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.