“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” — Philippians 4:12

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My home state of Alaska has produced some incredible Olympians through the years, a few of which I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Particularly in winter sports, this place of less than a million residents has taken great pride in watching some of our own take to the biggest stage and succeed. One of the most recent athletes to join these ranks is cross-country skier Gus Schumacher.

I actually recall local headlines talking about Gus back when he was in high school and winning races here in the area, and it’s been a joy to watch him work his way all the way up to contending with the sport’s biggest names. But Gus will tell you it hasn’t been an easy journey, and the mentality that set him free was actually somewhat counterintuitive: He had to learn how to lose.

In an article he wrote following the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, where he walked away with a silver medal from the team sprint competition, he noted, “I’ve done somewhere around 500 cross-countrv ski races in my life. In those 500 races, I’ve crashed, won, gone the wrong way, puked, gotten tired, and lost. I think after one of them, I couldn’t remember my own name. Five hundred races later, I’m an Olympic medalist, and the reason for that is not that I won most of the races I started. No one is good enough to win every time. I’m an Olympic medalist because I kept trusting my capabilities even when there wasn’t a result to lean on.”

He went on to say, “All of the best races of my life have come when I was just happy to be there. It sounds so simple, but the truth is, it’s one of the hardest feelings to find when competing at any level. There’s so much noise around you, and so much pressure and desire to be fast — to win. … I’ve wanted to win races so badly my entire life, and with every year I do it, I find more and more that it only happens when I don’t care about winning. When I don’t care about the outcome, I can ski fast and free. When I ski fast and free, I win. … I’m proud of the Olympic medal, but I’m most proud that I kept stepping up and giving each race all that I had. … I was successful because I was happy to be racing as hard as I could.”

Schumacher has figured out that learning how to not focus solely on winning and to simply enjoy and appreciate being able to race has helped him move past the races when he doesn’t ski well and to relish the process and treat each race as a gift. Perhaps this is partly what the apostle Paul was getting at in Philippians 4:12 (above) when he said that he had “learned the secret of being content in any situation.”

Much like in sports, in life most of us will learn more from our failures or losses than we ever would from our wins. And the more OK we can become with simply approaching all of life as a gift, we just may set our own selves free.

— Katherine Singer

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