George Bovell III

The goal, the goal, the gold! It's so easy to get car­ried away, es­pe­cial­ly for ath­letes in an Olympic year. Every four years there is a mass neu­ro­sis in elite sport as the loom­ing Olympics Games are ap­proached with an in­sane lev­el of in­ten­si­ty and all con­sum­ing zeal.

In many ways am­bi­tion is a curse; it dic­tates that one nev­er be sat­is­fied with the present, but in­stead al­ways look­ing to­wards the fu­ture in search of hap­pi­ness. Our so­ci­etal con­di­tion­ing man­i­fests as a sin­gle-mind­ed fo­cus on the goal, that blinds us as to why we fell in love with the sport in the first place as chil­dren.

Sport is no longer pur­sued for its own sake and en­joy­ment, but in­stead for the sec­ondary no­tion of at­tain­ing a goal. Con­stant rep­e­ti­tion brings the false con­vic­tion that its achieve­ment will bring hap­pi­ness. This is sim­ply not true.

I re­mem­ber tak­ing off my Olympic medal for the first time, feel­ing its sub­stan­tial weight and strug­gling to come to terms with the fact that there was no true hap­pi­ness to be found in it.

It was sim­ply a trin­ket, just an­oth­er thing. We are con­di­tioned by so­ci­ety to ex­ter­nalise hap­pi­ness, and to al­ways be look­ing for it in the fu­ture.

We are led to be­lieve that we will find hap­pi­ness when we win that medal, get that ma­te­r­i­al pos­ses­sion, or when we grad­u­ate, when we go to Uni­ver­si­ty, or when we get that great job, when we get pro­mot­ed, when we re­tire or when we get to heav­en. Many nev­er re­alise what they were look­ing for.

This be­lief leads many as­pir­ing Olympians to for­get the truth that sport should be en­joyed and used to en­hance vi­tal­i­ty. In­stead they sac­ri­fice the present for the fu­ture.

How­ev­er, this ex­treme­ly mis­er­able way of liv­ing brings with it a form of des­per­a­tion. The con­stant sac­ri­fice pro­vokes an in­tense de­sire for the end to jus­ti­fy the means, for the goal to be ac­com­plished so that the process would have been worth­while.

It al­so car­ries the fear that if the goal is not achieved, then one of the best years of life would have been wast­ed. We suf­fer when life be­comes sole­ly about be­com­ing, and no longer about be­ing.

This delu­sion starts to be­come clear when we ap­proach the sit­u­a­tion like this.

How great can you be if you aren't ac­tu­al­ly fo­cused on what you are do­ing, but are in­stead dis­tract­ed by a de­sired fu­ture out­come that you are si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly want­i­ng and afraid of not get­ting? Imag­ine that it is time for the big race and in­stead of pay­ing at­ten­tion to what you are ac­tu­al­ly do­ing, you are day­dream­ing in your mind about the sec­ondary no­tion of a time, or a po­si­tion, or a medal.

To be tru­ly great and sur­pass all ex­pec­ta­tions you must be com­plete­ly fo­cused on the un­fold­ing process, with­out even a thought di­rect­ed to­wards the out­come; a dis­trac­tion.You can on­ly think about what you al­ready know, so there­fore think­ing about the out­come will lead to the known, to medi­oc­rity and not to your best.

You don't find hap­pi­ness in the goal, it hap­pens in the process as a byprod­uct of rev­el­ing in the en­joy­ment of what's hap­pen­ing. When you are ac­tu­al­ly fo­cused more on what you're do­ing and not on the out­come, the irony is that the re­sult will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter.

We hear a lot about "post Olympic de­pres­sion". Sad­ly, this is a re­sult of not hav­ing pre-Olympic vi­tal­i­ty; and the re­al­i­sa­tion that there was no hap­pi­ness to be found in the fu­ture.

Goals in life are very im­por­tant, don't get me wrong. Set the goal, com­mit to the process, but ap­proach its at­tain­ment with easy equa­nim­i­ty. The goal gives you the jour­ney, and while you may think that you are do­ing it, it's do­ing you; the jour­ney gives you ex­pe­ri­ences and there­fore life.

The fun­ny thing about goals is that they are all based on our cur­rent per­spec­tive on life that is a re­sult of con­di­tion­ing. How­ev­er, as time goes on, we be­come con­di­tioned in dif­fer­ent ways as new ex­pe­ri­ences in­flu­ence us, es­sen­tial­ly chang­ing who we are. We be­come very dif­fer­ent peo­ple from when we set our goals.

Of­ten by the time we have strug­gled to at­tain our goal, we have changed so much that it's no longer im­por­tant to us, lead­ing to the hol­low re­al­i­sa­tion that we may have wast­ed our time. So set goals, but don't set them be­cause they are ob­jec­tives that you want to ac­com­plish.

Do it be­cause it gives you a way of life that you as your au­then­tic self would rel­ish, and a jour­ney that you would en­joy tak­ing re­gard­less of how your per­spec­tive on life changes.If you can do that, then you will re­alise the pro­found truth that the Olympics are not every four years, but every day.

In which case, it won't be about the time that you went, but rather the time that you had. Who­ev­er has the most fun wins; lit­er­al­ly.

Find George on Twit­ter: @george­bovell