Unlocking Your Best Year: An Olympic-Inspired Approach
As the year takes off, in Paris, they are taking down the last decorations of the Olympics. On the freeways and bike lanes, one can still see the outlines of the decals that once decorated the road, lampposts, and everything in the city of light. Seeing these last remnants disappear reminds me of the most important lesson I learned from seeing the Olympics live for the first time. It’s a lesson that can help us make the most of this year.
Despite being the best in the world, the athletes’ performances at the Olympics were not perfect! It was amazing how often they stumbled, tripped, dropped, fumbled, and failed. If one were an alien, unfamiliar with the limits of human capability, watching the Olympics for the first time, given how often the athletes failed, it might even have been possible to conclude they were trying routines for the first time.
My point is that it was not the flawlessness of the effort that made the Olympics inspiring. Rather, what made their performances breathtaking was how they had the courage to push themselves to the edge—to the very frontier—of their capability. Although we winced when they fell, it was only out of sadness to see the greatness of their ambition unachieved. And when they nailed it, especially on the third and final try, we leapt from our seats screaming with joy, not because of the perfection, but because their courage allowed them to do something marvelous.
There is a deep lesson for life and work embedded in the experience. Many of us face significant challenges in life and work, and although we try our best, inevitably we stumble in those ambitions, which can be immensely discouraging. But what makes our own effort worthy of admiration is not the perfection of the first try, but the effort of pushing into uncomfortable territory, and by trying over and over again, despite the stumble and failure!
It is a lesson that emerged several times in our research on leading through change and uncertainty. One of our interviewees, David Hieatt, co-founder of Hiut Denim, the DO Lectures, and Howies (ranked one of the world’s top brands) pointed out a fundamental truth: “When we are only doing things that we’re certain of, we are following our formula. And therefore, we’re never going to do anything really new. We’re never really going to break through.” By contrast, “When we start ignoring our formula and go and find out there is a new, better way of doing things, I think both as people and businesses, we become much more interesting.”
He’s right, but the big question is how? We stay back from the frontier precisely because we fear we might stumble and fail. But what the Olympians and David Hieatt are trying to teach us is that the process of stumbling through the frontier of life and work is precisely the process to discover our best work! Of course, it can feel confusing, frightening, and even discouraging to be at the frontier.
The discomfort of being at the frontier reminds me a bit of the line in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. At one point in the film, the main character suddenly steps offstage and admits, “I don’t understand this play.” Although the character is talking about the play, it is really meant as a metaphor: the character is admitting I don’t understand my life! But the director simply responds: “Doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story.” It’s a wise and compassionate admission of how it feels but also how to move forward.
What we learned in the research is that the way through the discomfort of being at the frontier, and of stumbling, is to reframe these challenging circumstances as the frontiers where we can do our best work. As we move forward, whatever our circumstances, recall that we must step to the frontier if we want to do our best work. “It’s a skill that not many people have developed,” David Hieatt admits, but those who never try, those who stumble, “they’ll never ever find out what truly their best work is.”
Credit: Forbes.com
