MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
If you follow sports at all, Venus Williams is a person who needs no introduction. Over a 30-year career in tennis, she's stacked her mantel with seven Grand Slam singles titles, 14 Grand Slam doubles, four Olympic medals, among other accolades. She is also a serial entrepreneur. Along the way, she's developed a roadmap to physical, mental and emotional health, which she wants to tell us about in a new book. It's called "Strive," and it details the eight steps Venus says she lives by, a program she hopes others can follow in order to find their awesome, as she puts it. And Venus Williams is with us now. Good morning.
VENUS WILLIAMS: Hi. Good morning. How are you?
MARTIN: I'm good. So, Venus, we've spoken before, and I've always talked with you about your business ventures. I don't know if people realize that you always have had a lot going on besides tennis - I mean, fashion, interior design, nail art. How does this book fit into your many other interests?
WILLIAMS: This book is really kind of the story of my life. You know, a lot of people would write a biography, and I would write a book about health and wellness. And also, the story of my life as an athlete and kind of the lessons I've learned, but in the lens of wellness, too. And in this book, too, I don't just share, like, all the positive things. I share the mistakes that I've made, too - like, what I learned from, not to do again. I call it, I did this. I made this mistake so you don't have to (laughter).
MARTIN: Like what? Name one.
WILLIAMS: I think, you know, with the U.S. Open just ending, one of my biggest lessons was a really big loss at the U.S. Open, where I was headed to play the final and would have faced my sister. I was only 19, but, you know, I wasn't able to move forward. I wasn't able to get past my own fears and get past myself and ultimately lost the match. And it was just devastating, and I had to learn from that and had to take a look at myself. I had to observe myself, which is one of the eight steps in "Strive," to figure out why that happened, what I could do better. And I also had to let go of fear, too.
So it was a lesson I had to learn young, but it was a huge lesson, and it was, you know, a failure along the way that ultimately served to be a big plus in my life. It's just about how you treat failure, and it was just a moment. And that's how I look at failure.
MARTIN: The eight steps are observe, appreciate, balance, enrich, soothe, believe, inspire. Which of the eight, if you think of it this way, do you find hardest to do? I know - I'll just tell you for me this. One of the chapters on nutrition, you were saying, look, don't just think, change your diet. Think, in each instance, what is best for me in this moment? And I have to say, I was a little irritated this morning, 'cause I really wanted that pumpkin chai latte. But I had just read your book, and there you were like, what's the best choice that you can make right now?
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: And I realized that was not it. I'm still a little salty about that.
WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MARTIN: But what about for you? Is one of these harder for you than others?
WILLIAMS: Harder for me than others is definitely finding balance and, you know, making decisions that, all of a sudden, lead my life to a place where I'm just completely spinning too many plates, so to speak. And also, I want to congratulate you on that choice.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
WILLIAMS: And it gets easier over time.
MARTIN: I don't know.
WILLIAMS: You gave yourself a great pep talk. You reframed it. And reframing is one of the easiest things you can do, and there is no limit. It's free.
MARTIN: Thanks for that, but I'm still thinking about it. Like...
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: You mentioned in the book that you live with an autoimmune disease, Sjogren's syndrome. I would not have raised it if you had not in the book. You talked about thinking about how you could just power through it, and you've realized that you couldn't. So how did that change you?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I realized I had to find more balance. I had to have a lifestyle change. I had to take more moments for myself. I had to rest more - things that I wasn't necessarily used to. And if I didn't do that, then I was never going to go back to tennis.
MARTIN: Is that a hard thing to talk about? I mean, the fact is, if you weren't a world-class athlete, we wouldn't necessarily be all up in your business like that. Does it feel good to kind of release that, or does it feel like another aspect of celebrity that perhaps you wish weren't the case?
WILLIAMS: You know, it was not easy to share, because the first thing that I was thinking about was, like, I don't want my opponents to know (laughter), you know? As an athlete, you're invincible. No one looks at you and says, oh, she has a chronic illness. It's like, oh, there's a champion - hopefully, if you can make it that far, right? So it wasn't something easy, and I don't think it was something I wanted to share. My mom encouraged me to do so, and I think it's been for the best. There's been so many people who tell me they've been diagnosed with Sjogren's syndrome. And I think it's just been helpful to give a name to it, too, 'cause there are a lot of people who do live with it.
MARTIN: Venus Williams' latest book is "Strive: 8 Steps To Find Your Awesome." Thank you so much for talking with us.
WILLIAMS: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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