The Federer Lessons Revisited

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a huge Roger Federer fan. Today, Roger made history by, among other things, surpassing Pete Sampras’ 14 Grand Slam titles.

This got me thinking about the post I made last year about this and that I can still improve on each of the lessons I wrote about back then.

Have A Plan But Play Each Point

I’ve gotten better about mapping out my daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals but I still find myself worrying about the big picture rather than doing the task at hand. Whether this is fretting over the right keywords to use for a post or checking my link building success, I still need to concentrate more on simply completing the task I’m working on and trusting that it will start to come together eventually.

Luckily, I’ve had the help of Mark Hansen of TheNicheStoreBuilder.com who will tell me when I’m wasting time worrying about nonsense instead of just doing the work. Thanks, Mark!

Test Even If It’s Worked Before

This is an area I actually need to cut back on. I second guess myself way too much and I need to remember that testing is best done AFTER you’ve had some success with a method. In other words, refine a method rather than jump all over the place trying different methods.

I have a feeling I’m far from alone in this area. I think when internet marketers lack at least one huge success they tend to think that everything they’re doing is at fault. This causes the type of method jumping I referred to earlier.

If It’s Not Working, Try Something Else

Hand in hand with the above. I’m currently TOO willing to try something else. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean we should stick with one thing until we’re bankrupt. But we should try to refine a method before completely abandoning it. The difference between taking what we’ve learned to sharpen our focus as opposed to using any failure as an excuse to abandon a technique.

Take Risks

I’ve made great strides in this area but have a long way to go.

Just as there are different sized risks, each person has their own risk tolerance. Find yours and make sure that you stay in the habit of taking risks you are comfortable with. Once you start having success with these smaller risks, you can build up your risk tolerance and start taking larger risks. In time you’ll even be able to step outside your comfort zone. Remember to reward yourself for any and all risks you take.

Don’t Let One Failure Linger

Just as I reported last year at this time in my post “Six Lessons To Learn From Roger Federer“, Roger suffered a devastating loss at the hands of Rafael Nadal in the 2008 Wimbledon final. Did he feel bad? Hell, yes! Did he quit tennis? Hell, no! In fact, he turned around and beat Andy Murray at the 2008 US Open.

This is an area I need quite a lot of work in. I let failures get into my soul and hang around in there too long. If Roger showed me one thing in the Wimbledon final it was that what happened last year or last minute does not have any power over you unless you give it power over you. My inspiration is that I know I’ll have massive success even if I master ONLY this lesson.

Remember That You Are Human

Failure is human. But you know what? So is success! Being able to step back and admit you are fallible is an important first step. Keeping this lesson in mind will help your development in all of the other areas as well.