Business lessons from athlete who crawled to finish

Before last month Hyvon Ng’etich would not ring a bell in our minds. At least not in mine.

But all this changed after her epic performance. She was a competitor in the Austin City Marathon. With the finish line in sight, Ng’etich was clearly overwhelmed and came crushing down on the tarmac in downtown Austin, a city about 320 kilometres south of Dallas.

Ng’etich was determined not to quit the race even as she was on her knees in obvious pain. After a brief pause while on her hands and knees and with her forehead on the ground, she started an agonising crawl toward the finish line.

The crowd gasped while some shed tears upon seeing her determination to finish the race in her condition. They cheered her on as she made several stops to catch her breath.

She was fierce. She was focused. She was goal driven. She had the traits necessary for an Olympic athlete to emerge victorious in the field of competition.

But wait a minute. Aren’t these the same traits necessary to compete in the arena known as the marketplace?

Whether you are a senior business leader or an Olympic athlete, the key to success is a winning mindset. This term, along with the alternative, “positive mental attitude”, are, unfortunately, often viewed as meaningless business jargon.

However, it is true that battles are won and lost in people’s heads long before they are fought. Our thoughts dictate our moods, our emotions, our body language and, ultimately, our ability to perform. Ensuring the way you approach a challenge mentally is correct is the key to success.

What most people forget is that thoughts are not random; we can learn to control them to ensure that we always perform with an aura of self-belief.

The world’s top business leaders have a strong connection with their inner thoughts and train them, as an athlete would train a muscle, to make them work in their favour.

The reality is that you can achieve more by accepting that the business journey will be uncomfortable at times, and that’s OK — it simply means there is always something more for you to learn, in order to bring you closer to the vision that you started out with.

You can’t receive the fruits of your labour without having the fundamentals in place. As business professionals, we must choose to meet each day with the knowledge that our path holds both obstacles and opportunity.

The competition will be tough and the conditions unpredictable and unforgiving, but that’s what it takes to turn a vision into reality. So dig deeper and unleash what drives you.

You need to train your mind to operate like a marathon runner— set yourself a huge goal and take your time to get there, without any unnecessary burden, cost or luxuries.

Our bodies are really not made to handle marathons. The first person who ran a “marathon” dropped dead — literally. But then why do so many people want to do it? It’s because if you prepare yourself both physically and mentally, you can actually push your limits and finish.

There are a lot of things we want to do in life that we’re technically not meant to do. But with hard work and dedication, we can do them. You’ll have days, weeks, or may be months where you are down and running the business is no longer fun for you. You’ll question if you should be doing it or not. You’ll consider that job at the local coffee house.

The secret of running a marathon is to pace yourself so that you can still be going many miles down the line, or else you’ll burn yourself out.

As Martin Luther King said, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

Mr Waswa is a management and HR specialist and managing director of Outdoors Africa.

E-mail: [email protected].