by Xypher Pino

Just like the rest of the world, I spent the latter half of my summer watching the 2024 Paris Olympics. Everything from the opening ceremony to the fiery competitive games and all the way to the very last day of the competition was amazing. It was so inspiring seeing all these world-class athletes perform at their absolute peak and represent their respective countries with tremendous pride and joy. These Olympics served as a reminder of how great our world can really be despite the multitude of problems happening all over the planet. Everyone was able to put aside their differences and come together, even if it was just for a couple of weeks.

Of course, one of the main things that I kept track of as I was watching the games was the total medal count. After all, this is the reason why everyone was here anyway – to win medals and make their country proud. The Olympics has been around for an extremely long time, with its earliest documented origins going back about 3,000 years. The medal system—gold for first, silver for second, bronze for third—that we are so accustomed to was only implemented during the 1904 Olympics though, but ever since then, the medals have provided a standardized way of recognizing and celebrating achievements.

Among the three medals, of course, gold represents the pinnacle of success and excellence. Though the International Olympics Committee, the group that has organized every Olympics since 1896, never declares an official winner of the Olympics, most people determine the winning country by who has the most gold medals by the end of the competition. This unofficial criterion has been in place for decades now and society has little to no issue with this whatsoever. After all, having a gold medal is an objective indication that you are number one.

The problem with this method, though, is that it completely invalidates the silver and bronze medals. As I scrolled through social media during the Olympics, I came across numerous posts about a country or an athlete winning a silver or bronze medal. When I looked at the comments of these posts, particularly posts related to US athletes, I was very disappointed as many were leaving negative comments and criticizing them for not winning gold. I find it completely absurd that instead of being proud of their country and congratulating the athlete for winning, they get hated for not being number one.

Placing second or third in the entire world at anything is an extremely difficult feat and requires countless hours of dedication and sacrifice. Even for those that did not place, they still made it all the way to compete against the best athletes in the whole world and in order to do that, they had to put in tons of hard work. Unfortunately, people fail to realize and acknowledge any of this because all we do as a society is worship those who are at the very top.

The way that we have approached the Olympics echoes this “win-or-bust” mindset that plagues our society. This can be seen everywhere, not just in sport competitions – from school, your career, day-to-day lives – many focus on running their lives around achieving a goal and being disappointed if they do not accomplish something. As a result, only those that reach the very top are the ones that receive credit. Success is determined by nothing other than reaching the absolute end goal. Failure is defined as anything that is not first place, easily creating unnecessary pressure and a feeling of incompetence among people.

This mindset is the reason why many people experience burnout – a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. The majority of people tie their self-worth to external achievements and success. When the focus is solely on success, it can become easy to lose sight of joy and passion, especially when things do not go as expected. A negative feedback loop starts the moment failure occurs – stress builds up and it becomes hard to gain validation, making it harder to gain success. In addition, in the pursuit of success and goals, many begin to neglect themselves – forgetting to dedicate time for hobbies and relationships.

Furthermore, this mindset has created toxic competition among us – instead of helping one another, we tear each other down to gain an advantage, to get one step closer to the top. Collaboration takes a back seat as everyone attempts to beat one another. Less and less equitable opportunities come about as this selfish mindset continues to become normalized.

A better way to approach life is to focus on enjoying the process instead of the end goal. Only recently did I realize this. For much of my life, I constantly pushed myself to be the best in whatever I do, specifically anything school-related in the hopes of being in a great position for my future career. I constantly stressed making myself stand out, always doing things that I do not enjoy just to possibly get an edge. When I got my grades back for my projects or exams, I was never satisfied unless I got a perfect score. Though it did motivate me to always do better, which is never a bad mindset to have, it was a very stressful way of living and led to more disappointment than satisfaction. I only felt genuine happiness with my achievements once I started focusing on falling in love with the process instead of the end result.

There is nothing wrong with striving for greatness but, at some point, there must be a limit. We must learn to appreciate accomplishments even if there is more to be attained. This win-or-bust, goal-oriented thinking can lead to increased motivation but what comes along with it is immense pressure to succeed and extreme disappointment if expectations are not met. There must be a balance between reaching for the stars and remaining content. Focus on the journey and enjoy the process instead of only attaching your worth and happiness to the goal.