Five Tips to Learn From Michael Phelps: Go for the Gold

Five Tips to learn from Michael Phelps.

1. He went after his dream. Go for the gold. The silver or the bronze are good, too. Remember there’s a whole world out there between winning the gold and declaring that you’ll never win the gold so why even try.

2. He worked hard. He did those laps. He counted there and back, there and back. And there and back. We have to put in those countless hours.

3. He was his own cheerleader. Even when no one was looking or applauding or clapping for him. He was pushing himself on.

4. He had a coach. A mentor. Someone in his corner. And he got support from others.

5. He had a daily program. Each day he did something to get closer to his goal. All his medals are a result of a string of days.

Do the laps. Be your own cheerleader. Find someone to be your mentor. Make a commitment to yourself each day. Go for the gold. (Or silver or bronze or even last place.) This is it. Your life is your own Olympics.

Yes, these are perfect things to do to live our best chapter. It also gives me a good excuse to put a photo of half-naked buff men on my blog.

About dianabletter

Diana Bletter is the author of The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women (with photographs by Lori Grinker), shortlisted for a National Jewish Book Award. Her novel, A Remarkable Kindness, (HarperCollins) was published in 2015. She is the First Prize Winner of Moment Magazine's 2019 Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, tabletmag, Glamour, The Forward, The North American Review, Times of Israel, and is a freelance reporter for The Jerusalem Post, and many other publications. She is author of Big Up Yourself: It's About Time You Like Being You and The Mom Who Took off On Her Motorcycle, a memoir of her 10,000-mile motorcycle trip to Alaska and back to New York. She lives in a small beach village in Western Galilee, Israel, with her husband and family. She is a member of the local hevra kadisha, the burial circle, and a Muslim-Jewish-Christian-Druze women's group in the nearby town of Akko. And, she likes snowboarding and climbing trees.

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