Coming towards the end of the 2008 Olympics, couple of observations about success occur to me.

Now, I will confess that I’m not a great sports fan and I haven’t been watching the games much. I’m also somewhat dubious about the idea of using athletes and sportsmen and women as role models in other fields of endeavour like copywriting.

However, there’s no question that top athletes have succeeded in an extremely competitive environment and so it’s of value to understand what they do to be successful.

What’s been of most interest to me have been some glimpses into the mindset of some of these athletes and how they think.

The extraordinary Michael Phelps talked about how he had set himself a goal and that he had been completely confident that he would reach that goal of 8 gold medals.

One of the gold medal Australian women swimmers said that what could be conceived and believed could be achieved.

Interesting how the one thing that seems common to success in almost any endeavour is the right mindset. And creative visualisation, that I’ve talked about before, seems to be a big part of that.

So, why not use that in your copywriting?  Like Clayton Makepeace and Gary Bencivenga, take a brief moment at the beginning of a project to visualise the successful outcome you desire for both yourself and your client.

UPDATE: Ace copywriter John Carlton expresses what I wanted to say S-O-O-O much better in his latest post “Life And Games”…

“…I think the actual games of the Olympics are kinda cool.  You’re reminded, hourly, of how other people use goal-setting, discipline and a hard-core combination of cojones and guts to accomplish extraordinary things.”