Part 3: Be willing to see what others won’t - 3 principles of the athlete mindset

Over the past few issues I’ve been writing about the Athlete Mindset:

Principle 1: We can do just about anything, but we can’t do it alone. 

Principle 2: You don’t get what you don’t ask for, you don’t achieve what you don’t pursue.

Today I’ll add a third principle to this series:

Principle 3: Be willing to see what others won’t.

The embodiment of this principle can be seen in the story of Dan Cnossen.

A true patriot, raised on the farmlands of Kansas, early on Dan knew he wanted to serve his country. Upon graduating high school, he was accepted at the U.S. Naval Academy and spent the next four years relentlessly pursuing selection for SEAL training. One of only 16 members of his class given the opportunity to enter Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL training as officers, Dan successfully completed the grueling process in the fall of 2003.

Over the next six years, Dan was deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan and rose in rank to become the officer-in-charge of an 18-man SEAL platoon.

In 2009, at the age of 29, Dan was deployed to Afghanistan, into an area of heavy combat. There, on a night mission in the mountains, he stepped on an IED, losing both legs in the blast. He would later be awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Valor. 

For the next two years, Dan fought for his life, enduring over 40 different surgeries while readjusting to civilian life. It was during this time, as part of his rehab, that he was introduced to the sports of cross-country skiing and biathlon. Never one to shy from a challenge, he eventually earned a spot on the 2014 U.S. Paralympic Team.

In 2015, Dan returned to graduate school, earning two degrees from Harvard University.

At the 2018 Paralympic Games Dan stole the show, remarkably winning one gold, four silver and one bronze medal over a period of eight days - earning the honor of Best Male Athlete of The Games. 

This past March in Beijing at the Paralympics, after back-to-back fourth-place finishes, Dan won another Gold medal for Team USA in the mixed relay event.

Dan and I, along with my four-year-old daughter, Brett, met for dinner two times this past winter while Dan was training in Canmore, Alberta, which happens to be about an hour from my home in Calgary and only 20 minutes from our family ski hill in Banff where I take my daughter every weekend. He and I, while Brett was coloring, talked about Afghanistan, the night he lost his legs, and what it was like to come back from that.

Dan talked about being in some dark places until he realized there could be a new life for him, a new opportunity. I asked him what he thought separated him from others, how did he make it out of that dark place and build a new life for himself… and he basically, word for word, quoted the third principle of the Athlete Mindset: he knew that he could see opportunity where others couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

If you’ve had remarkable success in any aspect of your life, I’m guessing that you embody this principle in some way. 

And that’s an educated guess: I know hundreds of people who are at the top of their field, I’ve met hundreds of who I would consider the best teachers in the world, and I’ve broken bread with some of the best business leaders out there and I’ll tell you - there is a streak that runs through them all. And that streak is the Athlete Mindset. 

But I can also take a guess that your own mindset might need some tuning now and then. Mine certainly does. Sometimes these principles are alive and well within me; sometimes I need a kick in the ass to remind me to go back to them and sharpen things up. 

Regardless, I know without a doubt that the Athlete Mindset is worth attending to. I try to keep it alive in myself and I hope to share it with others. Because this is the mindset that got us here, and it’s the mindset that will help us go whenever we’re heading next.

- Steve