because a lot of people, even closest people in my life, ask me, what more do you want? You have achieved everything. What do you want? Why do you keep going? And I tell them. And the good part that I told you that I still really strongly feel it's inside of me. And I feel like as long as I have the capacity or ability to compete for the biggest titles in my sport, I want to keep going. And also partly the part that I didn't mention that inspires me to keep going is to test my limits mentally and physically. Because when I was starting to break through into professional tennis, I Remember, when you reach your 30, you start counting your days to your retirement. Like after 30, that's it, pretty much. Even though there were some exceptions, like, Jimmy Connor is the legend of our game. He played, I think, semifinals or finals of US Open when he was 40, still dominating the Tour. But very few exceptions. Nowadays, it's different. Why? Because I think the care for the body has improved so much. I mean, now not only top 10 or 15 guys or girls on the Tour have, like, multiple people in their squad to take care of them. You have top 50 people that are taking care of them. It's due to the improvement, of course, of the conditions for the players. And, you know, we earn more across the board. So it gives you. It allows you to hire more people, people that would take care of your body. And I think that it's also a kind of a curiosity from my side. How far can I go? You know, I'm 38 this year. How long can I push my own limits? And I don't feel like I do have limits. And I feel like the limits are normally constructs in our mind. I've seen the episode you did with Brian Johnson the other day, and then he talked about. He's, by a lot of people's opinion, very extreme. But he dedicated his own entire life to getting the data and understanding what are the best conditions for the longest living life that he can have for himself, which I think is something that is admirable. And I give him huge credit for that. And I understand, because as a professional athlete, the care for your body and your mind and the devotion to the daily habits is so tough, because when you want to change a certain habit, science says it takes at least 21 days, right, for the brain to start growing new neurons that are reprogramming. But if you don't have the right environment, that's going to be very, very challenging. So that was also one of the things that I wanted to reflect on in your question is the environment is the one that can be very stimulative to you. It can be really supportive, or it can be pulling you down. So it's super important. Even though we always encourage ourselves to be independent in terms of what we do, what we eat, how we sleep, how we lead our lives and what we do and how we can live the best version of our lives possible. But at the same time, we are social beings. We are very tribal beings. And even if it's the smallest community, we still want to belong to that community. We still want this community to support us. Even if it's one person or two. But it's super important in the end of the day because making tough choices, these are tough choices because society, when you go out there, super majority of the places where you go to eat or people that you see, it's a kind of a vicious cycle and they lead their life in a certain way that maybe doesn't coincide or correspond to your choices that you want to make the new choices or maybe the new changes. So it's really hard, you know what I mean, Living in the big city and deciding you want to go through transformational journey on a daily basis where being exposed to something that is contrary to what you're trying to achieve. I feel like it's reinventing yourself constantly. For me, I've had this kind of upbringing, had the great foundation and I have achieved incredible things. I was dreaming of becoming number one in the world and becoming a Wimbledon champion. And that was my dream. I achieved that dream within two days. I won Wimbledon and at the same day became number one in the world in 2011, in front of my family, in front of president of Serbia who was there. I mean it was with the welcoming of hundreds of thousands of people on the way back. It's just once in a lifetime type of experience. And when you do something for the first time, obviously that big, it's just like you're flying to the moon. I mean you're not. It's a kind of an out of body experience. But then I felt like I had to set new goals and because I was, you know, at the time, 2011, I was 23 years old, 24. So okay, what do I do next? You know, I feel like I'm at peak of my powers and I want it. So then I want to win multiple slams, then I want to win all slams at one, then I want to win gold medal for my country, then I want to make history and so forth, so forth. So I think goal oriented mind, particularly in sports, but also in business or anything really I think is super important because the clarity from my experience is something that is essential to have also peace of mind and to have a calm heart that you know what you're doing and that you set your goals, your short term goals, your long term goals, and you know exactly the strategy that you need to implement to achieve them. And you surround yourself with the people who are supporting you, but also people who are telling you what you don't want to hear, giving you constructive criticism or maybe giving you non constructive criticism and then putting you very down. But that's also part of the journey. It's also learning how to get up like a phoenix and rise and try to develop a thick skin, so to say. So it's a constant process really. I don't see myself fully satisfied if that's maybe a shorter answer because I have that part of me which is like, I think I can still do more, but the other side of me is like, of course I'm happy and I'm proud and in a way I can't wait one day for me to reflect on everything. But while I'm still in my active career, I don't have time. Tennis has the longest season of all sports, starts January, ends almost end of November. And of course I earn my right in a way to be selective with tournaments where I play. So that's what I'm doing. I'm not playing as much. I'm focusing on the big ones and I'm trying to incorporate all these other things inside of my career and basically expand the platform and use my voice for other things than just the tennis court. And I, I'm super blessed to be in a position that I am. But as I said, it's a constant journey and process.
