I was just reading about American Shaun White’s gold medal run on the halfpipe on Monday and there’s one thing that stands out to me about his performance:  after securing a gold medal with his first run he went all out in his second.

He didn’t have to.

He could’ve just walked down the pipe for his second run and still would’ve won.

He could’ve sat on his snowboard and whooped it down the course, and still would’ve got the gold.

His coach even suggested to him to take it easy on the second run. Sound advice, after all there’s no sense in risking any injury.

But Shaun decided to go beyond that.  Not only that, Shaun performed the most difficult trick ever invented for the pipe (even the name of the trick is intimidating – Tomahawk).

This got me thinking.  How often do we settle for a win and glory in the win and even celebrate the win in our own lives and then decide that’s all we need to do?

When we:

• get saved (a HUGE WIN) and stop growing.
• go on a missions trip and help a bunch of people and then just show pictures when we get home.
• give money to Haiti and then forget about it.
• participate and serve in an event that helps all kinds of people and then don’t follow up with those helped people after the event (someone else will do it)
• successfully complete a goal we’ve been aiming for and then fail to aim for something higher/better.

What could you add to the list in your life?  Shaun gives us a great challenge to go beyond.

[image from flickr user: TylerIngram]