Anyone following the olympic games at Paris 2024 might have seen the emotional finish to Women’s canoe slalom a few hours ago. After a nail biting game, gold was bagged by Fox from Australia and silver was bagged by Lilik from Germany and Bronze by Leibfarth from the USA. Hearty congratulations to all of them!! I truly enjoyed watching this game more than anything else so far. As I watched each player stride along the difficult course, an analogy struck me and I was excited to pen it down. Each player starts by gliding and soon enough face a fall and a sudden gush of water on their face. Some remain calm and concentrate on getting past it while others struggled to manuever their way out of the roaring currents. There were some green paths that could be passed through or be skipped and there were some red ones which had to be crossed at any cause. The red ones were carefully placed in the most difficult pockets and making a small mistake caused a huge difference. After crossing each red path there was again a steep fall and gush of water all over again. One had to sometimes fight their way upstream to reach the next red path, for, missing one could end it for them. At the end of approximately 100 seconds, the player, the audience and anyone who might be watching, will definitely feel a sense of achievement, just like it was their doing.
If we carefully observe, the current market situation that we all are going through, could be compared to this canoe slalom course. The last four years starting from Corona’s begin have marked a lot of falls, red and green paths and continue to do so. The key takeaway from the game for me was the qualities exhibited by these top athletes that could be applied by any individual under such difficult circumstances.
Calmness with which they approached the course.
Concentration with which they held it all together and moved towards the destination.
They looked at the destination which was the end point and did not pay heed to short wins or losses. Jessica Fox won the gold even after a penalty of 2 seconds!
Patience and perseverence to soar through those rough waters
Approaching this situation with calm, composure and concentration is the key to getting past it. Soon enough, the waters will no more be rough or you would have mastered sailing through ups and downs :) What do you think??
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