How elite athletes can help us all learn resilience.
For elite athletes, the world of sports is almost unrecognizable in 2020. Due to COVID-19, the first half of the year brought a total shut down to most sports. Then, for the first time in history, the Olympic Games were postponed (previously, Olympic Games had been fully cancelled because of war). Now that the world is adapting to COVID-era safety precautions, we’re starting to see leagues like the NBA and NFL start back up — but totally altered.
Even with the small wins against COVID, it’s an unprecedented, solemn time for many athletes who often work their whole lives for a game, a match, a moment — and are now watching it all slip away. For Olympic athletes, where timing is everything, this is especially true. Many plan their whole lives to physically and mentally peak at a very specific time, and the slightest change to these plans can have dire consequences. This reality hits particularly close to home for me, as I, too, have experienced what it is like to suddenly and unexpectedly have everything I planned for evaporating. As a competitive gymnast for 18 years, my dreams were squashed by a severe injury. I tore my right Achilles tendon during a competition when I was 20 years old. Immediately, my season, everything I worked for, was over.
Of course, in 2020, that feeling of loss is not exclusive to athletes.
Our community, globally, is mourning. We are mourning the loss of many loved ones to the virus. We are mourning the loss of many innocent lives taken due to racial injustices. We are mourning business and job losses, as well as home losses. We are mourning the opportunity to come together as a community — for weddings, graduations, celebrations, retirements, and simply going into the office every day.
But there’s one thing that incredible loss can teach you: resilience.
How do you find resilience among loss? As an athlete, I discovered that core to becoming resilient is wrestling with something most of us dread. It’s asking the big question: What is really in my control?
Control the controllable…
The moment I felt the tear in my Achilles, I remember my mind moving a million miles a second. How will I get to class the next day? Why did this happen to me? And how on earth am I going to take a shower after this competition? Then, I realized — I can’t control the fact that my tendon tore. I can’t control that I have no way to walk to class or get into my shower for a rinse off. And I certainly can’t control that I won’t be able to compete next weekend. I began to wonder, what can I control? I can ask for help when help is needed, cheer my teammates on, and, most importantly, move through the injury with positivity, not hatred or anger. I learned to control the controllable.
And recently, we are seeing the sports world find ways to control what is controllable. For instance, “the bubble” was created for the NBA and NHL to continue their seasons. This is basically the idea that all the players would live and work in the same place, eliminating their need to interact with the outside world and potentially contracting COVID. And, so far, it’s worked. Compare this to the MLB, which has tried to pretend that they can keep traveling similarly to seasons past, only to learn that the virus had other plans.
In addition, many athletes are controlling their narratives as individuals, as the elite members of a group that has a massive public platform. For instance, Tennis great Naomi Osaka wore face masks with the names of Black people murdered by police, the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team refused to take the court after the Jacob Blake shooting, the Las Vegas Aces women’s basketball team added Breonna Taylor’s name to the back of their jerseys, and the Lakers wore lace collars to honor the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg. We are seeing resilience in the face of loss showing up among athletes in almost every major sport. Not to mention, reaching millions of fans with critical messages around racial injustice in America. And, in my mind, this is all about controlling what you know you can control.
… And let go of the uncontrollable.
The other half of resilience comes from letting go of what you can’t control. For me, letting go of the uncontrollable was all about embracing grief.
All loss is loss. It comes in many shapes and forms and is experienced differently by everyone. I went through the stages of grief after my injury very quickly. When I got hurt, I was punching the floor to go up in the air for a tumbling pass. Think of it similarly to a basketball player taking off on one leg for a layup. I got hurt on the way up. I felt like I was in mid-air for what seemed like a whole minute. In reality, I was probably up there for a second, if not less. Immediately when I took off and felt the pop, I was in denial. No way this actually happened. Then, a millisecond later, I was angry. Why me? Then began the bargaining. My favorite and most idolized moment in gymnastics history happened when Kerri Strug landed on one leg on vault to win the Olympics for Team USA in 1996 after hurting her ankle on her first vault. I thought, can’t I try to land on one leg, too? Thankfully, I did not. When I landed, I remember looking straight down at the floor, my hands and left leg holding me up, not being upset about my leg, but upset that I fell in front of a whole crowd. I was depressed and, honestly, embarrassed. But quickly, I moved away from that mentality into the final stage of grief, acceptance. I realized yes, my Achilles did tear, and yes, I cannot fix it. This was my new reality.
For those of you looking for resilience, I would ask, what can you let go of that you know is out of your control?
Organizations must practice resilience.
Organizations, like people, can be either fragile or resilient, and throughout this pandemic, we have certainly seen our share of both. Like people, the organizations that will most successfully navigate this period of tumultuous and unexpected change will be the ones that embrace and practice resiliency.
This means building a culture of resilience — one that embraces adaptability, agility, and change confidently rather than fearfully. A culture of resilience is flexible enough to respond in new ways when faced with unexpected disruptions and crises. But ultimately, it’s the people within an organization that make it resilient because resilience and toughness are transmissible. When one person embraces resiliency others are more likely to follow suit. Which means it has to start with someone, a leader, or a team, to shift the focus. Are you prepared to show others the way?
As human beings, we are programmed to look forward to something — the weekend, holidays, events, the end of a difficult time — and not live in the moment. By practicing resilience, we can work toward living in the moment and creating meaningful change. Be a leader. Maybe you’ll inspire someone to practice resilience, too.
Olivia Karas is a communications coordinator at Huge.
The world is changing fast. It’s our job to not only understand that reality, but to act. What Matters Now is an ongoing series that explores the intersection of adaptation and resilience to identify new ways of thinking and doing.
