Novak Djokovic: Driven

Why success never feels like enough

At 1-3 in the fifth set of his first-round match at the US Open, Novak Djokovic began to cry.

The crowd inside Arthur Ashe Stadium had risen to encourage him. Djokovic covered his face with his towel and tried to compose himself. He still had a match to finish, although his body was making that increasingly difficult.

He had vomited, cramped and taken pills. His back had been massaged during a medical timeout and his shoulder was causing him pain. After four hours and 36 minutes, Mariano Navone, the world number 49, completed a 7-6, 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 victory.

It was Djokovic’s first opening-round defeat at the US Open and his earliest exit from any Grand Slam since 2006.

Afterwards, he described the experience plainly.

“I pretty much despised every moment that I spent on the court.”

Djokovic is 39. He has won 24 Grand Slam singles titles, spent a record 428 weeks as world number one and completed tennis, as several of his fellow players put it, by winning Olympic gold in Paris.

So why was he still out there?

Why does someone who has already proved more than any male tennis player in history keep asking his body for one more season, one more Grand Slam and one more chance?

Djokovic has given us the answer himself.

In August 2025, Jay Shetty asked him whether he had achieved everything he had set out to achieve as a tennis player.

“Yes, and more than that,” Djokovic replied. “And at the same time, I still want to do more.”

The two competing sides of his motivation are present in one sentence.

Djokovic explained that much of his desire comes from a good place. He loves tennis, enjoys competition and wants to inspire people. Playing gives him purpose.

Then he described another source of motivation, one he called “less of a good place”.

It was his “feeling of not being enough”.

He traced that feeling to the beginning of his life and particularly to his relationship with his father. Even while discussing it in his late thirties, with every meaningful tennis record already secured, he became emotional.

Within the 7 Skills Identity Model, this has the shape of a Sacred Flaw, a belief formed early in life that once helped a child survive and later became a rule he found difficult to put down.

Djokovic’s version appears to be simple: I must succeed.

When he was 12, his father, Srdjan, placed ten Deutsche marks on a table. It was all the money the family had left. They were living in a small apartment during a period of war, sanctions and severe financial uncertainty.

Djokovic understood the message immediately.

“Not having success is not an option,” he told Shetty. “I have to succeed. It’s basically a matter of existence, a survival of my family.”

His father borrowed money at punishing rates, sometimes from criminals, to fund the travel and training his son needed. Nobody had to tell Novak directly that he must win. He could see what failure might cost.

“You need to win no matter what,” was how he experienced it.

That childhood conclusion became part of his Identity, the network of beliefs through which we understand ourselves and our place in the world. It also reached into every layer of the Identity Matrix.

Tennis became connected to Safety because his family’s survival appeared to depend upon it. It was connected to Belonging because everyone had sacrificed for him. His father’s approval connected performance to Esteem.

His talent and training built Capability. Protecting and providing for his family became his Sense of Purpose, while becoming world number one was the Outcome through which he believed he could do it.

This was a formidable structure for producing a champion. It also meant that losing could carry far more meaning than the result of a tennis match.

“My upbringing, there was no room for emotions,” Djokovic told Shetty. “I have to do my job and I have to be successful, no room for error.”

At the same time, the world outside the family was dangerous. For 78 days in 1999, NATO aircraft bombed Belgrade. Djokovic has described being woken at two or three in the morning and running to a neighbour’s basement.

On one occasion, he tripped in the darkness as his family ran ahead. When he turned back, he saw an aircraft drop two bombs on a nearby hospital.

He continued practising tennis. The court offered rules, boundaries and repetition. In a world containing war, sanctions and financial uncertainty, tennis gave him a measure of control.

His wife, Jelena, describes the court as his safe nest.

“That’s the place where he finds love.”

Djokovic has said something similar himself. The court was where he felt safe and comfortable. Tennis became “defining ground” for who he was as a person.

This is where his Attention Direction began to form. Djokovic’s mind learnt to identify threats, doubts and challenges that could be answered through effort. Where another player might see a hostile crowd, an unbeatable opponent or a match slipping away, Djokovic would see something he could still influence.

Djokovic entered professional tennis while Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were already established as its central figures. Crowds loved them and their rivalry was the big story of the sport. Djokovic arrived from Serbia and announced that he intended to become number one.

He has spoken about feeling like an outsider and believing that he and his family had to work twice as hard to gain acceptance. Even as he began defeating Federer and Nadal, crowds frequently preferred the men whose dominance he was breaking.

This challenged Belonging and Esteem. It also created a tension between External and Internal motivation. Djokovic wanted the affection of the crowd, yet he could not depend upon receiving it. He had to learn to trust his own judgement while thousands of people supported the opponent.

Serbian culture gave him a word for the response: inat.

Inat is the stubborn force that appears when people doubt him. A hostile crowd can become fuel. A retirement question becomes another challenge. A prediction that his best days are behind him gives him something to prove wrong.

Djokovic has said that he is the person who doubts himself most. He is trying to prove himself wrong as much as anyone else. Turning doubt into fuel has become one of his greatest competitive strengths.

On court, few athletes have demonstrated more of the behaviour associated with a High IDQ. His Identity holds firm in circumstances that cause many players to tighten, panic or give up. He uses breathing, meditation and visualisation to Manage Your State, then contracts the contest into its own version of Stops and Shots: the next return, the next rally, the next point.

The Elevate Formula can be seen in those moments. A dangerous opponent becomes a Narrow problem. A lost set remains Fleeting because the contest is still alive. The difficulty stays Other, something he can work on, while his strengths remain Self, Broad and Lasting.

This Explanatory Style has allowed Djokovic to recover from positions that appeared lost and perform with remarkable clarity during match points and tiebreaks. His Capability feels available precisely when many players lose contact with theirs.

When not immersed in the contest, the same formula can reverse. His success becomes Fleeting because the satisfaction soon passes. Each achievement feels Narrow because it answers one question while leaving the Sacred Flaw untouched. The feeling of not being enough remains Self, Broad and Lasting.

That is the central contradiction in his Identity. The belief that helps him survive a match also makes it difficult to experience success as complete. This helps explain the two motivation directions. One moves Towards mastery, history, inspiration and his country. The other moves Away From the old feeling that he has failed his family, disappointed his father or finally been exposed as insufficient.

This is why his Outcomes have been so powerful. Becoming number one, defeating Federer and Nadal, winning every Grand Slam, breaking the major record and securing Olympic gold all became Stroop Magnet(s). Once fixed in his mind, they organised his attention, training and behaviour.

The difficulty came when an Outcome was completed.

After Djokovic won the French Open in 2016, he held all four Grand Slam titles at once. Then his motivation fell away. He later described himself as being in “no man’s land”. The Outcome that had directed so much of his energy was gone.

Eventually, he discovered new motivations. He returned from injury, reclaimed the number one ranking and pursued the records held by Federer and Nadal. Fatherhood supplied another source of energy. Representing Serbia continued to give competition a meaning beyond himself.

Olympic gold became the most important remaining Outcome.

Djokovic had suffered painful defeats at previous Games. In Paris, aged 37 and only weeks after knee surgery, he defeated Carlos Alcaraz in the final. He described standing beneath the Serbian flag and hearing the national anthem as the most intense emotion he had experienced on a tennis court.

Many people thought that would be the natural ending. Djokovic had won every major title available to him. His father had already encouraged him to consider retirement.

Djokovic’s reply was revealing.

“If I still physically am capable and I still feel like I can beat the best players in the world in Grand Slams, why would I want to stop now?”

The test concerned Capability. As long as he could remain one of the best, he would continue. A 25th Grand Slam and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics provided fresh Outcomes and kept his Attention Direction moving forwards.

Then came New York.

Against Navone, Djokovic’s familiar Stops and Shots worked for a while. He felt unwell from the fourth game, lost the first set and considered retiring, then won the second and third. He led by a break in the fourth.

The old process was still running: stay in the contest, solve the next problem, prove that the body can follow the mind.

This time, the body stopped cooperating. The vomiting returned. Cramp spread through him. His back and shoulder began to fail. His State could no longer be managed through will, experience or preparation.

The crowd tried to lift him and Djokovic cried.

Those tears came from challenges to several layers of his Identity. He was losing the match, receiving the affection he had sought for so long and confronting a physical problem he could no longer make Narrow, Fleeting and Other.

This health problem has followed him through the year. It may be Lasting. It affects the Capability on which his decision to continue depends. It threatens the place where he feels safe, worthy and loved.

After the match, Djokovic was asked about his achievements and the significance of the loss.

“Of course, I’ve been very proud of all the achievements in the past,” he said. “But now is now.”

His 24 Grand Slam titles do not help him feel good enough. A Sacred Flaw formed when his family had ten Deutsche marks left still tells him he must succeed.

His body is becoming less reliable and he can see it clearly. Recognising decline still does not give him permission to stop.

Retirement asks Djokovic to experience his strengths as Self, Broad and Lasting without proving them again. It asks him to believe he retains Safety, Belonging, Esteem, Capability and Purpose when the court is gone.

That may become the hardest test of his IDQ.

Djokovic may yet recover, challenge for another major and carry the Serbian flag in Los Angeles. Now his body is asking a question that cannot be answered by another trophy.

Can Novak Djokovic believe he is enough when there is nothing left to win?

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