“If my dreams can happen to me, your dreams can
happen to you. Champions are not made on the track or field; champions are made
by the things you accomplish and the way you use your abilities in everyday life
situations.”
Bob Beamon
The Summer Olympics are here and in full gear.
This time I have probably watched it more than ever and enjoyed a lot of great
entertainment in the athletics, triathlon, swimming, gymnastics, wrestling and
sailing competitions.For me it is not just exciting, educating and suspenseful
to watch the competitions. It’s also very inspiring to see how much work people
have put in, the fantastic things they achieve during the Olympics and the joy
that people get out of it all no matter if they watch or compete.
So today I would like to share some of the most
inspiring thoughts I have found from current and past Olympic champions.
1. Don’t make things harder, bigger or
more complicated than they can be.
“All I’ve done is run fast. I don’t see why
people should make much fuss about that.”
Fanny Blankers-Koen,
sprint, long jump, high jump and more
One thing I try to keep in mind is to not make a
too big a deal out of things.
Many movies or life-stories of successful people
tell us stories of the underdog that struggles and struggles until he or she
finds the success that he or she was dreaming of. Things often take time.
Perhaps longer than one would hope for. And keeping yourself in underdog
position can be motivating to keep soldiering on.
It can also be a way to make things a lot harder
for yourself than they need to be. Every bit of progress and action becomes a
big struggle. Approaching things like you’re in some kind of battle may look
cool on the movie screens. It may not be the most pleasant way to go about
things.
Your attitude towards things does to a large
degree determine how you experience them. And how or if you take action. Now,
things can be difficult. But making things harder than they need to be, to
identify with an image of someone who makes progress inch by painstaking inch
can make you feel important since your struggle is so epic. It’s a bit
unnecessary though.
If things are hard or difficult then it is most
likely you who are creating much of that in your own head. So be good to
yourself. Let that kind of thinking go and replace it with a lighter and a less
serious attitude. You’ll thank yourself later.
2. Climb out of the sea of negative
voices.
“When anyone tells me I can’t do anything,
I’m just not listening any more.”
Florence Griffith Joyner,
sprinter
It’s easy to let other people’s negative opinions
slip into your mind. But remember, they are just opinions. Not fact. Even though
the opinion may come from someone your look up to and respect. When faced with
this problem ask yourself a few questions:
Have they actually tried this or do they know
something about this? Or are they just sharing their own pessimism?
Or trying to keep everything as it always has
been as change and the unknown can be scary?
You may often realize that people are just
voicing there own problems and identity. Rather than giving your accurate and
experienced advice.
Listen to what others have to say. If what
they’re saying makes sense, take it into account. But hold your own opinion in
the highest regard. Make own decisions instead bouncing around like a pinball
while reacting to what others tell you.
3. Don’t let hero worship get in your way
and hold you back.
“It took me time to realize that the men who
won Olympic gold medals in the decathlon are just men, just like
me.”
Dan O’Brien, decathlete
Sure, you may not be able to swim like Michael
Phelps. But to put people you admire up on pedestals is to make things
unnecessarily hard on yourself. Because everyone is human, no matter what that
have accomplished. If you don’t think that you can do anything similar then it
will be very hard for you to do so.
You won’t feel worthy to do so. You’ll feel that
this or that person is so very different from you. And so you’ll hinder or
self-sabotage to keep yourself in line with your own expectations and
self-image. Understanding that everyone is human can open you up to your own
potential.
And realizing that everyone fails and make
mistakes can remove other mental blocks in your mind too. When you feel like
everyone is human you feel more connected to people. Holding people to
unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world
and negativity within you.
4. Be careful with inflating your ego or
identifying too strongly with your success.
“I’m the same kind of guy before all this
happened.”
Michael Phelps, swimmer
If you let the success go to your head then it
can, for one, make you an arrogant jerk. It can also make you more emotionally
reactive as you inflate your ego and strongly identify with your
achievements.
This will feel awesome at first. But soon you may
start to doubt that you are still as good as your last achievement and as
awesome as everyone said you were. And so you become more reactive to criticism
or having a bad day. This affects the steadiness of your focus, thoughts and
emotions. And so your inner life becomes more of a rollercoaster. All of this
can not only affect your relationships with other people but also your
performance.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t have a high
level of confidence in yourself and your abilities. It just means that you
should be careful with getting completely wrapped up in your past achievements
and letting you ego inflate to a harmful size.
5. Put your work into a longer
perspective.
“What I can tell them is the way you become
an Olympic champion is to start working now. I tell them why it’s always worth
it to put the time and effort into something you want to be good
at.”
Rafer Johnson, decathlete
How do you become really, really good at
something? The biggest part is the amount of work you put in. Sure, you can work
smart too and save energy and effort. But the people that really fulfill their
potential seem to put in years and years of hard work that most people just
aren’t willing to put in. Why?
Well, I’d say:
Because of the support from other
people.
Because they know that they need the challenge and can’t stay in
their comfort zone and just take it easy.
But mostly I think it’s because of
the love of what they do.
So focus on doing what you love – or like a whole
lot – to get really good at something.
6. Take a risk.
“He who is not courageous enough to take
risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
Muhammad Ali,
boxer
To get what you really want you will pretty much
always have to take risks. Of course, that can be scary.
So how can you overcome this, take a leap and
take the risk? I don’t have some simple and easy solution. But I do have a
couple of tips.
- Really, really want it. When you really want it simply becomes easier to push through the inner resistance you feel. You are so motivated to achieve whatever it is you want that the risk may be scary but smaller than your desire.
- Ask yourself: what’s the worst that could happen? It is common to build big, negative fantasies in your heads of what may happen if you do something. Huge scary monsters. But probably 90 percent of what you fear never comes into reality. If you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.
Every time you take the leap and take a risk –
even if things might not go your way that time – you can build confidence in
yourself. By getting more experiences where you took action instead of sitting
on your hands it will over time becomes easier to start moving in the direction
you desire and take a chance.
7. Focus only on what you are doing right
now.
“I’m trying to do the best I can. I’m not
concerned with tomorrow, but with what goes on today.”
Mark
Spitz
When you are actually doing the best that you can
out on the court, in the pool, behind the computer or wherever you do what you
do in then detach from the outcome. Just focus on what’s in front of you. Not on
what you missed in the past. Not on the all possible future outcomes of your
performance right now.
Then things will become easier. You’ll create
less inner anxiety and pressure for yourself. And you will perform better
because you are just focusing on what’s right in front of you and you are not
weighing yourself down with a lot of self-created negativity and doubts.
8. Don’t let the initial impression get
you down.
“Don’t be afraid if things seem difficult in
the beginning. That’s only the initial impression. The important thing is not to
retreat; you have to master yourself.”
Olga Korbut,
gymnast
Since society often tells us to look for quick
fixes or instant gratification it’s easy to make the mistake of giving up too
soon. After you have tried something maybe just once or twice. Or after you have
failed or put in a pretty bad or mediocre performance perhaps 1-5 times. That’s
a pretty “normal” thing to do.
But what could have happened if you just kept
going after that? And for each time you did it you learned more and more about
what works?
I think people often make a mistake of giving up
too early. Your mind probably has a reasonable time-frame for success. This
might not correspond to a realistic time-frame though.
It’s useful to take a break from common and often
advertised perspectives and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind.
Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what
they have to say in books or online. This will not give you a complete plan but
a clearer view of what is needed to achieve what you want.
- Umesh Shanmugam
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