Video transcript:
Two of the athletes that caught my attention from the Winter Olympics this past month and two athletes that I think every athlete should be taking notes of regardless of what sport you play are Alyssa Liu and Eileen Gu. And I think the most helpful takeaway that any athlete can gain from watching them compete and listening to them speak is in their respective competitive mindsets.
And now they’re a little bit different but they produce the same attitudes towards failure and towards losing. And that’s, it’s not possible. Alyssa Liu said that her mindset was that the competitive environment for her was like a stage to showcase her art. She said her goal wasn’t to win a gold medal or to really, to win anything, but it was just to give people an experience.
And you can tell when you watched your skate because it looked like she was having a blast the entire time. And the result was, she came home with two gold medals. Eileen Gu’s approach was a little bit different. She said that her motto is, train like you’ve never won and compete like you’ve never lost.
She said that for competition she flips this switch and becomes a killer. It’s kind of like Kobe’s “Mamba Mentality” where he would flip the switch and become someone else entirely. She said that her goal was not to win any number of medals but simply to have the most fun possible and to be fully present in the experience.
The result for her was one gold medal and two silvers. And while both athletes might have different approaches and different emotional states that allow them to compete at their best, losing wasn’t possible for them. They were 100% committed to being fully present and to having a blast doing it. And on a stage where we see all the time, even the best athletes in the world aren’t able to handle that pressure, they were at their best.
Now I’m not telling you that winning shouldn’t be a goal of yours, but we have to ask ourselves, what’s the mindset that gives me the best chance to win? And not just win, but to enjoy the experience? When we look at the best who do it, we see that it really is this compete like you can’t lose mentality.
If you paired this with incredibly intentional training, imagine how freely you’d compete, how much confidence you’d compete with, how confident your decision-making would be, how effectively you would bounce back from the mistakes, and you’ll still make mistakes, you’ll still lose. The best in the world do, far more than we often realize. But you’ll be putting yourself in the best position for success and the best position for enjoyment every time you compete.