An Olympic silver medal

Throwback to the 2012 Olympics...

Yesterday, I watched an interview with Valerie Adams, the New Zealand shot putter, reigning Olympic champion, who was expected to get the gold again. She didn’t, missing out to her Belarusian competitor. As she was interviewed, she was fighting back tears. A silver medal…and she was devastated.

In the first few days of the Olympics, the New Zealand equestrian eventing team, which included 56-year-old Mark Todd, won bronze. In a post-match interview, Todd shared his medal with the reporter before joyously lifting her into his arms. A bit of a contrast to Valerie.

So, who was more successful? What does success even depend on? Who or what determines whether we are successful or not? Is it a matter of perspective? Is it gold medals? Money? Power?

A lot of questions, but maybe it's something we need to ask ourselves a lot of questions about, because I think it's easy to just assume that the world's view of success should be our view of success.

If success is about status and money and power, what happens when we know we can't achieve those things? When we know we're never going to be as rich as Bill Gates, never going to win as many Grand Slams as Roger Federer, never going to sell as many books as J.K. Rowling...should we just stop trying?

I don't think that everyone needs to platform of a world stage to be successful.

I love Martin Luther King Jr,'s quote:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelopainted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

To me, that is success - doing what we do, what we're called to do, but doing it to the best of our ability, whatever the outcome of that.

But even in that, there is so much room for failure, another concept that the world has too often dictated to us. Is it merely the absence of success? We need to make a distinction between setback and failure, because so often, life deals us blows that knock us ten steps back when we have just fought hard to take two steps forward. You've worked yourself sick to show your boss you're worthy of promotion, only to see your lazy colleague get that step up. You've been getting up to train at 5 a.m. every morning but get injured the game before the squad is announced. You've put aside your insecurities and carefully, wisely invested yourself in a relationship, only to be led on and hurt.

These things are difficult to come back from. They are like a slap to the face that knocks you off your feet and makes you want to cower in the corner, nursing your wounds. But you know what? Getting knocked down is not failure. Failure is when you don't get up and try again.

Great successes often don't come before there has been failure. Michael Jordan is probably one of the most successful basketball players in the world. This is one of his famous quotes:

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Keep going. Don't turn away after missing the shot. Don't give up. Work towards the goal of doing your best at the things that make you come alive. I think that is the key to success.