We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mauro Gallardo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Mauro, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.
I train people to play tennis, and a big part of how I train them has to do with how to approach the game psychologically. I apply the same psychological ideology of tennis to real-life problems in my Youtube videos. I like to explain how problems on and off the court are similar, how world-class athletes and non-athletes approach them, and their similarities.
Mauro, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My dad is a former international tennis tour and Davis Cup player from Mexico, so I grew up playing from juniors to the Pro tour in Mexico, and college in the USA. I played competitively for decades. Now I work giving private tennis lessons full-time. Most of my time off I work on my website, Instagram, and Youtube channels. I help tennis players improve their physical game, and I also like to explain the psychological part of it, how it impacts them mentally, how it’s reflected in their performance, why they choke, how to keep your focus, how your self-language and self-perception affect your body and mind response, etc. I got to the point where I felt that teaching 40-50 people a week in a club wasn’t enough for me, I have the urge to share my knowledge with those that need to learn a little more about the way we process things, and the internet is giving me that chance. I think that the fact that I grew up competing for a long time and at a high level made me go through so much that it helped me develop a keen eye for emotions. I never stop absorbing environments, situations, people, etc., and processing or trying to find different ways to reach solutions, when you compete at a high level that’s how you function. I have worked with tennis players from state to national champions and women’s Pro tour.
Even though my dad was a tennis Pro and he helped me immensely with my game, I always felt like I didn’t have control of my high temper, my fears, and my doubts; we didn’t have the resources that exist nowadays to research and find what we need to. So. I had to find out how to tame my mind by myself, during matches, which was slow and painful but there were no shortcuts, no easy ways out; it was cruel sometimes but real. I want to help people improve how they think, but I always teach making it very clear from the beginning that all real transformation is long, painful, and requires a lot of hard work and a special kind of commitment, but it will forge your persona as nothing else will.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Yes, I want to share what I have learned, and I’m very passionate about it, especially with young people, because I see them and they remind me of myself. I remember myself being young and leaving high school to join a tennis academy full-time, and even though I trained for hours every day, even with the preparation I had, I still had doubts and fears. Eventually, I learned to control myself and that improved my game drastically. I noticed those fears and doubts transcended the tennis court and age, I felt them in college, at work, at home, in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. It’s a non-stop journey of growth and I love letting my students know that I know what they feel, the vulnerability, the intimidation, the stress, the perspectives, the social pressure, etc.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding thing is seeing students improve how they play, how they hit the ball, and how their physical game has grown. But the most rewarding part is to see the change in how they approach the game, how they face failure, how they face setbacks and fight their way back, how they understand and accept that 100% effort is unconditional regardless of the result, and that growth is in the process. The very first thing I tell my students is that no matter how hard they work, nothing guarantees that they’re going to succeed. But if the process was long, and they committed to winning, they have open a window of opportunity where their mindset has the capability to shift to a more resilient one than it was before, but they have to learn how to move it in that direction, and if they know how how to do it, new opportunities to create great success will come. If they don’t know how to move in the right direction after failure, that can mean complete self-destruction, when I see that they understand, accept, and are at peace with that ideology, it means they’re ready to face and process a lot of their future struggles,
Contact Info:
- Website: maurogallardo.com
- Instagram: #mauroarise
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arisebymauro
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/mauro-gallardo-9287798
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mauroarise
- Youtube: @arisebymaurogallardo3558 (psychology English),@elpoderquenoseve7438 (psychology Spanish), @maurogallardo7399 (tennis instruction videos)