Are Your Dreams Really Yours?

You don’t have to be a tennis fan to know the name Andre Agassi. Anyone who’s ever had Orlando Tennis Lessons knows the name. He’s one of the greatest tennis players of our time, having won eight Grand Slam singles championships and tying for seventh on the all-time list. Plus, he’s the only man who ever won a career “Golden Slam,” which is all four Grand Slam singles titles plus the Olympic gold medal.

Naturally, when I began reading his autobiography, Open, I expected Agassi to talk about his love of the sport, his burning desire to be number one. But instead he shocked me with a stunning admission: he hates tennis and always has.

This revelation is particularly jarring because of how much Agassi accomplished in his tennis career. It’s hard to believe that someone could get so far without the fire of passion burning in his heart. But he did. He accomplished it all fueled by nothing more than intense pressure from his tyrannical father.

Reading these early chapters made me realize how much we influence the dreams of others…and are influenced ourselves. Think back to when you were a senior in high school. For most of us, our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters and friends weighed in on what we should do with our lives. If you were lucky, you knew your calling with certainty and you followed that path. But if you were like most people, you had no idea what you wanted to do so you followed the advice that seemed to make the most sense at the time and ran with it, building a career, and a life, based on the opinions of your peers. As time goes on, your pay increases along with your expertise and by the time you do find your passion, you’re too scared to cut your carefully-crafted safety net and go after it. You become trapped, which leads to feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. This is how so many people end up in “the gray.”

In Agassi’s case, he wasn’t given a choice. His father told him he was going to be the number one tennis player in the world and that was that. No one ever asked him what he wanted to do, nobody cared. His destiny was determined by his father and he had no say in it all. Or so he thought.

You and me, we’re the lucky ones. We can dream freely and shape our futures into anything we want them to be. But, as Agassi’s life reminds us, we need to make sure that the dreams we’re pursuing are really ours and not someone else’s.

Discussion question: Did someone in your life play a critical role in determining the career path you chose to follow?

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Read along with us! This month we’re reading Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi.