45% of Girls Quit Sports by 14. Venus Williams Almost Could Have Been One | Venus Williams

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12Do you ever think about identity or do you just tie it towards kind of your values, your self-confidence and your belief system? Or do you think about identity in a different way?

0:22Venus Williams:That's an interesting question. No one's ever asked me that, but I think identity is a lot of things. It's being proud of who you are and your heritage, right? Knowing who you are is so important. Knowing your history, that can be as simple as knowing your family. For me as African American, there was a time where it wasn't easy to be African American. Maybe it wasn't easy to be proud of who you were. So different kinds of people have different experiences that could make it more challenging or less challenging to be proud of who you are. Or depending on where you are. You might get teased because of who you are.

0:58Venus Williams:Right. So first of all, it's just embracing unapologetically who you are, what you look like. This is me. This is what you get. This is my brand. You know, sometimes I joke is like, you knew what brand you were getting when you entered this, you know, and you still decided to come just knowing who you are and not having to apologize for it. And, and I think that's, that's so important knowing what you like and what you love. I think if you don't know who you are, I think get out there and experimenting, try new stuff, expose yourself to new things. Maybe you aren't in the right calling for your work.

1:36Venus Williams:Maybe your identity will be easier to know if you're doing something that you love. I think continually to try new things and have new experiences, meeting new people that you can learn from, I think is important too. It helps you get closer to who you are. I mean, I personally will always identify as a tennis player, even when I'm in a cane, God willing, I'll get old enough to be walking with a cane. I identify as athlete, you know? So that's who I am at the core. And as much as I would say, oh, I'm more than an athlete. I'm a human being. That's who I am because I found my passion. I think finding your identity too is finding your passion.

2:14Venus Williams:When you find what you're passionate about, it just clicks, right? So that's, it's important to get connected to what you love. That's really cool. One of the things I was asking you about earlier was kind of the identity of the younger generation and the lack of self-belief and self-confidence that I feel like the younger generation might have today or the confusion around how to build confidence. can you share and I think this speaks into building a confident identity can you share your passion for really starting to shift the conversation from appearance to capability and in your own personal journey given the insights in this issue you know there's this movie called mean girls I don't know if you've seen it I haven't seen it but I've seen the commercials for it yeah The girl gets mean and in the end, she's in this math context, right?

3:06Venus Williams:And she said, it doesn't matter if I make fun of this girl because of how she looks or what she does. It's not going to make her not answer this question more. I have to find something in myself to answer this question right so I can win this math lead, whatever it is, right? So it's so important that it doesn't matter what you look like. It matters what's inside of you that you can get out to live the life that you want to live. And figuring out what that life is and that having other people's approval or none of those things really matter for, you know, it doesn't help you get out of bed, you know.

3:43Venus Williams:So those those things are really important. And the research has shown that about 45 percent of girls globally quit sports by the age of 14. And that's due to low body confidence. And when I think about what if that happened to me? I turned pro at 14. what if I had stopped sports at age 14 because I didn't feel good about myself I mean this is literally my life I got to play sports and change my life and through that that was never my plan I just wanted to win Wimbledon change other people's lives just by doing something positive for yourself you never know what impact you're going to have on not only yourself but the world I had no idea that was going to happen and just wanted to lift the trophy.

4:29Venus Williams:So it's so important when I look at that, how it could have happened to me, that it doesn't happen to other girls. Not everyone goes pro. Not everyone becomes an athlete. But what you learn from sports is unparalleled. You cannot teach in a classroom or in a book what you earn from sports. I think Serena and I, we once were laughing, not laughing, but we were like, is this serious? like there's different books and we were like oh this this certain school is writing a book and a series on how to be resilient and we're like yeah just get out there and and push yourself physically you'll learn resilience fast you start pushing yourself so they get your mile time down you will learn resilience quickly you don't have to read a book to learn it you will figure it out because you will have to stay resilient to to beat yourself and beat that clock and you don't even need a racket to like to to experience that so it's so important for for girls to have that opportunity in sports and it's so important also to have that impact on coaches to make sure that coaches are getting girls in that right direction giving them the right feedback so they can feel good about themselves and about their bodies and stay in sports I'm so excited to be about in this program because it's it's literally my life

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