Have you been watching the Winter Olympics?  Anything in particular stand out to you?  Are you amazed, like I am, by the sheer speed of the luge or bobsled shooting down that tube of ice?  The precision and teamwork of how they direct the stone in curling or pairs figure skating, when the man literally throws the female skater twenty feet through the air and she lands perfectly?  Or how about the grit and endurance of cross country skiing?

It’s all very impressive.  But something else struck me about the Olympics—almost everybody who participates is a loser.  About 85% of all the athletes that compete will not get a single medal, and even fewer will win gold.  And some of the favorites—the ones everybody expects to win—will fall, or crash, or miss their mark, or be edged out by a competitor at the line and be sorely disappointed.

What do you make of those athletes?  If you competed in the Olympics, would winning a gold medal be the only thing that counted as success in your eyes?  What if you were the speed skater who had the best performance of his life, broke the Olympic record, but ended up in second place?  Would you see him as a success or a failure?

There’s an old saying, that “winning isn’t everything.”  But back in the 1950’s, UCLA football coach Red Sanders modified the saying to, “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”  On his view, the Olympics is chock full of failures.  I don’t see it that way.  No, I’m with Teddy Roosevelt, who famously said,

“The credit belongs to the man…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

There is a difference between having our success motivated by winning and having it measured by winning.

Have a wonderful day.