No, champions do not always win. As an athlete, I had to swim through many races even in the middle of hard training, or big swim meets. So yes, I lost races and that was disappointing at the time, but every race made me mentally stronger.
In our businesses, we go sailing along, we have our goals, we are unbeatable really, we are in that place...then there are those plateaus just like in sports, setbacks, pull backs, weeks where we are not really moving ahead, and for some it is a trigger that they are maybe not as good as they thought they were. Suddenly, little by little, self-doubt creeps in if you are not watchful and if you put yourself in that space.
Read Myth 2: Champions are Self-Made
So, you know what champions do? They leverage their setbacks, whatever they may be, to gain fresh perspective and recalculate the best way to reach their goals. For me, there were many times my Olympic goal seemed like it would remain a dream.
In Montreal, we had to totally recalculate and recalibrate EVERYTHING because we had no choice. Our past defeats gave us huge motivation. We used that motivation because we had to. There was nothing else we could do. It was what it was, and there was only one gold medal left for us to win. If my three teammates and I acknowledged the sheer adversity we were up against as we stood on the blocks one last time, history would have remembered us differently. We weren’t favored to win. We were the underdogs. We won the last gold against all odds by being hungry for it!
Wendy Bogioli (left) and her Olympic teammates.
We are facing our own trials and tribulations today, and to me, that is exciting. We are all doing things differently. Even in the face of the challenge of a worldwide pandemic that resulted in many, many losses, I know in my business, and certainly in your business, pivoting, being resilient, and facing the challenge head on has made all the difference. It’s what champions do. They never give up.
In the Olympic spirit,
Wendy