Growing up in Canberra Australia tennis was a huge part of my life. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family and I mean everyone played tennis. My grandfather and grandmother played into there 80’s, an older cousin played pro, a younger cousin played pro, I played pro, my uncle was the director of all junior tennis in Australia at one point and my father was probably the most gifted of all the Manning clan. Wimbledon was the mecca, top of the bucket list. I would dream daily about playing and hopefully winning Wimbledon one day.

As the years pasted on and my competitive playing days came to an end I transitioned into coaching. Wimbledon still remained a part of my DNA. I hoped that one day I would be able to coach at Wimbledon. The coaching years progressed with good experiences and good results but Wimbledon was never really an option. This was partly due to the time of year it is hosted, right in the middle of tennis camps a huge revenue source for myself and the family. As I completed my PhD in applied sport psychology and my ultimate passion in life, human performance, was becoming my vocal point in my life thoughts of Wimbledon become a distant memory until two weeks ago.

Varvara Lepchenko is a professional tennis player that I have been working with for a while. Two weeks ago she asked me to come work with her during the first week of Wimbledon. After all those years of thinking and dreaming of Wimbledon as a child, then a teenager, and finally a young adult then losing those thoughts and dreams and moving on and creating new one’s. I had not thought much about tennis over the last 5 years. Others interests had replaced those kid hood dreams, to the point I really did not think about the opportunity to come to Wimbledon until a day or two before the trip. Even then I kept telling myself that it wasn’t that big of a deal. I was wrong, new goals and passions can occupy our mind but old one’s may not be gone they may still be their in the back of mind patiently waiting for an opportunity to come out.

It was an amazing experience today to be picked up this morning in a Wimbledon courtesy Land Rover. Be driven into the players and coaches entrance of the storied facility, walk the grounds and then finally be able to walk on the amazing grass courts. The whole surroundings has an aura about it that is hard to describe. Overlooking the court we were on today was a small size castle that I believe is a home. It was kind of weird to watch Roger Federer practice. I have long ago moved on from being a fan of any tennis player, any athlete in general for that matter. With age comes a certain level of maturity, but yet I would be lying if I didn’t say that I felt like my teenager self again watching Federer practice. It was even more weird walking in between Novak Djokovic and his hitting partner and excusing myself for the disturbance because I had no where else to go.

Working with Varvara was already a great experience I look forward to seeing what see can do this week and the lessons we will both hopefully learn on the journey towards attempting to maximize our human potential. I guess childhood dreams don’t completely die. I will continue to blog my thoughts on this experience as the week unfolds. Below is a photo of Varvara warming up at Wimbledon with her coach Alberto.

What are we entitled to? Are we entitled to a life that we want? Are we entitled to be successful? If, yes. Why do we feel this entitlement?

The simple truth is that we are not entitled to be a high performer. Just because we start an endeavor or want to become elite does not mean that we have some type of innate privilege to become successful. Success is not given, it is earned.

Earning success is not an easy road, but it is a rewarding one. Studies researching why the most successful individuals in the world are so successful are finding that the answer is found in the mundane—the little things they do day-to-day.

Excellence is a habit, said Aristotle.

How is excellence a habit?

It is not exactly that the act of excellence is strictly a habit but also that daily habits are what lead to excellence. Professional athletes spend hours everyday on the offseason training physical skills. The best NFL players are known for the time they spend deliberately studying film (not a very exciting thing to do) and the team playbook (something that would never be considered a fun read). CEOs of major companies are often observed participating in seemingly industry-unrelated rituals. Steve Jobs standardized his wardrobe to eliminate the need to expend decision making energy on trivial details in his life. Boring things, not the exciting ones, aid us on the road to high performance.

Many of the individuals that believe that they are entitled to success are also the ones that crave excitement and reject the boring. To these people making meaningless decisions is fun, and going through regular day-to-day activities is something to be avoided.

I do not have anything against adding variety or excitement to life, but when the aim of life is to cloud our day with variety and reject the mundane, something is wrong. When someone believes that their dreams are just going to happen without work they are setting themselves up for an unfulfilled life.

There is a beauty in honest work, but just as dreams alone will not make us successful, working without a dream will only lead us in circles.

A researcher once blindfolded a man and asked him to walk in a straight line across a large field. The blindfolded man began to walk, and then he started to drift, and drift more until he was walking in circles. The man thought he was walking straight but without a point of reference in front of him he ended up in the same place as he started. He walked (working) but without eyes fixed on where he wanted to go (dream/vision), and he finished just as far away from the start as the researcher who stood still throughout the whole experiment. Dreams without work do not work, neither does work without a dream.

90% of the population never reach true high performance. They want to improve but they get caught up in distractions—in interference—and get stuck. What it takes to walk the road to high performance requires us to take one step at a time, and to constantly look forward to our destination while not getting distracted by the rocks and potholes that can trip us with any step.

We are not entitled to reach the end of the road; there are no taxies for us to take. What we are entitled to is the ability to make our future happen, to continue on the path, to get up after each stumble, and become high performing through concentration and effort. Don’t let entitlement blur your mind; live fearless.

The Fearless Mind resource center is a critical mental tool for any individual wanting to improve their performance in athletics, business, or personal achievement. Each subscriber gets over 32 individual mental training videos, access to the Mental Strength Journal, the statistics page, and The Zone, a special area with exclusive video content uploaded weekly all for only $20 a month. Click here to sign up The Fearless Mind also offers personal mental strength coaching. To inquire about getting a Fearless Mind coach to work with you personally click here: http://thefearlessmind.com/personal-coaching/