The news seems to only show the bad news. We are bombarded with bad news through the Internet, 24 hour cable news, and access to news on our mobile phones. This past week we heard about the University of Alabama professor shooting her colleagues in a faculty meeting, and then yesterday a man flew a plane into a federal building that housed the IRS in Austin. What is going on? Is their any one doing any good out there? Last night I turned on the television to the Olympics. I saw that Evan Lysacek reclaimed the gold medal for the U.S.A. I only saw the medal ceremony, but instantly felt pride and excitement Lysacek won. The Men’s Figure Skating competition was the must see of the night. Once I saw Lysacek won–all the bad news from the day started to melt away. I wish I had watched the competition, but I was knee deep in dissertation revisions.
This morning I saw an article in the The New York Times about Lysacek. The Russian skater Plushenko said maybe Lysacek won because he didn’t have a gold medal yet. I think Lysacek won because he showed passion for the sport rather than concentrating on the negative. I think we can all learn from Lysacek. He decided he was going to mind his own business:
Lysacek Wins the Gold with Style:
For Plushenko, though, the performance was not a complete disappointment. He had landed the quadruple jump, which requires four full rotations and is the hardest jump in the sport. He had added a third Olympic medal to his booty.
“I said I would be happy with second, third or even fifth place after not skating for three and a half years before this,” he said. “So this is not bad, not bad at all.”
Still, he and his coach, Aleksei Mishin, continued to say that male skaters who did not try the quad were basically wimps. Their theory is that no-quad performances are setting the sport back at least a decade. Mishin said “a real champion should execute quadruple jumps.” Plushenko hinted that Lysacek’s performance was subpar.
“If the Olympic champion doesn’t know how to jump a quad, I don’t know,” Plushenko said. “Now it’s not men’s figure skating. It’s dancing. Maybe figure skating needs a new name.”
But before this Olympics, Lysacek had put a note on his wall that said: Mind your own business. It was his reminder to keep his focus off other people and focus on his own skating. And it worked.
Thank you Lysacek for bringing home the gold and showing us the good news of the day. Also, you showed us to not to listen to negative people. Plushenko with his negative words about his own sport proved he didn’t have the passion to win if all he cared about was one jump, which he didn’t land THAT well. His negativity showed through his performance. And, Lysacek proves a positive attitude and being nice wins each time.
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I flip on the 24 hour news channels throughout the day and sometimes the news is uplifting, but many times it is not. I find the more I watch it, the more anxious or upset or agitated I become.
The Olympics provide a nice respite from the negative news.
I tend to read the news online and I start to feel agitated and anxious as well. So, I try to limit my news intake for the day or it will make you go crazy.
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