20 Ways That Pole Vaulting and Reinvention are Alike
by Loralyn Mears, PhD
No, I don’t mean that anatomy. You know, the bulge that broke the internet earlier this week? From now on and forevermore, the French Olympic athlete, Anthony Ammirati, will forever be known as that guy – the one who lost his chance to compete for gold because his naughty bits got into it with the bar he was hurling himself over. He did, however, get an attractive $250K offer from an adult film company …
Is it just me, or do the Summer 2024 Olympics seem to have more drama than usual?
Anyhoo … back to the topic at hand. I’ve been watching pole vaulting – men’s and women’s – and no, for the record, I don’t bend both ways, but even if I did, so what? On that note, cheers to Alysha Newman, the Canadian woman who captured the bronze – and hearts – in the sport a day or two ago. Her baffling twerking after her vault notwithstanding …
The more that I watched, the more that I became mesmerized by how there was so much movement in just a few seconds. It doesn’t happen in slow motion, but it somehow seems like it does despite the intensity of the effort. With my mind myopically fixated on reinvention these days, I watched and rewatched each vault frame by frame, delighting myself with the notion that the rapid series of complex movements had unexpected parallels to change and growth.
This appears to be a new concept
Hear me out. I don’t think these apparent parallels are all that weird, yet I couldn’t find anyone else online who equated the sport of pole vaulting with reinvention. Mondo Duplantis of Sweden, the reigning king of the sport who has broken his own insane record a staggering seven (7) times, describes pole vaulting as “kinda freaky.” Indeed, it’s the most technical of all sports and the most likely to result in a catastrophic injury: over 20 athletes have died since 1980.
Given these data points, I’m unsure that “freaky” is adequate as an adjective. But what do I know? I’ve never flung myself up on a breakable stick to then contort my body over a bar 20 feet in the air.
I’ve strung this introduction out long enough. No doubt you’re ready to hear how pole vaulting is akin to reinvention. Here’s how I see it. It all begins with some communication about your intended outcome …
20 things that pole vaulting and reinvention have in common
1. There’s an up – and a down
2. Failure is clearly part of the process
3. Learning from your mistakes is essential (otherwise, it’s pretty much a career-limiting move)
4. Adaptability quickly becomes evident as a critical skill
5. So does resilience, or you’ll give up before you achieve your goal
6. When the vault doesn’t go as planned, you need to pause, regroup, and do it again
7. Doubts and fears are par for the course and must be overcome
8. You can’t allow limiting beliefs like, “the bar is too high,” to cloud your thinking
9. There’s a lot of writhing and agony through it all
10. Pole vaulting is pretty much one big continuous improvement project
11. You must be really intentional about it – as in, uber focused and wholly committed
12. It takes courage (okay, I’ll say it – big cajones) to fling yourself up there into harm’s way; an appetite for risk is required
13. It is a calculated risk with several possible outcomes – but you must get comfortable with the idea of not knowing how it’s going to play out
14. If you don’t push yourself, you’ll never get close to the bar, let alone over it
15. Your chance for success depends on the tools in your hand – and sometimes, they let you down
16. Pole placement is everything: your take-off will be compromised if you don’t make good contact with the stop board (it’s ironic how you must first stop before you can “start”)
17. Propelling yourself forward requires that you initially aim high and upwards – but do so feet first
18. You twist then contort your body to hurl yourself blindly over the bar: it’s truly a leap of faith
19. As you descend, you fall backwards, tired yet energized from the effort
20. The landing is not always as soft as you think it’s going to be
Have I convinced you?
There may be additional parallels, but I think that I’ve listed enough here to make a reasonable case that there are parallels. Hence, there seems to be an opportunity to learn something here about ourselves and what it’s going to take to wholly embrace personal growth and change. Clearly, reinvention is not easy; and it’s definitely not for the faint of heart.
But we do it. Every. Single. Day. You can’t do a “sad scroll” through your social media feed without seeing some heroic story about someone losing 100 lbs and then chucking their diabetes medicine into the garbage bin. Or overcoming the loss of a limb because they fought for a cause they believe in, even though war is so primitive, ghastly, and barbaric. Companies transform themselves, too. Look at what Boeing is currently attempting to do – there is going to be a whole lot more writhing and pain until they get back up and over the bar. There are more articles like this over here.
The Debbie-Downer side of things
Look at Yahoo! I remember waiting in their then-new lobby of their headquarters when they just started to take off. There were giant lava lamps everywhere and red (or was it purple?) animal print wallpaper from floor to ceiling. Getting a meeting with them catapulted me to “top dog” rank at the Fortune 100 IT company that I worked for back then. I vividly recall my meeting with their leadership: those guys thought they were untouchable. At that time, hubris was just about as abundant in Silicon Valley as computer chips were. Then poof. Seemingly overnight, they lost their way and gave up their stranglehold on the world’s inboxes and search tool – to a little nobody company with a “stupid” name – Google.
Okay, let’s bring it home. Insofar as I can tell, pole vaulting, with its breakneck and breathtaking maneuvers, may be just about the best visualization and “explainer video” to share with anyone who is unsure what reinvention entails. Nobody said change was easy. But as the legendary American psychologist and author, Dr. Susan Jeffers said,
“You’ve got to feel the fear – and do it anyway.”