With the Summer Olympic tryouts this past week, I was reminded when 2008 Olympic all-around champion Nastia Luikin fell flat on her face during her routine in 2012.
From flat on her face, this mighty, blonde powerhouse reached up and grabbed the bar to complete her routine.
Whoah.
Pure awe.
Nastia’s fall and rise were a classic phoenix rising from the ashes story.
I love stories like her’s because they remind me that “it’s never over, until it’s over,” that we get to say how we are going to ‘finish the game,’ that we get to say how ‘it’ all goes.
Olympic athletes are a mighty metaphor for how to live life.
What empowered Nastia to continue in the face of a such a fall? What roused her to get back up to finish her routine, even though she likely new her chance to join the ranks of Summer Olympic athletes was no longer possible?
I suspect what roused her is her training to never quit, to complete what she started.
Whatever it was, she was fierce.
Her fierceness reminds me of my client Marianne who reached out to me for a touch-base, coaching call recently. Marianne is committed to her health and wellness, like a bonified Olympic Athlete no doubt, but she fell off the get-healthy wagon since our working together last year. Busy schedules. Deadlines. Fatigue. She got pulled out, but now candida has taken hold and caused imbalance in her body.
Or maybe even like my former client and ginormously successful business mogul Robert who texted me, “I need accountability, what can we create? I want to lose weight and totally up level my get-healthy game. I’ve fallen off track.”
Here are 6 lessons I learn from Olympic athletes and my clients on an ongoing basis about all the benefits of staying in the game, 5 things you can use to up level your commitment to becoming your healthiest, most vibrant self:
- Winning isn’t a standalone endgame. Every time you ‘try,’ you flex your get-healthy muscle and you get stronger, more convicted, more resolute in your commitment. So what if you fall off the healthy wagon! Get back on! Begin again.
- Become an ongoing learner. Olympic athletes and every one of my clients spend an enormous amount of time studying their area of expertise AND what they most want to master by hiring coaches who help them take their career and their health to the next level (like me), listening to or reading books, studying those who have achieved mastery and even create personalized daily rituals to help them stay in the game!
- Think BIG, bigger than this moment. Olympic athletes go into the competition with BIG dreams. I guide clients to create the ‘classic’ S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based), BUT I also guide them to create unreasonable, outrageous, even preposterous goals … goals that thrill and excite them … goals that might seem impossible in the moment. Think about it, would most have thought Gandhi as smart to think he could contest England’s colonization over India initially? Or, Martin Luther King goal’s in challenging social norms that excluded Black Americans from public spaces achievable? Or Gloria Steinem’s efforts to help women gain equal opportunity relevant? Creating unreasonable goals, reaching for the BIG and lofty is as important as creating smart goals!
- Be congruent. Olympic athletes and my clients create actions to meet their word, especially when they falter. They reach up for the bar and get back in the game. They find mentors, resources, others like them to help them, anything to help them put the rubber on the road, even when they fall. They do what it takes to move the dial forward!
- Preparation. Preparation is the game changer. Abraham Lincoln seemed to have the same formula as Olympic athletes, and one that I impress upon my clients. Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Preparation take the lead when it’s show time.
- Never quit. Quiting is no longer an option. You burned the boat. You closed the door. Anything less than completing what you set out to achieve is no longer possible.
I know what it took for Nastia to reach back up for that bar. I know what it took for Marianne and Robert to reach out to me to up level their game.
I too have had to do get back up over and over and over again, with failed launches, missed business opportunities, utter free-falling without a steady paycheck as an entrepreneur and even battling my sugar addiction! I know what it’s like to fall ‘on may face’ repeatedly.
But I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve grown from flexing my commitment to expanding my message of healing and wellness, from staying in the game of learning and thinking BIG (think crazy BIG), from preparing, preparing and preparing, from burning the boat, while aligning my actions to my word. I can’t begin to tell you the ginormous, life altering results my clients have experienced from getting back in the game.
Your get-healthy game and life will dramatically shift if you keep flexing your get-healthy muscle, especially when you fall, especially when you lose your way … if you keep learning and growing, if you think BIG, bigger than this moment might say is possible, if you take your commitment serious and do what it takes to prepare for success, if you burn the boat, AND if you get congruent with what you say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it.
Leave a comment: What lesson resonates most for you? Do Olympic athletes inspire you too? What idea do you think we help you best?
Yes! These Olympic athletes give more than there all everyday. That inspires me to try a little harder every day!
Karyn, as you know, when we become congruent with what we say and what we do, our life changes! We can be an Olympic athlete in our commitments, or … we can be part of the crowd. The choice is ours. And … we fall off the balance beam, AND we get back on.