Habits, Olympic Thoughts, and Musings
August 26, 2008
Did you watch the Olympics? I’ve heard that over 4 billion people watched at least some parts.
Wow. What a show, from just about any way that you want to look at it.
The Chinese are reported to have spend 50 billion dollars on the event, with all the new construction, festival, support services, coordinating upwards of a million volunteers, training, consumes, infinite tiny little details, etc.
And the athletes. Wow. Forget for a minute the issues about a few of them being under-aged, or on drugs, or flopping, or even the what China is like being the scenes.
The athletes are the show. The pageantry is awesome, but it’s not the show. The show is all about the years of training, work, and sacrifice that it takes just to be considered for the Olympic team, much less hit the gold. Imagine the habits that have to be formed and the attitude that these people need to develop.
Nerves? Part of the training they work on is getting past the nerves and the fear. Hard enough doing a talk in front of your group at work, now imagine doing a routine on the balance beam in front of 4 billion people.
How many times does a sprinter work on the launch? How about that little bend over they do when crossing the finish line?
Most of the actions these people do they’ve done to the point where they become habit, and how many times does one have to practice a Vault for that habit to happen?
Getting the Focus
They’re way beyond the “Ok, now I have to do this thing this way and I have to look for this point and I hope I don’t…” With the rare exception where concentration cracks a bit they’ve developed the habit (yeah, I say it’s a habit) of focusing exactly what they want to do and on shutting out all distractions.
I’d even say that most of them aren’t even aware of the audience when they’re doing whatever their event or routine happens to be, especially for the short events. Obviously in a team sport, such as Soccer, the teams are aware of the audience and their cheers and jeers. Still, the habits and the focus are where they have to be.
Now I’m the last person anyone would ever think of as Olympic material, but I did some Martial Arts for awhile. At times the going was easy and at times it was just hard. They easy parts were when I had the training habit down and a routine established, which made the concentration easy.
It’s way too easy to lose that habit.
Even the little habits, much less what it takes to Pole Vault in front of a billion or two people, can drop out of whack with surprisingly little effort.
But if we can find a way to lock in the actions and thoughts which create good habits then we’re on the road to where we want to be. Obviously all those marvelous Olympians, even the one who weren’t competitive, had those habits.
Nothing’s stopping us from developing ours, but the “how” part can be hard, and a little help is nice. The Athletes have their coaches, mentors, support, etc. and there’s not reason that we can’t have the same.
There’s a book which will help you on this path: the Habit guide.
It’s a great way to start building the right habits that are needed to hit your goals, even if they aren’t balance beam routines.
Get your copy of this very helpful book, here.
More Resources for Creating Good Habits:
Millionaire Mindset to Achieve Financial Freedom - Repeated action leads to good habit. Good habits lead to positive character. Positive character and attitude lead to phenomenal result and destiny. Begin to take action and make our dreams become real. Inspiring Journey To Financial …
Good Habits Are Hard to Break - You can train yourself to create mostly positive outcomes on a daily basis in your life by developing good habits. How often have you walked away from some sort of minor catastrophe, disaster or accident, in the kitchen or otherwise, …
Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival: Good Habits Edition - I can’t think of a better way to keep motivated in our endeavors to create good habits than the experiences she shares in this entry. She shows how putting down a new “habit rail” brings more freedom to your life. …
Habits: how to create good ones - 2. I want to relinquish myself from my need from sugar. 3. I want to feel accomplished. HOW DO I CREATE GOOD HABITS? I googled: How to create healthy habits and came across this great blog. Creating Healthy Habits …
Back To School - 17 Good Habits For A Successful Life - It is an indicator of whether you mean what you say and can be trusted. Do not introduce doubt about this into people’s minds by showing up later than expected. Create the habit of being punctual now and you won’t have to worry. …
The Habit guide - The Habit Guide shows you how to live a happy, healthy lifestyle for good. Perfect for newbies and seasoned health seekers alike, Mike Kinnaird reveals every step-by-step detail you must know to finally lose weight, get healthy and set yourself free…”
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Tags: dreams, habit guide, habits, Olympics
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August 26th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Hi Greg, thanks for the link to Habit Guide.
You’re spot on — skills are really just complex habits. It’s the same part of the brain that’s being used. Mike gives this example in Habit Guide: A dancer consciously learns her routine, but once she’s on stage, it’s all pretty much all automatic.
Our lives are larger scale versions of this. Most of us have pretty much the same routine that we follow every day. This has it’s advantages of course. But because our brains are “geared up” for this habit-based behavior, we can find ourselves doing the same unhealthy things for years on end.
Without the right knowledge, habits are very hard to shift. But of course, in time, good habits become just as automatic as bad ones. As you mentioned, they “lock in”, just like the old unhealthy habits did in the first place.
So the transition is trickiest part. But there are some specific things you can do to make it a LOT easier…
In terms of “how to be healthy”, the “how to change” information is absolutely critical. Yet I’d NEVER read a health or diet book that showed me how to do it. I’m sure that’s the main reason Habit Guide is proving popular.
~ James
September 1st, 2008 at 7:52 am
Habit gets us down in all ares of life, bad eating is a habit as is too much TV. We can change our lives by just making small habit adjustments, sticking to it until it is a habit. Giving up is a habit!
September 8th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
We all could use good Olympic habits in our life!
November 18th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
[…] to get past a few issues to move on. Fear holds us back, not the “other guy.” Fear is a habit and if we can get past the fear we can move far beyond where ever we are […]