I’ll never participate in the Olympics, though I always watch with admiration, enthusiasm, and awe.  “How do they DO that?!”  So fast! So Coordinated. So Impressive! Diving marvels, Track and Field athletes, ice skaters, downhill skiers, luge, bobsled, and team sports amaze and excite me every Olympics.

Olympians inspire me. Not because I’m going to be one someday (I believe the applicable term here would be “fat-chance!”), but I learn from these remarkable athletes all the time and I’ve discovered that thinking like one, applying basic discipline and optimism to my setting, I do better and enjoy my accomplishments:

• What’s harmful?
  Don’t even consider it.
• What’s needless?
  Think about it once – and forget it.
• What’s needful?
  Think about it all the time.
  Give others permission to remind -and push- me.
• What’s imperative?
  Think, do and become those things!
  Be consumed with them. Driven by them.

Olympians don’t brag about what they give up, how they change their routines and schedules to accommodate their training, or how intense it is. They just do it.  “No, Thanks. I’m in training,” may be about all most of us hear.

“I want gold!” motivates and compels them.  But you seldom hear a speed skater telling everyone what time he or she has to be on the ice every morning; those are the things commentators like to discover during the Olympics, and we marvel. “So THAT’s how you do that!”

I have a handful of ambitious, gold-like goals already set for 2016.  When I watch coverage of the Summer Games in Brazil later this year, I’ll observe again the parallels between their extraordinary achievements and how I’m reaching for gold in my personal and business life. My quiet admiration of those athletes will soar as it always does and their success will urge me on.

Take five minutes.  Sit quietly or go for a short walk and ask yourself “How could thinking like an Olympian help me, my business, my personal life, my  waistline?”

When you’re finished make some notes – for just you – and begin.
Don’t talk about the things you’re going to do, just do them, and smile as you see your goals come closer and closer, the result of your optimistic discipline.  You can have silver – I dibs gold.