Nike released a new commercial timed to the start of the Olympics. It begins with the question “Am I a bad person?” and then proceeds to link greatness to being “deceptive,” “obsessive,” “selfish,” “obsessed with power,” “maniacal and delusional,” “not respecting” your competition, having “zero remorse,” “no empathy,” and “no sense of compassion.”
First of all, the sentiment expressed in the ad is simply untrue. It embodies pseudo-greatness, but it’s not how actual greatness works (more on that below).
Second, consider that countless six-year-old children who love sports are watching the games. They will see this ad and ask: “Dad, what does it mean to have no sense of compassion?” “Mom, this commercial says I shouldn’t show respect, why?”
Maybe this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, it describes the personality traits of notable Nike names such as Lance Armstrong and Alberto Salazar, men involved with two of the more notorious doping and harassment sagas in American sports history.
The ad completely misses the mark. Yes, the best athletes in the world are focused, determined, a little bit crazy, at times obsessive, and live mundane lifestyles that most people would find boring. That is all true. But the best athletes in the world also have deep respect for their competition, develop identities outside of sport, learn compassion for themselves and others, and do a good job of being realistic about their capabilities, lest they get injured or blow up during their events.
Two of the more recognizable athletes featured in the advertisement, Lebron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo, are known for being decent people with deep respect, empathy, and compassion for their competitors and their sport.
The most generous view of this advertisement (and I hope the right one) is that Nike was trying to capture the ferocity, relentlessness, dedication, and sometimes borderline insanity that is often required to be world-class. But they failed to highlight that when athletes become too enveloped by these hyper-competitive traits, they often lead to cheating, illness, injury, or burnout.
What makes for greatness (and not just in sport, but in anything) is being a fierce competitor and respecting your competition; wanting to win badly and knowing how to lose; being deeply determined and not letting your entire self-worth hinge on a single result; being relentless and kind; being disciplined and compassionate.
This isn’t just my opinion. Decades of research show it to be true. It’s why a large meta-analysis found that athletes who focus on process rather than outcomes are more successful. It’s also why so many elite coaches, from Bill Walsh to Nick Saban to Dawn Staley to Steve Kerr, embrace some variation of the same mentality: do the work, let the outcome take care of itself. It’s why favorable views of performance-enhancing drugs are tied to too much extrinsic and too little intrinsic motivation. It’s why research shows that an excessive focus on dominance pushes us towards insecure striving, which makes people more susceptible to stress and anxiety. Contrary to the ad, when we view sport as win-at-all-costs and about singular dominance, it pushes most of us to perform out of fear, to avoid instead of approach, and to play not to lose instead of playing to win. Over 100 sources in The Practice of Groundedness all point toward this conclusion.
In some ways, this is the question I was wrestling with when I wrote the book: Can you strive for greatness while, at the same time, staying grounded and being a good person? The answer my research and reporting led me to is a resounding yes (which, now that I think about it, is probably why I had such a repulsive and visceral response to the Nike ad). It starts and ends with knowing your core values, what you stand for and why, and then making them the foundation, the ground, from which you strive. And then putting into place the right constraints and the right community around you. When you do this, your pursuit is as much about molding you as a person as it is about any objective result.
(Probably the greatest compliment I’ll ever receive about my work is when the world’s greatest ever runner, and perhaps a top-10 historical athlete, Eliud Kipchoge, read the book as a part of his preparation to break the world record and said “it molds you as a human being to achieve great things.” The irony is that Kipchoge is a Nike athlete, which shows just how badly they missed the mark with this ad.)
When I shared my thoughts on the ad on Instagram, one of the first people to like the post was literally the best all-around athlete in the world: Damian Warner, the reigning Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon. (You can listen to Damian’s approach to greatness on our podcast. It is a much better and more accurate view of what makes someone the best in the world.)
The entire spirit of the Olympic Games—before corruption and doping and all the other modern maladies that have plagued it—comes from the ancient Greek’s desire to compete. The root of that word is com, which is Latin for together, and petere, which means to aspire toward or to rise up. The founding spirit of the Games, and of sport more broadly, was “to rise up together.” Compare that to this quote in the Nike ad: “I want to take what’s yours and never give it back. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.”
I believe what Nike was trying to capture is how hard it is to be great, and how you can’t do it by being ordinary. By definition, greatness is extraordinary; it requires immense tradeoffs and sacrifices. When you pursue greatness many people might think you are crazy. It isn’t for everyone. This is true and inspirational. But from there, Nike appears to have gotten caught up in bro-speak internet motivational culture, which is all about power and dominance and winning at all costs—essentially, pseudo greatness, which is far from the real thing.
My fear is that this ad will instill in young athletes the wrong ideals and values and give aspiring athletes, weekend warriors, and online fitness influencers an excuse to be assholes, use illicit performance enhancing drugs, and so on. Nike’s ad appeals to the angry gym bro or the person in the municipal running club who cheats to win their local 5K. It does not represent the best in the world.
It is worth reiterating: even if you don’t care at all about being a good person, and all you want is to be the best in the world in what you do, you’d still be wise to follow a different path. Because the traits described in the Nike ad not only make for bad people—they also make for bad, anxious, injured, and burnt out athletes.
— Brad
