Issue 482 - Proper Preparation Prerequisite!

Hi,
I hope everything is ok where you are.

So, the Olympics are over. Beijing is left in the memory and London is now the official Olympic Host.

Our organising committtee has already said that London won't try and compete with Beijing on scale, and in our segment of the closing ceremony, London chose a London Bus and umbrellas as our defining images.
Oh, and David Beckham, who has never competed at an Olympics, nor even won anything in international competition. Sir Steve Redgrave, who won gold at 5 different Olympics, was sitting commentating for the BBC...

In all fairness, I think London is right to say right from the go that it won't compete with Beijing.
China is a one party state which can do what it wants with its money, whereas the British government is (theoretically at least) more accountable!

London can now carry on preparing without the pressure of topping what China did.
That's the subject of today's last missive about the Games - preparation.

It takes years to prepare to host an Olympics, and all the athletes who took part this time around had to prepare.
Not just for the 4 years since the previous one, but most athletes spend their whole career preparing. An obvious example is the early morning starts before work, the extra jobs they take on to pay for the training and equipment and then more training in the evening. That's not once a week, but every day. Then there are the families, sacrificing time and all sorts of things to help support the athlete.

Then the athlete has to join an elite programme, which will mean moving home, and committing years towards Olympic qualification, giving up careers in many cases.

Then the elite programmes have to be created in the first place, staffed with the correct coaches and facilities, etc.

As for the Games themselves, think of all the volunteers needed to make the 2 week event run smoothly. Some set pieces in the opening and closing ceremonies had thousands of people who had been rehearsing for a year!

All those areas of preparation, and none of it can be missed.
If an athlete misses a single training session, that work has to be made up somewhere. At the top of world sport, the differences between gold and coming 4th are marginal, and it's often the marginal differences in preparation that make the difference.

It's the same in life when going for a goal.
Yes, you can set off all willy nilly, working it out as you go, because you have the flexibility I mentioned 2 weeks ago.
However, the more prepared you are, the better able you are to cope with the external circumstances I mentioned last week.

In life, just like the Olympics, you'll find that the successful people all have certain things in common, and one is preparation.
Don't overdo it though, there's something else all successful people have in common, and it's that they take action.
If you spend forever preparing and don't ever act, you'll get nowhere.

Ok, roll on London 2012. I'm semi tempted by the archery, as I did notice some old fat people taking part, but what made me laugh was that after they took their shot, they used binoculars to see what they scored!!

Right, thats it for this week, I'm off to prepare a cup of hot chocolate.

'Til Next Time,
Health & Happiness,
Gordon
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