Olympic Observations
Well, the Olympics have been on, and love em or hate em, I think it would be hard to deny that the athletic ability and amount of training it must have taken to get to that point is nothing short of admirable. Compared to some other challenges life throws at us, losing a game or a race can seem like perhaps a drop in the bucket, but when you’ve been training hours upon hours nearly every day for many years, I can appreciate it would be difficult to not achieve your goals on this stage. Heck, looking back sometimes when a high-school sports tournament didn’t go as planned it seemed like the end of the world (temporarily of course!).
This year, I noticed a theme going on when listening to some athlete interviews. Though there are exceptions, compared to other Olympics, their focus seemed more on their experience at the games rather than their results - regardless if they did “well” or not. I’m not sure who the sports psychologists are working with the athletes, but they seem to have done good work. Perhaps the athletes now have a new perspective of how special it is to compete on this world stage in front of spectators, after the previous summer Olympics were delayed a year and then had very limited fans in the stands once they did happen. Perhaps it’s the general increased awareness of the importance of mental health for all of us, athletes included. Regardless of the reason - and much to the dismay of the interviewers who sometimes prodded for a “mental breakdown”… when listening to athletes whose events didn’t go quite as planned, rather than being devastated, they instead seemed to focus on the experience, feel proud of what they did, grateful to be there, and thankful for all of the support of their families, friends, teammates and fans.
I wasn’t sure the medal count, but it seemed like our Canadian athletes were also having a little more success than the past. When there was adversity, many seemed to have an easier time bouncing back and starting fresh for their next game, race, event etc. Could it be that ironically, this mindset of not having so much focus on results has actually improved our results? Turns out it looks like we are on our way to setting a new medal count record. So it seems like, if my observations are accurate, focusing on doing your best with what you’ve got to give that day, enjoying the experience, trusting your training, and being grateful for those who helped you get to where you are today is more beneficial than focusing on results. Even though most of us probably won’t find ourselves in the Olympics any time soon, I’m pretty sure there’s still some transferability of this lesson to our day to day lives.
Setting goals is important and helps us focus our efforts, but there will be many times in life when things don’t go as planned - that’s just part of the adventure. Focusing only on the result can leave us frustrated, angry and sad when things don’t work out. This only leads to longer periods of struggle, self-doubt, and difficulty moving on and dusting ourselves off to try again. There are always lessons and gifts in the losses, we just usually can’t see them until much later down the road - so when they do happen, we need to remind ourselves of the journey and be proud of what we did accomplish.
Regardless of the situation, try to be more focused on doing your best and learning from the highs and lows of the process. This mindset can help you stay positive and resilient - and along the way, like the athletes, you too may just see more positive results as a byproduct. And also, never forget about those who helped you get to where you are; you likely weren’t the only one who made sacrifices to allow you the opportunity to strive for your goals.