Medals

I threw away every medal I ever earned.

.

Years ago, a friend invited me over for dinner.

The first thing he showed me wasn’t the kitchen, the backyard, or even the view from the house.

It was an entire wall covered in medals—a visual timeline of athletic achievement.

And to be fair, he’d earned every one of them.

As we walked along the wall, he told me the stories behind the races, the training, the challenges, and the wins.

I listened and asked questions.

I could tell the wall meant a lot to him.

Toward the end of the evening, he asked me something.

“Where do you keep yours?”

I remember laughing.

“I don’t.”

He looked confused.

“What do you mean?”

“I threw them away.”

The look on his face was priceless.

He truly thought I was joking.

I was not.

At that point in my life, I’d already completed a number of endurance events myself. Marathons. Triathlons. Long-distance adventures. The kinds of experiences that hand you a medal at the finish line.

But I never cared much about the medal.

Not because the experience wasn’t meaningful.

The experience was everything.

That’s exactly why I didn’t need the medal afterward.

The reward wasn’t hanging around my neck.

It was who I became while earning it.

What stayed with me wasn’t the medal. It was the experience itself—the training, the moments I wanted to quit, and the quiet realization that I was capable of more than I had believed.

That’s the part I kept.

The medal was just packaging.

I’ve been thinking about that conversation lately.

Especially in a world that constantly encourages us to gather evidence that we’re enough.

I understand it because I’ve played that game too.

Looking through old Facebook memories recently, I can see eras of my life when I was seeking approval from outside myself—hoping achievement, recognition, or admiration would answer questions they were never designed to answer.

The tricky thing about external validation is that it works—briefly.

The compliment lands and recognition feels good.

Then the feeling fades and the finish line moves again.

That’s why it’s such an exhausting game. The reward never lasts long enough to become peace.

These days I’m much more interested in a different question.

If nobody knew you did it—no applause, no medal, no post, or recognition—would it still feel meaningful?

For me, that’s where the treasure is.

Not in what the world sees, rather…in what you know.

The mountain doesn’t care if anyone knows you climbed it.

You’ll know.

And that’s enough.

WHY DO SMART PEOPLE STAY STUCK FOR YEARS?  →