What’s the luge feel like? It’s crazy. Eighty to ninety miles per hour on a sled that’s just a piece of fiberglass on a couple of steel runners.
All the way down the track, you are right on the ragged edge of control - right on the edge of disaster. Remember when you were a kid, and you leaned back on a chair balancing on its back legs and felt the point where balance is lost and you were about to fall back? That’s exactly what the luge feels like! Like an out of balance chair moving 90 miles per hour!
You are managing risk the entire way down the luge run. Do you dare to take a faster, more risky line down the track? You can actually ‘cut-corners’ down the luge track, but doing so increases the chance of slamming into a wall and crashing. Do you dare put your head back for a few seconds and race blindly to be more aerodynamic? Tucking your head back to assume the shape of a bullet will make the sled go faster, but when you do, you won’t see where you are going. Do you dare round your steel runners to give up traction and gain speed?
That’s what the top guys in the luge circuit do. They actually ride on sleds that have virtually no traction, and they race blindly (using only their peripheral vision) the whole way down. That’s what it takes to win Olympic Gold. It’s risky business to dare to become a world class luger.
Successful people don’t avoid risk. They embrace and manage risk to have the opportunity to win more. On the circuit, the top competitors are the ones who are so mentally tough that they are willing to take the biggest risks. To win big you have to be willing to risk big. When somebody crashes on the luge, nobody laughs. They respect you for pushing the envelope. They respect you for going for it.
It’s no different in business and in life. You have to be willing to commit to your goals and dreams if you want to taste the sweet taste of success. So don’t dilly dally around. Take some risks, Go for the Gold and make your life a masterpiece!
Olympic Motivational Speaker Ruben Gonzalez
www.TheOlympicSpeaker.com
