This week on Winning In Life, Angus Pryor the #1 Google-ranked dental marketer in Australia will be sharing with you about the new year – Will 2021 be your great comeback?
Will 2021 be your great comeback? You know, recently I was in an op shop, which I enjoy getting books there. And I picked up this book here, “Choose To Win,” by Susie O’Neill. Susie O’Neill’s certainly one of Australia’s most successful female swimmers. She won eight Olympic medals, and, you know, she was a National Sports Person of the Year, you know, several times.
But I just thought as I’m reading through her story, there are a lot of parallels with her story. And what is, what has been, 2020. Now, just to give you an idea, Susie O’Neill was from a family full of doctors and indeed, ironically, she actually married a guy who’s an ophthalmologist. And in many ways she blazed a trail that was not like the rest of her family was doing, which was this real focus on swimming. But one of the things that happened as a young swimmer, she had a real phobia about, it was a total mental game.
She was technically very good, but she would, her sort of confidence and belief in herself wasn’t great. And the upshot of all that is she became known as a bit of a choker. Her favourite event was a 200-meter butterfly, which is four laps, and she would end up dying in the fourth lap. And she said in writing this book, that looking back on it she realised it was a total mental game that she was, she sort of believed that she couldn’t win.
And on top of that, the other thing is, she got a bronze medal in 1992 at Barcelona. And this was during a time when the Chinese swimmers were doped up to the eyeballs, so in many ways that sort of stole her joy as well. So I just wanted to read you a quote from the book that I felt was very interesting in relation to, this is talking about, so she had this Barcelona where things went okay, and then the Commonwealth Games. And she said, “The key to rebuilding my confidence “was to learn to forget about my competitors “and to swim my own race.”
There’s a bit of a metaphor there, isn’t there? “I also learnt from those games “that no matter how low your career in confidencing, “there’s always a chance to start again.” And I guess that, therefore, my question is, “Well, what do we learn from that?” You know, how do we, is 2021 the year of your great comeback? Now what Susie O’Neill did is she sort of got back to her first love.
She realised that she’d stopped enjoying swimming, and so she ended up changing coaches and going in a team that had a bunch of her mates, and really started to enjoy it, started to develop more of a social life. And the upshot of the story is she ended up winning gold in Atlanta in 1996. So that’s inspiration. And for some of you, you may feel like you’re being, you know, as it were metaphorically, beaten by doped up Chinese swimmers, or whatever the case may be. But, you know, like this story, is 2021 going to be your great comeback?