You never know someone's potential.

We like to fool ourselves into thinking we know what a person is capable of in the future, but every coach has had someone go from looking like they had no talent to pretty darn good.

You've got to give people a shot to develop.

5 Lessons on Life From the Greatest Sporting Event

(To read on TheGrowthEQ.com, click here.)

What can the world's greatest sporting event teach us? A lot, even outside of sport. But wait...we're not talking about the Super Bowl here. What event then? The US Olympic Marathon Trials, which took place a couple weeks ago.
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It's a once-every-four-years event, a single race to determine which three men and women represent the US at the Olympics. The all or nothing nature of the event combined with the unpredictability of a marathon makes it an incredible two hours and change of drama. This year, we had the deepest women's marathon field in history, plus a changing of the guard on the men's side. It all added up to a crazy race that included fulfilled dreams, unbelievable underdogs, gut wrenching efforts that just fell short, and much more.

But for our purposes, here are some wonderful lessons that we all can learn from:

1. Know when to throw the watch away!

We live in a world where we can measure anything. From readiness to sleep scores, many of us are inundated with data. Sometimes that data can be good, telling us to speed up or slow down, or to get some more recovery. But sometimes it gets in the way.

At mile 17, while in the lead pack, Sara Hall did the ultimate boss move: she took her watch off and flung it into the crowd. No use for the data. The splits didn't matter. And they may get in the way. She was there to race. Sara fell just short, settling for 5th place after battling for 3rd for most of the final miles, but it's this attitude which put her in this situation in the first place. As a 40-year-old in her eighth Olympic Trials, she didn't quite make the team, but she had the best finish of her career. Sometimes you've got to ditch the data and metrics and trust yourself to compete!

2. When you're hurting, create some distance.

Emily Sisson is the American Record holder in the marathon. Four years ago, she entered the trials as a favorite to make the team, and it all went wrong. This year, she entered as a favorite again, but sealed the deal with a 2nd place finish. Part way through, when fatigue and discomfort started creeping up, those doubts of whether she could hang on surfaced. She looked at the lead vehicle right ahead of her and saw US marathon legend Deena Kastor sitting there watching the race as a commentator for the press. Emily asked herself, "What would Deena do?" It led her to think about how Deena would handle the discomfort, recalling the strategies she outlined in her book.
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It's a masterclass in what I wrote about in Do Hard Things: one way to deal with discomfort is to get yourself out of your own head and ask how a respected friend or role model would handle that situation. It dulls the emotional impact of what you're going through and puts you on a path to coming up with a coping strategy that works.

3. Hope allows us to find more.

Four years ago, Leonard Korir finished in the worst place in the sport: fourth. He was just three seconds short of making the team. This year, it looked like a repeat performance. At the 24 mile mark, he was in 5th place and 37 seconds out of third. He resigned that it was over. He all but gave up.

But then, all of the sudden, he saw the two runners in front of him start to falter ever so slightly. The crowd started yelling at him that he had a shot. Reenergized, Korir pressed forward, and over the final two miles made up that gap to clinch his Olmypic spot on the final stretch. Korir explained, "When [the fans] were screaming and cheering, I got some extra energy. It was like a superpower."

So what? We never reach our actual limit. Our perception of fatigue is influenced by our situation. If we feel like we have no hope, like our goal is out of reach, we literally feel more tired, and our motivation wanes. But, if like Korir, we start to feel a bit of hope, we often find an extra gear. Find ways to keep the hope.

4. Talent is not one dimensional.

In high school, Dakota Lindwurm's best mile was 5:35. For those who don't know track, to put it nicely, that wouldn't make a good varsity high school team. Lindwurm walked on to a NCAA division two school. She got better, turning herself into a respectable college runner. But she was still over a minute behind her peers who were considering running professional in the 5k. Fast forward a few years and, after climbing the ranks for unknown to underdog, she ran the race of her life to make her first Olympic team.
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Often we think talent is easy to spot. We fall for the myth of greatness. The talent that expresses itself right way. The phenom. But that's only one form of talent. Sometimes, talent takes a while to express itself. Some people need to have years of training to let their true talent shine. Too often, these people get lost to the talent identification machine. They are high responders to training who just need more time to train! Our society neglects them. And that's a shame. Fortunately, Lindwurm found a way to stay in the sport. We need to afford that opportunity to others, to give the late bloomers a shot!

5. Match Skills and Demands

The secret to just about any endeavor is being able to match your skill to the demands you face. This is easier said than done, and there is no better example than the marathon. It's about riding the line. If you go over that line, you might feel great at mile 13, but not so great at 23. If you play it too cautious, you might come trucking home, underperforming because you had more in you than you realized. The problem is that you never really know if you got it right until after the race.

There were many examples of each at the trials. And some should be commended. Zach Panning made the men's race, leading for the majority of the middle miles and dwindling the pack down to just three, before finding out he kept it just a touch too hot in the last few miles. But there were a few who nailed it. Jessica McLain may have come in fourth, just missing a spot, but she ran one of the best races at the Trials. She came in with a 2:29 best, over 10 minutes slower than favorites like Emily Sisson. Yet, going into the race, she thought top 10 was well within her reach, and top 5 was possible. As a self-coached, unsponsored runner, no one else was thinking about McLain reaching those goals. Yet she knew what she was capable of. She didn't do that by going for broke. She ran her race. At halfway, she was in 13th, about a minute behind the leaders. By mile 21, she was still only in 10th place. Barely at her first goal. On a hot day, she ran nearly even splits. Riding the line perfectly on what she was capable of. She may have come up just short of her Olympic dream, but she undoubtedly got the most out of herself. Which is all we can ask.

-- Steve​

No Matter Where You Live, You Should Know How to "Winter"

February in New York, where I live, is always a confounding time of year. According to the calendar, the spring equinox is close, and yet, because it's still cold (it snowed just this week) and because winter has stretched on for a couple of months now, it feels very far away. (To put it in running terms: milers often say that the third lap of a race is the most torturous—it feels like we're on the third lap of winter's mile.) It's at time like these that I find great solace in the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, by Katherine May.

I've read that book each of the last three winters, because it contains a lesson I need to keep learning. Just as spring, summer, and fall have their time, so too does winter—and it cannot be rushed. This is true of literal, seasonal winter, but it is also true of the metaphorical "winters" of our lives, as well: times when we or someone we love is sick, when we lose a job, when we're going through a breakup or dealing with grief—anytime life gets heavy, really. If you're an athlete, your "winter" might be an injury, or simply the slow period of rest and rejuvenation after a key performance.

Denying that period of rest and recovery "really is harmful," May told me in a recent interview. "It means that we're denying this completely natural other half, which is actually essential to the growth, because of all of the secret work that goes on during those darker, more difficult times."

Remember that the growth equation says stress plus rest equals growth. You don't get growth without rest any more than you get spring without winter. So whether you're dragging through a frosty meteorological winter, or a metaphorical one, respect where you are in the cycle—and take solace in knowing that new season will unfold before too long.

(Katherine May is this week's guest on FAREWELL (Apple/Spotify), where she makes a great case for cultivating a "wintering" practice to go alongside your movement, eating, even your spiritual practices. It will change how you think about recovery, productivity, and the passage of time. Listen at the link above or wherever you get your podcasts.)

– Clay​

• Don't jump into cold water after a workout! New meta-analysis finds that taking an in ice bath after strength training impairs gains. Why? The damage and inflammation are the signal to adapt!
• Destigmatizing mental health issues is much needed. But, what if we've gone too far? We've turned the world into a bunch of first year medical school students, afraid that they have every new disease that they learn about. In this fascinating podcast, they take on the balance of awareness and over-identifying with mental health disorders. What we give attention to gains value. As we've written about previously, don't marry your labels, be they disorders, political tribes, or your occupation.
• And, as always, some of our prior writing related to today's main piece:
  • ​Balancing Competitiveness and Letting Go​
  • ​Listen to Kobe: Spend Time Alone in Your Head​
  • ​Rethinking What It Means to be The Best in the World​
  • ​Performance Lessons From The Wild World of Elite Chess​
  • ​3 Lessons from NBA Superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo​

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Thank you for reading this week's edition of The Growth Equation newsletter,

Brad, Steve, and Clay

P.s., if someone forwarded this email to you, you can sign up to get our weekly email here.

To Learn more and go deeper, check out our books:

• ​Master of Change​
• ​Do Hard Things​
• ​The Practice of Groundedness​
• ​Peak Performance ​

For daily insights, ideas, and practices, be sure to follow us online:

Twitter: @Bstulberg and @Stevemagness​
​Instagram: Steve Magness, Brad Stulberg, Clay Skipper, and The Growth Eq Instagram​

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