As a former Olympic coach in the sport of Freestyle skiing I get asked this question a lot. Success at an Olympic games takes years of preparation and has several key aspects to develop to meet your goal of success. “Why does adding 5 colourful rings to an event every four years create so much pressure?”
My viewpoint on success is that it takes a team of support, and strength in many areas. I describe in a way like a F1 race car. The car has several systems to make it the fastest and all the different systems must work together to make it the fastest on the track even before you add a driver. It can fall apart from a simple choice of putting the wrong tires on the car for the conditions. From an athletic perspective you need four key elements to make it to the top. Focus, positive self-belief, hard work, and a support network around you. If one of these are missing or is not running at full speed, you’re putting yourself in to the other 98% of the population. The support network is also a major key to success. These elements are made of the following: physical fitness support/ training coach, mental support/ sports phycologist, recovery support/ massage, injury/nutrition support/ doctor, and sport specific support of coaches. Now that we have built the support team and the found the athlete with the 3 key factors, we have a package that can produce success. Going back to my F1 analogy and think about why 2 different drivers in the same car can have such drastically different results? It comes down to what they are doing more than the rest of the field. It can be as simple as having the mental capacity to push the car to its very edge more than the other driver. This is where the mental strength can have so much influence on a result. The negative talk, fear of failure, previous injuries, and so many other negatives can derail success. In most sports mental fitness is the always the one that is left out or only given a small amount of focus and time. If the athlete allows for negative experiences and setbacks to dictate their success that is exactly what will happen! Ask any athlete who has competed on the world stage how they got there? Has anyone ever said “Ya, was pretty easy, didn’t train much, didn’t make any mistakes or loss any competitions, not sure what all the fuss is about…” It’s normally quite the opposite. Athletes learn from failure. Failure is looked upon as a bad thing or a negative. When it’s quite the opposite. Athletes learn from their mistakes and analyse with a microscope every tiny detail of where things went wrong to improve the next time. A successful high-performance athletes thrive on failure because it helps them to grow and be better.
Now taking these tools and applying it to an athlete’s performance can be translated into the business world as well. Typically, these athletes do very well in the business world. Have you asked the questions “why?”. Usually, it’s because they are comfortable to “fail” or learn from “failure”. Most people have been taught or have a negative reaction to failure. Also, failure can be discased as many little things to stop or reduce an outcome.
So, success is made up of many parts and can be easily overturned by a negative experience or reaction to failure. Let’s not forget the Olympics in this as well. What is it about this event every four years? What does it do to athletes? The bottom line it creates pressure to perform your personal best! To obtain success in sport or business you need to have a positive mindset, be open to learning, be ok with getting it wrong, and focus on the positives. You may not become the Wayne Gretzky of sport, but it comes back to the realistic goal setting that was created at the start. Have a plan, work hard, review the plan regularly, celebrate the small wins, enjoy the journey!
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