Now I know what you're thinking, this guy is absolutely bonkers. What does the greatest competition of the world's best athletes and a weird card game have in common? Well, you can bet your biscuits I'll tell you.

Both of these teach various life skills. Both are fun. Both are extremely competitive. The slightest mistake in either can easily lose you the game. Both require significant amount of time, effort, and money to become good at. Both have competitions on the world stage. This is just the beginning.

Success. Everybody wants to be successful, especially in the Olympics. But success takes a lot of things like time, effort, and failure. You could add many more to that list but those are the most important. Just like any other skill or activity, the more time and effort you put into something the better you will become at it. Practices makes perfect. But it takes more than just putting in the time and putting your whole self into whatever you're doing. You need to fail. In failure, people learn the most. What should I have done? How could I have overcome my opponent(s)? Nobody likes to fail but it is an important part of growing and becoming better at your craft. Olympians and Yu-Gi-Oh! players know this. Olympians train for years, all to compete in one (or a couple) events. All though Yu-Gi-Oh! events are a lot more common, the big events like Nationals and the World Championship are only once a year. Players spend months preparing their deck and learning how to overcome obstacles and defeat certain match-ups so they can claim the glory of triumph like Olympians. While the Olympics has Michael Phelps, Yu-Gi-Oh! has Patrick Hoban.

Life is too short to not do what you love. There are tons of stories from Olympians of how they left their dead-end job and went to train around the clock to follow their passion. It's the same way in Yu-Gi-Oh!. At it's core, it's a card game meant to be enjoyed. There are a lot of decks and archetypes from which players are able to build and mix. It's important to play the deck that you love and not just the best deck. I am guilty of this. All the way back in January, a new deck came out that was going to be in the top three best, since it was cheap I picked it up. I sorta kinda liked it but not nearly as much as others. I played it mainly because I wanted to win, and win I did. Yes, there were times where I lost and fell short, but I had the most success with this deck than any other I had ever played. Fast forward to late July, Nationals are over with and I played the same deck there and I went significantly farther in the tournament that I thought I would, so I was happy with my performance but I noticed that I was consistently having more fun when I played with other decks than the one I was using. At one of the smaller tournaments close to my house one of my opponents said at the end of our match, "ya know, it's just a card game. What do you got at the end if you didn't have fun?" I completely agree with him. Since then I've switched decks and been having a lot more fun with the game.

Don't judge people. Judging people never ends well, no matter the situation. Yu-Gi-Oh! has some of the most unique people I have ever met. Even though it is a heavily male dominated game, there are people from all different, socio-economic classes, religions, ethnicities, and of a wide range of ages. That's the same thing with the Olympics, besides the gender issue. People from all different walks of life compete against each other on a grand scale in hopes of achieving glory. Every single time I have met a Yu-Gi-Oh! player and judged them I've been wrong. The same thing goes with Olympians, now I've never met any but the same principle still applies.

Both of these events unite people. If I wasn't a Yu-Gi-Oh! player, then I would only know a select group of people, most of which have the same general lifestyle. Yu-Gi-Oh! has opened me up to a new world of friends and I've been blessed to interact with all of those different kinds of people. The Olympics affords the same opportunity. People from all over the world gather to compete against each other. You get to meet people from all over the known world. I was excited just to meet people from all over the US when I went to Yu-Gi-Oh! Nationals.

The last and arguably most important common trait is that both of these keep us competitive. Competition is good. It keeps us motivated and striving to better ourselves so we can conquer the obstacles in front of us. With these activities we're not only bettering ourselves just from advancing our skills but we're also becoming more knowing and understand of those we share this planet with, like a family getting to know each other.