We've been enjoying the London Olympics in our household, although it has been taxing for our DVR. (It seemed too strange to keep the kids in the house watching televised sports on a beautiful summer day, so we went to the pool instead.) I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Olympian and working mom Wendy Boglioli, who won gold and bronze medals for swimming in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
I thought I'd share some of her hard-won wisdom from the Olympics, the illness of her admired father and her 37-year marriage to husband Bernie. "Swimming took work, athletics takes work, business takes work, marriage takes work, and to think that one is less than another, we've never viewed it that way," Boglioli told me. "You have to be pretty darn selfish."
I'm not sure I would use the word selfish, but certainly I believe you have to be ruthless in prioritizing how you spend your time, and refuse to let someone else overrule you. Otherwise you could pass the whole day merely reacting to the arrows that life shoots at you, rather than charting your own course.
Watching the Olympic athletes gives me a renewed appreciation for the heights that a human being can achieve with enough dedication, training and effort -- added to a healthy dose of raw talent, of course. It inspires me commit myself to those stretch projects and lofty career goals that would be easy to dismiss as too ambitious. Not to mention to nudge my kids gently towards endeavors that might turn out to be their life's passion.
Photo courtesy of Wendy Boglioli
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