A year ago, Canadians were glued to the Vancouver Olympics, cheering on our athletes as they won an unprecedented 14 gold medals, tops for any country and the most Canada had ever won at an Olympic games.

Just some of the moments that many Canadians still remember:

·         Alexandre Bilodeau’s soaring performance in free style moguls to win Canada’s first ever gold medal on home turf; afterwards, he dedicated his medal to his brother, who struggles with cerebral palsy

·         Ashleigh McIvor’s  and Maelle Ricker’s exuberant races to win gold in ski cross and snowboard cross respectively.

·         The ice cold dominance of Kevin Martin’s curling rink

·         Tessa Virtue’s and Scott Moir’s virtuoso performance in ice dancing

·          Jon Montgomery’s celebratory stroll through Whistler village, jug of beer in hand, after his win in the skeleton

·         Christine Nesbitt’s dominant victory in long track speed skating

·         Joannie Rochette’s bronze medal skate, two days after her mother’s tragic heart attack

·         The wins by both women’s and men’s hockey teams, with Sidney Crosby’s unforgettable overtime goal a highlight

·         The unbridled joy and excitement of double silver speedskater Marianne St-Gelais as she cheered boyfriend Charles Hamelin on to his gold. Watch the video of St-Gelais’s and see if you can keep from smiling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyljfphimpc

Bouncing back from disappointment

And yet as glorious as those wins were, for every winner there were many more disappointed losers who had worked and trained just as hard as those who made it on the podium. While Canada had 26 medals, it also had 23 fourth and fifth place finishes, more “almost medals” than any other country… and how many of those athletes do we remember a year later?

For anyone with lofty goals for success, in many regards the real lesson from the Olympics doesn’t lie in the gold medal performances, but in the ability of those who came close to bounce back afterwards.

Consider just a few Canadian athletes who fell short of their goals in the Vancouver Olympics:

·         Mellisa Hollingsworth, in second place in the skeleton going into the final run, finished fifth. In a tearful interview afterwards, she apologized for “letting Canada down.”

·         Jennifer Heil, Canada’s queen of freestyle skiing, took gold at the 2006 Olympics and had won the last four world cup events going into the Vancouver games. A strong favourite for gold and in first place with one skier to go, she was bumped into silver position.

·         Brian McKeever began losing his sight at age 19 and today has 10% vision. Despite that, he qualified for the cross country ski team, only to be replaced just prior to the race by another skier who had excelled in an earlier event, preventing him from becoming the first athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics in the same year.

·         Chris del Bosco had bounced back from substance abuse problems to make the Canadian ski cross team. In the four man final, he appeared to have locked up bronze but in a push to catch the leaders fell – and ended up off the podium. 

·         Cheryl Barnard’s women’s curling rink had dominant performances going into the finals. In that last game, Bernard had two chances to win gold against Sweden, but minor errors prevented victory, including one in the tenth end in which she just had to remove a Swedish rock to win.

A remarkable number of these athletes bounced back to compete and excel.

For example, after declaring in January that she would retire at the end of this season, Jennifer Heil wrapped up her career with two golds at the World Championships.

And while early this year Cheryl Bernard’s announced that it was disbanding after this season, in late January they pushed Kevin Martin’s team to the wire in the TSN $100,000 skins game, only to be edged out $11,000 to $10,000, in the process silencing forever those who said women curlers couldn’t compete  against men.

We all encounter disappointments in our careers. In recent conversations with two successful advisors, I was reminded that the issue isn’t whether we experience setbacks, it’s how we deal with them.

One of these advisors had spent three years cultivating a very large account. A year after winning the business, the client was transferred to the United States; despite him wanting to continue the relationship, this advisor’s firm wouldn’t allow him to do business with a U.S. resident and this advisor had to give this client up.

The other advisor I spoke to had competed long and hard against two other brokers for a high profile entrepreneur’s business and had been told he’d won the account; at the very last minute, the entrepreneur’s accountant suggested he talk to an advisor who worked with a couple of this accountant’s clients … and the client decided to go with him instead.

I felt for both of those advisors, who’d lost large accounts despite doing all the right things. But despite their understandable frustration, both took the view that these kinds of things come with the territory. Rather than feeling sorry for themselves, they walked away with renewed determination to do whatever it took to replace those accounts.

It’s precisely this kind of resilience and positive attitude that leads to success in any endeavour … whether it be competing at the highest level of Olympic competition or building an outstanding practice. So the next time you experience one of the inevitable disappointments that comes with the territory in our business, remember those 23 Canadian “almost-medalists” at the Vancouver Olympics …  in many regards, I believe we can learn more from their determination, resilience and persistence than from all the athletes who accepted gold medals on the top step of the Olympic podium.