Hyrox champion Joanna Wietrzyk won the Beijing event while completely covered in her own poo.
I mean, no wonder she won.
If I was a fellow athlete I’d be avoiding her lane and anything she touched like the Black Plague.
Running into a literal shit-storm? No thanks.
If only they had this kind of event when the triplets were younger.
That was just Tuesday.
Whilst I have compassion for Joanna because of the lengths her ambition pushed her to, there’s a cruel irony here:
The very thing she was striving for she ended up repelling.
The recognition. The status. The public opinion.
Now she’s forfeited the win. Sponsors have distanced themselves. And there are those photos – which no amount of scrubbing will remove.
The thing about elite athletes is that they’ve developed an extraordinary capacity to override their body’s pain cues.
Sprinkle in some talent and an obsessive drive for external validation – and you’ve got the makings of a real champion.
I understand the compulsion deeply.
No, not the poop-running in public part.
The idea that the good opinion of somebody “out there” is worth putting myself through the most punishing of physical feats.
Growing up – I used to gobble up external validation like eating lollies – my achievements in the school newsletters. Breaking records in the local paper. Ribbons, Medals. Trophies.
You might have a passion for your sport but there is also an unhealthy obsession with proving your worthiness that lies underneath it all
The message gets installed pretty young:
Winning makes you special.
Being impressive feels safe.
Keep going.
No excuses.
Modern day society pushes these little Over-Achievers out like a baker cutting cookies.
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
But if I were Joanna, looking back on this event years from now, I think I’d feel quite betrayed.
Because I did everything success told me to, and it completely backfired.
Where was somebody in her corner that was telling her “Hey, today isn’t your day”.
“There will be more trophies and there will be more races. Don’t sacrifice your dignity on the altar of success.”
Even if they had to pull her kicking and screaming like a two-year-old triplet into the bath.
I suspect in the quest to be the best, she’d made that little internal voice of reason so small that her own personal needs were unnecessary.
And so it became easy to discount the discomfort of the competitors around her as just “the price of success”
But it’s not for us to stand up on our “normal people” podium to point and laugh.
We’re all taking on board crap we shouldn’t tolerate – because we just think is “the price of success”
We’ve all had a fecal incident we’re very fucking glad nobody else had to know about.
Most of us just get the luxury of having our shit-ups happen in private.
But every day in business I see people shitting on themselves and calling it winning.
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We make the sale when everything inside us is saying no.
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We keep the client who is destroying our peace because the revenue is “too good to lose.”
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We promise more than we have the capacity to deliver.
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When we second guess our own knowing because somebody else’s business looks more successful than ours.
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When we make ourselves more palatable.
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We override our no.
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When we keep going long after the thing we’re chasing has stopped being worth what it’s costing us.
And because none of it looks as dramatic as shitting yourself in the middle of a race…
We call it ambition. Commitment. Doing whatever it takes.
Whilst crying on the inside like a winner.
Until one day we’re standing in the middle of the thing we worked so hard to create thinking:
Why the fuck does winning feel like I’ve got a river of excrement streaming down my legs?
It’s the classic trap. The rules that organised your first level of success become the very thing that undoes it.
Pushing through. Enduring more. Wanting it harder. All in the name of worthiness and belonging.
But what’s the point, if in the quest of the next achievement, the way you’re chasing it is the very thing pushing it away?
It costs us our ability to feel content, or have any genuine lasting sense of personal fulfilment.
We hit the thing we were chasing and immediately move the goalpost. Okay, but THAT will be when I’ve really arrived.
We forget what we’ve already done and feel like we’re back at square zero.
It costs us our inner peace, because we’re more comfortable in the tension than the slack. (What do you do with slack anyway?!)
It costs us our health. Our presence with the people we love. And sometimes, we trample over somebody else’s needs in the process.
Because the pursuit feels safe. The having doesn’t.
Some trophies cost far more than they’re worth. And sometimes walking away from the finish line is the most self-respecting thing you can do.
The problem isn’t pushing through – sometimes that’s exactly what’s required.
The problem is not having an internal guardrail that tells you when enough is enough.
Because if your operating system says:
Success = hard work + sacrifice + push through
you can become extraordinarily good at overriding the information that’s telling you to stop.
Most of us don’t realise we’ve outgrown a rule until the cost of following it becomes too much for us to bear.
Honestly, a shitstorm can be a gift.
It’s the moment you find out there’s a limit to your capacity – that you’ve become a victim to proving your worth through your work ethic, and that the principles you’ve been organising your success around no longer work.
That limit rarely comes out of nowhere. There’s a rumbling in your tummy. A sense of queasiness. Something feels off.
You don’t wait until the shart, when it’s already too late.
The cues are already there.
Start noticing what you’re tolerating right now – that you wouldn’t consciously choose. The client who’s draining you. The yes that should have been a no. The sale you made while your gut was telling you to stop.
Then look underneath it. There’s usually an organising principle sitting there, something you absorbed a long time ago about what success has to cost.
Put other people’s needs first.
Being liked keeps you safe.
Being helpful makes you valuable.
Being exhausted is how you know you’re working hard enough.
This is the work I do. Precision subconscious repatterining – which is basically an energetic colonic (and to be fair, would have been extremely helpful for Joanna).
We find the rule underneath and rewrire it, so you’re not unconsciously embedding the price of success into every achievement you create.
So you stop assuming that success has to be an either/or
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I can make more money OR I can stay true to who I actually am.
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I can grow, OR I can feel calm in my body.
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I can be more visible, OR I can keep my freedom.
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I can build the bigger thing, Or I can be present with my family.
You get to have AND.
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You can make more money AND be more of who you are.
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You can grow AND feel settled while you do it.
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You can be seen AND still feel free.
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You can build something big AND actually enjoy it now, not someday when things finally settle.
You can still be ambitious.
You just don’t have to wear the cost of it because it’s the way it’s always been done.
If you’re reading this taking stock of your life right now, and noticing all the things that you’re tolerating that you wouldn’t consciously choose… but you just have been, because you think that’s the price of being successful.
Stop. Right. There.
I’ve made something for you.
The Orientation Oracle takes about 5 minutes. It’ll show you the pattern organising most of your decisions, and the old definition of success sitting underneath it.
Don’t wait for the public poo fiasco.
