So I was watching the Rio Olympics 2016 10,000 meter final. The whole race takes over 30 minutes.
Being a long-distance runner, I could relate to how tough it was to keep up your endurance. These people were gasping for air.
About a quarter of the way through the race, one of the runners tripped and fell. He got swept up by the crowd and fell behind.
Most people don’t know that they put actually put metal spikes on your shoes to make you run faster. He almost got sliced up too.
This doesn’t happen often, but I can understand how it can in the Olympics. Everyone’s pushing each other, it’s crowded, and it’s an important event.
After it happened, the camera replayed it a few times, and everyone shook their head and said it was a huge error. This guy lost unnecessary time because of that.
When I saw that, I thought, “Wow, that sucks. This guy is screwed.” And I had no idea that it happened to Great Britain’s Mo Farah, the guy who ended up winning the event.
Mo did not overreact to the fall. Yes, it cost him a few seconds. Yes, he had to use extra energy to catch up in this event.
But he did not give him. He still believed he could win. And he prepared enough ahead of time.
Here’s the video of what happened:
What’s even more crazy is that he won the Gold Medal by less than a second.
Here’s what I took as life lessons from this event. Let it help you in growing your wealth and success:
- Do not overreact to unexpected bad events. Just quickly recover and keep going.
- Do not lose hope or belief that you can succeed because of an unexpected bad event.
- The world is not always fair. You can still be #1 with starting off with more disadvantages than everyone else.
- Prepare ahead of time so that you are so much better than your competitors that you still win even after unfair, unexpected setbacks.
Now, I want to hear from you.
What do you think about what happened? What did you take away from this?