Gold Medal Motivation

I have a cork-board in my office.  It’s behind the filing cabinet, but I still take a peak at it every once in a while.  It has a picture of a nice big remote cabin, a couple of nice cars, a World Vision sponsor child.  Jana and I were encouraged to create this “wall of fame” to symbolize what we would do if we made a ton of money through real estate investing.

Many people who’ve achieved highly have had some vision or symbol of what drives them.    For an Olympic athlete, it might be the picture of a gold medal.  Every time they get weary of the endless hours of practice they might look at the gold medal to remind them of what they’re suffering for.

Kohei Uchimura, the world’s number one ranked gymnast has a picture of a silver medal as his cel phone backdrop.  He has gold medals, but they are individual.  He expresses no pride in individual achievement, and counts a mistake during the team competition in the world gymnastics competition that cost his team the gold medal as “the low-point of his life.” 

I’m pretty sure he’s not pleased with the results today, nor how they came about.  As it turns out the item he’s been staring at is what his team achieved.  It’s pretty hard to see the road ahead if you’re looking in the mirror.  I’m not speculating that Japan’s failure to achieve gold was because of Uchimura’s fixation; the Chinese gymnasts earned that gold by a healthy margin.

I would suggest that when you determine what you’d like to achieve, you put a symbol of that on your cel-phone or computer desk-top.  Spend your time imagining the joy of a successful outcome.  Then go out and earn it!