Why should we be inspired by all bronze medal winners?

By Renata Roa

The Olympics are over and with them, a lot of things are being cut out of the box. Discipline, opportunity cost, beliefs, excellence, dreams, the importance of mental health, mindset building - so much to talk about in terms of competition! However, and it is worth stopping for a moment to learn from them. According to a study published in the American Psychological Association, they analyzed the levels of happiness on the podium and they did not correspond to the order in which the athletes won the medals. That is, the gold medalists were of course the happiest, but the bronze medalists were much happier than the silver medalists.

The theory that most echoes this is that silver medal winners tend to compare themselves to those who won gold, that is, in their head they start to ruminate on everything they could have done differently to have gotten that first place. While bronze medalists compare themselves downward, making them feel better: "at least I didn't come in 4th place and so I won a medal". This phenomenon has been studied since 1995 through interviews with many athletes where they identified that the narrative corresponds exactly to these findings, in addition to analyzing body language in more than 2,000 images. In addition to the type of comparison, they have added another ingredient where they describe that silver medalists actually have a mentality focused on winning gold, while bronze medalists are almost always more focused on doing a good job, but not necessarily on winning, which for me is the real key.