Push Yourself, Without Losing Yourself: What Olympic Champion Steve Mesler Taught Me About Ambition, Purpose and Life After Gold

We tend to see the medal, the podium and the photograph. What we rarely see is what came before it, and perhaps more importantly, what happens next when the cheering stops.

Steve Mesler offers an unusually revealing perspective on both. A talented track athlete whose original sporting path was derailed by injury, he reinvented himself as a bobsledder and ultimately became a three-time Olympian. In 2010, riding with Team Night Train at the Vancouver Olympics, he helped the United States win its first four-man bobsled gold medal in 62 years.

Yet when I spoke with Mesler, the medal was almost the least interesting part of the conversation. We talked about fear, purpose, depression, gratitude and the uncomfortable truth that what makes someone exceptional for a period of their life may not be what allows them to remain exceptional over the long haul. For business leaders, the lesson is not simply how to achieve more, but how to adapt the ambition that drives success, so it remains a source of direction rather than permanent dissatisfaction.

Purpose Is the Why. Goals Set the Destination. Strategy Is the Route.

Mesler did not grow up dreaming of bobsled. He dreamed of becoming an Olympian.

Sitting on a couch after elbow reconstruction surgery, his athletic sporting future looked largely finished. What powered his push forward was not simply fear of failure. As he told me, “I think I feared not fulfilling my potential more than anything else.” 

Bobsled eventually became a vehicle for something bigger. As Mesler reflected, “bobsled was just the tool,” before realizing that track and soccer had been tools as well. Underneath them was a more enduring ambition, which was having something where he could become better and pursue an extraordinary goal.

Business leaders often confuse purpose with the current plan. A useful distinction is that purpose explains why the pursuit matters, a goal defines what success looks like, and strategy determines how to get there. We become attached to a market, operating model, product or technology because it is how we have historically pursued success. But when conditions change, holding the same line through every corner can threaten the destination.

That distinction also matters at team level. Mesler described his championship team simply as, “We had one goal. And that was it.” Disagreements could be resolved against that shared finish line objective because everyone understood what they were collectively trying to achieve. Purpose gives goals meaning, but shared goals get everyone running in the same direction.

A 2019 study by Claudine Gartenberg, Andrea Prat and George Serafeim in Organization Science reinforces the importance of clarity in terms of how its people understand the path forward. Purpose alone was not associated with financial performance, but firms combining strong purpose with management clarity on the “how” had higher subsequent performance.

Purpose matters. So does pushing together with clear direction.

You Don't Have to Love Every Twist and Turn

A clear destination also helps explain Mesler's rejection of the fashionable idea that sustained success requires loving the journey. “Without a destination, you're just wandering,” he told me. He did not enjoy every workout. But he values what many of those uncomfortable experiences produce.

Bobsled itself? His verdict was beautifully blunt: “Bobsledding sucks. It hurts. It's dangerous.” Yet he loved what the pursuit represented and where it was taking him.

Meaningful work includes repetition, conflict, uncomfortable decisions and days when motivation simply refuses to show up. Sustainability does not require pretending those experiences are joyful. It requires enough meaning in the destination to justify the rough ride getting there.

Purpose Must Evolve or It Can Become a Prison

But what happens when the destination is finally reached? Winning gold in 2010 created an altogether different problem. Two days after the Olympics, Mesler remembers feeling “satiated.” In his words, “It was like I had been thirsty my whole life, and I wasn't thirsty anymore.” 

However, a new, outward-looking purpose had already begun to take shape while he was still competing, when Mesler co-founded Classroom Champions, initially mentoring nine classrooms. Today the organization says its programs have connected more than 250 elite athletes with students across multiple countries. Mesler now serves as its board chair.

Senior executives face a similar transition. Early career purpose may revolve around achievement. Later it may shift towards enterprise impact, developing others or legacy. Trying to preserve an old source of motivation forever can leave leaders chasing a finish line they have already crossed.

The Dark Side of “Not Good Enough”

Then our conversation took a more uncomfortable and, for me, more important turn. Mesler spoke openly about depression and a period when several foundations of his identity were simultaneously disappearing. Physical health had deteriorated. Business pressures were mounting. His relationship with the Olympic world, a community central to his identity, had become complicated.

He eventually recognized something about the psychology that had fuelled his earlier success. “I woke up every day not strong enough. I'm not fast enough.” Even after enormous success, he said, “At no point did I feel safe and secure in my job.”

Achievement can reinforce that cycle rather than resolve it. Becoming an Olympian did not satisfy Mesler for long. Watching teammates win medals shifted his ambition towards gold. Today's breakthrough quickly becomes tomorrow's baseline. “You get the raise, feels great, and then two months later, you could use another raise,” he told me. “You get a promotion, two months later, you could use another promotion.”

For executives, the same mechanism can make every milestone feel provisional. Dissatisfaction can fuel improvement, but it carries a hidden cost. As Mesler asked me, “How could I possibly be grateful if things aren't good enough?”

Andrew Hill and Thomas Curran's 2016 meta-analysis in Personality and Social Psychology Review, covering 43 studies across work, sport and education, makes a useful distinction: perfectionistic concerns, rather than high standards alone, were positively associated with burnout.

High standards and gratitude need not be opposites. Mesler's question is not an argument for abandoning ambition, but for noticing when the pursuit of improvement makes it impossible to recognize what has already been achieved.

Hope Is a Performance System

What, then, can sustain ambition without relying on constant dissatisfaction? Mesler recalled learning a definition of hope from a mental health professional he worked with: “My actions today will make my tomorrow better.” Simple. Practical. Powerful.

Psychologist C. R. Snyder's 2002 hope theory in Psychological Inquiry offers a complementary framework. Hope combines the motivation to pursue a goal with the ability to identify routes towards it. It is not just wanting a better tomorrow but seeing a way to act.

Ambition provides direction. Purpose makes the sacrifice worthwhile. Daily action builds momentum. Gratitude allows us to occasionally recognize that progress rather than immediately moving the goalposts.

Perhaps the real lesson from an Olympic champion is not how to push harder. High performers usually know how to do that already. The harder lesson is knowing when to push, when to change course and what makes the next run worth taking.

Dr. Lance Mortlock is the author of Outside In, Inside Out – Unleashing the Power of Business Strategy in Times of Market Uncertainty, EY Canada Managing Partner, Industrials & Energy, Strategist & Adjunct Associate Professor.