An Olympian’s Perspective
Welcome to an Olympian’s Perspective
A brief intro to the blog series that will challenge you to see the world through different lenses and invite you to make positive changes within yourself (and your organization).
I competed in the 2014 Olympics in Pairs Figure Skating; I didn’t medal (I always get asked this and I am sorry to disappoint you!) but medaling had never been the goal for me- qualifying and competing was. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have been overjoyed with an Olympic medal, but I believe that a large contributor to a successful career is the ability to set realistic, yet challenging goals for ourselves; that’s why my focus was always on qualifying for the Olympics, rather than on winning them. Maybe if I had continued to compete for a couple more Olympics my goals would have changed accordingly, but for my first and only Olympics, my singular goal had always been to qualify and compete.
And call it cliché or corny, but those two programs that I competed at the Olympics created moments that are unparalleled to anything else I have experienced since then. To have a lifetime of sweat, tears, hopes, losses, trust, sacrifices, teamwork and dreams be represented in 6.5 minutes of soul-bearing skating that I am unconditionally proud of, for an audience all over the world... is magically gratifying, humbling and empowering in a way I don’t even begin to know how to duplicate for myself. What I do know, is that those moments at the Olympics are the foundation of the career I am building now.
I built a 20-year career, reached the epitome of sporting success, and lived out a dream all before the age of 24.
And then I retired.
And it was extremely difficult.
And I felt lost for a very long time.
My Dad said to me in the early months of my retirement, that unbeknownst to myself at the time, sparked a fire within me that has led me to become an Executive Performance Coach.
He essentially challenged me to think about what I could do with the knowledge and education that I had gained through my years of being an elite athlete. I can remember scoffing at him and thinking “pffft, who outside of skating cares to know how to do a triple toe loop?”.
It took me years of experiencing life outside of sports to realize that he had never been talking about the technical or physical components of skating. He had been asking me to think about how I could use my wealth of knowledge, experience, and perspective on the mental components of performance to help impact others. (Or maybe he wasn’t meaning that at all either, and that was just my own realization from it- either way, thanks Dad!)
What I have learned about life outside of sport, is quite simply, that most people don’t see the world in the same way that I, as an athlete, do. The majority of leaders don’t pursue life, goals, or dreams in the same way that an athlete is trained to. And athletes don’t experience failure, feedback, challenges, setbacks, comparison, leadership, time management, growth, change, .... in the same way the majority does.
Olympic athletes become Olympians because they are put into a unique, pressurized system that either makes or breaks you. We either adopt the skills and mindset that allows us to excel, or we fall short. Imagine- you have a single focus that you put all of your time and energy into, you have one goal –the Olympics-- and you have one chance to be on top of a podium out of everyone in your country, every 4 years. All of your eggs literally go into one basket.
It is 100% an abnormal scenario.
To give ourselves the best chance at making our Olympic dreams come true, we learnto think, train, process information, and live abnormally. We learn to perfectly balance an imbalanced approach to life. We embrace life outside the norm. And for those who make the Olympics, we learn to excel outside the norm.
Every aspect of our life is designed to challenge the status quo.
I now am dedicating my life to help professionals challenge their own status quo. The world of business and the world of sport run many parallels; both are results driven and both are dependent on human performance. Yet how much time is spent on helping business professionals cultivate the skills and mindset necessary for outstanding results?
The question that continues to pound through my head as I view this world through my sports-tainted lenses, is what could be possible if more people were better equipped to challenge the status quo? If businesses and people didn’t just strive to “get the job done” or to be “good enough” but rather, they strove to always be better? What if change wasn’t something to be resisted by leaders or employees because they were so invested in growth? What could businesses and professionals be capable of, what dreams could be realized, if more people worked to solve the question “why not?” rather than “why?”?
As I share some of the questions, thoughts and insights that I have, I invite you to follow along and challenge you to see your world through an Olympian's perspective.
I will never tell you how to do your job, and I’ll (likely) never tell you how to do a triple toe loop, but I sure as hell can and will share some of the elements in my life that are outside the norm, that will help you to become better at whatever you’re pursuing, and that will change your perspective on life in the way that you need it to.
I mean, why not?