I'm an Olympic failure.
Well, not exactly an Olympic failure. I’m more of a junior development Olympic failure. Let me explain…
In 7th grade I was invited to join the USA Luge Junior Development Team. For those unfamiliar with the inner workings of the sport of Luge (aka pretty much everyone) it’s a team that develops high potential American luge athletes to eventually compete in the Olympics.
The story starts with a skateboard, a twelve-year old me with no fear of physical harm and the hill outside my childhood home.. As a twelve-year old, I used to lie down on my skateboard like a luge sled and slide down that hill for fun. I loved it! Also, as a 7th grader in the year 2000 with at home access to dial up internet, I also loved googling random stuff.
One day I typed into my mom’s green iMac “How do you join the USA Luge team?”. I figured if I could luge on the back of my skateboard outside my house in Massachusetts, I could obviously do this on a sled with extremely sharp runners on a hill going 90 miles an hour with up to six G’s of force pushing me into the track. My twelve year old brain is a miraculous well of self-confidence.
After doing so basic searching online, I discovered there were actual tryouts for the USA luge team! And they happen every summer around the country using altered luge sleds with rollerblade wheels attached to the runners. I attended one of those tryouts near my home in Massachusetts and had a blast. I went home with a fun memory and a purple “USA Luge” size XL t-shirt.
I thought nothing of it until I received a fat envelope in the mail inviting me back to spend two weeks in Lake Placid, NY at the USA Winter Olympic Training center for an all expenses paid training camp. This training camp was designed to determine which middle-school aged athletes would be invited to join the Olympic Junior Development team. I quickly filled out the paperwork with my parents, mailed it back to Lake Placid, NY, and started preparing to fulfill my olympic dreams.
When February rolled around, I took a six hour, solo Greyhound bus ride from Boston to Lake Placid, New York. The training center was amazing - I had a room in the dorms where all the other real-life olympians lived and trained year round. Me and my fellow junior squad members were quickly taken under the wing of the Gold Medal Winning Women’s Hockey team, who to us 7th graders were basically Goddesses walking (and skating) the earth.
And of course we got to slide (the verb for Luge) on the real track. We didn’t start all the way at the top, instead we started about a ⅓ of the way up the track, meaning we reached speeds of about 30 miles an hour (instead of the 90 mph reached by Olympians). Getting on the sled and going down the track was exhilarating - every bump on the ice reverberated through the runners, up through my back and legs and back down again. As I got better with each day, I still found myself wondering: “Is this sport for me?”
A few months later I received a massive package in the mail officially inviting me to join the USA Luge Junior Development Team.
After a lot of tears and gnashing of teeth and sleepless nights I realized it wasn’t the right choice for me. Saying yes meant giving up all of the things that I already loved to do in service of following this one dream.
I said no.
I said no because saying yes meant giving up my summers to go and train in Lake Placid for two months. It meant giving up two weekends a month in the winter to travel to freezing upstate New York to get on the ice and practice. Most of all, it meant focusing all of my 12-year old energy on this one thing for the next 5 to 10 years and missing out on friends, family and all the things I already loved to do back at home.
So…I failed.
But what I learned about myself from that failure is something I’ve never forgotten. A lesson I’ve held onto, and coincidentally my wife and I’s motto is: “there are no shoulds in life.”
I learned the value of trying something completely random and seeing how far I can take it.
And I learned the value of quitting.
Now it’s your turn - what’s something you’ve “failed at” or “quit” in your past? With what you know now, would you make the same decision again?