Chasing Excellence: A Story About Building the World’s Fittest Athletes

Successful people use adversity to grow and thrive.

But talent without grit is just potential. Talent plus grit is unstoppable.

What is grit, really? It's a word that's been used to describe everything under the sun, but it means something specific: when things get hard, you push harder; when you fail, you get back up stronger; when you don't see results, you don't get discouraged, but you just continue to pound away day, after day, after day, with relentlessness, consistency, heart, and passion -- that's grit.

Positivity, by contrast, is directly linked to improved performance.

Today I will do what others won’t so tomorrow I can do what others can’t.

People successful in life, in business, and in relationships are living into a process that leads to excellence; these are the people who get up early to work out, who say no to crappy food, who carve out time for learning and mindfulness.

Success is a decision, not a gift.

At the end of the week, she wants to be able to look herself in the eye and have no regrets. Regardless of where she ends up on the leaderboard, she’ll walk away happy if she knows she was able to give everything she had, every minute of every event.

Like everything else, excellence is a habit.

As an elite athlete, there are only five things that you can truly control -- your training, nutrition, sleep, recovery, and mindset. If it doesn't fall into one of those categories, I tell my athletes, forget about it. Control the things you can control, and ignore everything else.

It’s the days when you have to do things that scare you, when you have to take risks, when you have to push against challenge and difficulty—those are the days that make you stronger, faster, and better overall.

Understanding that you only have control over the present moment is the key to being able to turn the page. Reliving the past is a recipe for unnecessary depression, and fearing the future is a surefire way to anxiety. Learning to live in the present moment is vital, because it’s the only thing you have any control over. The only thing you can do to rectify the past or influence the future is to take action now, in the present moment.

According to physics, bumblebees can’t fly, but nobody ever explained physics to bumblebees, so they fly around anyway.

Moments like this are what we train for year-round. It’s why we spend so much time developing character traits like commitment, grit, optimism, and humility. It’s the reason we practice embracing adversity and learning to regard it as a competitive advantage. Events like this are the reason behind our all-consuming focus on the process—why we learn to control the things we can and let the rest go.

She’d transformed from an athlete who sat in her own suffering to an athlete who decided that facing her fears with a “just start” mindset was a more productive approach.

Psychologists call this adversarial growth. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is not a cliché but a fact. It’s a classic example of the way successful people use adversity to grow and thrive.

Elite athletes know something that most people don’t—adversity is the best thing that can happen to you. The competitors here at the Games know that humans only improve through adversity by embracing short-term pain.

You’re going to experience adversity; you’re going to have days that are incredibly challenging, even scary. There are going to be days that cause you to question your motives and ability. It’s important to realize that the toughest days are your best days, because they have the potential to force the most adaptation—mentally, as well as physically.

The only difference is how they’ve chosen to perceive it; where one woman sees adversity and difficulty , Katrín sees advantage and opportunity.

If you tell yourself, as Katrín does, that no amount of adversity can throw you off your game, you’re far more likely to be resilient and thus successful in the long run. Your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, and your actions dictate your destiny.

We fear adversity and do everything we can to avoid it, even though it is a guaranteed part of life for every species on planet Earth. It’s not a matter of if we will encounter it, but only a matter of when. And when we do face it, the form the adversity takes is far less important than how we respond to it.

Never whine. Never complain. Never make excuses.

Success to me is giving full effort knowing that was the best I was capable of. That said, full effort means nothing if day-to-day preparation was not all I had. Success to me is giving everything I have into each and every day, each and every moment; training, recovery, family, friends, giving back, inspiring, loving what I do. Then, come game time, give full effort, knowing I am the best I am capable of becoming.

I try to prepare my athletes for how fast time flies in competition. I tell them that it’s going to be over in a flash, with the hope that they’ll take the time to appreciate moments along the way. Like a parent sending kids off to college, I implore them to cherish every single moment and make memories. It doesn’t stop the competition from flying by, but they enjoy it more.

Elite athletes know something that most people don’t—adversity is the best thing that can happen to you. The competitors here at the Games know that humans only improve through adversity by embracing short-term pain. Ensuring there is no struggle, no challenge, and staying in your wheelhouse is a recipe for spinning your wheels without improving. It’s the days when you have to do things that scare you, when you have to take risks, when you have to push against challenge and difficulty—those are the days that make you stronger, faster, and better overall.

What people don’t see is that behind most every talented person who has become a massive success is a daily schedule of grind, hours of suck, and a whole string of difficult, lonely moments working on the tiny details that will get them where they want to go.

like on a bathroom mirror or on their fridge. Here’s Katrín’s definition of success: Success to me is giving full effort knowing that was the best I was capable of. That said, full effort means nothing if day-to-day preparation was not all I had. Success to me is giving everything I have into each and every day, each and every moment; training, recovery, family, friends, giving back, inspiring, loving what I do. Then, come game time, give full effort, knowing I am the best I am capable of becoming.

One of my favorite TED Talks is a lecture by Simon Sinek called “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.

discipline, commitment, passion, confidence, persistence, resiliency, competitiveness, coachability, growth-mindedness, humility, hunger, dedication, tenacity, and grit.

It's the not-so-hidden secret to extraordinary success: clarify what you really want, then work as hard as you can for as long as it takes.