Scott Hamilton is a living example of good guys who finish first. He is a New York Times bestselling author, Olympic champion, cancer survivor, broadcaster, motivational speaker, author, husband, father, eternal optimist, and firm believer that the only disability in life is a bad attitude. For more than twenty years, Scott has inspired audiences around the world with the story of his life and how he has overcome adversities. He lives near Nashville with his beautiful wife, Tracie, and their four amazing children.

Finish First

Winning Changes Everything

Thomas Nelson

Contents

WHY YOU AREN'T A WINNER — YET

Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing. You don't do things right once in a while ... you do them right all the time.

— VINCE LOMBARDI

I have some bad news for you. You were not born a winner. You may have been told, somewhere along the way, that you were. Maybe your parents said you were "number one," no matter what you did. Or maybe a high school coach said all you needed to do to get the trophy was show up in the uniform and play a few innings. But those empty promises may have robbed you of your most victorious moments. They may have stolen the best you have to offer to yourself and to the world.

I was not born a winner, and neither were you. That might seem like a harsh thing to say, but it is actually the kindest, most important gift I can give you. Winning is not about getting an award or a medal or making a certain amount of money. Winning is about accessing all of your innate human potential. You cannot be born a winner. But you can become one.

What a tragedy that so many of us don't.

There might be a part of you that resists this, that wants to fight to keep the "winning" status you feel you've earned but haven't worked to achieve. And then there is another part of you, I'm convinced, that is whispering to you right now that you have so much untapped potential, skill and tenacity and talent that the world has yet to see. What will it take for you to unlock the champion trapped inside of you?

What will it take for you to choose to finish first?

My Unimpressive Beginnings

I wish you could have seen me at the beginning of my figure skating career. If you had been there, watching like a fly on the wall, you wouldn't have seen the person I am today. You would have seen someone else entirely. You would have seen a version of me that was more familiar with losing than he was with winning, who was terrified to make the sacrifices he knew it would take to become a winner, and who wondered if any of the work was even worth it. Winning has changed everything for me. It can change everything for you, too.

In the world of figure skating, I tell people that if you're a woman and you win, you're really good. If you're a man and you don't medal, you should probably think about doing something else. Still, for some reason, I kept skating even when I continually found myself in last place. That is a decision I will never fully understand, and yet I'm grateful I made it. Despite all the losing I endured, I knew there was a champion inside me yet to be revealed.

My first year at the Novice level — the lowest level for men's competitive figure skating to qualify for the US National Championships — I didn't even make it to the National Championships, let alone win a medal. My parents were always supportive and made continual sacrifices to keep me skating, without any expectation for success. But I realized at one point that if I was going to find my way to the winner's circle, I would have to take a different approach.

When I was thirteen years old, my parents decided to move me to a new training facility as a last-ditch effort to see if something would "click" for me there.

Wagon Wheel had a long track record of success. The facility wasn't cheap, and my parents weren't rich by any means. But they were relentlessly committed to helping me find my way in skating because they saw the health benefits it provided me in the midst of a world where the scales had been tipped against me.

I was an unwanted child, given up at birth by my biological mother and adopted at six weeks of age by my parents. I like to say that I remember it like it was yesterday. On top of that, I battled a rare and undiagnosed childhood illness that started at the age of four and came with all kinds of unpleasant symptoms. The worst of the symptoms was stunted growth, which left me shorter and smaller than all of my classmates. I remember being teased and bullied.

If you feel like you came into this life so far behind the starting line that you shouldn't even consider winning, you are not alone. Most people feel like the obstacles and challenges in their way are too big. They may even feel like they have been set up to fail before trying. We tend to become focused on what everyone else has that we don't — money, status, size, athleticism, access, relationships, and so on — and forget that the list of qualities it takes to be a winner has far more to do with what is inside of us than what is outside of us.

Most of my young life was consumed with hospital visits and doctor's appointments, and after years, we still didn't have any answers. I can only imagine how frustrated and discouraged my parents must have been, wondering if their son was ever going to be healthy and happy like the other kids. By the time I was nine years old, my parents were physically and emotionally depleted. Then, at the advice of our family physician, who insisted they take a morning off each week, my parents sent me to Saturday morning "learn to skate" classes at the brand-new skating rink at Bowling Green State University.

Like most skaters, my first steps on the ice were tentative and frightening. I spent most of that first morning holding on to the wall. I would find moments of bravery when I could let go for a brief time, but honestly, I held on more often than not. Over the next weeks I was able to get all the way around the ice without touching the wall. Soon I was skating as well as the healthy kids. Soon after that, I was skating as well as the best athletes in my grade. Self-esteem is a powerful force — and now I had it for the first time in my life.

I was small, my energy ran low, and I struggled with the effects of my undiagnosed illness, but skating offered me exactly what I needed. The cool, moist air helped with my lung condition, and the constant movement helped with my ability to digest food properly. The more I focused on skating, the less my body seemed to be in direct opposition to me. I started practicing and getting better. I began competing some and improving. Still, for all those first years of skating, I was underachieving.

You might be wondering, So what if you were underachieving? Why should that even matter? If skating was helping with your symptoms, if it was bringing you joy, why should it matter if you win a gold medal? My answer to those questions is that if I had never found a way to finish first in skating and the rest of my life, none of the other amazing, miraculous things I've experienced would have happened. As Vince Lombardi once said, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."

What It Means to Finish First

To me, winning is not about holding a gold medal, losing the twenty pounds, getting a promotion, or seeing my name on a plaque. In fact, I won a gold medal in 1984, and it lived in a brown paper bag in my underwear drawer for years. I resisted the natural urge to worship the idol of that success. What I found to be more interesting was what I was becoming in the process of achieving the unthinkable.

When I talk about finishing first, I'm not talking just about beating your competitors. To finish first is to understand what you have to offer the world and then to be the best you can be at offering exactly that. It means understanding your life purpose and putting your whole heart into being the best at what you do. It means to break through your perceived limitations, overcome the barriers that stand in your way, and make the biggest impact in the world you are capable of making.

The general consensus of our culture seems to be that winning doesn't matter, that there's no point to trying hard because in the end, none of it matters. Instead of acknowledging who has won and who has lost, we hand out participation trophies and give everyone a ribbon before sending them home. Our fear of winning and losing has created an entire generation of entitled, apathetic, surefire losers. We haven't even stopped to consider the fact that losing might not hurt anyone. What if, by shielding people in this way, we're stealing the transformational power of both winning and losing in their lives?

The irony is that if you believe nothing matters in life, you will live a life that doesn't matter.

We have never been more confused as a culture about winning and losing — what it really takes and why it matters. And yet I meet people every day who are hungry for more and desperate for something deeper, something better than the mediocre life they are living. The path to victory is precisely the thing that will open the door to the purpose they most crave.

Maybe to you it seems arrogant or selfish to think of yourself on a podium. You were trained to hold the door open for others, to be kind, thoughtful, sacrificial, and helpful. You were taught that the last would be first. Nothing is wrong with any of that. And as an Olympic athlete, I can say with confidence that the best way to help people — maybe even the only way to help anyone — is to start chipping away at the part of you that worries you don't have much to offer. Become someone who is worthy of winning, and you'll have a wider, greater impact than you ever dreamed possible.

In addition to this idea that winners are selfish and losers are the good guys, we also have the idea that winners and losers are preselected, and that doesn't feel fair. Yes, some of us are born with more resources than others, more access, more opportunities. But only one qualification makes someone more likely to win: they choose to win.

The number-one predictor for whether you will be a winner is if you decide to be one. It's a choice only you can make. And once you make it, nothing will be able to stop you.

The odds of me becoming an Olympic athlete were slim to none. Less than slim to none, actually. It was not even on my radar. It wasn't on my parents' radar, either. Yet my path to victory did something even more powerful than I could have predicted. Winning reshaped who I was as a person, helped to shape the world I live in, and even healed my physical body. Finishing first has opened doors for me to help others; it's given me a new lens through which to see my pain. It's helped me face the challenges of life with integrity and perseverance.

What if winning could do the same for you?

Are You Done Being a Loser?

When I moved to Wagon Wheel in 1972, my skating immediately began to improve. I was surrounded by people who were better skaters than I was and had access to more experienced coaches. Everything and everyone began calling me to a higher standard. My work ethic improved, and I started to see myself as being able to hold my own with my competition. I even made it to the National Championships that year.

The problem was, at Nationals, I fell five times and came in dead last. Dead. Last. Talk about losing. At least when I lose, I go all the way. Of all the losers, I proved to be the best.

Looking back, I can't help but think about how important all of this losing was in terms of preparing me for my future success. This is something few people talk about — how much losing really goes into winning. If there were a recipe for winning, losing would be a main ingredient. Just when you think you've added too much, add some more.

You'll be hard-pressed to find a champion who hasn't had more than an average amount of losing in his or her story — myself included. And yet I meet people all the time who worry that they've been disqualified from winning because they've lost so many times. Are you kidding? Losing is your greatest asset, and I'll talk more about that in chapter 8. When I meet people who aren't losing enough, I immediately wonder why they haven't taken more risks, who has been insulating them from the possibility of failure, and what potential they still have hidden inside of them.

Of course losing is embarrassing. It's humiliating. But it also fuels us.

It changes us. It humbles us. And it plants in us the character we need to sustain the long-term kind of achievement we crave. If you're sick of losing, you're in the right place. What I'm about to share with you is a way to live that can help you become the winner you may have only dreamed you could one day be.

When I think about what happened that year at Nationals, all I can say is that I choked. It was my shot, and I blew it. You've probably had a moment like this, a moment where none of your excuses held up anymore and you knew that losing could only be your own fault. That was me at the end of Nationals that year. And as I sat in the embarrassment of that moment, I realized something important: I didn't want to be a loser anymore.

In fact, there was a specific moment I made this decision. It was after the competition, and I was at a victory party for Gordie McKellen, the men's national champion of the year. We were all relaxing, having a good time. At one point one of the other skaters my age looked over at me.

"Hey, go grab me a beer," he said, pointing to the open cooler.

"Why don't you go grab your own beer?" I asked, a little confused about why he was bothering me for something he was perfectly capable of doing himself. He looked back at me and then back at the beer and then back at me.

"Because you have nothing to lose. I do," he said.

Suddenly I got it. Never have I felt the weight of losing so heavily, and never had it been more clear to me. I was over this. I was done being a loser. I didn't care what it took or how much it cost me. I was ready to be the kind of person worthy of the position I desired. I was ready to do the work. I was ready to change from the inside out. I was ready to become a winner. What I didn't know at that point was that I wasn't done losing yet.

Your Path to Victory

When I think back on my move to Wagon Wheel, I realize that this was the first big shift for me in my competitive career and that it would never have happened if I had started out even moderately successful. If I had made it to Nationals the year that I didn't, for example, my parents never would have invested the resources for me to go to Wagon Wheel. I would have just stayed where I was. Have you ever stopped for a minute to think about how many things had to go wrong in your life for you to end up exactly where you are?

This is important because a lot of people wonder why the United States isn't as competitive in skating as it used to be. And I believe it's because we've lowered the bar as far as who goes to the National Championships. The best possible thing that could have happened to me was not making it. It changed the way I approached my skating and my commitment to get better. By allowing anyone who wants to compete to go to Nationals, we are robbing all skaters of developing that burning desire to win.

I say this to point out that no matter where you are today, this is your path to victory. It will be paved with so much disappointment, so much failure. You will question yourself and question your path. This is part of the process.

I often meet people who have lists of reasons why they will never be successful. They list their failures, their critics, and their setbacks. They talk to me about how they've wasted time. They tell me it's too late. And I tell them the same thing: The path to victory is the path you're on. It becomes a path to victory the moment you decide it does. You think that doing what it takes to win will be miserable, but the real misery comes when you lose because you weren't willing to do the simple things it takes to become a champion.

Honestly, I'm grateful for all of my losing. Without that experience, I wouldn't have any idea why it matters so much to be a winner. And I wouldn't know any of what I'm about to tell you — about how you can become the winner you wondered if it was even possible for you to be.

KNOW YOUR PURPOSE

The purpose of life is not to be happy — but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

— LEO ROSTEN

What were you made to do that you aren't doing?

You get a glimpse into your purpose by paying attention to the things you love, what you're good at, and where opportunities are open for you. When you're a skater, you skate. When you're a writer, you write. When you're a teacher, you teach. And you do those things with everything you have because when your purpose presents itself, you owe it to yourself to follow through.

I get excited by the kind of person I know you will become when you give up your excuses and start uncovering what you've been capable of all this time. I get excited by the kind of impact you will be able to have when you stop playing small, when you get out of your own way, when you are ready to be done holding back and to become all you were made to be. I get excited by inspiring every individual I meet to access his or her great potential so that the world doesn't miss what he or she brings to the table. This is what finishing first is about for me. It's not about proving yourself or beating your competitors but about accessing your deep purpose.