Beyond the Inspiration, What it Takes to Achieve Results No Matter What

How badly do you want to succeed? What’re you willing to do? What’re you willing to say? But the most important question is, what are you willing to surrender to?

Achieving results no matter what isn’t motivational. There’s a specific way of thinking that gives you the results you’re looking for, even in the face of the greatest adversity.

Maybe you’ve seen the story of Oscar Figueroa, a Colombian weightlifter who had dreams of Olympic gold, floating around the internet. His story is quite inspiring with that flavor of “don’t ever give up” that makes us feel good. 

If you haven’t heard the story, Oscar first competed in Athens in 2004, he ranked fifth overall. Four years later in Beijing he failed to make a lift and was disqualified. 2012 he was back in the London Olympics and won silver, just short of his goal. It was in 2016 that Oscar's dreams became a reality when he won Olympic gold in Rio de Janeiro. His dream finally accomplished after more than 22 years in pursuit. You can check it out here if you haven’t seen it yet:

If you dig a little deeper into the story you would find that around 2008 it was discovered that Oscar had a cervical hernia which had to be corrected surgically. In 2016 he needed surgery again to repair his chronic back pain caused by a lumbar hernia. He faced not just the mental adversity of continuing to train and return to the Olympics, but the physical adversity of injury. 

I think the inspirational element of Oscar's story is great (and if you know me, you know I love some good inspiration) because it just leaves this sense of grit and determination as the source of making us want to get up and achieve our goals! Only to find out that for most of us determination by itself is short-lived... After-all, we all know gym attendance come February drops pretty substantially from the dreams we had on January 2.

Oscar had something deeper than just grit, that you might not know about. It’s something that all great achievers have in common and that’s surrendering to possibility. What did Oscar surrender to? For him, it was a surrendering to God’s will over and over again. Surrendering to the idea of what was happening to him was by the grace of God. By giving over the results and externalizing the purpose to something greater, he had purpose to keep going.  

So, how badly do you want it?  What’re you willing to do? What’re you willing to say? But the most important question is, what are you willing to surrender to?

Success is about letting go and surrendering to a purpose greater than yourself, whatever that is for you. 

The next time you run into an obstacle or get stopped by failure or bump into adversity, in your business or your life, try surrendering to what’s possible, to commit to a greater purpose beyond the circumstances. It just might be what has you achieve that goal you’ve been striving towards.