An Everyday Guide to Being an Olympian

In the third grade, I stood at the edge of the mat, ran with all of my force, and sprang into a powerful roundoff.

I did not stick the landing.

Instead, I broke my radius and my ulna (the two bones in your lower arm) at the same time.

I later broke my ankle playing basketball, and broke both my wrist and my growth plate in two separate, but equally fun, relay races.

All this to say, I’m not exactly the world’s most athletic (or, apparently, coordinated) person. While I’m never going to compete in the Olympics Games I really enjoy watching them. As I’ve enjoyed Tokyo from the comfort of my couch, with a glass of wine in my hand instead of a cast around it, here’s my take on three things we can all do to show up as Olympians every day at work.

Saying yes to saying no.

The world went bananas (and nearly broke the internet) when Simone Biles pulled out of the team event in Tokyo, and here’s why: so many of us desperately crave that same courage to say no.

So how do we do it? It’s actually this simple: If Simone Biles can withdraw from the Olympic team finals, you can say yes to taking a vacation, taking a sick or mental health day, declining a meeting, project, or a Zoom, asking for help, or just saying no.

Seriously, one more time: If Simone Biles can withdraw, are you going to tell me you cannot decline a single obligation?

If you’re still not convinced, consider this: We often look at saying “no” as a sign of weakness, when it’s actually a sign of strength. What Simone revealed in that moment of immense scrutiny and pressure is that we always have permission to make a choice, and that the right choices actually enhance both our reputation and the longevity of our career.

What Simone revealed in that moment of immense scrutiny and pressure is that we always have permission to make a choice, and that the right choices actually enhance both our reputation and the longevity of our career.

Basking in bronze.

Okay, did you see Simone win that bronze? Great, so I’m not the only person who teared up. What a powerful statement for a woman known as the G.O.A.T (the greatest of all time) to bask in her bronze, accepting her medal with such pure and absolute joy.

Basking in bronze is really hard for a lot of us. Especially if you’re a (recovering) perfectionist like me. As Claire Wasserman writes in her book, “Ladies Get Paid,” when it comes to perfectionism we typically believe that:

“Anything less than flawless is a failure; and failing at a task really means that we’re the failure … But by convincing ourselves that having unreasonable standards is in our best interest, we risk getting stuck in the never-ending cycle where we’re pushing ourselves too hard and then being too hard on ourselves for every misstep.

“To be clear,” Wasserman reminds us, “letting go of perfectionism doesn’t mean lowering our standards. It means operating from a desire to do well, not so we can escape judgement but so we can grow.

In Tokyo, Simone reminded us of what can change in our lives and outlooks when we give ourselves permission to bask in bronze instead of beating ourselves up.

The one percent strategy.

For many of us, getting comfortable saying “no” or conquering our perfectionism can feel incredibly liberating in theory, but impossibly daunting or downright radical in practice. That’s why one of my favorite Olympic stories comes from Great Britain’s cycling team.

After winning a gold in Sydney in 2000 and scooping up another two in the ’04 games in Athens, the team got a new coach, Sir David Braillsford, who had a theory. He believed that the team could make a huge performance leap—not by making a massive stride in a single area, but by making incremental changes, one percent at a time, across everythingin their training routine.

So the team started making a large number of small changes to their helmets, their diet, and their training routine, even seeking out the best pillows, and taking them everywhere they went as they competed around the globe. And with one percent changes here and one percent changes there, they went from two golds in Athens, quadrupling to eight golds in the next games in Beijing and holding down eight golds again in their home-town games in London in the Olympics that followed.

Meet me on the podium.

This is the practice of being an everyday Olympian: saying “yes” to saying “no” happens one percent at a time. Letting go of our perfectionism so we can bask in bronze happens one percent at a time. It’s one day at a time one decision at a time.

Randi Braun is an executive coach, consultant, speaker and the founder of Something Major.