Real-life resilience - Andre Agassi

It’s the final edition of The Resilience Brief for 2024. Thank you all for being on this journey with me. It’s been extremely encouraging to see so many people signing up every week, and I especially love it when I get feedback about one of my newsletters, so let me know what you think.

Over the past few years, I’ve assigned less value to New Year’s resolutions and more value to New Year’s evolutions. I’m a big advocate for a growth mindset, so any exercise to evolve into a stronger, more resilient version of ourselves gets my thumbs up! That’s why I wanted to finish the year off with a real-life resilience piece about someone who literally had to shed their previous self to reveal a liberated, stronger, evolved person. And that is Andre Agassi.

When Agassi was 19, he was one of the best tennis players in the world. Not only that, but he was also one of the most popular. He had ‘main-character’ hair, the type that you notice before anything else. Fans used to attend his games wearing wigs to proclaim their unwavering support for the young American. He was also somewhat of a rebel, rocking neon-colored outfits and playing the game on his own terms.

While he was known for his incredible talent and charisma, it was his famous mullet that accentuated his rockstar persona on the court.

However, unfortunately (and ironically), Agassi started balding at just 19 years of age.

Going bald at such a young age would be challenging, going bald with the world watching would be harder, and going bald as someone who is partly famous because of their hair would be terrifying. So he did what most of us would expect him to do, he hid it from the world.

As his hair was thinning, Agassi maintained the big hairdo with a hairpiece. He would fashion it every game and, for decades, the world had no idea.

His hairpiece was his shield, protecting him from the vulnerability he felt about his appearance. He knew that if the truth came out, it would almost certainly affect how people saw him. So, he continued to play the part.

Shortly after he turned 20, he earned his first ever Grand-Slam final appearance at the 1990 French Open. He had been playing exceptional tennis and was the clear favourite to win the title.

But the night before the final match, disaster struck when his hairpiece disintegrated in the shower. He called his brother to come to his hotel room and they worked on the hair piece for hours. Somehow they managed to stitch it all together with about 20 clips, but it wasn’t enough to allow the young Agassi to fully trust that it would stay on. He recalled in his autobiography Open, nearly two decades after the incident: “During the warm-up, I prayed. Not for victory, but that my hairpiece would not fall off.”

Agassi was able to play without the hairpiece falling off…. but he lost the match.

His girlfriend at the time, Brooke Shields, suggested that he get rid of the wig, telling him that she thought it was holding him back from playing his best tennis. He finally agreed, ditched the wig, and eventually shaved his head. He would win his first Grand Slam (Wimbledon) in 1992 and a total of 8 Grand Slams throughout his career.

“I think it was the most liberating thing I ever did in my life, cutting my hair. I just felt like, here I am. This is me.” - Andre Agassi

How to cut stuff loose.

Agassi’s decision to let go of his hairpiece is a metaphor for the changes we all face in our own lives. When we have these unfair expectations placed on us, whether it’s by ourselves or others, they rarely make anything better. In fact, they can make things a lot worse.

Two things we can do.

1. Change the expectations. Change them to what we want, rather than what we think others want. We can set new expectations of ourselves, that are positive and align to our own ideals. When Agassi let go of the hairpiece, he was able to replace other people’s expectations with new ambitions to play better and win more tournaments. Ultimately, his true fans just wanted him to win, whether he was bald or rocking a mullet. It’s a shift in perspective that can make this possible.

2. Focus on what we control. Agassi couldn’t control his hair falling out, he couldn’t control the media, and he couldn’t control whether the fans would still love him without a huge mullet. He could only control two things: his own actions and thoughts. We are the same - when we understand that we are only responsible for how we respond, we get to work on doing that instead of living up to other people’s requirements.

So as 2025 begins, it’s a good time to think about the evolutions we want to make. And sometimes, the most powerful evolutions come when we let go of something we’ve been holding onto for far too long. For many of us, that might mean shedding old habits, rethinking outdated mindsets, or even letting go of things that no longer serve our growth.

Happy New Year folks and, until next time, stay resilient!

Carre @ Resilient Marketing Minds