The “Zero-Regrets” Mentality
Olympian Apolo Ohno and his quest to live a life of no regrets
A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon an autobiography by Olympic short-track speed skater Apolo Ohno called “Zero Regrets: Be Greater Than Yesterday.” The title of the book immediately stood out to me because I was in the midst of reflecting on my own life at that moment. I, too, had been grappling with the question of how one embarks on the journey to maximize one’s potential in life. As a result, my serendipitous encounter with Ohno’s book could not have come at a riper time.
Reflecting on my three years of undergraduate study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I thought about the positives and the negatives of my time spent there. There have undoubtedly been many more good times than bad, but life is such that the good does not come without the bad following closely behind. But, after all the reflection, the biggest question I had asked of myself (and still did not have a clear-cut resolution for) was the following: Did I have any regrets about all that has happened (both positive and negative) in these past three years at UNC? To fully understand this question from all perspectives, I needed to gain insight on what it means to truly live a life of no regrets. Is such a lifestyle even feasible? Or, is this just some esoteric notion that only the special among us can strive to imbibe in their lives?
For Apolo Ohno, the Olympics and speed skating served to inspire him to reach greater heights than he thought possible, but, along the way, he had his fair share of trials and tribulations. There were periods when he felt lost. Then, there were moments when he felt in so in tune with his sport, that he could literally control the flow (and outcome) of the races. But, it is undeniable that just like any other human being, his life has consisted of its fair share of ebbs and flows. However, somehow and someway he was able to transcend those difficulties and triumphs to become the most decorated U.S. Winter Olympics athlete. All in all, Ohno won 8 medals over his three Winter Olympic Games (2002 — Salt Lake City (2 medals); 2006 — Torino (3 medals); 2010 — Vancouver (3 medals)). But those Olympic medals are only the tip of the iceberg — Ohno in those intermittent years won many more world championships and other prestigious speed skating competitions, so his successes and abilities are, arguably, unparalleled.
In honor of his eight Olympic medals, I wanted to present eight medal-worthy life lessons from his autobiography that will hopefully assist in answering the question I posed of myself.
ONE — Find something you want to spend your life doing.
To live the zero-regrets lifestyle, Ohno followed one simple mantra: “You have to dedicate your heart and soul to something. Then you go forward; you don’t look back. And you don’t hold back. You go after whatever that thing is without being afraid to fail” (Ohno 65). What Ohno is saying isn’t that we should pigeonhole ourselves into ONE single career or life. He’s urging us to take charge of our lives and actually DECIDE on doing something (whether this changes in a year or ten years down the road is inconsequential) and then pursue it with all your efforts and focus. For Ohno, he dedicated his early teenage years and his twenties to speed skating and excelling at that endeavor; however, at the moment, he’s focusing on his other life plans and excelling at them too (and we can do the same). You can throw a dart in any old direction, but if you have a bulls-eye to aim towards, then you get that sense of aiming at a target. That’s what Ohno is saying. Find a bulls-eye to aim towards and, in a few years, if you find that that bulls-eye is the wrong one, then move on to another one — but always, in that process, have something to aim towards.
TWO — Success AND failure are both CHOICES.
One of the motto’s of Ohno’s life was that he was not afraid to win. But, this was an acquired skill for him that took years to perfect. A lot of times, we get paralyzed by fearing what happens when we win than what happens when we lose. Hence, we literally scare ourselves out of a winnable situation. Ohno had to learn this the hard way in 1999 in a competition in Montreal when he eased off the accelerator going into the final turn and ended up being outraced by one of his competitors for the gold. In reflection, Ohno asserts, “you can’t be afraid to win…I [had to] allow myself to win, allow myself to want it, allow all the hard work I had put in to come to fruition” (Ohno 86). If you’re going to work hard to prepare for something, then why not go all out all the way? Why let the fear of impending failure or unparalled success deter you from accomplishing your objectives? If you don’t go all out, then you ostensibly open up the possibility of allowing regret to creep in somewhere down the road.
THREE — It’s not talent that separates the best from the average, it’s the thing in between your ears. It’s all mental.
Ohno writes, “If, as a premise, all world-class athletes had physical talent, what could separate one guy from the rest? Since everything else had to be equal, it figured that the guy who could make the best use of the mental edge would consistently be in a better position” (Ohno 95). What Ohno is asserting is that you will reach a certain level in life where everyone, on the average, has the same talents as you, so then how you do begin to separate yourself from these highly skilled individuals? You do so by first preparing your mind to handle the challenges.
FOUR — You are, at the end of the day, only competing against yourself.
This was perhaps the point that resonated with me the most from Ohno’s work: “It dawned on me that summer: I wasn’t racing against other guys or other countries. Not really. I was racing against myself. If I allowed myself to be who I could be, the possibilities were endless” (Ohno 102). If you are only competing against yourself and nobody else, then you leave that much more room for growth. For example, someone that you’re competing with may think that he has reached his ceiling at whatever you two are doing, but by surpassing this individual, what does it really mean for you? All it means is that you’ve passed this one individual (a person that may have maximized his own potential), but have you, in passing him, maximized your own potential? So, by comparing yourself to other people you inevitably fall into the trap of viewing other people’s potential as that of your own when, in reality, your potential is probably limitless.
FIVE — Life, just like short-track speed skating, is uncertain. Even when things seem certain.
If you prepare better than anyone else around you, if you have a strong mindset, and if you seek to constantly improve yourself, then is success guaranteed? Is a zero-regrets lifestyle easier to attain? In response, Ohno outlines a race where he absolutely dominated…until the final lap. After the race, reporters and critics asked him how he felt to lose the gold medal in such an unpredictable manner and he responded with the following:
“I didn’t lose gold. I won silver….Life isn’t certain; short-track isn’t certain. Even when something seems certain, you’re coming around the last turn, in position to win — it’s still uncertain. My goal was to get off the ice and be satisfied with the effort I’d given, to have no regrets, and on this particular day, in this particular race, I had indeed given all I had. How, in any way, could I not be delighted with silver?” (Ohno 136).
Ohno’s point is that if you know in your heart of hearts that you’ve laid it all out on the line, then why would you be upset if the vicissitudes of life prevent you from reaching your goals? In the grand scheme of things, it is much more important that you use the failure to see how you can improve than to get bogged down in self-ridicule and deep self-criticism.
SIX — It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.
In a sport as intense and unpredictable as short-track speed skating, all the years upon years of physical, mental, and nutritional preparation cannot guarantee success. Similarly, for Ohno, starting first in a race did not mean he would be winning the gold when all was said and done. There are simply too many variables that could go wrong in the midst of a race. But, Ohno offers, “It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish. And it’s okay along the way to fail. I failed. It took that failure for me to realize what my potential was and to dedicate myself to something I truly believed in, to understand that it was going to take a whole lot more than going through the motions, no matter how talented I might be” (Ohno 153).
SEVEN — Ambitious goals require ambitious preparation and sacrifice.
In order to accomplish your tough and lofty goals, “you have to be willing to sacrifice beyond what others are willing to sacrifice; you have to be willing to train at levels others are not willing to train at; you have to be willing to accept accomplishing goals that others never reach” (Ohno 246).
One of the most jaw-dropping parts of Ohno’s book for me was to read the chapter on what he did, preparation-wise and sacrifice-wise, in order to train for his last Olympic games in Vancouver in 2010. For these races, Ohno decided that he was truly going prepare harder and longer than any one of his competitors. One of the quotes that stood out to me of this epic journey Ohno takes is the following: “…there wasn’t — there couldn’t be — anyone else in the world who was putting in that much time and effort. That is what gives you confidence. If you were to take the guy lining up to me on the ice and ask him how hard he works, double or triple that, and that would be me. That gives you confidence” (Ohno 236).
If you ever read this book, the excruciating journey that Ohno goes through to prepare for the 2010 Winter Olympics is something that I firmly doubt anyone else in the world would be willing to endure. I mean the amount of mental fortitude, stamina, work ethic, and focus needed for him to survive those long and grueling workouts definitely left me in renewed appreciation of the character of this man. But, his experience also gifted me with another piece of the zero-regrets puzzle — if you put in the work, then no matter how the results unfold, you really are left with no regrets at the end. This phenomena occurs because you realize that you did everything single thing possible (and then some more) to truly maximize your potential and so you actually have zero regrets about the preparation part of the journey at the very least.
EIGHT — Anyone that has accomplished something of significance in this world has not done it alone. Appreciate the support that those around you provide.
Last but definitely not least, the eighth lesson of Ohno’s life story really hit home with me. Throughout the course of the book, the reader is led to understand the key role that Ohno’s father plays in his life and his future successes on the short-track. Although Ohno didn’t always appreciate the lessons his father taught him or the parental pressure his dad put on him to excel, he realizes during the course of his Olympic career that it was really his dad who had worked tirelessly to ensure that Ohno would have zero regrets when he finished his short-track career. Ohno writes of his father: “My father led me to see the way: when you want something badly enough, you’ve got to be willing to do things nobody else is willing to do. Body, mind, and soul, you can’t hold back, you don’t hold back” (Ohno 283).
I’m sure we all have figures in our lives that influence us to reach bigger heights. These important people help us to realize that what we see as our “plateaus” are actually just the valleys of another mountain to climb. These are the people that push us (even when we don’t like them for it) to dream bigger. These are the people that set up the environment we need in order to flourish on our own journey. These are the people that sacrifice their own dreams and ambitions so that they can selflessly help us realize our own. Without these key people in our lives, we don’t reach our goals and, if we do, the journey always seems much more difficult and arduous than it would have been otherwise.
____________________________________________________________________
So…what about my question about living a life of zero regrets? After reading Apolo Ohno’s book, I have come to develop a deeper perspective on my time in college. I have come to appreciate all that I’ve learned and experienced over these past three years. BUT, in the back of my mind, I know that I haven’t even scratched the surface of my potential (since I believe that potential is limitless). And I believe such is the case with every other college student too; none of us, despite our accomplishments in our respective higher-learning institutions, have truly reached our potential. There is always so much more we can bring to the table with our extraordinary gifts and abilities if we develop the work ethic, the mental fortitude, and the desire to excel at whatever opportunities come our way.
However, I also realized that the past three years matter and yet they don’t. To be clearer, I mean that while three entire years of my life are undoubtedly important to me and I’ve learned a lot from them, I need to shift my focus on to the next year of my life — my senior year in college. I am reminded of a Wayne Gretzky quote that goes a something like this: “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” What I mean is that it is important to learn the lessons from the past and cherish the memories, but it’s vital to never get stuck in the past. It’s much more beneficial to focus on what lies ahead of you. It’s much more important to have the uncanny knack for realizing and seizing future opportunities for growth rather than recounting all of the missed ones in the past.
Therefore, I need to learn to view the next hour, next day, next week, next month, and next year as the most important of my life. If I embrace this philosophy, then I will set myself up, from this point onward, to live a life of zero regrets. Ultimately, developing a hunger for producing great work and instilling the work ethic required to do so are also challenges on my plate. Moving forward, understanding and imbibing Ohno’s eight big life lessons into my own life is definitely a great start and I eagerly anticipate observing all the changes that shape my life with this new outlook. We can’t take back the time that we have already lived, but we can dictate, to the best of our ability, how we choose to spend the rest of our time on this planet. And I, for one, choose to spend it living a life of zero regrets.
Works Cited
Ohno, Apolo Anton., and Alan Abrahamson. Zero Regrets: Be Greater than Yesterday. New York: Atria, 2010. Print.
If you liked this post, then please hit the green “Recommend” button below — thanks in advance!
