Watching the Winter Olympics has brought the question even more clearly into focus: What does it take to be a champion? The interviewers of the skaters, skiers, and their coaches all reveal the same triumvirate--dedication, persistence, and passion--to perform and compete no matter what, or if the medal.
From Bode Miller winning his fifth Olympic Gold to Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir dance-skating their way to victory, winning goes way beyond nationalism. It's dedication, persistence, passion.
The Olympians candidly revealed how long it took them to perfect their skills--five to ten hours every single day for years, going over and over a particular run or routine, experimenting with trampolines, weights, music. They all looked at how they could be better. Much better. They had coaches whose only mission was to make them better.
Who among us doesn't ache to be better at something? But we can achieve more and make that kind of training work for us. We can begin to develop muscles, not just physical, but the mental muscles that it takes to make us champions no matter what our jobs, no matter what our industry.
This career coach would prescribe the following year's worth of competition training: Pinpoint a skill that you need to learn or improve for your job--whether it's a computer skill or accounting skill or managerial skill, anything.
First, make a plan of accomplishment for the rest of 2010. Plot out a way to perceptively improve. You might need to take some training or start from scratch, improve a little or a lot. Perhaps you'll want to apply to a summer institution over your vacation or enroll at night school or a technical center. It may even mean hiring a tutor or private teacher if no such class exists.
Second, you need a mentor or career coach--someone with whom you can bravely check in to show progress or reveal procrastination; to ask for advice or criticism, positive and negative. Be excruciatingly honest.
Keep records of meetings, ideas, progress, even feelings in a special notebook. Label it as brazenly as you dare--Olympiad, Gold Medal, or Champion! Pay attention to it every day, even if only for a few minutes.
I met a champion junior weightlifter once who confided to me that he knew he wasn't the strongest in his category, but he surely was the strongest who went to the gym every day. I never forgot hi message. I believe it works the same for us, whether we're developing muscles, minds or both.
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