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Thrill of Victory

Guest post by: Jordan Crouter

Article Overview: To dream and to actually visualize yourself achieving your goals and dreams is a key factor in finding success. During the Olympics athletes have shared stories that early in their lives they actually had drawn pictures of themselves on the podium receiving an Olympic medal. They started early in life visualizing their success and allowed the images to imprint on their minds.

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Thrill of Victory

Normally I am not able to sit down long enough at the TV to spend time watching anything longer than an episode of Animal's Gone Wild, since I am a type A personality. However, I am an extremely competitive person so I find the bigger events like a championship game exciting enough to grab my attention. It is with that explanation that I want to discuss something that I observed at the 2010 Olympics.


I admire anyone who makes the type of sacrifices and commitment in order to be the best in the world at a particular sport. In fact, this year one athlete actually lost his life in his attempt to negotiate a tough luge course. So, I take a lot away from the stories of the athletes involved in the years of preparation, injuries, disappointments, and all that goes into the human interest stories behind each athlete. It seems like you and I can always take something away from the lives of these athletes and make some application to our own lives.


My dad was telling me that years ago there was coverage of the Olympics by a network who called it the ABC Wide World of Sports. He said they had this old black and white TV coverage showing samples of the winter Olympic event that showed a ski jumper coming down the huge ski jump and losing control before he even jumped off the ramp. The shot shows this man taking a terrible fall while going off of the jump and tumbling off the end of the ski jump into the fans on the side of the hill watching. The voice on the TV would say something like "The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat." This is definitely one time in sports when you see so much of that drama compacted into one week, over and over again. These athletes epitomize all of the things we've learned about visualizing, dreaming, over coming pain, commitment and doing whatever it takes to make it to the finish.


You can't read anything regarding personal development and not see the words about DREAMING and DESIRES and how important they are to achieving your goals in life and business. In fact this year they showed how one U.S. women's skier, Julia Mancuso, had actually drawn a picture of herself in the Olympics at age 4 and now here she was skiing for the gold medal. One women ice skater even took the ice for her competition a couple of days after her mother unexpectedly died. She went on to win the Bronze medal to win to pay tribute to her mother since they had shared that dream. She too, said she had imagined as a child standing on the podium holding her Olympic medal.


There are myriads of these human interest stories this year but one that really seemed to catch my attention was the Dutch speed skater named Sven Kramer. He was a national hero with the Dutch where speed skating is such a national sport. He was the favorite to win the 10,000 meter. He had taken the lead in his race and was well on his way to winning the Gold and setting an Olympic record in the process. The racers have to make lane changes in this event and as he was well ahead of the pack he was told by his coach to change lanes and as he followed his coaches direction, he committed a mistake that resulted in his immediate disqualification. He had done everything that was required of him and done it to the best of his ability. Something that was perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity. But, somehow fate stepped in and dealt him and his coach a terrible blow. Obviously for him it was an unbelievable disappointment along with anger. For his coach, an unimaginable mistake that he will have to live with.


The athlete at first showed real disgust and even anger with his coach but throughout the recorded interviews that followed he took a higher road and admitted that humans can make mistakes and he had to move on. My thoughts gravitated towards events in my life when I have felt wronged or disappointed when I had done all that I could and due to circumstances beyond my control, things did not come out the way I dreamed of or intended.


Perhaps there are things in your own lives that have happened as well where someone in your own life was well-intentioned and maybe gave you some wrong advice or while trying to do what they they thought was the right thing for you and your development or career, turned out to be devastating to you.

Just like these athletes, you need to put it behind you, move on and not hold blame to anyone. You are in control of the outcome and even more important, you are in control of how it impacts you personally and what effect it has on your life. We can always find enjoyment or the thrill of victory but it shows what we are made of when we deal with the agony of defeat.

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Article Tags: achieving your goals, agony of defeat, Bronze Medal, coach, goals and dreams, Gold Medal, images, Olympic athletes, Olympic medal, Olympics, Silver Medal, thrill of victory

About the Author: Jordan Crouter
RSS for Jordan's articles - Visit Jordan's website

I was raised knowing I could BE, DO, and HAVE whatever I want, as long as I just make BIG decisions and put my mind to it.  

I did exactly that, and so can you.  Just get out of your own way!

 

 

 



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Re: Good role models (and a rant on women in today's TV) Re: Good role models (and a rant on women in today's TV) - [quote="BuzzAroundBooks":zr494s8r]In that case, which shows on tv (if any) do you enjoy watching? And if you had the money are there any good role models on tv you'd ask to endorse your products and services?[/quote:zr494s8r] Heh heh. To tell the truth, I don't watch a lot of "new" TV. I watch a lot of sports, and see the advertisements for the dramas, sitcoms, reality shows, and so on, that way, and so I can tell what they're about, and what kind of people the women portray, without actually having to watch them! What I'd like to see are TV shows that show women pilots, bicyclists, and so on. (I'd really like to increase the profile of bicyclists on city streets, because in the good ol' USA, even though drivers are supposed to share the road with cyclists, 9 out of 10 of em think cyclists are supposed to be on sidewalks. Have some big name actors like Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, riding through the streets on bikes urging people to do likewise...might do some good!) I'd like to see astronauts such as Shannon Lucid and Eileen Collins in programs, or the various female Air Force pilots (I just interviewed Donna Kohout, for example, first woman to fly a Nighthawk, for my Winged Victory webzine), etc. etc. The shows I watch are the DVDs of the ones I grew up with as a kid, The Avengers with John Steed and Emma Peel (Emma Peel was and is a role model for me), Banacek, Columbo, etc.! I used to watch Law and Order, too...but it's many spinoffs have never appealed....
You just can't win - a very long story You just can't win - a very long story - I recently started a new webzine for women in aviation. My initial title was taken...so I thought about a new title. I wanted something that would say women and aviation at the same time. I came up with You Fly, Girl. (Although I've stated in the past I dont' like women being referred to as girls, since this ezine is kind of aimed at teens...and teens are girls...I decided to go with the title.) I then posted a request for interviews at a webzine frequented by lots of pilots, including women. Including the famous Patty Wagstaff! In factr she responded - on the site, saying that she didn't like the title. She'd worked hard to be taken with respect, and was a woman, not a girl. (She didn't say this in a rude way, I'm just paraphrasing her point.) A couple of the other female pilots there voiced the same concern. So, I decided to change the title. Since the site is still in the "a-borning" stages and isn't listed on search engines yet, it was no problem to change the title. I decided to go for Winged Victory: Women in Aviation. Then, someone gave me the URL for an organization of female fighter pilots (a small and select band of military pilots, obviously). The name of their website? fighterchicks.com Now, to me, I find being addressed as a "chick" to be more offensive than being called a girl, but these women obviously didn't feel that way. So, I emailed the website owner, explaining that I had a new website and was requesting interviews. She emailed me back and said that she had forwarded my message to "the girls." I just had to laugh. (And, on a side note, one of 'em, who was the first woman to fly an F-117 (the stealth fighter) has agreed to do an interview!)


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