We love sport. It’s a beautiful, messy microcosm for so much of life. There’s no hiding. You have to confront whatever happens to you, win or lose. In a world where, increasingly, so much of what we see is superficial, photoshopped, AI, fake nonsense, there’s something deeply refreshing about the realness of sport.
With the winter Olympics in full flight, we wanted to highlight a few lessons we’ve taken away:
You Can Be Fierce and Kind at the Same Time
Lilah Fear just finished 12th in the ice-dancing portion of figure skating at the Olympics. Before she headed to Milan, she sat down with us on Excellence, Actually, and gave a masterclass on mental performance. Seriously, it blew us away. (Everybody needs to listen to this episode. If you listen to one podcast episode this year, make it this.)
Of all the great advice she dealt, what stood out most was her approach to competition. We often hear how you need to be cutthroat. Some go so far as to say you should hate your competitors, seeing them as enemies to take down. There are college coaches who prevent their team from “fraternizing with the enemy” before games because they want to cultivate a desire to destroy.
Fear and her competitive partner, Lewis Gibson, take a different approach: “I’m training next to my greatest competitors every single day. The best teams in the world. We all train in Montreal. We have the same coaches,” she told us. “People think, how does that work? Don’t you hate each other? Is it awkward? No. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
As the saying goes, iron sharpens iron. When you respect your competition, you’re forced to bring your A-game. You know they aren’t slacking or taking the day off. But even then, it’s not cutthroat. Fear went on to describe that the friendships are partially what allow her to do what she does. “These are people who are experiencing this really, really weird lifestyle that not many people can relate to. We go to dinner, or we’ll talk about nerves, mindset tips. At competitions, I can ask them about their family, or what they’re watching on Netflix, and get those good vibes going,” she explained.
What’s fascinating is that Fear is not an exception. What she illustrates is what we’ve observed in most of the high-performance environments we’ve been part of. It’s not some fake macho, “I hate my competition”. There’s respect for being in the arena, an understanding that few people get what you’re going through, and an acknowledgment that you are trying to lift each other, to push one another to be better, because that’s what allows you reach your own individual potential. As Fear eloquently put it, “I know that I perform my best when I go, I feel good when I’m kind to people… when I empower those around me.”
When she gets called onto the ice, Fear can flip the switch and become an intense badass, no doubt. If she couldn’t, then she wouldn’t be among the best in the world. But when the competition ends, she’s capable of turning that switch off. Kindness isn’t a weakness. Friendship doesn’t make you soft. It makes you better, both as a competitor and as a human being.
Feel Alive
Breezy Johnson won Olympic gold in downhill skiing this past weekend. She was the first American to grab a gold at this year’s Olympics. Four years ago, it was a different story. As she was preparing for the 2022 games, she took a hard crash just weeks before the games. It was devastating.
Asked why she kept going, she said: “I love the sport of skiing, and I wanted so badly to realize my dream of becoming Olympic Champion…This sport is brutal. Someone asked me why we do it….for me, the feeling of racing is the feeling of being truly alive, and so I will keep coming back…”
The mythologist Joseph Campbell spent his career studying what drives people to pursue extraordinary things. He came to the conclusion that most people get it wrong. “I don’t think people are really seeking the meaning of life…They’re seeking the experience of being alive.”
It wasn’t the medals, accolades, or achievements. It wasn’t even meaning. It was the feeling of aliveness. And for both Johnson and Campbell, they got that from the same source: racing.
When asked about where he felt this peak experience the most, Campbell didn’t describe his award-winning mythology or being a key source of the blockbuster Star Wars. He talked about running the 4x800m at Penn Relays.
We’ve built an entire motivation industry around goals, rewards, and outcomes.
And those things matter, to a degree. But they’re not what keep people going through four years of rehab after a devastating crash. Something deeper does.
The experience of being fully engaged in an activity that demands everything you have. It’s what genuine, heartfelt excellence is all about. We live in a world designed to numb us with endless scrolling, simulated achievement, and pleasure on demand with zero friction. We’re surrounded by cheap, fake aliveness. And we desperately need the real thing.
As Brad writes in his new book The Way of Excellence, “The main reason I write and lift weights is because a technology company can’t design a robot that can make me feel what I feel when I write and lift weights. Maybe the robot can write more elegantly or lift more weight. But it can’t make me feel the aliveness of a great idea. It can’t make me feel the rhythm of a great sentence. It can’t make me feel the heavy-ass weight starting to move. This feeling is what makes us human.
Find it in your own life. Protect it. Cherish it.”
For Johnson, winning gold was a consequence of refusing to give up on the thing that made her feel most human. The podium just happened to be waiting at the end of that commitment. If you want motivation that survives injury, failure, and years of doubt—find the things that make you feel alive. Sport, art, craft, conversation, love; whatever it is.
Be Yourself and Go All the Way
A week before she was supposed to complete her Olympic comeback, downhill skier Lindsey Vonn suffered an awful crash. She was airlifted off the mountain and learned she had torn her ACL. But at 41, she decided to compete in the Winter Olympics anyway. Sometimes when you’ve given a goal your all, you owe it to yourself to try, even when the odds are stacked against you.
“As long as there’s a chance, I will try,” Vonn said before the Games. “I will do everything in my power to be at the starting gate.”
On Friday, she stunned everyone when she completed her practice run effortlessly. With a torn ligament in her knee. In her fifth Olympics.
“My intention is to race everything,” she explained.
Unfortunately, that intention met reality. During her first competitive race on Sunday, in the women’s downhill event, Vonn crashed. She appeared to be in great pain. It was gutting to watch.
Critics will say (and have already said) that Vonn took someone else’s spot. But that’s nonsense. She earned her right to compete in the most objective way—seconds on a clock. She’s one of the greatest ever. She can make whatever decision aligns with her values, just like we all must do every day.
Sometimes the gutsy and “tough” thing to do is to pull the plug, especially when you know it’s not going to happen, and you’d be taking unacceptable risk. It’s the choice Simone Biles made in 2021.
Other times, the gutsy and “tough” thing to do is stay in the game and send it. It’s the choice Lindsey Vonn made. That choice was between her and her team, and has nothing to do with what those on couches have to say.
Lindsey Vonn has been training and competing in sport for her entire life. This is likely her last Olympics. Who is anyone to take that away from her?
What if the meaning of life for Vonn is (and has always been) pushing her limits and sending it? “Because I push the limits, I crash, and I’ve been injured more times than I would like to admit—to myself, even,” Vonn told ESPN.
“I’ve been working really hard to come into these Games in a much different position [than in years past],” she continued. “I know what my chances were before the crash, and I know my chances aren’t the same as it stands today. But I know there’s still a chance, and as long as there’s a chance, I will try,” she said.
A big part of excellence is being yourself and going all the way. Sometimes this leads to great wins. Other times it leads to terrible defeats. But in both cases, you know you stepped into the arena and gave it a shot. It’s precisely what Vonn did, and it’s the embodiment of authenticity—not the self-help, popular psychology, feel-good version, but the real thing: being true to who you are, especially in the toughest of moments.
We’re not judging her decision to race in either direction, good or bad. It was never our decision (or anyone else’s) to make. You only live once. You owe it to yourself to live in alignment with your values. You owe it to yourself to take your shot.
— Steve and Brad
