Stan Wawrinka and Failing Better

I love tennis. And of course I love Paris. So when the French Open happens every year, I get excited. I’ve been immersed in watching the matches, loving that my favorite player, Roger Federer, has won so far and enjoying the wildness of the crowds every time Frenchman Benoit Paire plays. This weekend a particularly wonderful highlight for me was watching Swiss player and ethnically Polish guy Stan Wawrinka play Stefanos Tsitsipas. It was an epic match that lasted five hours and five sets.

At 34, Wawrinka’s considered a senior player, and yet he’s playing his highest level of tennis ever. Because he’s an athlete who won Grand Slam tournaments later in his career, I find his journey interesting. It reminded me how anyone who works hard enough and is willing to endure long enough can succeed. This includes artists and writers. A writer works to perfect their art or craft and tries to share it with the world, only to often meet with rejection or indifference. The attempt can be a failure. We can feel like losers. But Wawrinka has an interesting perspective on failure. What he had to say is my quote of the week:

As a tennis player, you have to get used to losing every week. Unless you win the tournament, you always go home as a loser. But you have to take the positive out of a defeat and go back to work. Improve to fail better.

–Stan Wawrinka, tennis champion

Image by David Mark from Pixabay