During my eight-year college stint, one of my fondest memories comes from my first exposure to the Greek Games.  The Greek Games are a weeklong competition between all the different fraternities and sororities on campus.  Various contests are conducted each day with points being awarded to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams.  I had just been initiated into my fraternity so I was still low-man on the totem pole.  That meant that I didn’t have too much input regarding the events in which I’d be participating.  Needless to say, I drew the short straw for bottom row of the pyramid building competition.  But that wasn’t the worst event in which I would compete.

I found out about midweek that I was signed up for the “Best Chest” competition along with another frat brother named Matt Newman.  Yes, this event is exactly as it sounds.  Two men from each fraternity would walk on to a stage, remove their shirts and show off their bare chests to a panel of sorority judges.  To say I had no business being part of this event would be the understatement of the year.  As for Matt, he had no worries.  He was somewhat of a gym rat who stood much more of a chance of being mistaken for Arnold Schwarzenegger than I did.  The reason I was chosen to accompany Matt in this event?  Simple.  Nobody else wanted to do it!

I remember being back stage moments before our turn.  I had just cranked out about a hundred pushups, trying to give my chest any sort of bulge that could possibly resemble muscle.  Matt was in front of a mirror bouncing his pectorals with ease.  This did not comfort me!  Then our fraternity President, Keith Warman joined us.  “How are you feeling, men?” he asked.  Matt gave him a confident smile while I shot him a look that must have shown I was about to lose my lunch.

Then Keith spoke a few words that I’ve never forgotten.  “Relax, Jay.  I’m not asking you to win.  I’m asking you to just show up.”  I felt a little better, but not confident enough to take my shirt off in front of a panel of women deducting points for my physical inadequacies.  Not wanting to let Keith, Matt or the fraternity down, I followed Matt up on stage and we removed our shirts.  Several screams, whistles and boos echoed up from the crowd watching below.  And yes…the screams were for Matt.  The boos, I’m sure, were for yours truly.  We had decided to stack the deck and taken a Sharpie and written down all the different sorority’s Greek letters on our chests as our “shout out” or “suck up” to the judges.  After minutes (which felt like hours), our exploitation was finished.  We were able to walk back stage where I would pretend like this never happened.

As it turned out, only five of the eleven fraternities decided to compete in this event.  So all we had to do was beat two other frats to receive points toward our overall Greek Games score.  When it was all said and done, either the judges liked the penmanship on our chests or two other frats offered up contestants with worse chests than mine, because we placed 3rd  and earned our points!

Now that I’m older, I am able to see the lesson from Keith in that day.  He told me to just show up.  Not to be the most talented or to somehow magically have the best chest.  Just show up.  And on that day, that’s all it took.  We could have taken the route that seven other fraternities did and not even bothered to field a team.  But then we would have had a 100% of losing.  So many times in life, successes don’t go to the ones who are the most qualified or to the ones with the best pedigrees.  More often, successes go to the people who stay diligent and don’t give up.  Successes are claimed by the ones who are not sure if they’re going to accomplish their goals or not, but simply show up and do what needs to be done.

I’ve never competed in another Best Chest Contest (the world can thank me for that), but in so many areas of my life, I’ve adopted the “Just Show Up” philosophy…and I’ve never walked away disappointed.