What will you do to finish this year well?
Julie Moss is an American triathlete. She first became known during the 1982 Ironman Triathlon, in which she competed as part of her research for her doctorate. The race wasn’t what she envisioned, and she did not finish in the way she expected for her first Ironman Triathlon. Julie was leading the event in Hawaii and was less than 500 yards from the finish.
Suddenly, she felt her legs buckle and her body give out. She collapsed and then got up, only to fall again and again. Desperate to complete the race, Moss crawled the last 15 feet, reaching out with her left hand to touch the line a mere 31 seconds after another competitor had passed her by and crossed the finish line before she did.
The Ironman aired on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Within hours, the network was flooded with calls from viewers wondering if Moss had survived the grueling ordeal. In response, ABC flew Julie to its New York studio for an interview. After that came numerous television appearances and even a TV movie based loosely on her experience. Says Moss, “I fell into being famous—literally.”
And her fame endures: Moss’s performance over 25 years ago, which helped lift the triathlon into mainstream sports, has been preserved on YouTube and seen by tens of thousands.
“What I did that day wasn’t pretty to see,” Julie says. “What shined through was the humanness of my struggle. That determination is inside everybody.”
Here is the video of Julie’s amazing finish:
A few years ago, I read an insightful book called Finish Strong by Dan Green. While many people at the end of this year are winding down, celebrating the holiday season and getting ready for Christmas, some of us in sales are determined to achieve performance objectives and finish strong. The words “finish strong” have greater meaning as a whole than the sum of their parts.
As Dan Green illustrates, when we combine the word “finish” with “strong”, we create a powerful platform for action. Imagine the impact these two words can have in achieving excellence or dealing with any challenge. To quote Dan Green:
“Regardless of what came before or of what has yet to come, what matters most right now is how to respond to the challenge before me. Will I lie down or will I fight? The choice is mine and I choose to FINISH STRONG.”
You may not always get the result you are looking for, but there is great satisfaction in knowing that you gave it everything you had. In the end, our greatest accomplishments are not the end of our greatness but are merely a launching pad to other bigger and greater things to come.
Moss did not win the 1982 triathlon race, but she chose to not give up. She chose to finish, and most importantly, she gave it everything she had—leaving everything on the race course as she crawled across the finish line.
Moss has become an iconic symbol of hard work and determination for the Ironman race. Her race and ensuing popularity pushed an obscure sport into the limelight; in 1982 there were 250 triathlons with a total of 60,000 participants. A year later, those numbers jumped to 600 triathlons and 600,000 participants.
As Dan Green states at the end of his book:
“May your greatest achievements be in front of you and may you always Finish Strong!”
As many of you come down the home stretch, striving for those sales accolades and end of year awards that are only a few weeks away, I encourage you to give it your all!
For another inspirational video, watch Dan Green in his Finish Strong video:
