I’m a big proponent of setting goals—and reaching them. And we all like to win—to cross that finish line once we’ve put ourselves in a competition, no matter if we compete against ourselves or against others. We want to know we have done our best and achieved that gold medal, which could be anything from losing 15 pounds to publishing a book to improving a relationship. However, we also make choices about how we achieve goals. And then we have to live with ourselves after we make those decisions.
In the last week, however, I’ve been bombarded with information that seems to show me that people will put winning, or achieving their goal, above anything else—even their integrity. In fact, they achieve their goal but they don’t do it in a way that really accomplishes it at all. The choices they make about how they accomplish that goal actually negate the accomplishment in the end. In such cases, you have to ask, “What’s the point, really?”
Look at Lance Armstrong, who has finally admitted he took performance enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France. That’s possibly how he won it all seven times. The cyclist was stripped of his Tour titles, lost most of his endorsements and was forced to leave Livestrong last year after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a, report that accused him of masterminding a long-running doping scheme, according to the Toledo Blade. He was also stripped of his 2000 Olympic bronze medal back in January.
When I see Armstrong, who survived cancer, and who has thousands, maybe millions of people wearing his yellow Livestrong bracelets and looking up to him as a role model—or did, and I see a man that is now nothing more than a liar. Not only that, the goal he achieved—winning seven Tour de France races—was never really achieved at all. Yes, he made it across the finish line, but I have to wonder if he would have done so had he not taken performance enhancing drugs. Is he the athlete we thought he was? Could he meet those goals without help of some sort? And I bet he wonders the same thing. The title is gone, as is the Olympic medal. He has achieved nothing after all.
Last night I watched the movie The Words. In it a struggling writer finds a manuscript and ends up saying it is his own, getting it published and becoming famous. His other works of lesser quality then get published because the first book was such a success. They don’t get published because they have merit on their own. The original author of the novel finds him, and he must live with the repercussions of not only living a lie but of knowing he really never achieved his goal of writing a great novel. Like Armstrong, he achieved his success with a form of “performance enhancing drug”; in this case his drug was someone else’s manuscript, which helped him cross the finish line. Yet, the writer knows he never had the talent to cross the finish line–to get published–without that help. Thus, despite the achievement, he has really achieved nothing.
Immediately after watching The Words, I happened to see reference to a news story from a few weeks ago about Spanish athlete Iván Fernández Anaya who aided a fellow runner cross the finish line to win a race. Fernández Anaya was competing in a cross-country race in Burlada, Navarre. He was running second, some distance behind race leader Abel Mutai. He saw the Kenyan runner pull up about 10 meters before the finish, mistakenly thinking he had already crossed the line. Fernández Anaya caught up with Mutai, but instead of exploiting the other runner’s mistake to claim a victory that really wasn’t his, he stayed just behind him and guided the Kenyan to the finish line and let him cross first.
I think what Fernández Anaya had to say was interesting. In this particular race, he had little at stake. Thus, it was easy to let Mutai, a bronze medalist in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the London Olympics, win. He adds: “But I also think that I have earned more of a name having done what I did than if I had won. And that is very important, because today, with the way things are in all circles, in soccer, in society, in politics, where it seems anything goes, a gesture of honesty goes down well.”
Had he not helped the other runner across the finish line, he would have had to live with the fact that he had not honestly won the race. He was not the real winner. He didn’t take performance enhancing drugs or steal someone else’s work, but had he rushed on by Mutai he would have taken a race well-run by someone else and called it his own win because of a simple mistake made by the other. He wouldn’t have really achieved his goal.
It’s important to have goals. It’s important to achieve them. The means by which you do so, however, are just as important. They say something about who you are.
Whether the stakes are high or low, you have to live with yourself once you cross the finish line. You have to live with you and how you achieved those goals. Be sure you really achieve what you set out to achieve and that you can live with the way in which you win the race–and that you remain a winner. Allow your own power to propel you over the finish line.
Photo courtesy of pichart99thai | freedigitalphotos.net
