Most times you come in first nobody hands you a gold medal.
Which - it’s a hunk of gold, melted (smelted?) down and pressed into a mold, then cooled (probably on a fancy cookie rack?), and attached to a ribbon which is a lot of effort at no insignificant cost, so, no surprises.
And it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to be first at some things.
Not the aggro-needy things.
Don’t push old ladies out of the way at the grocery store.
You don’t need that first place.
Now, you can move swiftly and pretend you didn’t notice when you got in line first, I do think that that’s ok, so long as you pretend to not see them and then offer them the spot if or when you feel eyes burning into your back in your kindest voice.
I’m an impatient person at times too, you need to practice some self-kindness, I’ve been told.
But there are lots of chances to be first where you won’t get a gold that should still count as wins.
The Lindsey Vonn crash was hard to watch this week. We missed it live but heard about it, and then in the highlight/catchup segment, when we realized it was coming on, we had to do the “are we sure we want to see this” thing, but we let it roll. Her statement had just made the rounds by the time we caught up to the bittersweet mix of Breezy Johnson actually winning gold and Vonn being airlifted off the mountain.
You want to feel bad for her. You should. Hopes and dreams and effort - so much effort - and for what?
But Vonn wasn’t even supposed to be there in the first place. She just kept coming back on some Michael Jordan level commitment to the craft. This is what happens sometimes.
If you haven’t read her hospital bed announcement, you should.
In the event I don’t understand how to place links into these (very possible) here is the text from the Instagram post, too:
Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would. It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail, it was just life. I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. Because in Downhill ski racing the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches.
I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash. My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.
Unfortunately, I sustained a complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly.
While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets. Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget. Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself. I also knew that racing was a risk. It always was and always will be an incredibly dangerous sport.
And similar to ski racing, we take risks in life. We dream. We love. We jump. And sometimes we fall. Sometimes our hearts are broken. Sometimes we don’t achieve the dreams we know we could have. But that is the also the beauty of life; we can try.
I tried. I dreamt. I jumped.
I hope if you take away anything from my journey it’s that you all have the courage to dare greatly. Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying.
I believe in you, just as you believed in me.
❤️LV
I hear the elementary school taunt of “You get an A for effort” in my mind. It’s the consolation prize of awards. It’s funny in a dark way, but there’s also some truth in a very truthful way worth considering there.
You can be first to do something.
Maybe not first in the world, maybe not with the best outcome, but in your mind - you can do something for the first time, if only because it’s the first time you’re doing it on a Monday and hey, you’re DOING THE THING.
I introduced two co-creators and regular collaborators on Just Press Record this week. I was kind of shocked I hadn’t introduced them already and was about to click send on an email introduction when I thought, “I can’t even introduce either of them to people because if you pay attention to me even slightly, you’ll see me doing stuff with them.”
So, sometime in late December, I asked Bogumil Baranowski and Tony Greer, separately, if I could introduce them to a stranger and we could play the game I play on “my other podcast.” They said yes.
I wanted to capture the first time they met. I mean, why not? It was eventually going to happen anyway.
Plus, they’re so inherently different on so many levels. Tony is all short-term all in and of the moment with his business philosophy as a trader, and that’s in stark contrast to Bogumil who is all in the moment, too, but focused on infinity, if not timelines beyond his or his client’s own.
What would happen? Oil and water or - I really didn’t know what. That’s not even with the Long Island Italian energy bumping into the soft spoken ex-communist Poland voice.
But, a first is a first.
You get up. You go. You let whatever happens happen.
We weren’t risking anything, really. A few mean YouTube comments? Come on. We all grew up in a pre-social media world, those insults sting but we’ve had much (much) worse.
We’re all hosts in our own right, and we all love a challenge. We love getting up at the top of our mountains, and seeing what happens on the way to the bottom. It’s not a Lindsey Vonn scale dare, but it’s daring in its own way, and we’re all friends and co-creators because we’ll take that dare any day of the week.
No regrets.
First is first.
You pick the ruler.
Put a gold medal on that reminder.
(Godspeed on the recovery, Lindsey Vonn)
