It was a morning like any other. Michael Phelps had just finished his first gruelling training session of the day, the kind he was famous for, three hours in the pool, thousands of metres covered, all before the average person has had breakfast.
As he headed out across the icy parking lot to get in his car, he slipped and fell on a patch of ice. He broke his wrist. Not ideal for any athlete but especially not for Phelps who was nine months away from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
He could have given up.
However, instead of using the time to mope and watch his Olympic dreams disappear before his eyes, he used it to remain calm, get his head in the right place and work on his weaknesses. He focused on his leg strength. Immediately after surgery on his wrist, Phelps was back in the pool. Using just a float, he focused on his kick. He did lap after lap only using his legs.
Fast forward to August 2008, Phelps was swimming in the Olympics. It was the hundred metre butterfly final. Phelps was behind the Serbian gold medallist Milorad Cavic after an ‘average’ start and not a great turn at the 50m mark. The commentators were adamant he wasn’t going to do it. Phelps was exhausted. He had already won six races; he had given everything and there was nothing left. This was the race that he was not going to win. But then suddenly he kicked into a higher gear. As Cavic’s legs began to drag, Phelps moved faster than ever before. He got his hands on the wall first and he won the gold medal by 1/100th of a second.
Speaking afterwards, his coach said that without the injury Phelps never would have won the race. Michael Phelps went on to win eight gold medals in that Olympics, breaking the existing record held by Mark Spitz in the 1972 Munich Olympics and he is now the most decorated Olympian ever.
There will be times when things don’t go to plan, when it feels like it’s all gone wrong, but we need to see the opportunity it is providing.
The author Robert Greene talks about how we all have two types of time: alive time and dead time.
Dead time is when you sit around and wait for things to happen to you. Hoping things will get better and as a result life passes you by.
Alive time is when you take control, you make every minute count. You don’t simply let life happen to you; you own it. You learn, you grow and you get better.
Each day presents us with the question – are we going to use this as alive time or dead time?
So instead of wasting months of training, Phelps opted for alive time. He didn’t control what happened to him, but he controlled how he responded to it.
Little moments of alive time add up. They can be worth 1/100th of a second. They can be the difference between a gold medal and a silver medal. The difference between a world record or not. As Annie Dillard says, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
You don’t have to be an Olympian to put this into practice. The next time you are stuck in traffic, are you going to get frustrated or use it as a chance to listen to a podcast? The next time your train is delayed, are you going to grumble to your fellow passengers or start reading a book? The next time you are running a project you dislike, are you going to wish the time away or use it to hone your patience and perseverance skills? Using our time wisely will prevent us waking up a year from now realising how much time we have wasted.
Just like the little moments of alive time add up, so does dead time.
Most people get so hung up about the future or dwell on what has already happened, they miss the present that has been given to them.
If we get so focused on counting down until our holiday, or the weekend, or until the term is over, we are letting opportunities pass us by.
If we think like that, it’s dead time.
There are so many opportunities up for grabs if we learn to shift our thinking and start looking at things differently.
It’s not that every situation is amazing, it’s just how we perceive and respond to it.
How we do anything, is how we do everything.
Choose alive time, make every moment alive time, focus on what’s right here right now, what you are in control of, in the present moment.
You won’t regret it.