Yes, Usain Bolt is pretty fast (the fastest man on earth). Yes, he likes the big events. Yes, his nonchalance and keeping cool are not just cunning fronts to phase the other runners – they are real. But why has he run so well at these Olympics?
Listen to what he actually said in his BBC interview straight after he had won the 100m final: He is not a good starter. He’d been worrying about this, trying to improve his start, trying to react quicker and get out of the blocks ahead of his rivals. And all this worry was tensing him up and making him run worse. Until his coach said to him: Forget about the start. You’ll beat them when you get into your stride. For you, it is the second half of the race that matters. And when he realised that, and let go of the desire to put everything right, he was fine. More than fine: he was 9.63 seconds.
And this is what he said in the post-win euphoria: I won because I stopped worrying about my start.
This is a wonderful example of ‘positive psychology’. Instead of looking at psychological dysfunction and trying to fix it, positive psychology looks at a person’s strengths, virtues and talents. It doesn’t ignore the very real difficulties that someone may have, but the core conviction is that you help someone to flourish and find happiness by focussing on their strengths rather than by trying to correct or compensate for their weaknesses.
Sometimes, you don’t need to straighten everything out, you just need to go with what’s positive – notice it, affirm it, use it, strengthen it. This is what Usain Bolt learnt from his coach.
Most of us are right or left handed. We don’t worry about that most of the time; we don’t waste energy trying to build up our skill set in our weaker hand. We simply learn to live with the strengths that come from our stronger hand. This can be true for skills, virtues, personality traits, spiritual gifts, etc.
If you are interested in all this, see the Authentic Happiness website run by Dr. Martin Seligman, Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. And you can take one of the questionnaires here, to see what are your instinctive strengths of character and how they might serve you better.
[…] And when he realised that, and let go of the desire to put everything right, he was fine. More than fine: he was 9.63 seconds. […]