Reveal Your Brilliance. Rethink and Find Innovative Way to Solve the Problems — Miraculous Life

While it is often easy to get stuck in our ways and only do what we have always done, it is important to explore and try new things in the workplace. Doing so will not only help us come up with new ways to do things but can open our minds to greater possibilities and help us to become better problem solvers. Rethinking the way we do things and turning them around can bring us great achievements.

Have you ever heard of the “Fosbury Flop.”?

Dick Fosbury, the madman who thought differently, the madman everyone laughed at, the madman who won a gold medal and changed the world of athletics forever. A slender kid from Oregon called Dick, paused a moment as 80k people looked down at him from their seats in Mexico City’s Olympic stadium.

The fans at the 1968 Olympic Games didn’t know it at the time, but they were about to witness not only the setting of an Olympic record but the complete revolution of an entire sport. To the audience, he was just another kid interested in the high jump and didn’t seem particularly gifted. But had failed many times before he had a stroke of genius.

The high jump is a rather simple event. Athletes jump over a bar and whoever jumps the highest wins. You must jump off over one foot but there are no other rules dictating how you choose to clear the bar. Let’s take a quick look at the format of the high jump event. Every competitor gets 3 tries to clear the bar. If they are successful in clearing it, the bar is raised, and they get to take another shot at it. If they can’t clear it on three attempts, they get knocked out. The elimination continues till there are fewer people left after each round. Until there are three, then two, and finally the Winner.

The dominant technique at the time was known as the straddle method. It was a complex motion by which an athlete went over the high jump bar facing down, lifting their legs individually over the bar, and then landing on their feet. The boy found it difficult to coordinate all the motions involved in the straddle method. He began to experiment and thought there was a much more effective way. What if, instead of jumping the conventional way with your face toward the bar, you turned your body, arched your back, and went over the bar backward while landing on your neck and shoulders?

It looked crazy. It was criticized at first. Many laughed at him and his way of jumping. Some even came to consider him an eccentric and crazy madman. When he tried to compete in the Oregon State University with his unique style the coach discouraged him. Parents were worried that his technique was dangerous.

In Mexico City that monumental day, Dick Fosbury used his unheard-of technique to set a new Olympic record by jumping 2.24 meters and changing the entire philosophy of the sport. The one whom everyone laughed at, and whom they considered a madman, ended up imposing his technique, taking the gold medal.

No one had ever seen anything like it. There were many doubters. Today, Dick Fosbury is considered one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field. Besides winning a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics, he revolutionized the high jump event with a “back-first” technique, now known as the Fosbury Flop. Thinking differently and acting differently are characteristics that we have to deal with on a daily basis as Growth Hackers.

Do you want to raise the bar for yourself just like Dick Fosbury? Don’t be afraid to try new things and don’t be afraid to ask for help. After all, we’re only on this planet once and we should live the best life we can.