"First say to yourself what you would be," taught the Greek philosopher Epictetus, "and then do what you have to do." This advice uttered two millennia ago is still pertinent today for Anthony Amalraj, who found that mental strength was the key to tapping his potential. Before he became India's two-time national men's singles champion, Amalraj kept crumbling under pressure. In the 2000s, India's all-time champion Sharath Kamal Achanta was in his prime. Amalraj established himself as a contender but never got a title shot until he faced Achanta in the 2012 final. "The knockouts were a bogey for me before that," recalls Amalraj, now 34. "Even if I faced a player I had beaten in the pre-quarters or earlier, I would fall to them in the semi-finals." While Amalraj had trained as hard as anyone physically, he kept stumbling over his own mental roadblocks. He finally sought help in March 2011, undergoing hypnotherapy with Dr. TK Vadivel Pillai. "I worked with him for five months – from March to August 2011 – and his training made me fearless at the table," said Amalraj, who learned not to worry about the scoreboard but to simply focus on the next point. The results speak for themselves, as Anthony Amalraj claimed his first national title against his old bogeyman Achanta in 2012. He bagged another for good measure four years later. While Amalraj found new mental strength under hypnosis, he cautions that it is not necessarily a panacea for your ping-pong problems. "It is not a process that may necessarily work with everyone," says Amalraj. "Different players have different needs – my family made me mentally strong, so I only needed a new mindset at the table, which hypnotherapy helped me with." For Anthony Amalraj, success was the result of mental preparation and focused action. Even an old Stoic like Epictetus would surely struggle to suppress a smile, seeing his philosophy in praxis.

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