With Jim Loehr
17
successful life is through winning and great achievements. And the more sensational the accomplishments, the happier, more fulfilled we will be. Unfortunately, the world of research doesn’t support this contention. If we reflect carefully on our own experiences in life, we don’t need the research world to tell us that the thesis is flawed. At some level, we all know it to be false but we keep chasing as if it were in fact true.”
Schweyer: “You tell Andre Agassi’s story in the book, is he a good example of someone who has won both ways so to speak?”
Loehr: “I first started working with Andre when he was 14 years old. He was my least favorite of the 250 kids at the Nick Bollitteri Tennis Academy because he was arrogant, distant, and rebellious. But he possessed so much raw talent. He shot to the top of the world in a flash. He hated the fact that his father made him play tennis, but he got to the top - became number one in the world in spite of all the resentment. Like so many of us, he believed all the things that he’d heard about winning and fame. He was told that if he became number one, all the fame, money and privilege would bring him peace, happiness, and fulfillment. Well, the promise didn’t work for Andre. He was completely miserable. He still felt empty. This discovery was followed by a very difficult time in his life. He had no purpose, nothing made sense to him. Andre’s ranking dropped from #1 to 141 in the world. He was on his way to a bad ending like the many athletes before him who experienced little sustainable happiness in spite of successfully achieving their lofty goals.
But Andre took a different path. He began to repurpose his life and his tennis. He realized he had chased things that had little enduring value, and the more he chased those things, the more lost he became. The more he tied his life to extrinsic markers of success, fame, money, etc.; the emptier his life became. He found that the only thing in his life that had real meaning was helping others – helping them feel safe in a way that he never did. After considerable struggle and painful reflection, Andre decided to devote the rest of his life – all his fame, money, and future tennis success to help others discover the truths that he had learned. He devoted his life to serving others, to helping young people become less afraid of moving forward in their lives. He built a charter school in Las Vegas and has helped countless children move from fear to hope. Armed with his new purpose in life, Andre began his assent to the top of the world of tennis again. Remarkably, Andre did, again, become number one in the world only this time he had a vastly different purpose driving the chase. Now his tennis successes provided him with the deep satisfaction and fulfillment he had always longed for. True happiness, as Andre discovered, comes
from inside not outside and comes from finding and following a purpose bigger than one’s self.
These insights may seem obvious, but the messages get easily lost in all the noise in our lives. I believe one of the core messages we need to get right is that we must continue to chase achievements and significant accomplishments in our lives but the ultimate game is an inside job. The most important take-away from any chase is who we have become in the process of chasing. Did you become a better, more selfless human being as you pursued the objective? Were you able to repurpose the chase to drive gains in ethical and moral character? Do you like yourself more because of the chase? A great insight is that the more you give your life to a cause bigger than yourself, the happier you’ll likely be and the better you will perform. It took my entire life to get many of these insights. I only wish I could have come to them much earlier.”
Schweyer: “And, as you say, it works ‘on the field,’ too. Andre Agassi rose back to number one, and won more majors after his transformation than he did before. So you’ll find contentment and happiness but you’ll win your share too, right?”
Loehr: “That is the conclusion; that is really what I found. This mentality also allows people to perform at much higher levels. Andre performed much better afterwards, but the performance and successes that he achieved were far more fulfilling. He would play tennis for the rest of his life if he could, and he is still giving back. That’s clearly the lesson. Not only are you a nice guy, but nice guys can become fierce competitors and outperform those who are simply caught up believing that winning is everything.”
Schweyer: “I believe you’re also finding this with the junior tennis players in your clinic. You’ve reported that they are actually more fierce competitors, and that they are better competitors on average than those you taught at the same age using your previous approach. We hear so much about the purpose driven life. What do you mean in terms of purpose and why is it so critical to success in life?”
Loehr: “One of the things I’ve learned is that human beings are mission specific. Human beings are dynamic energy systems, and like all energy systems, they move towards chaos and disorder by their nature. The ordering principle