Patrick Mouratoglou | Champion Mindset | Talks at Google

Patrick, welcome to New York, home of the US Open. How does it feel to be here in New York?

Well, we were talking about it before, just a bit before. I love New York. That's probably one of my two favorite cities in the world. Just the weather, especially today. Otherwise I would be living here for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're very glad to have you back and very excited to hear you talk about your book today. But I'm going to start at the end and then come back to the beginning. My first question to you. You've been coaching some exceptional athletes for many years. Why now for the book? When did you hit that moment where you realized that all of these things you've been observing and learning throughout the years, it was time to put them, to commemorate them in something for people beyond just sports. When was that moment?

First of all, because probably I'm getting old, at some point I have to look back and think of all the lessons that I learned from those exceptional people I worked with. Actually, to be completely transparent, it was the idea of the editor to do a book and to talk more about self development using all the experience of sports. Again, working with exceptional people. I mean, we all know and I know there are several books about all the things that those exceptional people have in common. I lived it. I worked with a lot of exceptional people. And that's true that it's their mindset that makes a difference. Of course, think of Serena, because she's the greatest. So she's always the most interesting to talk about. If I think of Serena, she has a lot of assets. She has exceptional athleticism. She has huge weapons. Yeah. But if she was not thinking and processing like Serena, she would never have become Serena. She would have become a great player, but not an exceptional champion. So it definitely comes from somewhere else than just the strokes, the physical. It's something else. And actually, during her career, the only moments when she struggled is when she kind of disconnected with herself, her way of thinking, of processing. And I always thought my main job was to keep her connected with herself or help her reconnect with herself. Because when she was thinking the way she usually thought or processing the way she was usually processing, she was unstoppable. So why, to answer your question first, because I'm getting old, but also because this idea, and I thought, yes, it's a good idea because of course I use that for helping athletes perform in sports, but it can be very useful for people to perform in anything. And also the editor knew about my childhood and all this made a lot of sense together, because I'm sure we're going to talk about it. But because I was in such a difficult situation when I was young, and if you would meet me young, you would think this guy has zero chance in life. 0. 0. And I found a way to transform myself. I didn't transform myself, but, yeah, I found a way to get rid of all my problems, solve my problems, which is actually how I define my job. I'm here to solve problems, help people solve their problems. Not as bad as mine, but anyway, there are always problems to solve. Solve my problems, to become able to do whatever I wanted to do in life and thankfully find the success I wanted. So these moments from my childhood to my adulthood, that was a key moment in my life. I used that so much to help players. So all this makes a lot of sense. And for me, it was not in sports, it was in life. So I thought it's. I think all this can be very useful for people. That's why it happened at that special moment.

Well, and what you were describing there with Serena is in some ways a very transferable thing in that I think we get very wrapped up in the special skills that our job requires of us. Right. Might be an engineer and you have to write code. You're a tennis player, and your job is to hit a ball over a net. And we think that those skills are what will differentiate us from other excellent people in the field. But it seems like from what you have witnessed over the years, when you get to the real upper echelons of performance, regardless of the field you're in, the differentiator then often becomes not just the specific niche skill of your field, but your mindset. So I can't wait to get more into that with you as we talk about the ideas in the book. But I want to come to what you were just talking about, about your origins. My first question kind of started at the end. Let's go back to the beginning. Tell me a little bit about the place you started from in your childhood. And if you see any seeds of the person that you were when you were young, in the person that is here today, having written this book, with all of this experience, how did you get from A to B?

It was a long way.

A long way? More like A to Z, I guess. You know, there's a long Alphabet in there.

But tell me in a way you're right, because, I mean, everything happened between 15 years old and 26. So 10, 11 years. That's where I completely changed myself. But from zero to 15. My life was a disaster because I had a very, very low self esteem. Really close to zero. I was struggling at school. I was really bad at school, but really, really bad. And I was trying. I was unable to connect with people because my level of shyness was something you probably never ever saw in your life, which was completely linked with the perception I had of myself. I was having such a bad image about myself. I didn't dare talking. And my days were difficult because, I mean, I was going to school, I was bad. So I was feeling humiliated every day because I was so bad. I was talking to nobody. And I was scared that someone would talk to me. So I was avoiding eye contact with anyone because when you create eye contact, maybe the person is going to talk to you. So that was my days. And what saved me in a way at that time was tennis, because I was lucky to meet tennis. When I was 4, my parents were going to the club they were starting. Tennis was very trendy at the time, so they started tennis and I was four and they put me on a tennis court with other kids and I started to play and I fell in love instantly. And at least I had a place where I felt worth something because I was not too bad. So I was okay. I was a good junior, so I felt at least I was doing something right. And I was, that was my place. When I was on a tennis court, I felt completely different, but I was the only place. So that made me, thanks to tennis, I could survive a few years. And it's interesting because when I was, I never thought I would do anything else than tennis, be a tennis player, because I was obsessed with tennis. That was the only thing I liked, the only place I was feeling well. So in my mind it was for sure. And when I was 15, I really needed my parents to put me in a situation in which I could play. Because when you start to have more homework, more hours of school, I couldn't travel. So I said, am I going to be able to do that? Can you find a way so I can have less school so I can play tennis? No chance. You're not going to be a tennis player. So my life stopped that day. But I think my life began that day because it was the worst thing that could happen to me. But I think at the end it was the best thing that could happen to me because I had no other option than to focus on myself and solve my problems and really do it like 100%. Otherwise I would have played tennis. And when I was playing tennis, I was Feeling I was okay because I was on a tennis court. So I think this is the most difficult probably moment of my life, but it's probably the most important moment in my life also because, and I always say that the most difficult moments you're going to go through are probably the most important ones because this is where you can make the biggest transformations. I've lived that with my players too. Always made the biggest transformations on the difficult moments. And even in business, it's true. During COVID we will remember, everything stopped. And for all the people that are business owners like me, it was really difficult. And I remember I put my team together and I said to them, a lot of companies are going to go bankrupt during this period. A lot of other ones are going to be in trouble and a few ones will bloom because there are opportunities in the toughest moments, we just need to see them. And this is the moment I created uts, which is my tennis league. And I think that I would probably never do it if Covid didn't happen. And I think it's really an interesting thing. In the toughest moments, if you're not too emotional, if you find a way to take some distance, you might find the opportunities because they're always there. Just need to see them and find them.

Yeah. I'm sure your players are very grateful that they have a coach that can resonate with some of the challenges that they're going to face. Like that understanding that those dark, challenging times can hold great promise. I'm curious when I think about your 15 year old self and I think about the type of people that you might have written this book for, who did you write this book for? Did you write it for your 15 year old self?

It's a good question. I never thought about it. No. I think I really, I wrote it for people because I think, I mean to my extent, I don't think there are many people that are so bad when they're 15, 16, because it was very extreme. Because also I was sick all the time because I was so anxious about my life when you were failing everywhere and every day you don't want to go to school because you're not going to talk to anyone, you're going to be under stress, you're going to be bad at school, you're going to be humiliated. I was bullied too. I had everything possible. But for everybody, life is tough. You know, you have a lot of challenges and even if it's not to that extent, you have problems to solve. So I think, I hope and that's the whole point about the book, is that it can be useful for people, and that's the feedback I get from people. So I'm very excited about it.

Well, I'm hopeful that maybe I'll come back to this at the end and ask you to think about, you know, if someone was going through an airport lounge seeing your book in the bookstore, like, who's the person you most want to maybe take it off the shelves and read it? But I'll come back to that a bit at the end. I want to get a bit into some of the ideas you put forward in the book. We're already starting to get at one of them. It reminds me of your idea about modifying your inner language. I think you're already starting to talk about some examples of this from your own life. But our inner dialogue can either be our greatest friend or our biggest critic. How have you seen the inner monologue play out in some of your players? And can you share maybe some examples of a specific dialogue shift, a mindset shift about how we speak to ourselves that you've seen transition your players from a weaker place to a stronger place.

For tennis players, it's even more difficult because the tennis match is such an emotional moment for all of them. Go visit the toilets before the matches and you'll understand. I mean, even if the player has 15 years of experience playing professional matches, it's always the same stress. Always before the matches, they feel they play their life every time they play a match because they're judged. And there is nothing more difficult in life than to feel judged by people. Actually, the people you love the most are the people who are not judging you. But when you're a professional athlete, you're judged every single day. So the stress level is extremely high. And this sport is all about dealing with frustration. You all probably saw this video of Roger Federer explaining that he won only 54% of the points he played throughout his whole career, which is not much if you think about someone who won 20 Grand Slams. And it's one of the greatest of all times. Imagine the other ones, so many, but percentage, they won. So imagine this guy lost almost 50% of the points, half of the points he played his whole career. So you have to accept a lot and you have to deal with your frustration. And actually, the best ones are the ones who are dealing with that, the best, because you have three, four points in the match that are going to be key moments. If you win those points, you're going to win the match. If you lose those Points, you're going to lose the match. All the players know that when the moment comes again, the emotional level is extremely high. There is probably a lot of frustration coming from, you know, being at that point, or I should be higher, I should win easier, or I shouldn't be down or whatever, and I missed easy shots or. And you have to be able to take that away. Find an emotional level that is a good one to perform and perform. So what you tell to yourself, I mean, we all talk to ourselves all day long, whether we notice it or not. We all do. The mind never stops. Never stops. Actually, I had. It's nothing to do with that. But it's funny, the coach of the world champion in chess, I had him come to my tennis academy and give a speech. It was very interesting. He was telling me that the chess players are playing games 24 7. They can't stop in their mind. That's what we do. We talk to ourselves all the time. And I think it's very important to be aware of what we're saying to ourselves, because a lot of the things we're saying about ourselves to ourselves are very limitating or degrading. But during a match, it's so obvious. And I've heard so many players say horrible things about themselves during the match. And I could see them getting more and more down. And at the end they could barely play tennis because they were destroying themselves. You don't see that that much at the highest level in tennis because otherwise they wouldn't be there. But at even a very good level, professional, very good, you see that a lot. So this inner monologue is key because if you're able to first be aware of what you're saying and replace the things that are limiting yourself, limiting yourself or degrading yourself into things that are lifting you up, it's a game changer. And I've done this a lot with players that are inner monologues during matches that were hurting them, convert them first, be aware when it happens, what exactly it is. And we were finding other things to replace those. Bad words, bad thoughts, but whatever. Because if you don't really replace it by something else, you're not controlling it. Something else is. Something is going to come for sure. But we have this saying in French that says la nature aurora David, which means nature. I don't know how to translate it. Hates when it's emptiness.

Nature abhors a vacuum that one probably thinks that one.

When it's empty, something's going to pop. Exactly. Something's going to pop. Up. So you don't want to leave that open because you don't know what's going to pop up. So let's control what you say to yourself and get used to it. So it's going to help. It's helping so much.

Can you give us an example of what is a saying that you like to use to replace a negative thought? Like, so I'm Federer, which would be great. I'm Federer. I've just had One of the 46% of my points that I've lost. I'm walking back to set myself up to start the next points. What's the kind of thought that you want a player to be having in that moment when they've just had a setback?

I mean, it's simple things. I think, in general, the simpler the better. This is true for everything. And a lot of my job is to make things simple for players and clear and simple. If I take the example of a player who would have a break point, which is one of the most important points of the match, whether you convert them or not, and he doesn't make it once, twice, and then he will start to think, it's always the same story with me. I never make the breakpoints. If he thinks this, I tell you, he's not going to make the next one. And it's, of course whatever you think about yourself is going to happen. So if you think it's always the same with me, I never convert the breakpoints. You're not going to convert many. I can tell you for sure, not. So this is for an example of a terrible thought. You can't let that thought inside yourself, so you can replace it by, so it's juice. You had a breakpoint, you go back to juice. It's fine, it's okay. I'm going to create another one, and next one, I'm going to make it very simple. But if you say this to yourself, first of all, you avoid the other one. And second, it's positive. It's positive. So whatever you say about yourself is going to happen, whether it's positive or negative, whatever you think about yourself. So you have to influence what you think about yourself and you have to influence what you say about yourself, and all those things come together.

It's interesting because I think I remember now that comment Federer made about this mindset shift. You have to be able to move between as a player where when the point is ahead of you, it has to be the most important points of your career. You're going to do your absolute best to win that point. But as soon as the point is over, you have to be able to disregard it in a way and say, if it didn't work out, it's ok. Of other opportunities. So you have to be able to very quickly move between, like, this is incredibly important, and then immediately after, kind of make it humble again. Like, actually, you know, that point wasn't the end of the world. There are more opportunities ahead of me. And that kind of flexibility.

That's a very good way to put it. I would just say this. For Roger, it works. For someone else, it would not. We all know Roger, but I tell you why. Because for some players, if they think next point is the most important point, they're going to be paralyzed. For some others, they might think, doesn't matter, let's play. Doesn't matter. I had players like that. I experienced that. Also after Serena, I worked with other players and some of their. Some of them were too impressed to work with me, even though they were great players because of Serena, not because of me, because of Serena, because of what we achieved with Serena. And so the match was becoming too important for them. I have to perform, otherwise I'm going to disappoint him. This is an example of people who. I mean, for some others, it's the opposite. If they don't have that pressure, they can't perform. And that's an interesting thing. That's why I don't like to give recipes, just do this. Because everybody's so different and something which would work for somebody would be too much for someone else. I had players, I had to put extra pressure on them for them to perform. For some others, I had to take away a lot of the pressure, otherwise they couldn't perform. It would destroy them. So that's what's so interesting about my.

Job, and I think that's what you actually do a really good job of in the book is people might pick this up and think this is a recipe for becoming a world number one in whatever it is I care about. But you're right, it's often not a cookie cutter mold that everyone fits into. People need different strategies to unlock their best capabilities. So I think your book did an excellent job of that and thank you for giving a good example of it just there. I feel like we're starting to hit on some of the misconceptions that people have about elite athletes. Maybe we think that they always take every point really seriously, like I mistakenly thought. Or maybe we think that they always feel confident and capable. If you're World number one at something. You must feel invincible. But we know that they don't. Like you said tennis player, 15 years, top of the game, could still be in the toilets freaking out before a match. What are some other misconceptions we have about elite athletes and maybe high performers in general that you've seen?

It's a very good question. You've said a few of them, which are true. They doubt all the time.

Yeah.

The amount of pressure they are under, you have no idea. Nobody. I mean, you have an idea because you did some sports at a very high level. But when I say you have no idea, it's more general. People have no idea. They don't realize when you are. Because there is one thing that nobody experiences is they don't have the right to fail, which I think is the worst thing in life. You know, we all can fail. It's not the end of the world. And because we can fail, then we dare doing things. We feel more relaxed doing things. Except for those who put this pressure that they're not allowed to fail, which is a big mistake, by the way, because we all fail and it's completely fine. But when you're a top, top athlete, all eyes are on you. You represent your country, so you have the hope of the country. You have all the journalists that are judging you every day because that's their job. Nothing against them, but still. And when you lose, every time is the same. Oh, wow. Maybe it's the beginning of the end. Oh, something's wrong. What's happening? So you feel that constant pressure and you feel you don't have the right to fail. So this pressure is unbelievable. Until you've lived that pressure, you have no idea how it feels. It's so heavy, so heavy. And I'm not even talking about playing one match for history. This is another level. Like you don't have the right to fail. And actually the few matches when Serena didn't perform well, it was just. Because that was just too much to handle at some moments. I remember that match against Vinci, the semifinal of the US Open. After Serena won four Grand Slams in a row, she was playing for the fifth one. And she's in the semifinal of the fifth one, which is the US Open, and suddenly all the top seed lose and she's playing Roberta Vinci. Sorry, I don't want to be disrespectful, but she never lost a set against her before. She's number 20 in the world in the semis of a Grand Slam to play Peneta in the final. I Don't know if you know Panetta, but probably a lot of you don't. But she won a Grand Slam. She's a great player. Again, nothing. I don't want to be disrespectful, but I mean, nobody would think she would win a Grand Slam one day. So suddenly you're playing probably the two most important life of. Sorry matches of your life. And how can you lose to those players? I mean, even if you respect them, I mean, Serena doesn't lose to Roberta Vinci. So in a way you don't have the right to fail. You don't. Then suddenly the match goes completely wrong because of that pressure. So I think that's. And people say, oh, how can this player lose against this one? Yeah, but that's exactly why they lose, right?

Exactly.

Because the pressure is so big that they can't, they can't not able to play the level on that day. And the other one on the other side has nothing to lose. I mean, Vinci is playing first semifinal of a Grand Slam in her life. She lost every time easily against Irina. Nothing to lose. So you play free.

Yeah.

So you have one who is completely under pressure and tense and the other one who have nothing to lose and plays completely free. And then the scenario goes the wrong way and then it just increases the pressure on the one who's supposed to. So that's a big misconception. You read this all the time on the comments. How can this player lose to this one for that reason?

Yeah. And as much as some people might think was unique to tennis, like how often do we go head to head with someone in our respective industries and be able to know how good the other person is to have a sense of ranking of me and them. But actually, when I think about it, what you're describing is a situation where we might go into an interview or a presentation or any kind of make or break moment and think, I have no excuse to lose this. There is no reason why I shouldn't have this in the bag. And I've done far harder things than this in my past. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to do this. Like you say, it's not giving yourself permission to fail. And that is a mental trip up that you're going to run into. It could happen to any of us when we're in one of those high pressure moments.

And there is a big difference between I'm gonna make it and I mean, I can't fail. Yeah, in a way it means the same, but it doesn't mean the same at all.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you see it because some players, they play at home, their home tournament, US Open for American players, usually Americans are great when they play in the US because they feel supported. They see it as something positive. They think, wow, everybody was with me, I'm much stronger. And they play, they're always more dangerous than anywhere else. And we take the French players in France, playing around Garros, I can't fail. And then they can play. It's crazy. It's just how do you. So how you process makes a difference that it's like day and night. It's crazy. But French is specialty. They can't perform at home. Americans, they're the best at home.

And I just love this and I've said it before, but it just amazes me how in sports, in theory, we've created a field that is designed to test the body, that is designed to push the body to its physical limits. And there's absolutely a mental component. But we think of sports fundamentally as like, how strong or physically athletic can this person be? And yet, as I've said, when you have these make or break moments, that moment with Serena playing against someone, they should absolutely be able to outperform. Their physical capabilities are completely unchanged. Physically, they should absolutely have the advantage. But what it's going to come down to is the minds and is the mindsets. It amazes me. So we've talked in quite big terms about mindset. Right now I want to get kind of small and tangible. I want to think about the daily routines and the daily mindsets that you try to encourage your athletes to be in to have this champion mindset. I mean, I'm a behavioral scientist by day, so I'm really interested in how we build habits, how we get ourselves thinking and acting in the small moments of our days that are going to set us up for success. What is a daily routine? It could be mental, it could be physical that you have seen support your athletes in getting to that great mindset.

So there is a concept in the book that I explain is that you, me and everybody in this room, we are just the result of all the small experiences that we went through. And we go through maybe 10, 20, 100 per day, every single day of our lives for so many years and what we made of them. And then we have an opinion about ourselves, what we can do, what we can't do, in which situation we're going to be successful, in which other we want, etc, etc, and everything we think of when it comes to us is true because we make it true. If we would think the opposite, it would be true too, because that's what we think. So if you want to change your mindset to a more efficient mindset, you just have to create experiences that are going to form an opinion of yourself that is going to make everything possible. It's called confidence. And when we talk about routine, what is very important, that's what I explained in the book, is to create positive experiences every day, which I call little victories. You don't have to climb the Everest every day. Actually, it's unnecessary. If you like it, do it. But you need to do something that you can do, perform something you can do, even if it's very small. It doesn't matter. We all started somewhere. I started with something small, like this, it's fine, but I made it. So if every single day you go to bed after the day and you are proud of what you've done, even if it's small, but you were not able to do that the day before. You didn't dare, or you didn't have, you were too lazy to do it, or you didn't have the courage to do it, but you did it, even if it's small. You come after one day, one week, one month, one year, you become a completely different person because your perception about yourself is different. Completely different. And that's actually 100% what I did when I was 15. I was thinking I was not able to do anything. I was not even able to talk to someone. I mean, imagine. But I started small, very small. And when I felt courageous enough to go for a little bit bigger things, then I did, and then I built it, I built my confidence. And then I was able to say, okay, I want to see a doctor for the mine, because this is not normal. I'm not going to spend my life not talking to people. But two years before, no chance I would have done that. I would have been too scared and not confident enough to accept the idea that I have to see a psychologist and do a psychotherapy, which actually was much heavier than just a psychologist. But so that's basically it every single day. And that's also where I speak about the comfort zone and the progress zone. But maybe you want to talk about this later, so I don't want to talk too much about it.

We are going to talk about the progress zone.

But yes, go there. Get out of the comfort zone. Comfort zone is what you've done all your life. What you know already, what you feel comfortable every day. I mean, if you live there. You're never going to progress. You're not building your confidence being in the comfort zone. You think so? Because you feel more confident there, but you're not growing it and you don't learn anything. So it's no point, you know?

Well, that's a perfect segue into a little game I thought we might play. Patrick, now everyone's in the room because they enjoy a good rally, right? Enjoy a bit of one shot, over the neck, coming back, making it quick. I've created a little game for us that I'm going to call critique and counter. And I thought this would be a fun opportunity to shake things up a bit, but also to give you a chance to respond to what might be some challenges or some critiques that your philosophy in the book might face. So I'm going to articulate one of those potential viewpoints, and then you're going to defend it. And we'll hit our shots. We'll try. We'll try. Return the shot over the net. And let's start with the progress zone. So the progress zone is an idea. I think I'll try and relay it fairly, an idea from the book, that it's the opposite of the comfort zone. It's the area in which you are challenging yourself. You are risking things. You embrace that challenge and that risk, and it's an area that you encourage your readers to live in. Right. Live in the progress zone. I wonder, is this sustainable? If we are always existing in a place where we're pushing ourselves, relentlessly pushing for self improvements, refusing ourselves comfort and complacency, are we going to burn out? Like, how can we live in the progress zone?

So, first of all, the way you embody the progress zone is scary. I don't want to go there. Looks very scary. It's actually not scary at all. I mean, I think it's like everything, it's a question of habit. When you spend your whole time and life in the comfort zone, you don't want to be in the progress zone. But once you are in a progress zone on a daily basis, I love it. I mean, I'm bored as hell when I'm in the comfort zone. I always wanted to do things that I didn't know about. I want to learn something. It's. It's. The only exciting place in the world is the progress zone. It depends on the level of stress, because the way you embody it makes me feel the progress zone is super stressful, which is true at the start, when you start to go from the Comfort zone to the progress zone. It brings stress because you go to the unknown. You don't know how you're going to react. You don't know if you're going to be good or not good. That's why I always advise, do small things. Don't go too big. That's that two, three things that are important. First, again, always do things that you can achieve. Don't go to the progress zone aiming for two big things. First, because you need victories. You're not going to win all the time, but you have to win most of the time. That's what I say for the young players. To my coaches, I want 75% of wins. If the tournament is too strong, go to the other one. I want players to get used to winning. And that's also how you build your perception about yourself. Why do the champions turn matches around so much? Because in their life they have done it a hundred times. So whenever they're in trouble during a match, they have this voice saying, you're going to find a way. On the other hand, if they would have lost a 80% of the matches when they lost the first set, then the voice would say, it's happening again, I'm going to lose again. So that's a big change. So it is scary at the start, but if it's not too big, it's not too scary either. It is scary, but okay. And then the more you do it, the more time you spend in this progress zone, the more exciting it is. You don't want to go to boring place. You want to go to a place where you are challenged. It's exciting. You have a bit of stress, but it's a positive stress too. So that's one thing. Second thing is, don't be too hard on yourself. That's very important. Be kind with yourself, as Serena says all the time, be your best supporter. I think it's a great way to put it. That's what she's great at, that she supports herself. But it's very important. If you don't do it, who's going to do it? I mean, of course, when you Sirena, you're going to have supporters, but when you have a random person, not easy, so that's important. And support yourself when you don't get the results straight away, that's very important. Don't consider it a failure, otherwise you're going to be too scared to go. But if you accept that, you know, when you started to walk, you fell a hundred times, probably more than that. And when you're a baby. They don't know judgment. They don't know what it is, so they don't care. They fall, they start again, they fall, they start again, and they do it 100 times, a thousand times, until they walk. If they judge themselves after two, three times, they will stop. And that's the problem of adults, because we live in a world where everybody is judging everybody. We hear judgment all the time. So we apply those judgments to ourselves. And as we do, we're scared of trying because we might have a bad judgment on ourselves. So when you get into this progress zone, be kind. You know, one of the people who are the most successful in the world in anything have failed a hundred times, a thousand times. But if they were too affected and if they would have stopped, they would never have achieved what they achieved. So just, you know, Roger Federer loses 50% of the points he played throughout his career. He's Roger Federer. You can't lose one or two things. You can't fail one of two times. It's fine. What is important is the final destination. And on the way you're going to fail. And so if you can with yourself and you set goals that are little every single day, you're on the right way, you're on the right path, and you're not going to burn out 100%. No. You're going to get really bored in the comfort zone. Trust me.

Well, I think that's a very strong return. Very good defense.

I have a good backhand down line. Good.

I don't know what I was thinking going up against Abayas Patrick in Critique Encounter. I'm going to give you that round. I think you do an excellent job of explaining why the progress zone is not something to seize up and stress out about. It's actually your friends and it's where you want to be. So I love that. Okay, for my next shot.

She's too confident on this one.

I can feel I'm pushing myself into the progress zone now. I'm trying to enjoy the risk of failure and just giving myself credit for even going up against Patrick. Now, the byline of the book, coach yourself to win at life. This is a very empowering idea, right? That we can coach ourselves to success. But what about the roles of things that we can't control? What about the roles of things like external supports, mentorship, luck? Does the book imply that we should just be able to self sufficiently achieve all that we need, or does it acknowledge the role of contributing factors beyond our own inner coaches?

You know, what's One of the favorite quotes of Serena, she wrote on her shoes, luck has nothing to do with it, and I love it. I don't believe in luck. You can have luck to win a point, but to win a match by luck, to make a career by luck, no chance. So luck plays a role, but not a major role that will make a difference between you being successful or not. I don't believe in that. The second thing is I think it's a very powerful belief, and I always have this one, and I have it by experience, that everything is in your hands. Everything. Can you imagine you control everything or your destiny? I really believe it. So I give you one example. When I was 15, my parents decided that I would stop tennis. That was my life. Bad luck. Somebody decided for me. It's not me. It's not my fault. Ten years later, after working on myself, I came back and I said, this is 100% my responsibility. Why? Because I could have convinced them. Did I convince them? No. So I failed, which is okay. I learned something. So it also comes to something very important. You have different reactions when you fail. You know, failing is like losing a match. Let's talk about that. It's not big failure, but the less it happens, the better it is. You lose a match. So you have different attitudes. You have. A lot of the guys would find excuses. Yeah, but it's not my surface. The guy played incredible today. I'm unlucky. I mean, I can make a list like this of the excuses, right? Oh, I had a little pain here. Okay. I mean, did you learn something? If it's not your responsibility, you learn nothing. You're going to play the same guy tomorrow. Same thing is going to happen if you take the responsibility. Okay, I love three. If you enter the court with the right mindset, you're gonna win because there is a good chance that the guy is not as well prepared as you, that he doesn't have a plan that is as good as yours, and that doesn't enter the court with the best mindset. So zero reason to lose. Whenever my player loses, I take responsibility. And I think, okay, what did I do wrong? What could I have done better? Because I need to do better next time. This is taking responsibility. So this is so important. So when you find an excuse, you take zero responsibility. When you consider that everything depends on you, you take full responsibility. And if you think about it, and I come back to the experience I had with my father that said that I should stop, that I was stopping tennis, I thought back and I thought, okay, I didn't convince him. Why? Because that was the question. Why did I fail? And I thought, okay, he was scared for me because I don't doubt the fact that my parents love me. So he was scared for my future. That's why he decided that I should go to school rather than to play tennis. Okay, he was the right. What was he scared about? A few different things. So if I knew and I understood him, I would have had a very good chance to convince him. But the only thing I was able to tell myself is that, oh, they're selfish. You know, my father did good studies, so he wants me to do the same. You know, excuses, blaming the other one. You don't progress when you blame others. But it's such an important belief because you're not going to achieve anything if you're not able to convince people. You need people. You're not alone in life. And you need supporters. You need people who team up with you. You need people who believe in you. So you need to convince people. When you do a negotiation, same, it's all about convincing people. I mean, not only, of course, but a lot also. Your success depends on that. And you can always say, but it's not me, it's the other guy. He doesn't understand. You hear that too. You hear that too? A lot, actually. When I interview coaches and they tell me, oh, but this player didn't listen. He was not listening. And I'm thinking, oh, you're not a good coach. Why didn't you listen? Why? Because you. You missed something. You're not able to be listen. You don't deserve to be listened to. What did you do wrong? So it's all up to you. All up to you. Convincing people is all up to you. So when they say, coaches, he lost the match, but you know, his father told him shit before the match. That's why he lost control. The father. Can you control. Of course you can, because the father wants him to win also. So just find a way that the parents trust you and that they follow your guidance. This is coaching, otherwise you're going to complain about them all your life. And that's what I hear a lot when I did a lot of interviews of coaches. So to come back to your question, I mean, to your point, sorry, not question.

My serve, my shots.

Exactly. Unfortunately, was in the net. This one too.

It was in the net. 2 for 2 at this point. 0 for 2, rather.

Let's call it the double fold.

So gracious.

No, no, no, actually, it's a fair point, but I don't believe in luck, and I don't believe in exterior factors. You can have sometimes, but if you look at the big picture, you're not going to fail because of external factors. You're not going to fail because of luck. You're just going to find a way to control everything that you can control to get to the result.

Well, for my final attempt to try and claw back a single point from this critique encounter rally before we move to some Q&As from Googlers that they have shared with us, my final shot focuses on the idea of what it means to be a champion, what we should expect from some of the greatest athletes and role models in the world during the height of competition, or indeed what we should expect of any high performer under pressure.

Right?

Not all of us here are competing in the US Open, but we all have high pressure, high performance moments in our job. Now, as any tennis fan will know, there are many stories of athletes getting angry or frustrated or emotional on the court as professional athletes and role models to adults and children alike. You know, are these kinds of outbursts and mistakes acceptable? Is that behavior compatible with a champion mindset?

I love this question because you're going.

To hit it right back into the net. I know you're he's going to hit it. He's going to get it. I'm going to get one in. No, I think this one's going to go over the net. I can tell, I can tell.

And honestly, I don't see it as a fight. I think it's very important topics to talk about. People always want tennis players to be perfect, and we've been unlucky to have some champions in the past that were showing.

Are these kinds of outbursts and mistakes acceptable? Is that behavior compatible with a champion mindset?

I love this question because you're going.

To hit it right back into the net. I know you're he's going to hit it. He's going to get it. I'm going to get one in. No, I think this one's going to go over the net. I can tell. I can tell.

And honestly, I don't see it as a fight. I think it's very important topics to talk about. People always want tennis players to be perfect. And we've been unlucky to have some champions in the past that were showing perfection, even though it's not true because we're human. So I don't know anyone who's perfect. We all make mistakes. We, we all have flaws, whoever we are. But why do we expect tennis players to behave perfectly all the time. You agree with that, right? So many people, and supposedly very clever people were saying very in a tough way to me, I don't like how some guys behave. I don't think it's a good example for our children. It's not their job to be a good example for your children. Their job is to be themselves and do the maximum to win matches. That's their job. But if I go further, isn't it great to have different behaviors? That's called diversity. Not two people are the same in that room. Do we do everything right? Do we do mistakes? Yes, it's great. So I asked those people. So when your children are watching movie, you just show them movie with just perfect people, everybody's nice, Nothing happens. There is no scenario. Fantastic, right? Or you show them movies with gangsters and rapists and horrible people, but also, you know, redeemed characters. Yeah, that's life. Humans are also like that. And you have all types of behaviors. Why should tennis players be perfect? But you show them this type of movies where the politics behave the way they do or some business people. Why tennis players should be perfect doesn't make sense. They represent us as humans with all type of behaviors, and you have the right to pick up the ones you like, the ones you don't like. And actually, I told those people, this gives you a great opportunity to explain that to your children, that humans are not perfect, that you have all kind of behaviors in the same situation. People react differently. And you have to. First of all, it's a good opportunity for you as parents to explain what you think is the right way to behave in that situation. So it's great that it happened. If nothing ever happens and people are perfect, you have zero opportunity to explain anything. So I think it's a great opportunity. And second, it gives you the opportunity to try to understand people and put yourself in their shoes. Because what. And I'm not talking about anyone in this room, but what do people know about the pressure that those guys feel? The frustration, the level of frustration that they have to deal with? That explains sometimes some behaviors that are not so bad at the end. You know, if they're breaking a racket, they don't kill anyone. You know, it's not the end of the world. Yes, it's better not to break the racket, but it's not the end of the world because they broke a racket. And I have to come back to that thing that happened with Serena in the US Open. I feel, I say Only bad stories about Serena, who had the best career in the history. But I think this US Open final, does it work? My. Yeah, this US Open final was against Naomi Osaka was interesting because, I mean, a lot of comments I read or heard was people who don't understand anything. So I always. And I think it's a great example. Yes. Maybe she didn't have the best behavior. I don't know what it means. She didn't have the best behavior. Why? Because she didn't win the match. So the behavior was not adapted to get the results. So in that way, for sure, not the best behavior. Now we're going to try to put ourselves in our shoes for one minute, which 99% of people who are judgmental never tried for one second. So imagine it's the most important day in your life, okay? You're playing one match for history. Do you know what it is to play one match for history? No, you don't know because you never did. Imagine I never did either. This is the most stressful moment of your entire life. And you had some very stressful moment. Maybe you passed a very important exam. So you can feel like, oh, it's the most important day in my life. I cannot fail. That's how you feel times a hundred. Because you don't play only for you to win a match or a Grand Slam, which is already huge. You play for history to beat the record of all times, okay? You're playing. So imagine the level of stress, your worst level of stress. Let's say it's 10 out of 10. She's at 20. She enters the court with this crazy level of stress and pressure, and things start to go the wrong way. She's starting to lose against a player she's not supposed to lose because, you know, we talked about it. You play Naomi Osaka, who at that time never won a Grand Slam. How can you lose? So from 20 out of 10, you're at 30 already. And then you have a chair umpire. I'm not going to talk too much about this guy because I don't think he deserves one second of talking anyway. He thinks he's clever, he thinks he looks good, whatever goes through his mind. He says something to her in front of 1 billion people. That, for her, is the most humiliating thing that she can hear. So you're at 30 out of 10 in terms of stress racking up, and then the person humiliates you in front of 1 billion people because it tells her that she's cheating, which is the worst thing you can tell her. And she feels humiliated. How many of you can react well in that situation and be very calm, say, oh, sorry, don't say something like that. No, nobody, nobody. And with 10 times less stress, people behave. People who judged her behave 10 times worse. So this is what I mean by putting yourself, or trying at least to put yourself in the shoes of the other people and try to understand also and not go straight to judgment.

And I'm going to join you on your side of the net now in this final round of critique encounter. Because I think that compassion that you're talking about, compassion being this ability to try and understand and empathize with another person's circumstances, that's at the core of a lot of what your book is about. It's about having compassion for yourself and your own struggles and demands. And you take a shot, it fails. You have compassion for yourself in that moment. And that compassion has to extend to even our idols in their lowest moments. So I think that was an incredibly strong round of critique encounter. Patrick, thank you so much for playing it with me. Let's do a couple of quick fire questions from some Googlers as we get close to the end of our time. I wish I could keep you for longer, but you've got a flight to catch. If you could only give tennis players one piece of advice to improve their game, what would it be?

That's a very good question. It's a very difficult question because again, everybody's different. Yeah. I have one thing that comes to my mind, but I don't think it's. It's a. It's a good one because I'm just going to say it because very important. One of the things that all those champions or exceptional people have in common is passion. Number one. Passion drive, number one. You cannot decide to be. I cannot tell people, be passionated because if you're not, you're not. Actually, it reminds me of Serena was spending her whole day working for tennis, and in the evening after dinner, she was watching tennis every single day and trying to see things that she could improve. This is crazy passion. And I talked to guys top 50 in the world and I was asking them, do you watch tennis? The guy was saying, come on, I play tennis all day. I'm not going to go back home and watch tennis. I'm not crazy. No, she's just not passionate.

Yeah. Obsessive even. You have to care. You have to want to immerse yourself. So. Okay, passion. Next question. With the rise of data and analytics, how do you balance these kind of quantitative data driven Strategies for success with the more intuitive or psychological art even of coaching.

That's a very interesting question too, because I think it's a big, big, big plus and helps to have those data. Actually, I was doing data before it existed, but didn't exist. So I was with my paper and my pen and I was re watching the matches of my players, putting dots and making statistics myself. So when this happened, the data, I was so happy I didn't have to do that job at work anymore. No, I think it's very important because you know what you're going to tell to your players and the decisions you're going to take for them, or I mean, bring them to those choices. You have to be sure 100% there is no room for mistakes. So as you are, you have emotions. Also when you're a coach, you, of course, because you're passionate, you have, you have passion. So when you watch matches, it's difficult to have zero emotion. You have emotion and emotion kind of transforms the reality a lot. So it's always great to be able to rely on data which are more cold. There's no emotion. Yeah, there's no emotion. So that's great.

Yeah.

The only thing is, and you have to be careful, you can basically find, I mean, you can make data say whatever you want. So this is something you have to be careful with. But it's, it's an incredible plus. That's one thing. Sometimes data is not interesting because when a player is completely under stress and unable to express his tennis data is not that important. But in a lot of other moments it's so important you can track the progress like you want to. For example, I don't want to be too technical, but on the at side, when the player serves is less efficient than on the juice side, you want to understand why maybe there are some zones it's not as efficient. So you know exactly what to work on and you can track the evolution and make sure that this progresses. And the data will tell you not any emotion, but if you watch it, maybe you will want to see the result of your work and it's going to influence what you think. So that's great for that. That's also great. When you're scouting the opponent and you want to beat, how to beat this and that player, you can know exactly what they're efficient in, what they're less efficient in. And through. Through the data you have so much more accuracy. I think the combination of this plus your eye and your knowledge of tennis is ideal. And when it's really psychological. For example, when the player is unable to express his level because he couldn't deal with the tension, then the datta are not, I think that important. But I work with the datile a lot and I think tennis was the last sport that one of the last ones to get into the data world. But now most of the coaches use it. I'm not sure that all of the coaches understand it. Most of the coaches use it.

Amazing. And we'll do one final quick in the room question and then we'll wrap up. Given that elite private coaching is financially out of reach for many families, how viable are alternative paths for success for junior players? Today, for instance, can a dedicated player forge a top level game by leveraging group clinics, online resources and sheer court time? What is the single most important piece of advice you would give to a player and their parents that are on that kind of path?

Yeah, so I mean, compared to collective sports, tennis is individual sport. And financially it's extremely difficult to become pro because you need a lot of funds for a simple reason. When you're in collective sports, you belong to a club. The club owns you, so the club invests in you, thinking, he's going to be great and I'm going to sell him for a better price in the future. So you have someone who invests in you. When you're in individual sports, especially tennis, you belong to yourself. So the only person that can invest in you is you. There are some exceptions. You have federations that promote, I mean, help young players because they have a lot of money, especially four federations, French, American, Australian and English, because they have Grand Slams and provide so much money. So they have a lot of funds. But all the federations do it more or less. But a lot of players don't succeed because of financial resources that are missing. You have to pay for your coach. You need a fitness coach. You need to travel the world. You cannot travel by yourself, especially when you're under 18. So you need to pay accommodation, flights for you, for your person that comes with you. It's crazy. At the end of the year, it's minimum 50 to €100,000 dollars per year. I mean, which parent can afford that? Not so many. So this is a real problem that I have a foundation to help, I mean to help the players that I need that resources and I think have very big potential. Coco Gove was helped since by my foundation since she was 10. Stefanos Tsitsipas, Holger Rune, Alexey Popperin. We helped a lot of great players when they were young. But you help just a few. I mean, you have to find a way to find money, and it's not easy. A lot of guys find sometimes, you know, a rich guy that gets passionate about your game and helps you. But it's really, really. That's one of the most difficult things for young players is to find. And I've seen a lot throughout my career. When I was a lot before being with the pros, I was with engineers. I've seen so many guys not make it because of financial. Lack of financial support. So it's a real problem. What advice? It's difficult to do clinics and stuff like that and at the same time play professionally. But you can do some individual lessons. But when you're a junior, how do you do that? I don't think it's possible. There are maybe a few online, I don't know how to call it, websites that proposes to invest in young players and you have to give back prize money in the future. I mean, if you don't have the choice, you can do that or you have to be exceptional. When you're young, if you're top three in the world in your age group, you'll find some sponsors, like equipment, and you'll get some money. Enough. Not always, but you get some money. If you're far from that, it's going to be very difficult. So this is one of the problems of tennis.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, there is a. Yeah. I mean, the financial part plays too much of a big role.

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate how realistic and honest you've been in that answer. Patrick, we're going to have to give you up shortly. Thank you so much, so much for spending time with us here today at Google. It has been an illuminating and intellectually rigorous conversation for me. One final question. Is there any sort of singular ethos or call to action that you would love to leave the audience in Google here with today about champion mindsets? Why should people go and pick up a copy of this book?

Oh, because I think everybody needs. Not necessarily a copy of the book, but everybody needs.

So that would help.

It cannot hurt. Worst case, it doesn't hurt you. I think we all can do better and we all can learn from the best. And we said it at the start and I think it's good conclusion. Also, the biggest champions in the world, whether it's in sport or anywhere, they have a special mindset. Not everyone in this room will be Serena. Probably nobody. By the way, I'm not Serena either, but we all can take something from those people in terms of mindset. And I think everybody can at the end have the best mindset possible. I don't think I have the best but I have I think a good mindset to be to succeed. And I was ready when I was 26. When I was 15, I was the least ready person you can imagine. But I did what I explained in the book and it takes courage. It's not easy. It takes discipline, that's true. But it's achievable for everyone. So that's I think a good reason to read the book.

And we've come back to our starting question. Who walking past a bookshop should pick it up? You don't have to think you're going to be Serena Williams or that that might be in your cards but if you think you want to do better any part of your life, you should maybe pick up a copy. Patrick Moritogli, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Great to see you.