Watching athletes stand on the podium, sniffling as their national anthem plays, it’s easy to get swept up in the romance of winning a gold medal. It’s also easy to forget that television has the bad habit of compressing time for viewers. Michael Phelps makes winning gold medals look easy. His races last only a minute or two while you watch, but what you don’t see are the all the years of early mornings, late nights, and self-sacrifice that lead to these heady moments.
It’s tempting to think, “He’s lucky.”
It’s not unlike the feelings generated by that annoying friend almost everyone has who retires early and spends their days golfing, or traveling, or learning to paint — even though she wasn’t an executive or a start-up CEO.
“She’s so lucky,” you might think.
But that would be a mistake. And a missed learning opportunity. The folks at Grow asked me to write about things people can learn about finances by watching the Olympics, and here’s a taste of what I had to say:
There’s a lot you can learn about setting goals and “winning” from watching the Olympics during the next two weeks. We begin with the most import lesson of all:
- Winning a gold medal takes only a moment. Preparing for that moment takes a lifetime.
Some Olympic competitions last only a few seconds. An athlete’s’ whole sports life is compressed into a single hurl of a javelin, or a vault, or a shot. That “moment of truth” may very well be the athlete’s only chance at sports glory. This makes for amazing television drama. But that’s all it is: TV drama. In real life, the athletes have to eat, sleep, and drink their sport for 10-20 years. Behind a 9-second 100 meter dash are hundreds of early mornings where the athlete refused to hit the snooze button, and instead hit the day running. Each day is a moment of truth. Each morning, a well-trained athlete wakes up faced with a question: “Do I want to go back to sleep, or do I want to win a gold medal some day?” Picking tomorrows goal over today’s snooze, day after day after day, is the key to success.
Going for financial “gold” requires this same kind of thinking. Day after day, monthly budget after monthly budget, you have to stay disciplined at stick to your goals. Your moment of truth comes each time you consider splurging on new clothes and busting your budget. Do you want today’s shiny object or tomorrow’s financial goal? Answering that question correctly, time and again, is one of the keys to financial success.
Read the rest of this story at Grow.com’s website.
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