You're Number 230 in the World

My close friend Reilly Opelka is one of the best tennis players in the world.

He has battled injuries over the last few years, but is now thankfully back on tour and winning tennis matches.

At his peak so far, he has been number 17 in the world (and won Wimbledon as a junior), and I won't be surprised if he wins a couple of slams in his career.

I got to know Reilly very well while he was injured.

Not only is he one of the most genuine and loyal people I have ever met, but I have also learned a tremendous amount from his mindset, which is truly that of a champion.

During some of his darkest moments, while he had been out of commission for more than a year and was staying at my place in NY, I remember having a sauna discussion with him.

He needed to have a second wrist surgery (because the first one had been botched), and everyone he would run into would ask him if he was ever going to play again. It seemed like absolute torture and I didn’t know how he kept his cool. I saw very little negativity from him, although I could tell that demons inhabited him.

But I never witnessed any self-pity or sulking, which are two states of mind I despise and have tried to eradicate in myself.

Over the past few years, Reilly has taken a very strong interest in startups and investing, and has become looped in with a lot of Pareto companies and become indispensable to several already.

I was recently complaining to him about not yet having built a more important company.

In general, I’ve come to realize that I am at my worst when I compare myself to other people, especially what headlines say about other people (which of course does’t tell the whole story.) And this was one of those non-glorious moments for me.

I was essentially telling Reilly that I thought our team was harder working and better than a lot of the other ones in the headlines, but that for some reason we were behind on really building something great at scale for the world.

He called me back a few hours later and told me the story of an important early interaction with his coach.

Reilly at the time was complaining that a few tennis players he knew well were far ahead of him in the rankings.

“But I’m playing better than them,” he said. It wasn’t fair.

“You’re playing like number 230 in the world,” his coach answered. Because that was his ranking then.

There was nothing else to add.

The world is wonderfully objective and cold in this sense.

You cannot hide between would be’s and should be’s.

What is, is. Deal with it.

Everyone is born unequal yes, so luck of the draw is also is a big factor.

But aside from that, you are where you are. Arguing that you should be further along is not only useless but it is wrong.

Go, become better, and let the result speak for itself.