Like many people around the world, I’ve been watching the Winter Olympics. I’ve been struck by the skaters in particular, who have had a number of falls.
It’s easy to sit back in my living room chair and criticize them for making mistakes and “blowing their big opportunity,” but I know how hard it is to compete at that level and to push through the nerves and jitters. I also empathize with them, feeling their emotional, as well as physical pain, as they hit the ice. Oh, what disappointment they must feel knowing that they haven’t performed up to their highest potential and that their moment in the spotlight has been darkened by their fall.
I wonder, thought, what makes them fall? What makes them perform so well at their home rink or at another competition? Is it just nerves? Is it that they are at the Olympics and that fact freaks them out? Or is it just that sometimes they manage to get in the zone and sometimes they don’t?
I wonder if it isn’t more likely that they weren’t having fun. I wonder if their performance that night became more about winning than about enjoying the actual performance and doing what they love–and doing it well.
Torah Bright, who had a bad fall while competing in the snowboarding competition during her first run in Vancouver at the Winter Olympics, came back to win gold. Why? She said she saw some fellow Australians watching the event and having fun. She decided to have fun, too. She went on to have a winning run.
I believe that if you can remember to perform with joy, or to do whatever you are doing from a place of joy, your nervousness will dissipate. You’ll forget that you are afraid. You can move through your fear and truly do your best. You’ll forget that big jump is coming up next, and you’ll just do the jump because you love doing the jump. And it will be perfect.
What about the rest of us? How often do we “fall” when we are focused more on winning than on simply doing our best and enjoying what we are doing? How often do we succeed when we take on the latter attitude? how often when we lose ourself in the enjoyment of doing whatever it is that we strive to do well do we find that we’ve had a “winning run” or a “star performance”? And if we have done our best and we’ve enjoyed our selves in the process, does the fall really matter so much? Probably not.
I’ve seen more skaters go away with a medal–and a gold medal at that–when they skated with sheer joy on their faces. That’s the lesson I’d take away from the 2010 Winter Olympics…at least from watching the skating and snowboarding events thus far. To truly win, do whatever you do with joy.
