Leaving with a smile

It's past three in the morning in New York, and the stadium is still buzzing.

The crowd has thinned, with many having peeled off to catch last trains or get home to families on a weeknight, and you can even spot the cleaners starting to tidy the upper tiers. But thousands are still here, four and a half hours in, on the edge of their seats and launching out of them every few points, watching two of the best tennis players alive throw everything they've got at each other.

Carlos Alcaraz, the defending champion, has been through it tonight. Playing his first tournament in four months, back from a wrist injury, he's lost the first set, clawed the match level, lost the lead again, and dragged himself all the way back to a deciding set. He's been sick into a towel before that final set and somehow walked straight back out to play.

By 3:33am, it's finally over. Ben Shelton closes it out with a 146 mile-an-hour ace, the latest finish in the history of the US Open.

In Alcaraz's shoes, you'd be well within your rights to sink to your knees at this point. To sob, or want to retreat, spent, from the spotlight. We've all seen every version of disappointment from top athletes over the years, the good, the bad and the ugly of what defeat can do to a person.

And yet, Alcaraz gave the world a very different picture of second place.

He grinned as he walked to the net to hug Shelton, and fist-bumped a security guard on his way down the tunnel. When he finally came before the media, he was still beaming from the experience: "It was close, really close, so I was disappointed. But I'm happy, I'm proud of myself, how I fought. I'm leaving happy, and my head held high."

Watch these two athletes put heart and soul on the line at 3am, and it's obvious the scoreboard only ever captures one side of the story. Millions of people around the world stayed up to watch this match, because there's something so universal and exhilarating about seeing a person stretch to the very edge of what they're capable of and find out, in real time, what they're made of.

There's a name for that edge. Decades ago, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi set out to understand when people feel most absorbed and alive, and landed on a state he called flow: those stretches where we're so immersed in what we're doing that the world falls away. It shows up not when things are easy or comfortable, but right at the border of our ability. Growth lives on this edge, in the messy, uncertain stretch where a challenge tests the limit of our skills and experience.

It's exciting to witness, and to live, precisely because it costs us something. There's always a sacrifice, always something given up to chase the thing, and without guarantees. Which is exactly why a traditional "win" can't be our be-all and end-all.

Over a hundred years ago, Theodore Roosevelt said those famous words:

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who errs, who comes short again and again… who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."

We often return to this, as do many of our clients ahead of big performances, to remember that the whole point of stepping into life's arena is not about the promise or glory of winning.

It's in the daring. The guttural, wholehearted attempt. The joyous, brutal ache of being alive.

It's likely Shelton and Alcaraz walked off court from this showdown having discovered new things about themselves. After all, there'd never been a day quite like this one before. You can't intellectualise this kind of self-data.

What do I do when I'm running on empty?
How do I respond when things aren't going to plan? 
What feels fun and interesting in this experience? 

We can't answer those questions without getting into the mud and trying things out, moment to moment, embracing the meaningful struggle of it all.

Maybe the invitation from this extraordinary match (and that giant grin 😄 ) is a simple one. The next time we're at our own edge, spent and uncertain, maybe the perspective we most need isn't "I’ve gotta get through this," but something more curious, or more generous…

I get to do this, and see what's possible.
I matter. No matter what.

Or even: I wonder how I'll surprise myself today?

You never really know, after all, until you're all in, having a crack, bravely learning how to be fully committed and completely detached from the end result.