Leave It All On the Ice
Like some of you, I just spent two weeks watching 6 hours a day of Olympic coverage. Whew! I love figure skating more than football or any other sport. I find the Shib Sibs (Shibutani siblings) synchronized twizzles (multi-rotational one-foot turns) in ice dancing moved me to instant tears, just as the running back who twizzles away from four or five 300-pound linemen to run the length of the field and score. Really.
Sports have always been a great metaphor for life’s more difficult lessons. The ability we have within us to be heroic, is summed up by the quote credited to Vince Lombardi about leaving it all on the ice. The actual quote is our “finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that (we) hold dear, is that moment when (we) have worked our hearts out in a good cause and lie exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.” And that’s what inspires me: EFFORT! The individual determination to make it, whether it’s a touchdown or a triple toe loop!
So you know why my tears flowed as I watched the Canadian ice dancing pair, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, efforting their guts out to win the Gold Medal! In 2010, they were the first North Americans to win the ice dancing Gold. They won Gold in 2010, Silver in 2014 and Gold again in 2018. If we looked up the word “tenacity,” would their pictures be there? Should be. Not only were they technically perfect, they were emotional, passionately connecting with the music and with each other! This was the culmination, they commented, of a 20-year relationship skating together—since they were 8 and 10 years old!
The men’s figure skating championship was also awesome. Yuzuru Hanyu is the first Asian figure skater competing in men’s singles to win the Olympic Gold. He is the most beautiful skater I have ever seen. And I’ve been a huge fan since the 70’s. It’s ballet – – his spinning jumps are the best and rated so. He brings instant tears, because I know it’s EFFORT, made to look effortless. And he came back from injury in 2015, and surgery. He has had many falls in practice and in competition on TV in front of millions. At the end, he was emotional, joyous in fact, and that’s leaving it all out on the ice, isn’t it?
We can’t wait to do our job absolutely perfectly before we do it with 100% of our effort and heart. Leave it on the field (ice) means hold nothing back. Put it all on the line. Be exhausted at the end. We need to give renewed energy every day — even when we are reinventing ourselves, after illness or injury, or doing something we haven’t done for the past 20 years. We need to live our life like our life depends on it—because it does, you know.
The success of your business depends on how you regard it and talk about it. Call me, and we can create the words that have you falling in love with your business all over again.