All In
When the goal becomes a cage
When you grow up in tennis, you hear this sentence a lot:
“While you’re resting, someone else is practicing.”
And it’s a good sentence. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s true. Somewhere in the world, someone is doing one more repetition, one more set, one more run, one more practice. High-performance sport is competitive by nature, and this idea is part of the environment. It pushes you. It reminds you that this is not a hobby. It’s a race, whether we like that word or not.
But what nobody really talks about is what happens when you live with that sentence in your head for ten or fifteen years. Because if you take it too literally, it can slowly take over every decision you make.
You start to feel like you should always be doing more. More practice, more recovery, more analysis, more discipline. More, more, more, of everything.
And for a while, this works. You improve, you feel like you are doing the right things. You feel professional and serious. You feel like you are “all in,” which is something sport really respects.
I had a period in my career where I was exactly like that. Completely devoted to the process. And I don’t mean that in a superficial way. I really believed that if I wanted to be very good, then this had to be my whole life.
So I organized my life in a very simple way:
If something helped my tennis, I did it.
If it didn’t help my tennis, I didn’t do it.
Very logical and efficient. Very clear.
The problem is that if you live like that long enough, your world becomes very small without you even noticing.
And what’s strange is that I’m actually a person who has many interests. I like conversations, I like ideas, I like observing people. I like writing and understanding how things work, not only in tennis, but in people, in environments, in life. I was never someone who only had one dimension.
But during that period of my life, I slowly became one-dimensional. Not because someone told me to or because I was forced to, but because it felt like that’s what it takes.
I told myself I don’t have time for other things, that I can do them all later.
I told myself this is just how it is if you want to be exceptional at something.
And maybe for certain periods, that’s true. High performance is not balanced all the time. There are phases where one thing takes more space than everything else.
But the problem is that in tennis, “for a period of time” often becomes years. And years shape who you are.
And at some point, very quietly, tennis was no longer something I did.
It was the only thing I was.
I see this pattern a lot, not just in tennis. In many areas where people are ambitious, driven, and chasing something difficult. Business, sport, art, and anywhere where performance is measured, compared, and rewarded.
At the beginning, the goal gives you direction.
Then it gives you structure and meaning.
And then, if you’re not careful, it can start to take things away.
Not in a dramatic way, but in a very practical way.
You stop doing things that are not useful.
You stop meeting people who are not connected to your world.
You stop being interested in things that don’t make you better.
You start measuring your days only by whether they were good or bad for the goal.
Your life becomes very organized, focused and efficient. But also very narrow.
And this is where something important changes, because at that point the goal is no longer just a goal. It becomes your identity.
And when the goal becomes your identity, everything becomes heavier.
A bad result is not just a bad result — it feels like you are failing.
An injury is not just an injury — it feels like your whole life is on hold.
A losing streak is not just part of sport — it feels like you are losing your place in the world.
This is the moment when the goal stops being a direction and starts becoming a cage.
At the beginning of a career, most athletes are driven by curiosity.
You want to see how good you can be and discover where your limit is. Push yourself and challenge that limit.
Curiosity is a very powerful driver because it’s light. It pulls you forward. It makes you work hard, but the work has energy in it. There is interest, engagement. There is even joy inside the effort.
But when the goal slowly becomes your identity, curiosity often gets replaced by something else: fear.
Fear of losing what you built.
Fear of losing ranking.
Fear of losing status.
Fear of being passed by younger players.
Fear of not being enough anymore.
And from the outside, nothing changes. The athlete still trains hard. Still competes. Still shows up. Still looks disciplined.
But on the inside, everything is different.
Curiosity asks: How good can I become?
Fear asks: What happens if I’m not good enough?
Curiosity expands you.
Fear tightens you.
And you can see this very clearly in players over time. The ones who are still driven by curiosity usually look more free, even when they work very hard. The ones who are driven mostly by fear often look tight, even when they are winning.
This is why the goal becoming your whole identity is so dangerous, not only for life, but also for performance.
Because when you feel like you have to win, it’s very hard to play freely.
When you feel like you have to protect your ranking, it’s very hard to take risks.
When you feel like you have to prove who you are all the time, tennis becomes very heavy.
And nobody plays their best when everything feels heavy.
The most fulfilled athletes I have seen over time are not the ones who are the most obsessed in the narrowest way. They are the ones who are very committed, but their life is still bigger than their sport.
They have other parts of their identity that are alive.
They have relationships and interests that have nothing to do with results or ranking.
They can switch off for a few hours and the world doesn’t collapse.
Tennis is very important to them, but it is not the only thing holding their entire identity together. And this gives them something that is very difficult to measure, but very easy to see when you work with them:
It gives them space.
Space to lose and not feel like their life is falling apart.
Space to win and not feel like they have to protect that win with their life.
Space to rest, to think, to breathe.
And in high performance, being able to breathe is a performance advantage.
I sometimes think that one of the hardest skills in high performance is not focus. It’s knowing when to step out of the tunnel.
Because tunnel vision is powerful. It can take you very far. But if you stay in the tunnel too long, you start to forget that there is a world outside of it. And when that happens, the tunnel is no longer a tool.
It becomes a cage.
The hardest balance to find for any athlete, but also for anyone who is very driven in any field is this:
To care deeply.
To work very hard.
To be committed.
To be all in for periods of time.
But not so much that if one day it’s gone, there is nothing left of you.
And maybe this is the part that is the hardest to understand when you are in the middle of your career, when everything feels urgent and important and time feels limited and you feel like you cannot slow down, because someone else is always working.
But careers end. For everyone.
And when they end, the question is not only what you achieved, but also who you are when all of this stops.
If your whole identity was inside the goal, when it’s gone, it doesn’t feel like you lost tennis. It feels like you lost yourself.
And I think this is something we don’t talk about enough in high performance environments. We talk about discipline, sacrifice, hard work, resilience. All important. All necessary.
But we don’t talk enough about building a life that is big enough so that your sport fits inside it, not a life that is so small that only your sport fits inside.
Because the goal is a powerful thing. It can organize your life. It can push you, it can change you and it can take you further than you thought you could go.
But it should be something you pursue. Not something you disappear into.
I love your articles. It’s so much deep, meaningful and out of sport only. Thanks!