Osmond Wu

I still remember hearing Rai Benjamin share his mentality to winning 2 gold medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics. He believed that an Olympian should never attach their sense of achievement to the gold medal itself but rather to the feeling of having done everything in their power to succeed.

Ever since this, I’ve began thinking about how we shouldn’t index our life on binary outcomes.

The danger of indexing our work and life to a trophy or a specific outcome creates two problems.

We start working hard for something external (gold medal, $$, a label on a relationship, a role/title/comp, etc…)

We give omnipotent power for the trophy to define the worth of the journey and our hard work

A simple life example. Let’s say I meet someone that I deeply resonate with and could potentially imagine a future with. The natural instinct is to jump to the most high-value outcome—could this person be the one? But now by attaching the successful outcome as whether or not you are able to make her “the one”, you lose sight of what is actually important—getting to know the other person deeply. You

1) end up working for the relationship — pushing inorganic interactions

2) index your value to an ambiguous outcome. Instead of being present and getting to know the person, you end up always focusing on the trophy. Which, many times, actually drives you away from the desired outcome.

Many times we think we want the trophy because it is the highest-value tangible outcome. Of course I want an unbelievable girlfriend, a specific high-impact job title, and specific $$ in my bank account. But we forget that what we fundamentally want is to feel like we have fulfilled our potential—tried our very best. At the end, we simply want to do have done great work; been the best friend or lover; and realized the best version of ourselves.

If you index your work on the gold medal, only two possible outcomes will occur.

You are sad and feel like a failure that you didn’t win the gold
You win the gold, but what now? hence the “post-Olympic blues” as so many olympians crash out, become depressed even after winning with no true purpose.

This is all to remind us that we must be incredibly intentional with how we choose to measure our life and desired outcomes.

We intend to measure what we care about. But instead we end up caring about what we measure. Chris Williamson

written at USC, JFF courtyard

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The Gold Medal?