Episode #143
Love, not duty, is the most sustainable motivator for excellence and persistence.
Detaching from outcomes and practicing daily gratitude and joy created calm and peak performance leading into the Olympics.
Failures and external doubts were met by focusing on controllables, maintaining support, and separating identity from results.
I think the highest motivator that we really have is love, and for me, all these other sports that I tried, gymnastics or ballet or diving, you know, I was afraid of doing backflips or with diving, I was afraid of heights, and with ballet, I was afraid of being watched, and with wrestling, I just loved the sport.
I'm tired of riding the highs of winning and the lows of losing. I can't be on this rollercoaster anymore.
And so I didn't need to win at that point. It was more like, I'm just doing it to enjoy it.
Today I bring you Helen Maroulis. Born and raised in Maryland, Helen won her first World Championship in women’s wrestling in 2015 by outscoring her opponents 35-0. At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, Helen became the first ever American to win a gold medal in women’s freestyle wrestling at the Olympic Games. In the gold medal match, Helen defeated Saori Yoshida, a 13x world champion and 3x Olympic champion- the most successful wrestler in the history of the sport- and an opponent who’d beaten Helen twice before. Helen has truly become a legend in her own time.
