Lynsey Sharp on Personal Resilience

Transcript

Lynsey Sharp (British athlete): When I was very young, my dad had a road traffic accident, which left him brain injured and I saw firsthand how resilient he had to be to bounce back from that to learn to walk again and to learn to speak again. So I guess that I have been brought up in an atmosphere where resilience is really important.

Hi, I’m Lynsey Sharp and I’m an Olympian. It is very important that I am resilient. It is a career which is full of ups and downs, and what makes the highs so good is, unfortunately, coming back from the lows. So coming back from injuries, coming back from a disappointing performance, or even just when people have maybe an opinion of your performance which you aren’t happy with. Before the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, my coach suggested that I thought of some words which would help me to focus on the start line because it is quite an intense environment. So the words "Get Out, Strong and Commit" were basically my race plan.

"Get Out," "Strong" and "Commit" can be applied to anything in life. If you have a big challenge coming up, you get out confidently at the start, say strong throughout the middle and then finish off at the end and really commit to the project. These words turned out to be a plan for life and lots of people picked up on them and said that those words helped them through difficult times or challenges, and that was really cool because I felt like I had had an impact on people and people were able to apply it to their life. So when I had norovirus the night before the Commonwealth Games, I was really ill, had about two hours sleep before my race and I just went into the competition thinking that I’d done all the hard work. I have worked so hard for this for so many years that I am not going to let this one thing last minute stop me from achieving it, because if I was to dwell on that, then that would be what was in my head and I would go into the race in a negative mindset.

So it was really important to focus on the job that I had to do and it was a home crowd and there were 50,000 Scottish people there. It just gave you that extra edge that my competitors didn’t have. And when I hit the home straight, I knew that I didn’t just have to do it for me, I had to do it for all of them as well. It is hard to bounce back from a disappointing experience. I didn’t make the final at the World Championships. I think I focused too much on someone else’s plan, rather than focusing on myself. And if I’d just had faith in myself and the race plan that I had, then I think I would have been successful and I had two choices – I could either mope around and be disappointed, or I could get up and do something about it.

I knew I had two more races in which I could run a personal best and to make up for the disappointment, I mentally prepared for this by reading books, looking for quotes and watching back performances, and looking at what I had already achieved that year and knowing that I was in great shape and that I was prepared. I just needed to execute it right.

What I learned from that experience was, don’t let the setbacks hold you back. I learned so much from that negative experience and was able to actually turn it into a positive and do something that I had never been able to do before – run my fastest ever time and personal best. There are figures in my life who have helped me to become resilient. In my event and in my sport is Kelly Holmes. What she achieved in Athens was unbelievable. To be able to see that someone from my country, in my event, could win two Olympic medals was so inspiring. Ronda Rousey is a UFC fighter and she has written a book, and at the start of each chapter is a life lesson, something that she has taken away from a negative experience.

When I have a negative experience, I look for some sort of similarity in the circumstances to something that she has dealt with and then try to process what has happened in a similar way to how she has bounced back from it.

There are definitely things which leaders and managers can learn from me about being resilient. When I am facing something that I perhaps don’t want to do, I stay positive by remembering the big goal, but breaking that big goal down into smaller goals and almost using that as a tick list to tick off things that I have achieved along the way and then that big goal seems much more achievable.

I think emotions are great, so whether that’s anger or frustration, it’s about being able to use that and control it and use it to help your performance and still being able to make logical decisions.

Even if I don’t run a faster time or win, I try to walk away from each race thinking “What have I taken away from this that will help me to improve in the long run?” And as long as I can take something away from it which is helping me to improve, then I see that as an opportunity that I have grasped.

I think that when I get criticism from people within my team or family, I take that as constructive criticism, because these are people that know me and who know the sport. I have a team around me and it is important that I pull from their experience, because they have knowledge that I perhaps don’t have and so if we pull all that knowledge together, then we can use that to achieve something great.

There are more opportunities where you don’t win, than when you feel like you have absolutely nailed it or you have won, so that feeling when you win is almost like it is all worth it and no one can take that away from you.

About Lynsey Sharp

Lynsey Sharp is a former Scottish track and field athlete who competed in the 800 metres. She won European gold in 2012 and two silver medals in 2014. She also won silver at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and has competed in two Olympic games, setting a Scottish record after placing sixth at the Rio Games in 2016.