BEHIND THE MIKE

Sometimes we find that the price of victory is not the long hours of labor and toil that it takes to win, but rather that tiny bit of extra effort that we exude at the finish line. Attitude.

In race after race in the Olympics, the difference between victory and a not-so-distant second place was ever so slight. Almost every winner who is cornered for an interview knows exactly how they won or lost the race. And most especially in defeat; that cause stings.

Just ask Blain Lingerin as he came off the last hurdle, racing toward a sure gold medal in the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The only problem, Lingerin went in straight up at the finish line while America’s Hayes Jones, in the outside lane, leaned ever-so-slightly at the final second to touch the tape first and to take away the Gold Medal, barely nipping Lingerin by a 100th of a second.

Can you even imagine how minute a 100th of a second is? Do you know how many thousands of Gold Medals have been won by a 100th of a second? But, it is the difference between first and second place.

It is the tiny bit of extra effort that often makes the difference in life.

In Innsbruck, Austria, at the 1964 Winter Olympic Games, the gateway to the Brenner Pass and the capital of the Tyrol, seven gold medals were won by less than one one-hundredth of a second.

That cannot even be seen that on the electronic scoreboard. There is hardly anything you can do with your hands to illustrate just how little that is. A blink of the eye is a fifth of a second. Can you imagine training ten years of your life and then losing a race by that small of a difference?

In Munich, Germany, one athlete lost an Olympic Gold Medal and a World Championship by just two one-thousandths of a second. That simply cannot even be illustrated. No move you can make, no device available to the human eye can illustrate how many minutes a thousandth of a second is.

When it comes to life, just the slightest lean toward the positive can make the difference. It can change your life if you will only give it a try. But most of us do not want to pay that final price to gain the ultimate satisfaction.

We go through life and then it all but collapses because our attitude is not right. But we can change all that if we will begin today by leaning toward the positive.

Stephen Covey once observed: “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” Decisions are driven by attitude.

Our attitude defines our life, including being ready for the worst possible outcome but prepared to know how to expect the best in life. Some people only want to high-five the negatives. Someone should high-five their face. Get rid of negative people.

The best people I have met in my life were not experts at anything when they first started… they were only beginners who found a way to finish. They became great because of the greatness of their character, not their circumstances.

Character is about sacrifice and if we are unwilling to sacrifice what we want out of life, then what we want becomes what we sacrifice. Since all of life’s experiences are little more than experiments, the more you experiment with a positive attitude the more likely you will do better.

A bad attitude is a lot like a flat tire. You can’t go anywhere until you change it. A least a positive attitude gives you power over your circumstances instead of your circumstances having power over you.

Michael A. Aun is the winner of the 1978 World Championship of Public Speaking for Toastmasters International. He lost the same contest the year before because he went 8 seconds over his time limit and was disqualified.