Playing tennis, I didn't tie in my self-worth into winning or losing matches.
Martina NavratilovaRead
When you make a lot of money, it just means you made a lot of money. It doesn't make you a better person.
Interpretation
Wealth does not define a person's value or character.
This quote emphasizes that financial success alone does not enhance a person's moral worth or virtues. It highlights the distinction between material wealth and true personal character, suggesting that the latter is far more important in defining who we are as individuals.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the impact of wealth on personal character.
Playing tennis, I didn't tie in my self-worth into winning or losing matches.
I just wanted to play tennis. It wasn't a job. It was an ambition. I knew I could make money at it. I was 18 - old enough to think I could do it, young enough not to consider the consequences.
To those people doubting Serena Williams, writing her off - do not do that to a champion.
I can teach many sports, but obviously, tennis is the one. When you do other sports, you see things from different perspectives: different footwork drills, body positions, angles and geometry. All that stuff is helpful, and so when I do other sports, I can see things, because once you know one sport, then the other sport becomes more clear.
So many athletes are afraid to use their platform to do the right thing and speak what they feel, and that's very depressing. Sure, they are afraid of insulting people and losing money because of it, and everyone wants to make the maximum amount of money in their lifetime. But at the expense of who you are? I don't know. That just wasn't in my DNA.
I am just sorry my own mother had to live under that regime for most of her life. I was lucky. I got out and, 14 years later, Czechoslovakia became a free country. So I feel anger, even fury, at this bloody system that ruined so many people's lives for no reason whatsoever.
The best part of basketball, for those people on the inside, is the bus going to the airport after you've won a game on an opponent's floor. It's been a very tough battle. And preferably, in the playoffs. And that feeling that you have, together as a group, having gone to an opponent's floor and won a very good victory, is as about as high as you can get.
Many of the most successful men I have known have never grown up. They have retained bubbling-over boyishness. They have relished wit, they have indulged in humor. They have not allowed βdignityβ to depress them into moroseness. Youthfulness of spirit is the twin brother of optimism, and optimism is the stuff of which American business success is fashioned. Resist growing up!
I dumb down for my audience and double my dollars...
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.
You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies.
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