What the Paris 2024 Olympics has taught me so far

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Watching the Olympics as a Jamaican

As you probably know, the Paris 2024 Olympics are in full swing, and so of course, the Jamaican pride 🇯🇲 will also be unstoppable across my socials for the next few weeks. I remember as a kid growing up, I had the privilege of watching and supporting Jamaica throughout Usain Bolt’s Olympics sprint dominance, which really put us on the map and made the world recognize Jamaica as a sprint force to be reckoned with.

I, like many other Jamaicans, decked out myself in full black, green and gold to watch the races at home, and I expect to do no less in the weeks ahead as our athletes compete again.

What the Olympics has taught me so far

On Friday, I watched the Paris 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony and it made me stop for a second and really think about what it takes to be an Olympic athlete.

For most of the athletes (if not all) we’ll see for the next few weeks, the sport that they’re competing in has been the centre of their existence for pretty much their entire lives. They’ve given everything to their sport, committing thousands of hours since their childhood preparing for this exact moment. Their paths to success didn’t centre around doing what other people told them to do, it centred around doing what they were good at and honing in on a talent for something that they discovered and fell in love with.

For a lot of Jamaican athletes especially, I think about the fact that the story is often - “it was track and field or nothing”. A lot of the athletes out there representing Jamaica are raw talents that came from poverty but trained hard and devoted their lives to having a career in their sport. This was their ticket out. This was their only option.

Olympic athletes believe in themselves

As I’ve spoken about in the past, remember that in this big world, what’s true for one person, won’t always be true for another. In this context, that means that some athletes at the Olympics might have come from families of sportspeople, or come from wealthy parents that could afford to pay for elite sports training while others come from poverty as I just mentioned. But one thing that binds them all together is a shared commitment to being successful at their sport, and a commitment to themselves and their own talent.

For me, that’s where I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from these Olympic games so far.

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Do you believe in your ability to be successful?

If you’re a regular reader of #TheLifeofJLOWE, you’d know that I’m at a point in my life where I just graduated college and I’m figuring out what to do with my life. I’m battling with societal expectations, personal expectations, financial needs and wants and dreams and aspirations, as we all are. But of late, a question that I’ve been asking myself is - “If you knew that you’d be successful at anything that you did, would you be doing what you’re doing right now?”

And further than that:

“If you knew that you’d be successful at anything that you did, what would you actually be doing right now?”

The reason I’ve been asking myself these questions is because watching the Olympics has made me realize that the athletes competing at the games believe in themselves, and put their best foot forward to be successful. They’re the best of the best from every country around the world, and they’ve chosen to devote their lives to these sports because they know that they’ll put in the work to be successful. Of course not everyone can be the Olympic gold medalist, but by very virtue of qualifying to represent their countries at the Olympics, they are by definition super successful athletes.

So - what does that mean for me and you?

Believe in yourself and trust yourself to work hard

One of the biggest lessons I’ve taken away from watching the Olympics so far is to believe in yourself.

When I ask myself the question above, the implicit assumption behind it is that I know I can be successful at anything I put my mind to (of course within reason, please don’t expect to see me at the 2028 Olympics 🤣 ).

More clearly phrased the question really is - “If you 100% believe that you’ll put in the work to be successful at something, what would you be doing right now?”

This question has been lingering over me, because I trust myself to work hard and yield results in anything that I put my mind to. So the question becomes, since I know I can be successful at whatever I put my mind to, what is it that I want to be successful at?

Conclusion

Watch the Olympics this year. Appreciate how amazing each athlete is at the sport that they’re competing in. Recognize that behind that performance is thousands of hours of training and a mindset of belief-in-self and self-confidence.

There’s nothing more inspiring than watching someone be passionate about something that they do. Whether it’s demonstrating a love for a subject in school, a drive to succeed in a job or a genuine happiness when partaking in a hobby, passion is what drives our success as humans.

Behind passion is a desire to succeed and the will to work hard to yield results.

The hard part? Finding what you’re passionate about.

For me, that means making mistakes, taking chances and trusting myself in the process. It means reminding myself that nothing is impossible and I can do anything that I put my mind to. It means conquering fears, overcoming self doubt and pushing myself to new limits.

If you’re at a place where you feel like you’re not doing what you should be doing in life right now, my advice to you is this - trust yourself.

Do what feels right, regardless of what others might think of you, and trust yourself to make it out of it. Take the risk, take the plunge and take the first step to doing what you want to do, because in our journey of defining success for ourselves, the most important step is figuring out what it is we want to be successful at. The only way to do that is to take a chance on yourself. Passion will flow from there.

So trust yourself. You’ve got this. You can be successful at anything you do. So what are you waiting for?

Until next Sunday,

Justin