Interesting thing, this Olympics.
3 billion of us are estimated to have responded to the invitation to revel in our national pride, determination and fitness by doing...um, yeah...nothing.
There we are watching elite athletes sweat and strain and compete for gold and what are we doing? Sitting/lying/sprawled perfectly motionless, (except for the odd groan or cheer) sometimes for hours at a time, our only exertion that of the hurculean effort it takes to bring the snacks and beverages not normally found in an Olympic athlete's diet up to our mesmerized mouths.
The juxtaposition of elite athletes with MacDonald's as the "official restaurant of the Olympic games" strikes me as more than a little strange too.
I've also been struck this week by what a unique career model an amateur athlete is. Take Kelly Vanderbeek, ski racer for the Canadian Olympic team, for example. She tore her ACL (yeah, I'm not sure what that means either, but I know it's bad) in December, thereby ending her 2010 Olympic dreams and it got me thinking: what if, instead of being bored, demanding or impatient with our careers, we followed the model of an amateur athlete?
What if we...
1. gave our best and worked towards a goal years and years in the future, without any guarantee that we would ever reach it--but we kept working and believing anyway?
2. delayed big financial rewards now and for years, doing training, paying our dues, building our skills so that when the big opportunity came along, we'd be as ready as we could be?
3. satisfied, nourished and celebrated ourselves with small goals (e.g. races/time improvements/new technical prowess) along the way...while we waited and waited and waited some more for our chance?
4. put all our career eggs/loves in one basket and worked consistently and happily towards that goal?
and perhaps hardest of all...
5. recognized that some of it is simply not in our control--torn ACLs happen and change everything in an instant--and instead of giving up, we started working towards a new goal?
Kelly Vanderbeek had a major career goal just weeks from her grasp. She had presumably done everything right and worked very, very hard toward her goal. And now she must wait...and work hard some more--four years more. How many of us do that when things are stagnating or worse--go that terribly wrong in our careers? I acknowledge that elite athletes are often from comfortable, if not wealthy stock and have a significant basis from which to harness opportunties that we might not all have. I still think the career model they follow from there is something we can learn from.
Kelly has a career she obviously loves but it's not without its moments of heartbreak and yet she doesn't abandon it or forget the joys it brings, even when the going gets really, really rough.
And, despite all her training and good fortune and disappointment, Kelly is, at her core, just a woman like you (okay, maybe with slightly whiter teeth) with a career to deal with. And like you, when you've had a bad day on the job, she might console herself momentarily with a cheeseburger and chocolate milkshake.
It's okay. We're all allowed a moment of decadence and self-pity and besides...
I've heard the "official restaurant of the Olympics" is welcoming customers.
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Christine, I love your humor and the way you make me think about my career by connecting everyday happenings to the process! This post really got me thinking (and smiling!) I think what Olympic athletes do is incredible. The discipline it takes to succeed and keep on going is awe inspiring. And I can see many ways this connects to having a successful. The one point I find myself wondering about is #4 - putting all your career eggs in one basket. While this is noble, I wonder what happens if we fail to plan for what comes after our Olympic careers are over? Will re-tooling be more difficult if we never allow ourselves to even entertain the thought of something else?
ReplyDeleteThanks for getting me thinking about this! Would love to hear your thoughts.
Very timely piece Christine! And food for thought (literally and figuratively!).
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered how athletes do it. I mean, presumably many of them have smaller goals in between (if "Worlds" can be a smaller goal!). But listening to Canadian Ice Dancing Gold Medallists chatting about how long they'd envisioned skating for Canada at the Olympics and winning...well it was YEARS.
I'd argue that perhaps some of us do this training without knowing it. I'm certainly not getting off the sofa to figure skate to classic dance music, but everyday that I work I'm building my skills, knowledge and expertise. I noticed one day that I knew A LOT more than I'd realized. It felt really good, you know? Like I don't have to work at the McD's of career ever again...I'm 5 star baby! But it crept up on me after years of honing my skills...
So we need to keep redefining success for ourselves and staying aware that what we put our time into is what we are "training" in unless we are actively training for something else on our own time.
Does that make sense? Does it matter?
Most important...I'm going to get hot chocolate after reading about the milkshake.
Karen