We Asked Our CEO: What Did You Learn as an Olympic Athlete?

I learned so many things from the wonderful experience of competing in the Olympics ... and from the 16 years of training required to get there. But a takeaway that continues to benefit me even today was learning the power of goals.

A great goal will stretch us to do the very best we can. And after giving it our best, we must trust God for the end results. When we put our most remarkable human efforts in the hands of our miraculous God, things we can't even imagine are possible.

I lived it in competition and now I'm living it in leadership — I prepare, but the results are in God's hands, no matter what. And we should never forget that the scoreboard that matters most is God's, not the world's.

I also learned much about the critical importance of rest and replenishment to reach my potential in life. People often say that life is like a marathon. Without offending my marathon friends, I've found that life is more like my event, the decathlon — a series of 10 diverse events, each demanding different skill sets.

Along the way, you cannot over-celebrate a victory in one event or overemphasize a failure in another. Either of those responses will compromise your ability to perform in the next event. Top performers know how to metabolize victories and failures in ways that mature them for the next challenge in life.

Another important life lesson from the decathlon was to understand the relationship between performing and recovering. Life is a constant series of performing and recovering.

Most of us see stress as the problem. I don't. The real problem is our incompetent recovery strategies. The stress of workouts made me stronger, and it still does. Jesus experienced stress — quite a bit of it at the end of his life. The key is getting the stress/recovery rhythm right.

Too much stress without recovery leaves you broken down. Too much recovery without stress leaves you underdeveloped.

But a healthy life rhythm — one that cycles from seasons of stress and growth to just the right amount of replenishing rest and recovery — allows us to grow and take on greater challenges and responsibilities in a healthy way.

I'm deeply grateful for my Olympic experience. I can't imagine my life today without the many lessons I learned from it. And, in a way, isn't that true for all of us?

When we place any experience in God's hands, he works it for good in our lives. I pray that not only for the athletes who will be competing in the Olympics but for all of us as we walk through life.