Olympic Motivational Quotes

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

Success is a decision, not a gift.

There are three types of people in this world. Firstly, there are people who make things happen. Then there are people who watch things happen. Lastly, there are people who ask, what happened? Which do you want to be?

Like everything in life, it is not what happens to you but how you respond to it that counts.

It is never about who is right or wrong, it is about what is best.

Too often, people get stuck in a state of over-thinking, the result is that they never reach a decision.

Compete like you cannot fail.

You settle for less, you get less.

The first step is the most important. It is the most crucial and the most effective as it will initiate the direction you have chosen.

Athletes who are able to stay completely focused in pursuit of their dreams are the ones that are most likely to become champions.

You can start to change your luck today. Begin believing that you can have what you desire and superior things will arrive.

If obstacles are large, jump higher.

If not now, when?

Act like a champion, and then become one.

If you have positive energy you will always attract positive outcomes.

Share your aspirations only with those who will support you, not those who will respond with doubt or lack of interest.

It is action that creates motivation.

See it first in your mind, then become it.

The thrust of continuous action is the firewood which fuels motivation.

Every time a champion makes a decision they have a chance to learn something new, regardless of the outcome.

Look for solutions, instead of being difficult; be more thoughtful, instead of allowing anger to burn you out. Look at things from a different perspective, embrace change, look out for opportunities and you will feel much more in control.

If you want to continue to be the best in the world, then you have to train and compete like you are second best in the world.

Invest your energy in the things you can control.

A mind filled with negative thoughts makes you feel miserable and inadequate and will lead to failure after failure no matter how hard you try to succeed.

If you remain static and wait for success to come to you it will certainly not happen.

To think is good. To obsess is bad.

Your current apathy is simply your soul telling you that it is confused.

The challenge for you is to decide not what is important, but what is most important and then focus your attention on that.

They don’t give Olympic medals out for talking a good game.

Lucky people will focus on what’s in front of them rather than scrabbling about for what they’re searching for.

Explore. Train your conscious mind and your subconscious mind to start working for you by getting those great powers to move in a new direction. Start creating your own good luck today.

Remember, if you don’t do anything – if you don’t change the way your mind works and direct your subconscious mind to create the life you want – then everything stays the same, nothing changes.

It is one thing to know what should be done, it is another to do it.

When you think a positive thought, you become positive.

Do you want to know what one of the secrets to achieving all of your goals is? You’ve got to be committed.

Nothing could be any worse than having to turn to your friends, your colleagues and your loved ones and say –‘I gave up too soon’.

Although you can’t go back in time and alter your natural level of potential, you can determine how much of that ability you tap into, exploit and develop for the future.

If not you, who?

My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race; they sent me 5,000 miles to finish the race. - John Stephen Akhwari, 1968 Summer Olympic

Success is simply never giving in to failure - either in mind or body.

The people and successes in your life mirror your beliefs.

Tell me your thinking, and I’ll tell you what your life looks like.

Mix with positive-minded people as a means to tap into your unexploited potential.

If you decide not to take action, you are going to fail, and even if you do take action, if you can’t keep up your motivation, you will simply end up back where you started.

These are the people who will encourage you to go after your dreams and will inspire you to succeed. Stick to them like a barnacle to a rock.

The way forward is to stop pestering yourself for answers and let it, the creative part of your mind, come up with the solution when the time is right.

Success is virulent. Once you get the bug then it’s in you.

For many, lack of achievement is more a consequence of fear of taking a chance and getting uncomfortable.

The only test is what you see when you look in a mirror.

To deliver your own personal maximum, you’ll realise there are no shortcuts; if you want to be a champion it is all about rolling your sleeves up and getting stuck in.

See it, feel it, trust it!

Trust in your own beliefs or succumb to the influence of others’.

No wrong in aiming or applauding the win but always agnize one's efforts.

It is true to say that the secret of a winning formula is the ability to accept that there is a vast area of unexploited potential beyond what you currently perceive to be your maximum.

It makes no sense to compare yourself with others because there will always be better & worse people than you out there. Each person has his own path to make. You are where you are now. Could you reach for the stars & have everything you want? realistically no. You may not win Olympic Gold in London 2012 , or be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company etc but you most definitely have the capacity to make YOUR life as the Masterpiece it could really be. The choice is yours...

When my son speaks of playing sports, I've always told him: playing on the team is great, but aspire to be the guy who owns the team. I've always told my son: most of the guys on the team will end up bankrupt with bum knees, but not the guy who owns that franchise.

Be Your Best Without the Stress!Be the director and actor in your movie, called My Life.

You have to create your self-belief by going to your core to find the probable reasons for the negativity in you, and then demolish them.

If you are able to focus unswervingly on your goals, then all that you desire will become yours.

Just identify the very first physical action you need to take, and do it.

The sprint is like life ... blink and you miss it.

Get clear on your genuine motivators to accelerate your success.

But the greatest paradox of the sport has to do with the psychological makeup of the people who pull the oars. Great oarsmen and oarswomen are necessarily made of conflicting stuff—of oil and water, fire and earth. On the one hand, they must possess enormous self-confidence, strong egos, and titanic willpower. They must be almost immune to frustration. Nobody who does not believe deeply in himself or herself—in his or her ability to endure hardship and to prevail over adversity—is likely even to attempt something as audacious as competitive rowing at the highest levels. The sport offers so many opportunities for suffering and so few opportunities for glory that only the most tenaciously self-reliant and self-motivated are likely to succeed at it. And yet, at the same time—and this is key—no other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does. Great crews may have men or women of exceptional talent or strength; they may have outstanding coxswains or stroke oars or bowmen; but they have no stars. The team effort—the perfectly synchronized flow of muscle, oars, boat, and water; the single, whole, unified, and beautiful symphony that a crew in motion becomes—is all that matters. Not the individual, not the self.

What happened?" "Oil." The sheikh shook his head. "The great cursed wealth from beneath the ground that the Prophet foresaw would destroy us. And statehood-what a terrible idea that was, eh? This part of the world was never meant to function that way. Too many languages, too many tribes, too motivated by ideas those high-heeled cartographers from Paris couldn't understand. Don't understand. Will never understand. Well, God save them-they're not the ones who have to live in this mess. They said a modern state needs a single leader, a secular leader, and the emir was the closest thing we had. So to the emir went all the power. And anyone who thinks that isn't a good idea is hounded down and tossed in jail, as you have so recently discovered. All so that some pantywaist royal nephew can have a seat at the UN and carry a flag in the Olympics and be thoroughly ignored.

Do you consider yourself athletic? How would you rate yourself, say, as a swimmer? Average, below average, maybe a little above average? So-so? Terrible? Well, I’ve got news for you: whether you know it or not, you are a world-class super-Olympic gold medal swimmer. I’m not kidding. You know how I know that? Because I took anatomy, physiology, bacteriology, and chemistry in college, as part of my science minor. And here’s what I learned: we all start out the same way, as tiny sperm cells. In order for you to be born, assuming your daddy had an average sperm count, you had to have out-swum some 200,000 other sperm. And it was uphill all the way. Now, I do not know what motivated you, but that little tail was wiggling like mad, and you were screaming, “Out of my way! Out of my way! I want to teach school! I want to dance! I want to be in real estate! I want to be a journalist!” or whatever it was you were screaming at the top of your little sperm voice.

What motivates Olympic athletes to train for years for one event—in some cases, for just seconds of actual competition? It’s the same thing that kept my friend Pete nosing around old bookstores for years. It’s the same thing that makes a person venture out of a comfortable job to start a new business. We see it in the artist who spends day after day in a studio chipping away at a block of stone. Look closely and you’ll find it in the shopper who passes up the good deal in search of the best deal. It’s one of the things that makes us most human. We consciously pursue what we value. It’s not simply a matter of being driven by biology or genetics or environmental conditioning to satisfy instinctive cravings. Rather, we perceive something, prize it at a certain value, then pursue it according to that assigned value because we were created that way. This ability to perceive, prize, and pursue is part of our essential humanness, and it’s the essence of ambition.

He liked how brave she was—that dauntless courage she’d had when she faced off against Gargoyle at the trials. The lack of hesitation to chase after Hawthorn or take out the Detonator. The bravery that veered just a bit toward recklessness. Sometimes he wished he could be more like her, always so confident in her own motivations that she didn’t mind bending the rules from time to time. That’s how Adrian felt when he was the Sentinel. His conviction that he knew what was right gave him the courage to act, even when he would have hesitated as Adrian or Sketch. But Nova never hesitated. Her compass never seemed to falter. He liked that she defied the rules of their society—refusing to bend for the Council, when so many others would have been falling over themselves to impress them. Refusing to apologize for their decision to go after the Librarian, despite the protocols, because she believed wholeheartedly that they made the right choice with the options they’d been given. He liked that she’d destroyed him at every one of those carnival games. He liked that she hadn’t flinched when he brought a dinosaur to life in the palm of her hand. He liked that she’d raced into the quarantine to help Max, despite having no clue what she was going to do when she got there, only that she had to do something. He liked that she showed compassion for Max, sometimes even indignation for the way his ability was being used—but never pity. He even liked the way she feigned enthusiasm for things like the Sidekick Olympics, when it was clear she would have rather been doing just about anything else. But no matter how long the growing list of things that attracted him to Nova McLain had become, he still found her feelings toward him to be a mystery, with an annoying shortage of evidence to support the theory that maybe, just maybe, she sort of liked him too. A smile here. A blush there. It was an infuriatingly short list. He was probably reading into things. It didn’t matter, he told himself again and again. He couldn’t risk getting too close to anyone right now.

I've defined myself, privately and abstractly, by my brief, intense years as an athlete, a swimmer. I practiced five or six hours a day, six days a week, eating and sleeping as much as possible in between. Weekends were spent either training or competing. I wasn't the best; I was relatively fast. I trained, ate, traveled, and showered with the best in the country, but wasn't the best; I was pretty good. I liked how hard swimming at that level was- that I could do something difficult and unusual. Liked knowing my discipline would be recognized, respected, that I might not be able to say the right things or fit in, but I could do something well. I wanted to believe that I was talented; being fast was proof. Though I loved racing, the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn't motivate me. I still dream of practice, of races, coaches and blurry competitors. I'm drawn to swimming pools, all swimming pools, no matter how small or murky. When I swim now, I step into the water as though absentmindedly touching a scar. My recreational laps are phantoms of my competitive races

Cohen continued to struggle with his own well-being. Even though he had achieved his life’s dream of running his own firm, he was still unhappy, and he had become dependent on a psychiatrist named Ari Kiev to help him manage his moods. In addition to treating depression, Kiev’s other area of expertise was success and how to achieve it. He had worked as a psychiatrist and coach with Olympic basketball players and rowers trying to improve their performance and overcome their fear of failure. His background building athletic champions appealed to Cohen’s unrelenting need to dominate in every transaction he entered into, and he started asking Kiev to spend entire days at SAC’s offices, tending to his staff. Kiev was tall, with a bushy mustache and a portly midsection, and he would often appear silently at a trader’s side and ask him how he was feeling. Sometimes the trader would be so startled to see Kiev there he’d practically jump out of his seat. Cohen asked Kiev to give motivational speeches to his employees, to help them get over their anxieties about losing money. Basically, Kiev was there to teach them to be ruthless. Once a week, after the market closed, Cohen’s traders would gather in a conference room and Kiev would lead them through group therapy sessions focused on how to make them more comfortable with risk. Kiev had them talk about their trades and try to understand why some had gone well and others hadn’t. “Are you really motivated to make as much money as you can? This guy’s going to help you become a real killer at it,” was how one skeptical staff member remembered Kiev being pitched to them. Kiev’s work with Olympians had led him to believe that the thing that blocked most people was fear. You might have two investors with the same amount of money: One was prepared to buy 250,000 shares of a stock they liked, while the other wasn’t. Why? Kiev believed that the reluctance was a form of anxiety—and that it could be overcome with proper treatment. Kiev would ask the traders to close their eyes and visualize themselves making trades and generating profits. “Surrendering to the moment” and “speaking the truth” were some of his favorite phrases. “Why weren’t you bigger in the trades that worked? What did you do right?” he’d ask. “Being preoccupied with not losing interferes with winning,” he would say. “Trading not to lose is not a good strategy. You need to trade to win.” Many of the traders hated the group therapy sessions. Some considered Kiev a fraud. “Ari was very aggressive,” said one. “He liked money.” Patricia, Cohen’s first wife, was suspicious of Kiev’s motives and believed that he was using his sessions with Cohen to find stock tips. From Kiev’s perspective, he found the perfect client in Cohen, a patient with unlimited resources who could pay enormous fees and whose reputation as one of the best traders on Wall Street could help Kiev realize his own goal of becoming a bestselling author. Being able to say that you were the

It was not the money that was my main motive; it was the challenge and the thrill where I got my kicks. Armed robbery to me was like a sport. To take on an armored vehicle with two armed security guards—it was like an athlete attending the Olympic Games.

I told Coach, ‘You know, I realize we’ve been working hard for this, but the medal almost doesn’t matter anymore because I feel like you all have elevated me in such a way that I never could have duplicated that.’ The reinforcement of the journey is so valuable, not just the prize or medal hanging around your neck. And we had such a special time pursuing that together. -- Denna Kastor, 2004 Olympic bronze medalist in the marathon

Doug Larson, the famous runner and 1924 Olympic Gold Medal winner, said it best 'Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.

I heard the story of a wealthy Texan who threw a party for his daughter because she was approaching the age to marry. He wanted to find a suitable husband for her—someone who was courageous, intelligent, and highly motivated. He invited a lot of young, eligible bachelors. After they had enjoyed a wonderful time at the party, he took the suitors to the backyard and showed them an Olympic-size swimming pool filled with poisonous snakes and alligators. He announced, “Whoever will dive in this pool and swim the length of it can have his choice of one of three things. One, he can have a million dollars; two, ten thousand acres of my best land; or three, the hand of my daughter, who upon my death will inherit everything I own.” No sooner had he finished when one young man splashed into the pool and reappeared on the other side in less than two seconds. The rich Texan was overwhelmed with the guy’s enthusiasm. “Man, I have never seen anyone so excited and motivated in all my life, I’d like to ask you: Do you want the million dollars, ten thousand acres, or my daughter?” The young man looked at him sheepishly, “Sir,” he said, “I would like to know who pushed me in the pool!” The

Even supermotivated people who’re working to exhaustion may not be doing deliberate practice. For instance, when a Japanese rowing team invited Olympic gold medalist Mads Rasmussen to come visit, he was shocked at how many hours of practice their athletes were logging. It’s not hours of brute-force exhaustion you’re after, he told them. It’s high-quality, thoughtful training goals pursued, just as Ericsson’s research has shown, for just a few hours a day, tops. Noa Kageyama, a performance psychologist on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music, says he’s been playing the violin since he was two but didn’t really start practicing deliberately until he was twenty-two. Why not? There was no lack of motivation—at one point, young Noa was taking lessons with four different teachers and, literally, commuting to three different cities to work with them all. Really, the problem was just that Noa didn’t know better. Once he discovered there was an actual science of practice—an approach that would improve his skills more efficiently—both the quality of his practice and his satisfaction with his progress skyrocketed. He’s now devoted himself to sharing that knowledge with other musicians.

The most successful athletes are self-motivated. “The most important thing is to love your sport,” said Peggy Fleming, the former Olympic figure-skating champion. “Never do it to please someone else—it has to be yours. That is all that will justify the hard work needed to achieve success.

Benjamin Bloom, an eminent educational researcher, studied 120 outstanding achievers. They were concert pianists, sculptors, Olympic swimmers, world-class tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists. Most were not that remarkable as children and didn’t show clear talent before their training began in earnest. Even by early adolescence, you usually couldn’t predict their future accomplishment from their current ability. Only their continued motivation and commitment, along with their network of support, took them to the top.

Life is given to all of us and everything that you want to become depends now on your preparation, hard work, and dedication. Only if you are willing to put yourself in process of grinding, hustle, and hard work then there will be a point in life where the opportunity KNOCKS on your door to give you a chance. A chance you always waited for and an opportunity you always wanted to have for yourself so you take yourself on to the path of greatness. You are close to success and succeeding in yourself only when you take charge, take action and make decisions for yourself. No one in this world has become great just by doing average things and being average. The people who go the extra mile, extra effort, and that extra one thing in their life makes them successful and lets them avail themselves of the opportunity that knocks on the door. If you are blind to yourself then you can't see opportunities. You are one opportunity away from success and the life you are dreaming but the question is, are you prepared?

Special!' Such a pretty word!" Cass Irvin had said. "But what it means is ‘segregated.'" Providing a "special solution for the handicapped" has been the typical response to disability in modern U.S. society  -- to segregate it, separate it, us from them, to make them go away and leave us alone. Special buses. Special Olympics. Very Special Arts. Special education. No matter whether proposed out of genuine if misguided caring or for more selfish motives, it is always very clear, although we don't use the words, that "special" means segregated. Special solutions isolate disabled people from normal society, and nobody pretends they don't. But few seemed to think it should be upsetting to the organized disabled; when they complained they were called selfish. Or unrealistic.

The Metaphor That Stuck In 1996, the Summer Olympic Games were held in my home city of Atlanta. As I watched athletes from all over the world perform in their respective events, I remember wondering what motivated them to compete at the highest levels. On the surface, it seemed logical to assume that these world-class athletes were driven by all the positive rewards that would go to the champion—fame, admiration, and of course, the gold medal. After training for most of their lives, who wouldn’t want to experience “the thrill of victory”? But as I watched the games unfold, it became obvious that while some athletes were motivated by positive rewards, many others were trying to avoid “the agony of defeat.” Rather than think about all the accolades that would come from success, some athletes were motivated to run even faster, and jump even higher, because they were trying to avoid an undesirable outcome. Carl Lewis, arguably one of the greatest track and field athletes of all time, and nine-time Olympic gold medalist, was an excellent example of this. After his last event in Atlanta, when he won the gold medal on his final attempt in the long jump, the sportscaster asked, “Mr. Lewis, what were you thinking about just before you jumped?” As it turned out, Carl Lewis wasn’t thinking about medals, money, or having his picture on a box of Wheaties. Instead, he said his primary motivation was that his family was in the stadium and he didn’t want to disappoint them by losing his final Olympic event.

There were certainly multiple factors contributing to these men’s post-moonwalk slump, but the question What do you do after walking on the moon? became a gigantic speed bump. The trouble with moonwalkers and billionaires is when they arrive at the top, their momentum often stops. If they don’t manage to find something to parlay, they turn into the kid on the jungle gym who just hangs from the ring. Not coincidentally, this is the same reason that only one-third of Americans are happy at their jobs. When there’s no forward momentum in our careers, we get depressed, too. As Newton pointed out, an object at rest tends to stay at rest. So how does one avoid billionaire’s depression? Or regular person’s stuck-in-a-dead-end-job, lack-of-momentum-fueled depression? Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile took on the question in the mid-2000s in a research study of white-collar employees. She tasked 238 pencil pushers in various industries to keep daily work diaries. The workers answered open-ended questions about how they felt, what events in their days stood out. Amabile and her fellow researchers then dissected the 12,000 resulting entries, searching for patterns in what affects people’s “inner” work lives the most dramatically. The answer, it turned out, is simply progress. A sense of forward motion. Regardless how small. And that’s the interesting part. Amabile found that minor victories at work were nearly as psychologically powerful as major breakthroughs. To motivate stuck employees, as Amabile and her colleague Steven J. Kramer suggest in their book, The Progress Principle, businesses need to help their workers experience lots of tiny wins. (And as we learned from the bored BYU students in chapter 1, breaking up big challenges into tiny ones also speeds up progress.) This is helpful to know when motivating employees. But it also hints at what billionaires and astronauts can do to stave off the depression that follows the high of getting to the top. To get out of the funk, say Joan DiFuria and Stephen Goldbart, cofounders of the Money, Meaning & Choices Institute, depressed successes simply have to start the Olympic rings over. Some use their money to create new businesses. Others parlay sideways and get into philanthropy. And others simply pick up hobbies that take time to master. Even if the subsequent endeavors are smaller than their previous ones, the depression dissipates as they make progress.