Mindset
I’ve spent a lot of time during the second half of my career training and reconditioning Olympic athletes and I learned a lot from every one of them.
These next few weeks we get to experience the phenomenon of the Olympics. Wrought with controversy and massive costs, it still evokes a sensation in those who care to watch that is unmatched in the sports world.
True, there are incredible sporting events every year on our calendars, and each has its special nuance and calculus. But nothing seems to match the incredible spectacle of the Olympic games.
Perhaps because there is a sport there somewhere for just about everyone. You’re bound to find an event that you find interesting. And even when you don’t, the intrigue of following a sport you know nothing about, but pits the best of the best against one another, simply stimulates fascination in even the most skeptical.
But it’s really in the finality of it. The fact that there is only one gold medalist, only one person gets to be anointed with that precious metal.
And, everyone has to wait for four years to get that chance, and if they miss……it may be the last time they ever get that chance.
Sure, numerous athletes have competed in multiple Olympic games, but very few have been adorned with gold in every attempt.
My good friend Dom Gauthier, himself an Olympic athlete and coach once used a great analogy to bring context to the almost impossible mission of winning a gold medal.
Imagine for a second that you want to be a doctor. On your first day in med school, you sit down in the massive auditorium with 100+ other aspiring physicians and wait for those first words from your professor.
Your professor walks in and stands behind the podium at the front of the class and begins by saying, “You are all here to become doctors, but unfortunately only one of you will graduate and attain that recognition.”
Imagine what you would feel.
Would you stay seated, or simply walk out of the room?
Most reading this would say it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
Yet that IS the effort and the requirement assigned to winning a gold medal. Four years at least of toiling and training, effort, failure, and success to simply be able to compete.
Winning the gold is like no other impossible task because it’s just simply meant to be that way. It’s a filter that eliminates the faint of heart, those who won’t do the extra, and those who won’t get up when everyone else has decided to sleep in.
I think we know this of the task, even if we’ve never experienced it. That’s why it’s so incomparable to watch. You know how hard it was for every single athlete to get there, and now, amongst their peers, they seek to stand on top.
No easy task.
But there always seems to be some who will take it on. Thankfully.
Here’s to a few weeks of watching the impossible become possible for a special few.
