“Perfection is impossible. In the 1526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches. Now, I have a question for you.
What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches? Only 54%.
In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play. When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.
You teach yourself to think, okay, I double-faulted … it’s only a point. Okay, I came to the net, then I got passed again; it’s only a point. Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN’s top 10 playlist. That, too, is just a point.
And here’s why I’m telling you this. When you’re playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world, and it is. But when it’s behind you, It’s behind you. This mindset is really crucial because it frees you to fully commit to the next point and the next point after that, with intensity, clarity, and focus.
You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments. That is, to me, the sign of a champion. The best in the world are not the best because they win every point. It’s because they lose again and again and have learned how to deal with it. You accept it. Cry it out if you need to and force a smile.”
— Roger Federer
I found the above quote from the great tennis player Roger Federer inspiring and consistent with Albert Ellis’s teaching in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Albert used to constantly say that “failure was not fatal,” that “perfection was impossible,” and that “humans learn by doing.” In group therapy, I often heard him quote Oscar Wilde, who said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” Ellis would encourage people to relinquish the desire to perfect themselves and to adopt instead the goal of striving to do better over and over again. He taught the philosophy of unconditional self-acceptance as the antidote to our human fallibility.
In REBT, we encourage people to identify their self-defeating rigid attitudes about themselves and their performances. The human mind quickly goes from holding the healthy attitude, “I want to do well,” to “I have to do well, I have to do perfectly well.” This jump exemplifies what Ellis called crooked thinking—the demand for perfection results in anxiety before we perform. The demand for a perfect performance also leads to shame, depression, and anger after we perform below the standard we set for ourselves.
In the above quote, Federer emphasizes the importance of overcoming the rumination humans often engage in after performing poorly. He mentions the importance of learning to “lose again and again and have learned how to deal with it. You accept it.”
REBT can contribute to your life in that we do not merely tell you to let go of your desire to perform flawlessly; we teach you how to do this. We call this process “disputing your self-defeating attitudes,” and the reflective process involves these steps:
- Put into words your attitude to performing perfectly well or performing poorly. Look for the “must,” “absolute should,” “have to,” “need to,” and “ought to,” and recognize that you are using these words not in any conditional way but in an absolutistic way.
- Question this attitude. My preferred questions are:
- Is thinking, “I must perform perfectly well,” “Never fail,” “never error,” bringing out the best in me, given that the evidence shows that as a human, I will not do perfectly well all the time, never succeed all the time, never error?
- When I think in this rigid way, what are the emotional and behavioral consequences?
- Will these consequences lead to persistence, practice, and hope that I can do better in the future?
- What flexible and non-extreme attitude about not performing well, failing, and erroring would allow me to acknowledge falling short of my standard, feel appropriately disappointed, learn from the experience, and try again without ruminating about my prior error or failure?
- How might I put myself in a situation where I can ACT on this healthy, flexible, and non-extreme attitude? In other words, what can I DO to implement this healthy attitude?
- Repeat this reflective questioning process once daily for at least one month and afterward as needed.
Humans have the right to accept themselves unconditionally because, by nature, we are flawed, and even with REBT, we cannot perfect ourselves. Disputing, that is, questioning the philosophical attitudes that underpin emotional upset, as recommended by REBT, will help you do what the tennis star Roger Federer emphasizes below:
“You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments. That is, to me, the sign of a champion. The best in the world are not the best because they win every point. It’s because they lose again and again and have learned how to deal with it. You accept it. Cry it out if you need to and force a smile.”
Final Thought:
Let REBT help you to become a master at overcoming life’s challenging moments. Study REBT, regularly watch my REBT Zoom Demonstrations on Saturdays at 9 AM in New York, and observe others think crookedly and struggle to remedy their thinking. Most importantly, act on REBT’s recommended attitudes! Then do it again and again. Practice makes better!