part0046

I get asked to sign a lot of autographs and when I do, I try to sign Believe in Yourself so that I leave the person with a message instead of just my name on a piece of paper. Many times I am signing for kids who don’t even know who I am, but their parents tell them I am famous.

The point in leaving that message is that to be successful in life, one has to believe in oneself. If you don’t, then why should someone else? But we all know this is easier said than done, and that is particularly true when you are young and trying to figure out who you are, what you want to do, how you want to do it, and the best way to get to where you want to go.

I was ultimately able to work my way through some confusing years, but it didn’t come easily and it didn’t come without a big support group of family, friends, coaches, teachers, advisors, and more.

I was fortunate enough represent the United States at two Olympic Games. I was even more fortunate to win two medals for myself, my family and support group, my fans, and my country.

But that, too, was a lot of pressure and with pressure comes a need for an outlet. And sometimes that outlet can take you down a path that may not be so great.

I must admit, I kind of liked the challenge. My coaches often would tell me I couldn’t do something, and that would just incentivize me to do it better just to show them I could. And I loved competing.

My son has a friend who is a very good gymnast, but he can’t stand the competitions and throws up at every meet. Competitions may not be the right thing for him because of how much pressure he feels.

When I was skating competitively, there were girls who were technically good skaters but they didn’t always perform well when the judges were watching. Some of them went on to great show careers and entertained all over the world, but they never made it to the national, world, or Olympic podium because sometimes the pressure might have been too great. They may have also known other skaters were just better, which creates its own sort of pressure, too.

Pressure isn’t just athletic pressure. For some people, that pressure could be school. For others, it might be peer pressure. For some, it could just be the pressure of trying to do your best in big events.

Everyone learns to cope in their own way. The trouble with that is that sometimes those coping techniques can lead to trouble.

I have spoken often about eating disorders in sports and, in fact, I am executive-producing a documentary on that topic as I write this. And while I was never diagnosed with an eating disorder, there were certainly times when I knew that although I couldn’t control everything in my life, I could control my eating. From time to time, including prior to the 1994 Olympics, I would have eating issues. Fortunately, I had strong people around me who made sure I recognized those issues, worked through them in a healthy manner, and started eating normally again.

But not everyone has a support group or one that has only their best interests at heart. So you have to be careful and have a really good sense of who you are, what you are doing, and the will to please yourself first—again, easier said than done. And it might have been a bit easier for me to focus on skating than it might be for someone else to figure out boyfriends and girlfriends and drugs and alcohol and homework and parties and college and having enough money to go to a movie (not that I didn’t have to deal with a lot of these things, too!).

One of the things I have learned through my own experiences, though, is that people are strong. They are smart. They are tough. We can bend a long way before breaking, and that is probably never more evident than in those vulnerable teen years when we are trying to figure out so much.

I tried to rely on a few actions to help me get through it all, and maybe these can help ease your own life pressures in healthy ways, too:

Find something you love: Passion is so important in anything in life. If you love something, you will work harder, be more invested in what you are doing, and simply enjoy it more. On the flip side, if you feel you are doing something for the wrong reasons, you are probably headed for a fall—and that’s not good for anyone. I absolutely love skating. It is why I still do it today. The speed, the performing, the crowd interaction, the physical exertion . . . it all makes me feel good and always has. I can’t stress this enough.

Find people you trust: This can be tricky. It is sometimes hard to tell what is really motivating the people around you. Are they there for you or are they using you for their own gain? There are times when it works both ways: you and those you trust work off each other for mutual benefit. My coaches definitely had my best interests at heart, but they also used their success with me to recruit other students. I have also seen a lot of situations where “friends” didn’t exactly have someone’s back because they were instead looking only for self gain. You have to rely on your instincts in these situations.

Learn to be focused: One of my strengths as a competitor was the ability to block out all the noise around me when I competed. In skating, a lot of parents, coaches, and skaters cozy up to the judges thinking it will help them. I never got involved in that. And I still don’t pay any attention to the gossip. You have to be able to drown out the distractions because they are everywhere and come in all forms. And some come with real problems attached. Make up your own mind as to what you want and stay as self-focused as you can toward reaching that goal.

Set short-term goals: If you set short-term, realistic goals, they can help you on your path to the bigger goal in the end! You won’t always be successful, but experiencing both good and difficult situations is how we learn where we stand and what we need to do to improve so we can reach our goals.

Laugh and smile as much as you can: I’ve heard that smiling uses two hundred muscles in the face and that laughing relaxes the body. Before competitions, I would listen to two DJs from New York who were comedians; then and now, I feel like comedy is a good remedy for most things. By the time I went on the ice in competitions, I was usually in a pretty good frame of mind. As far as I know, there is no downside to laughing and smiling.

There are no guarantees that these ideas will work for everyone, and they didn’t all always work for me. So I did slide into some bad habits from time to time. But these guiding principles helped pull me out of those bad patches more quickly than I might otherwise have navigated those situations.

You’re going to have bad days. You’re going to want to give in to temptation. You will get frustrated and not see the humor. Occasional missteps are part of human nature—and the human condition.

So remember your goals and why you are doing whatever it is that you’re passionate about. If you remember your passion it can help you find and/or maintain your drive.