Key points

Survival experiences create lasting autonomic imprints that shape how the body responds to pressure.

Perspective alone cannot override a physiology bracing for threat, even for elite performers like Djokovic.

Negative emotional fuel can drive achievement, but it eventually becomes exhausting and limiting.

The body performs at its best when we feel safe enough to play and connected to who matters most.

In a November 2025 interview with Piers Morgan, Novak Djokovic reflected on the childhood that shaped him. He described waiting in long lines for a single loaf of bread that his family would share for the day. “Between the start of the 90s, when the war started, and the end of the 90s, we had an embargo for four or five years, maybe even more. Nothing comes in or out of the

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