You may find yourself with 25 minutes or so to spare in your busy schedule today. So what do you do with that time? Some idle social media surfing? Online shopping? Text your friends? Or maybe even switch off your devices and let your mind wander? (An old-fashioned one, that, I know.)
But here’s my advice: sit down and plug yourself into tennis legend Roger Federer’s commencement speech ahead of the degree ceremony at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.
It’s already something of a viral sensation, and I was directed to it by a friend of mine, who is one of the titans of the financial services industry. “I wish I’d known all this,” he texted me. “Things may have turned out differently.”
Federer’s speech contained all manner of insights and enlightenment – “tennis lessons”, he called them – gleaned from a 24-year career which encompassed 20 Grand Slam titles, and it should be a required text for everyone seeking self-improvement. I took five lessons for life out of it.
The first is that how you fare in each individual challenge you face does not define you; it is your ability to accept your wins and losses, and focus on the next challenge to come.
Federer explained that he left school at 16, and that his visit to Dartmouth to receive an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters was only the second time in his life he’d set foot on a college campus. “I just came here to give a speech, but I get to go home as Dr Roger,” he said. “My most unexpected victory ever.”
And on the subject of his victories, Federer illustrated one of his central pieces of advice with the most remarkable statistic.
“In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80 per cent of those matches,” he said. But guess what percentage of points he won in those matches? Only 54 per cent. Almost every other point Roger Federer played, he lost. And what are we to take from that?
“When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot,” he said. “You teach yourself to think… It’s only a point. When you’re playing a point, it is the most important thing in the world. But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you.”
The second is that knowing defeat will come at some point – no matter how fluid your backhand or thunderous your serve – is liberating.
Federer explained that “the best in the world are not the best because they win every point. It’s because they know they’ll lose – again and again – and have learned how to deal with it.”
It was a powerful life message to an impressionable gathering. “Perfection is impossible,” he added, a particularly resonant notion in a culture that puts pressure on young people to present a perfectly curated version of themselves.
What was particularly impressive about Federer’s address was the use of tennis – an individualistic, not terribly complicated sport with narrow horizons – to reveal wider truths. The third lesson I took was a fine example: “Life is bigger than the court,” was his simple motto.
“A tennis court is a small space – 2,106 square feet, to be exact,” he said, making the point that, while he lived much of his life within these confines, he made sure he knew the real world lay outside.
Fourth, just knowing that life is bigger than the court isn’t enough. That knowledge calls you to do something which connects you to other people.
Federer started his own foundation to establish pre-school education in sub-Saharan Africa at the age of 22, and has since helped educate more than 2.4 million children. He encouraged his audience to contribute their “energy to a mission that is larger than yourself”, and in an increasingly atomised, introspective world, there could hardly be a more important piece of advocacy.
And fifth, his treatise on the value of hard work and determination – “effortless is a myth,” was how he put it – was well-judged and simple to understand.
He admitted to occasionally feeling frustrated by commentators’ observations that his tennis seemed effortless; in fact, he said, it took a lot of hard work to make it look easy. “Most of the time,” Federer said, “it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having grit.”
The economy of language, and the studied lack of oratorical flourish, was what made Federer’s speech so compelling, so beguiling and (all political leaders take note) so relatable.
We always thought Roger Federer had an interesting hinterland – the nights out with Anna Wintour, the successful family man, the social conscience – and, of course, his tennis record speaks for itself.
But this exposition on life, love and sport, which is on course to be seen by many, many millions worldwide, may, curiously, turn out to be his biggest, and most influential, single legacy.