You Think You’re Tired? Ask an Olympian—I Did
There is no exhaustion felt from the Relentless Pursuit of a goal, a dream, or a gold medal!
During my research for the first book in my Headcase series, Shock & Denial, I had the opportunity to talk to many high-level athletes and some Olympic hopefuls. Also, I watched Michael Phelps' “The Weight of Gold,” which will open your eyes to the level of sacrifice, focus, and mental health issues faced by Olympians who have been driven in pursuit of gold since they were able to walk.
“It’s okay, to not be okay.”
When we see these Olympians compete, it looks like they have endless energy and are performing feats of athleticism that we normal mortals could never dream of doing. And guess what? By the time the Olympics are happening, the most important competition in the world, I would bet a king’s ransom that all of them are beat up and nursing multiple injuries. But the adrenaline rush of competing for your country at the highest level of sport helps push the pain away in pursuing a gold medal.
I have always employed a “relentless pursuit” strategy when I have a goal. Whether it was physical, like training for a judo tournament, or in business negotiating and maximizing the price for the sale of my company, or waking up each day to pour myself into a world I created in my Headcase series. It feels great when I cross the finish line, feel a gold medal around my neck, sign the sale agreement, or unbox my novel and feel my book in my hands for the very first time.
However, in all those moments, there was a huge amount of preparation, tedious work, and very stressful moments that pushed my body and mind to new levels. In those moments when the stakes are so high, the stress mounting to an unbearable level, and my body hurts from the tension, the mantra I repeat to myself is, “find another gear.”
I can always find another gear.
Every Olympian has to find another gear when their body aches. The stakes of competing for their country, their Olympic teammates, and their families are so high that they must push beyond the pain and, if they have to, use brute force to push every doubting thought out of their minds. When you push the body and mind past its breaking point, that’s where you find another gear. But it is exhausting. And it’s an exhaustion perhaps only competitive athletes, entrepreneurs, resident doctors, and new parents experience.
I’ve experienced this level of exhaustion during the sale of my company. I could not tell my staff for four months that we were selling the company as the Letter of Intent was not signed yet. As CFO, in addition to the mountain of due diligence requests from our prospective buyer, I was managing our annual audit, keeping us financially on track, and leading my teams in Finance, HR, and Technology. I worked seven days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. The only thing that saved me from blowing a gasket was my intense fitness regime with my personal trainer and my morning meditations. But I was exhausted.
I am a very sociable person and a true extrovert. I love being around people. I didn’t see anyone socially for six months, which was hard. The only people I was in contact was with my best friend, who was living in the Midwest and another friend, who was selling his father’s company at the same time I was, so we commiserated.
I was focused on my relentless pursuit of selling my company.
Besides seeing my happy team in accounting every day, life at my company was a miserable existence. However, my accounting team of seven that I hand-picked was a group of talented, hard-working, pleasant people, of which only one was born in the USA. But by June, it started to take a toll. I was crabby and short-tempered, and my entire body hurt from the stress. It did not help that one of my business partners took a particular perverse pleasure in making my life difficult. During the sale process, he was argumentative and would demand unreasonable clauses, throwing wrenches in the deal that I spent hours getting to agreeable terms, only having to go back and ask for “more.” If this deal did not go through, I did not think I had it in me to wait for another business cycle.
I was ready to break.
Twice, I felt the tension growing so much that I gave myself a red card and sent myself home because I was going to scream at the next person to walk into my office with what was probably a legitimate question. My wonderful staff didn’t deserve my wrath. So, I left the office, went to my empty home, and took my frustrations out on my young analyst from the investment banker when, at 2 a.m., he got distracted, and I would yell at him, “Kyle! Focus!!”
Kyle was a good sport about it, and at our post-sale dinner, Kyle gave me a few gag awards: a teddy bear, a fuzzy blanket, and a bottle of melatonin for sleep. Sometime later, recovered from my ordeal, we met up for lunch, and I surprised him with a very expensive watch as a “thank you” for his help and for putting up with me and my Cancerian Crabbyness (As a Cancer, I don’t bite, but I pinch 🦀). We are still friends to this day.
The day after the sale closed, on June 29th, 2019, I was on a plane to Barbados, my place of healing and respite from my stressful world, and I had a moment; it wasn’t about the money, it wasn’t about the cumulation of 10 years of building a company from nothing, it was: “The pain is over.” I nearly lost it on the plane. I pulled my hood over my eyes and quietly sobbed for most of the first hour of a four-and-a-half-hour flight.
The pain was over.
This is the pain that every Olympian goes through. You wonder why these tough-as-nails men and women cry and sob uncontrollably after a win or heartbreaking defeat. It’s all the sacrifice and exhaustion, and there is a moment when your body gives in.
Michael Phelps’ golden tears courtesy of Getty Images.
While all their friends are out having fun or getting eight hours of sleep every night, these athletes are in the gym, on the court, on the mat working, doing thousands and thousands of tedious reps, hours and hours of boring cardio and weight training, sitting in freezing tubs of ice water to counter all the inflammation and trying to find that exact pin-point place in their training regiment so they can “peak” for the Olympic Games.
The pressure is constant and unrelenting until the Opening Ceremonies. Then “it's on!” A lifetime of work, four years of no breaks other than sitting on the trainer’s table or in rehab trying to heal an injury before the next Olympic qualifying event. To understand the level of exhaustion, here are some quotes from my athletes:
“I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t in pain, tired, stressed, and feeling the pressure to compete and win.”
“I love it and hate it all at the same time.”
“It’s all the waiting, all the build-up, I just want to get out there, run my race, and get this over with.”
“I love to compete, but sometimes I wish I had a normal childhood. It’s a lonely road, and none of my buddies can really relate with my life. It seems kinda glamorous, but I’m telling you, it ain’t.”
“You put in thousands of hours of training, grueling travel, and non-stop work, for just a few moments on the mat. You gotta make it go your way, but it doesn’t always do that, and that sucks.”
So, as you watch the Olympics, celebrate these athletes, whether they win gold, silver, bronze, or flame out. The sacrifices these brave athletes make to perform for us and their countries is an exhaustion few of us have ever felt. Applaud them all for just making it to the games and representing their country!
And the next time you wake up on a Monday morning, not wanting to get out of bed, think of them. Think of their sacrifice and how exhausted they are, but they fight the fatigue. They fight the voices in their heads that are saying, “Take today off. It’s only one day. What harm can it cause?”
The harm? The harm is going from standing on the podium to collapsing on the floor in defeat, disappointment, and the dread of knowing that the only path to redemption is doing it all over again for another four years.
Photos from my various accomplishments: Judo training in Barbados, Winning an award for the screenplay version of Headcase in the UK, my best friend and me on my birthday in 2019 after I sold my company 8 days earlier, Literary Titan Award & Readers Favorite Award for Headcase: Shock & Denial, 3 CFO of the Year Awards.
