Pounce on Federer’s 5 Word Formula for Success

Failure five years in a row didn’t stop Roger Federer.

Don’t let it stop you by using Roger’s five-word formula.

You might call it the Federer formula for success, which includes the hard-earned skills of enduring back pain, failure, and defeat.

After five years of losses in major tournaments, he didn’t give up.

Like an old man reaching for reading glasses, he switched to a bigger racket in 2014.

But, old Federer didn’t look like peak Federer.

Doubt hovered like a Texas buzzard.

Doubt was everywhere but in his heart.

Doubters were everywhere but in his mind.

Roger Federer lost the Wimbledon semi-final last year to a man a decade younger.

So, he took six months off while the media wrote him off to the senior circuit.

The Next Step to Brightness is Closer than you Think

Author Tim Hansel, when asked about his life-altering fall off a glacier peak, used to say that the reward inherent in any setback is the steps you are taking today to respond and not react.

That’s what Roger did for six months.

After not reacting, he responded at the 2017 Australian Open and dispensed his old foe Rafael Nadal in five sets for the Championship.

That’s the reward found in all our problems when we reflect on them later.

How did we respond and not react?

Federer summarized this in five words while hoisting the 2017 Wimbledon trophy to the dark green stands.

“I kept believing and dreaming.”  R. Federer/2017 Wimbledon Championship

Just a few words.  All significant.  All important for our struggle through trials.

“If you keep believing you can go really far in life.”  R. Federer/2017 Wimbledon

The brilliance in his championship interview is simple but profound. Many people give up on their faith after suffering a few defeats.

And when we give up on our faith, we settle for a scanty version of ourselves.

It took Roger Federer five thorny years to win another tennis major championship.

Gas Up Your Energy for the Darkest Moments

 Sometimes my feelings are freaking like a beagle with pizza!

Please!  Just give me a confident faith with firm steps!

All of us are blessed with a capacity to believe in our abilities and some of us do more than others at the worst of times.

But, the person who trusts God has an extra special energy source.

“Faith . . . is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.  For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes.  I know that by experience.  Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable:  but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. . . . That is why faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.”  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Feed off your feelings and your faith will starve.

Feed off your faith and you will go farther than imagined.

What have you found effective for responding and not reacting?