What does it really mean to reach the peak in your career?Is it earning the most you’ve ever earned? Does it mean you’re doing a job you truly love or is it securing an impressive job title?I was watching the Tokyo Olympics recently and saw Tom Daley win his first gold medal. I was surprised to learn it was his first gold because in my mind he’s been a champion, at the peak of his diving career for as long as I can remember!After a bit of a Google search, I discovered some interesting facts about Tom which made me appreciate how mentally and physically strong athletes have to be.Now 27 years old, Tom attended his first Olympics at just 14, although he didn’t win a medal in his first games, he picked up a Bronze in the 10-meter platform event, at the 2012 London Games and another in Rio 2016.13 years later, after making a name for himself outside of sport with 900K Youtube followers and being a TV personality, Tom has just won his first Gold medal.Athletes are renowned for having fairly short careers, mainly because of how physically demanding it is on their bodies and from the outside, achieving two bronze medals across 12 years, you’d have forgiven Tom for starting to step back from diving and exploring other passions.However, he’s not only just peaked in his diving career, but he’s also excelling in other aspects of his career too.It really got me thinking about that athlete mentality and how we could all benefit from certain elements of it.

1. Commitment – Success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes planning, hard-work, commitment, and failures along the way. This is all part of the journey and without it, success doesn’t mean much. No matter how talented you are, if you don’t commit to your goals it’s unlikely you’ll reach your full potential. Goal setting is key in elite sport, but it’s also invaluable to anyone who is looking to achieve something in life. It mentally helps you to commit to smaller, focused tasks that build up to the greater goal making it more manageable and thus, more achievable.

2. Challenge – an athlete has to turn up for training no matter how they feel and they have to continuously push themselves physically and mentally. I’m not saying that if you’re reaching burnout that you should force yourself to work but what it does tell us is that we are capable of more than we often believe. If we stay in our comfort zones, growth just doesn’t exist and if we keep repeating the same processes, we’ll keep getting the same results. Try to identify one aspect of your life where you feel you can challenge yourself to improve something and then keep track of your results.

3. Belief – Self belief is key to success. If Tom Daley didn’t genuinely believe he was capable of achieving that gold medal, he wouldn’t have gone to Tokyo. Having confidence in your ability is what will take you to the next level in whatever you set out to do. However, developing such strong levels of confidence doesn’t come easily to most people. Some helpful ways to improve your self-belief include focusing on how you talk to yourself. Are you framing things positively? Are you talking yourself up rather than putting yourself down? Surround yourself with motivational people. Track your progress so that you can draw on past successes and then build on these feelings to go bigger and better.

If we want to achieve big, we have to dream big. We have to pick ourselves up when we haven’t quite hit our goals and reflect on what we need to do better next time in order to do so.Tom Daley started diving at 7 years old and it took him 20 years to achieve that gold medal so don’t expect to reach success overnight, be prepared to put the work in!Trust that you really can achieve anything you set your mind to.For more career tips and motivational topics visit my blog.