Asked this spring whether he believed Phelps was the greatest American athlete of our generation, Bowman said, “My job is to make him be the greatest Michael Phelps. If he is that, all the other things you guys can bestow on him — or not. My job is to help him go at the end of the day as far as he could go. Dealing with the other stuff is really counter-productive.”

After spending quite a bit of time watching the Olympics over this past week, I realized something. The Olympics may just seem like they are about sporst and who can be the most talented of athletes. It may just seem to be about shooting beautiful athletes into the celebrity stratosphere. However, I believe that the Olympics are much more than that. I know that as a child watching the Olympics was so exciting. I not only learned about sports I didn’t see in my high school gym, like gymnastics, ice skating and trampoline. But I learned about what it means to commit yourself to something and follow through. I learned about what it means to have dreams and disappointments. I learned what it means to push yourself through pain and sail through triumph. These athletes work hard and push themselves to be great and to perform great. They sacrifice things that they love for the thing that they are passionate about. They know that if they work hard it will pay off. And that is what I see in those medal ceremonies, in the eyes of the athletes as the cameras get extremely close to their faces, the years of hard work and sacrifice paying a big price when their dreams come true.

Lately, I have enjoyed watching Michael Phelps swim. Swimming is actually my favorite sport to participate in, but it is so fun to watch. But what I find amazing about watching Phelps swim, is the devotion that he has to his goal. I list the quote at the top because, I felt it was a very reflectant of how we should be living our lives. So many times, I feel like it is easy to passively live our lives. We just get up and do with a medocre attitude and not even striving to be better than yesterday or even the moment before. We don’t have to strive to be the greatest human being or the greatest student or the greatest friend, but to be greatest us or me that we can be. We have to find people like this coach of Michael Phelps’, to push us further to our potential.

How can we even figure out what our potential is? Well, I believe that as soon as I try to put a cap on what my potential is, I have stunted my growth, I have limited the height at which I can grow. So, what does that mean for my life, for my world. It means that even on those days that I want to lie in bed and hide from the world and waste away time, I need to get out of the rut or valley I am in, and live. As cheesy as it sounds, I have to strive to live everyday to the fullest. I need to be a yes person, saying yes to more opportunties and chances. To live to meet new people and experience new things.

thoughts for now….