Article
Character
Comment
Sport
4 min read

When medal mania strikes

What turns a healthy motivation to excel into a toxic desperation to achieve?

Paul Valler is an executive coach and mentor. He is a former chair of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

A defeat fencer, withour a mask, turns angrily and roars.
Sandro Bazadze loses and loses it.

The brilliance and joy of medalists in the Paris Olympics is incredible to see.   Their discipline and sacrifices in training pay off in mesmerising displays of excellence and moments of pure elation.  Yet for there to be winners, there also must be losers, and there have been revealing moments of crushing disappointment which are never nice to see.  Sadly, Sandro Bazadze, world number one in fencing, could well go down in Olympic history as ‘the distraught loser who lost it’ in a furious rant at the referee as he was eliminated in the last 16 of the men’s sabre.  What is it that makes some people explode like that?  What is it that changes a healthy motivation to excel into a toxic desperation to achieve? What is it that changes a human being who is fully alive into an anxious person, so driven to succeed that they cannot bear to fail?   

That is likely why Bazadze erupted.  When he was denied success, he was denied who he thought he was. 

Few of us will achieve Olympic greatness, or the media recognition that redefines an athlete’s profile by forever linking their name to their achievement.  But we all have an inner tendency to believe that our value is based on what we can achieve.  We live in a culture that continually sends us the message that approval and worth depend on your results.   Many of us believe it, and then fall for a life of continuous intensity - a ‘cycle of grief’ as we fiercely strive for results, but mourn the loss of our inner peace.  And this cultural message of acceptance through achievement becomes really toxic when we begin to believe the lie that our identity is based on our performance.  That is likely why Bazadze erupted.  When he was denied success, he was denied who he thought he was.   “The referees have killed me”, he exclaimed. 

It’s not just athletes who are at risk from this.  Think about how our education system sends the same message about grades.  Thousands of teenagers suffer anxiety and mental illness as they face exams, because they believe their self-worth depends on their marks.  As GCSE results are published this month, thousands will be congratulated, but some will become depressed from failure.   

I know many workplaces where ‘performance management’ has become so oppressive that it leads to drivenness, perfectionism and burnout.  Even retirees can feel driven to complete their ‘bucket list’ before they die or become infirm.  So, people in all walks of life easily become addicted to the treadmill of ‘performance-based living’ and feel tired, trapped and troubled.  Labouring under the false belief that self-respect depends on achievement.   If you believe that, you cannot fail or even be ill without feeling deficient.    

There is a deep peace in that.  A freedom and resilience that makes it possible to compete without fear of failure. 

There is a better way.  We can choose to renounce that pernicious lie of a performance identity and affirm the deep truth that our real identity and significance is found in who we are as God’s much-loved children.  We can anchor our emotions in the security of that true identity.  If Bazadze had really understood and internalised this, he would still have been disappointed with the judges decision, but not destroyed by it.   

It is possible to decide to face up to the mania for results and our culture of continuous intensity.  That is what Sabbath is about – an act of resistance against a world dominated by the need for success.  God knows we need a break, not only to rest, but to recentre our hearts and minds on the truth.  We are loved unconditionally and don’t need to strive to achieve in order to be accepted and significant to God.  There is a deep peace in that.  A freedom and resilience that makes it possible to compete without fear of failure.  In the Bible, the word excellence is never applied to achievement, only to character, and the most excellent way is defined as love.  The Christian worldview celebrates great performance, but avoids making an idol of it, because that leads to a destructive obsession and to insecurity. 

Being secure in God is not about avoiding competition or pressure.   It is learning to pursue outstanding attainment free from any sense of our identity being stolen by our grades, or jobs, or whether other people approve of us or award us medals.  Top quality performance is superb and we should give our best with all our heart whatever we do.  But God is a God of grace, who loves, accepts and dignifies everyone unconditionally,  including those who didn’t even qualify for the Olympics, just as much as those who were on the rostrum.   

Article
Comment
Identity
6 min read

Identity is more than mere branding, ask WH Smith

It's not just nostalgia that's being generated by the retailer's demise

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London. 

Cyclists and pedestrians pass in front of a WH Smith store front.

So, alas, no more WH Smith on the British High Street. Then, to add insult to injury, the chain of shops will be rebranded by the private equity firm, Modella Capital, as TG Jones. A move to ensure the stores retain “the same sense of family”. 

Really? 

I was surprised. Not by the news. We’ve seen so many once famous names disappear, another one is hardly noteworthy. But no, I was surprised by my reaction when I heard. 

I’m not quite sure what the emotion was. It nestled somewhere between 

“NO!” 

and, 

“They can’t be serious!” 

Somewhere between warm-hearted nostalgia and gob-smacked incredulity. 

I have loved Smith’s since forever. As a boy, in a small market town in Norfolk, the kiosk at our railway station was where I went to buy my Commando war story comics. As a teenager it was the music and video department I frequented. Then, newly married it was photo albums followed by all the school supplies of pencil cases and folders our growing family needed every August. Our memories exert a powerful influence on us. 

But the nostalgia goes deeper than that. It is a British institution. WH Smith and Sons, as I originally knew it, began life in 1792 in a news vending shop established by Henry and Anna Smith in Little Grosvenor Street in London’s Mayfair. 

Their grandson, William Henry (of the WH) joined the firm as a partner in 1846 and was responsible for their expansion through railway stations. Taking advantage of the boom in rail travel their first news stand was opened at Euston Station in 1848 by securing exclusive rights to operate with North Western Railways. This was swiftly followed with a similar deal with Midland Railways. 

Across the years innovative entrepreneurship has been part of who they are. They pioneered wholesale warehouse distribution through their sites in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Dublin. 

Then, along the way, in 1966 they introduced a 9-digit code to improve their book reference system. Eight years later their Standard Book Numbering (SBN) system had been universally adopted as the internationally recognised ISBN classification on the back cover of every published book. 

Their company history also includes novel initiatives like a circulating library, a travel agency, the DIY chain Do It All, a 10-year ownership of Waterstones, satellite TV with their own sports channel in the mid-1980s, and more recently, in-store post offices and the online personalised greeting card brand, Funky Pigeon. 

Smiths is a company that is deeply embedded in the life of our country. It’s deeply embedded in my life story too. Of course I’m going to feel nostalgic about it. But, do you know what, I can’t remember the last time I went into one of their iconic shops and actually bought something! 

And that’s probably it, at least in retail. Any nostalgia on my part is, at most, only of the wistful variety. 

As important as our personal history and heritage are in helping us understand ourselves, life is provisional, and our identity can change. 

While the High Street shops do remain a going concern, it is their travel hub network in airports across the world that make the serious money and will retain the WH Smith branding. Hence, the change of name to TG Jones and the source of my “gob-smacked incredulity”. 

Now it is easy to understand how a move from WH Smith to TG Jones makes a lot of sense. Modella Capital were swift to affirm that it is “business as usual”. All the stores will remain open, doing what they do now, with all the staff retained. Two initials and one of the most common surnames is replaced by two initials and one of the most common surnames. 

Now the juxtaposition of Smith and Jones is very tempting in its offer to reference specific 1970s or 1980s TV shows. From a marketing perspective it is so cheesy, at least to anyone over 60. But to put that aside: what is in a name? 

WH Smith is a 233-year-old company and remained in the hands of the family until 1972. It has a heritage that has real substance behind it. It is the genuine fruit of all that has gone before. TG Jones is a fiction. A necessary invention to fill the gap, to provide a new name in place of an original that has migrated elsewhere. As Charlotte Black, chief strategy officer at Saffron Brand Consultants observed: 

“It feels incredibly close, a poor mirror of WH Smith and not necessarily very well thought through … I would say it feels hasty – an ‘insert here’ strategy – and a bit of a missed opportunity.” 

Ultimately, it’s about identity. Superficially it appears that a genuine history is being supplanted by pure fabrication. Any “sense of family” in TG Jones is vacuous because TG Jones never existed. There is no back story. 

WH Smith, on the other hand, does have a back story. Yet, having been a company run by shareholders since shortly after the second world war, how real is the “sense of family” there either? This is not the proverbial ‘mom and pop’ store. It is actually a corporate leviathan. There might be a sense of rootedness in the name, but a “sense of family” disappeared a long while ago. 

Now, with the name gone, the High Street shops have even lost that sense of rootedness, however tentative it had become. Where does that leave their identity? I’m sure the branding consultants and marketing departments have been all over this. However, identity is not established just by saying that something is so. 

Thinking about Smith becoming Jones then sent me down a rabbit hole of thoughts. So, bear with me here. 

We all know about identity because we all have one. 

At any given moment in time we are the product of a complex interplay of things. From our families and where we grew up, to the choices we’ve made and those that are foist upon us. The experiences we’ve had shape us. They make us into the people we are and help define our identity. 

Yet nothing is set in stone. There is something intrinsic to life that is dynamic, ever-changing and open to all kinds of possibilities. It is dynamic and multi-dimensional and alive to endless possibilities. 

In this sense, life is not deterministic, and our identity is not fixed. How we see ourselves and how others see us can change. As important as our personal history and heritage are in helping us understand ourselves, life is provisional, and our identity can change. 

That change can be evolutionary or revolutionary, it can come from inside ourselves, or result from our responses to what comes at us from outside. Life is a constant process of becoming who we are. Our choices matter. They have consequences. Nothing stands still. 

The possibility of turning life around, the opportunity of making fresh starts and hopeful visions for a better future have proven to be the bedrock of human resilience. The essential ingredients to ‘pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again’, to quote the famous 1930s standard. They’re also foundational insights that underpinned what Jesus stood for and taught. Proven across the range of human life, activity and ingenuity 

But back to TG Jones, I think I’m with Charlotte Black, the renaming is hasty, ill-thought through and a missed opportunity. Maybe the name will go the same way as Royal Mail’s abortive makeover as ‘Consignia’ in 2002. Identity is more than branding; we will know it by its fruit. 

In the meantime, when the new regime has established itself, I may swing by to see what they’ve done with the old place. 

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