Aug 12

Olympic Lessons - More Than Keeping Score

There is so much to enjoy about the Olympics. So much to witness - so much dreaming, competition, parity among competitors, so much drama. There is so much excitement there that I can feel it here. I’ve been wondering if there could be even more than meets the eye, and than is felt inside when we watch “our team” compete.

It is easy to cheer on the American team if you’re American, or the Brazilian team if you are from Brazil. That’s easy. In our minds and hearts we “feel” connected to our home nation’s team, and then our bodies create physical feelings that register in our minds as excitement, anxiety, fear, jubilation. So yeah, it’s easy to - in fact - it takes no conscious effort to cheer on our favorite team.

But, the real and frequently untapped potential for our minds and hearts is to cheer on another team. A team with whom we have no unconscious draw, no involuntary butterfly feelings in our stomachs when they step up to the line or leave the platform for their final dive. The untapped potential is in rooting for any performer. The Iraqis. The Japanese in gymnastics. The French.

Think about how silly it is to keep track of medals won by country. Only the largest and/or most prosperous nations will be among the top three or four positions. The nations with the largest economies, the nations with the largest populations, the nations with the longest-established sports infrastructures. Who cares what nation wins the most medals? That is nothing more than another form of dominance thinking the world can do without. And, not for nothing, but dominance thinking is so epidemic within ordinary work groups, departments, and entire corporations that it is worth lingering on the point. What is the point of keeping score like that? Who is made better by it? What point does it make? Would we stop funding our teams if they did not bring home the medal bacon? Why do we compete? Is it for the metallic result or also for higher reasons? Can we conceive of feeling truly “proud to be American” if we came in sixth in the medal count every time?

What if we all were to root for the little guy - which is a distinctly American value? To root for the Malawi volleyball players when they play, well, anyone, and perhaps especially our home team? But more than rooting for Malawi in the hope they beat their opponent, how about rooting for both teams? How about applauding all efforts? All results? How about appreciating the feelings of everyone, perhaps especially the ones who came in eighth. Just rooting on pure effort, rather than “good” or “superb” or “winning” results? Pay no attention to the score. How much can you appreciate their effort?

The beauty of the Olympics, and of the Olympic ideal, is in the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical union of athletes and citizens from nations far and wide in a simultaneous celebratory competition of effort, first, and results, second. Let’s practice together thinking of them in that order. Effort first. Results second.

In business scoff when someone respects anything before results. Results are everything. She with the most market share wins. He with the…oh, you know the old tune…and that is my poke-in-the-mental-plexus point. It’s the old tune we hum without thinking. The Olympics is about effort first. Dedication to the pursuit of winning, rather than to merely having won. Not one nation dominating another or all others in gymnastics, or the pool, or on the softball diamond. It is about the unity of spirit that comes not from nationalism, but from appreciation for what the athletes do as people whose effort the rest of us use to better understand and create ourselves and our potential as human beings, and hopefully get closer one another.

The Olympics should bring our minds back to unification and the greatest degree of connectedness we can conceive of (like we conceive of it in our religions) as one collective people around the planet, in our communities, in our businesses. When we improve the interconnections we will be wiser global citizens, and so approach globalization with not just a “winner’s” hunger, but with a global leader’s heart.

Yeah, it’s idealistic. It’s pie-in-the-sky. And why not? Aren’t you exhausted from merely keeping score?

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