The Psychology of Winning and Losing | Mikaela Shiffrin - From The Vault

A quick personal note here. If you're a parent of an athlete, you know what I mean about the importance of the car ride home, that sometimes overly intense drive after a tough match or a tough game where you're trying to sort out how to navigate it. Sometimes it's really easy, and sometimes it's really tricky. My son Grayson wrote a book about those moments. It's called Dear Parent, Sport Isn't Easy. Here's How to Have Our Back. And he wrote it as a short guide, a set of letters for parents of young athletes. He's 18, 6 years into his high-level club volleyball, and he wrote it as a senior in high school while he's living these experiences. It's written to us, to the parents, from that passenger seat. Every chapter is a story, what he learned, something a parent can try each week. These are lessons about tough teammates, coaches who got it wrong, and what a commitment like this actually costs in time and sleep for the young athlete. The question he challenges us to consider is not about whether our kids' teams win or lose. It's about whether we honor the person while we're developing the player. I'm his dad, so weigh that accordingly. I think this might be a really important book for you as a parent who's in the thick of youth sport. Again, it's called Dear Parent: Sport Isn't Easy. Here's How to Have Our Back. Order your ebook today at dearparentbook.com. The hard copy book comes out on October 1st. October 27th. Again, that's dearparentbook.com.

I finally said to someone, I don't think I care if I don't win another race. I know I can do the work it takes to win again or to have the chance. So I'm not afraid of doing that work, and that's the most free I've ever felt in my career.

How do you stay connected to the work when the outcome is the only thing that people really wanna measure?

I'm currently working on the self-coaching and looking at myself first and asking, what do I want to improve before I talk to my coaches, before I talk to anybody, and definitely before I speak to any media.

Today's episode is another classic from the Finding Mastery vault. It's a conversation with Mikaela Shiffrin, Olympic gold medalist and one of the most accomplished alpine skiers of all time. This is a masterclass in what mastery looks like from the inside out.

The winning lasts for literally 1/1,000th of a second, and the rest of the day, the rest of the year while you're training, that's where it's actually fun, you know? It's so— it literally is the process. If you don't If you don't like that part, then you really— you should probably find something else to do.

We first released this conversation in 2024, and since then, Mikaela has soared to even greater heights, securing another Olympic slalom gold medal at Milano-Cortina 2026 and a record-equaling 6th overall Crystal Globe, which makes this insight from this conversation feel even more relevant today. Because in a world that is constantly measuring wins and records and medals and headlines, Mikaela brings us back to the internal work, the stuff that's underneath it all.

I know I'm ready to race when I know the feeling that I want to have, and I don't have to be sure that I can do it. I just need to be sure what the feeling should be. That clarity combined with sort of intensity of focus, that's when I'm at my best.

So with that, let's jump into this week's From the Vault conversation with the legend, Michaela Shiffrin. Mikaela, I am so excited to finally have you on the podcast. I have wanted to have this conversation for a long time. Um, you're obviously, uh, world-class in how you approach life and what, you know, you do on the snow. So I'm really excited to have you on. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. It is such an honor to be Talking to you.

Awesome. Okay, good. So I want to start us off with pressure. You, from a very young age, were like the one, and you had, you had some of the greats looking and knowing, looking at what you're doing and knowing about you even from a young age. How do you work with pressure? And maybe what are the sources of pressure that you felt as a young kid? And then we'll compare that to the sources that you feel now.

I have to say that the people around me have been so incredible. I mean, I probably should have felt pressure when I was younger because there was a lot of— there was quite a bit of talk about phenom and the next greatest skier. And there, there was quite a fair amount of talk, but for whatever reason, I think for a lot of reasons. And I think especially because my parents were very kind of driven by the philosophy of just like work ethic, work hard, enjoy what you're doing, be passionate about what you're doing. Every single year, I mean, since I was 8 years old, probably even before that, they would kind of sit— my brother's 2 and a half years older than I am, and they would sit us down and say, you know, Taylor, Mikayla, Do you still love skiing? Do you wanna, do you, do you wanna keep doing this? Do you wanna keep being part of the club? Do you like your friends in the sport? Do you feel good where you are? And we were always like, yes. They asked me this literally while I was racing on the World Cup my first couple years. It's like, so how do you feel about this? You know, you're 16, 17 years old. The rest of your teammates, the rest of the World Cup, they're You know, 5 to average 10 years older than you are. And how do you feel being in this space? That's quite, probably quite different than what you, I don't know, are used to kind of. And it was always, it was so much of a self-driven motivation. And they were so supportive of that, that I never felt like— externally, people talked and we got excited and everyone was excited about the potential for me. But my parents were always like, hey, one step at a time. Let's just continue to enjoy this. And like, we don't have expectations. We have no idea what, like, we think you're amazing, but we have no idea what you can do. And that, I think the most important thing for me was the people closest to me didn't ever set expectations like that. So the talk, the phenom talk, the pressure, It was all external. I felt like I had a very strong bubble surrounding me of my closest friends and family.

It makes perfect sense. You are the emblem for what all of the research— your parents, the way that they raised you. And I know your dad's no longer with you, but that's the emblem for creating a healthy identity, for creating a stable base. Let me decode that, make sure I'm hearing it correctly. Yes. Is that if there's 3 conversations we could have, right? We could have conversations about the outcome, which is later and not in our control, which obviously creates anxiety for folks. It doesn't have to, but it can. There's conversations about performance and there's conversations about the process. It sounds like your family spent more time talking about the process, the way it feels, the enjoyment, the intrinsic drive. Like more about the— okay.

I was always about the actions and not, not what might come of them really. Like, yeah, like you said, very much, very much process-oriented. And because that's when you have fun. Like the winning lasts for literally, if you actually measure it, it lasts for probably 1/1000th of a second, the moment you cross the finish line and actually win the race. And the rest of the day, the rest of the year while you're training, that like, that's where it's actually fun, you know? It's so— it literally is the process. That's— if you don't like that part, then you really, you should probably find something else to do.

So how did you find skiing? Like, why? What is it about the snow, the mountain, being on edge? Like, why that sport? And do you think that with your family makeup that It could have been anything. It could have been, you know, any physical activity, I guess, or even artistic activity, because that foundation is there.

I think there was a potential for it to be a number of things. I, I did love soccer growing up. I, I sort of stopped playing and started to shift more towards skiing when I was around probably 13 or 14. But tennis, I've played, not competitively. I don't know if I could manage it in a match, but I've played a lot since I was little. My mom, my mom has played her entire life. She's loved it since she was little, little. So she is like my favorite tennis partner and I use it for cross-training. And I think I have potential in other sports. You know, we started skiing as a family. My, my, both my parents skied. They both raced right up into college. My mom stopped racing in college so she could go to nursing school because the nursing program didn't allow her allow them to compete in sports at the same time. My dad raced through college, and we just kind of had skiing almost built into our blood, at least the passion for it, I would say. I was born in Colorado, up in the mountains, and I— like, skiing was a natural thing we did. We had short school days on Friday, and we would all, as a class, we'd all go up on the mountain. And I sort of had a— Um, natural instinct for it that seemed a little bit, maybe more, a little bit better than my classmates, I suppose. Um, I didn't really know this at the time, but there's some pretty funny stories about our Ski Friday groups. And, um, one of our really close family friends tell this story, and I won't be able to tell it nearly as well, but basically the long and short of it is We're all skiing down the mountain and the teachers are trying to group us into, you know, our categories, like our different levels of groups. And I come down and more or less they say, we don't have a group for

her. So you've broken the mold from an early age.

Yeah. But that was a lot because my parents taught me and they taught my brother the proper technique of skiing from the start, from literally from 2 and a half, 3 years old. They, they sort of showed us the feeling of that outside ski and what all these different technical aspects of the sport that probably seem like it's, it's like they're kids, let them play. But from, from both, both my mom and dad, they both had this perspective like, play all you want, have a blast, but if you want to really enjoy doing something, you want to do it kind of well. And that's, that's when it's really fun. Like, you want to learn and improve, and then as you, as you improve in whatever that is, you start to really find some enjoyment in it. It's like not fun to play piano when you're just banging around on the keys and there's no melody, but when you start to learn how to make a melody, then all of a sudden it becomes fun. So you don't have to be like an expert at everything, but just being— just having like a fundamental basis is important. And that was, that was basically what they instilled in my brother and me from the beginning. So by the time we were doing these Ski Fridays at school, I already had a really technical, a strong technical base. I think my first time in an actual race course was in a NASCAR course. Just, you know, on the mountain, they would have these kind of public mini race courses that we could ski. And the first time I skied in a race course, like the NASCAR, I immediately, like, I didn't love to ski ski. I loved hot chocolate and French fries. But when I got in the course with the gates and I had sort of a guide and a goal to get, you know, getting to the bottom as fast as I could, all of a sudden I was like, I'm done. I'm, I'm a goner. This is my, this is my sport. This is my identity. Yeah.

Oh, that's interesting. So if I were to, okay, there's like, obviously on the world stage, but for everything, there's a combination between psychology, genetic coding, environmental conditions, and then part of the psychology is like the appetite to refine the skills. You know? Yeah. So like this deep motor to get good at it, environmental conditions, Genetic coding and the psychology to manage quote unquote pressure and monotony and all the other things that come with it.

Yeah.

Of those four, do you say ah pretty balanced? Or do you say look I'm I hate to say it but I'm kind of a genetic freak. Or do you say look I I I I gotta kind of point to the environment because my parents gave me a base. Or my mind is just like I've invested in my mind and I can focus and I I know how to find calm and I'm I know how to generate confidence. Like, how do you balance those 4? And it's not lost on me that I'm, I'm asking the best in the world, literally, about those 4 conditions. So I'm excited to see where you take it.

No, this is so interesting, actually. I, I love, I love this conversation. Okay. Uh, as far as genetics go, both my parents were incredible athletes and their parents, like my whole family in general. It's certainly a general athletic genetic code, I guess. But I would not say, like, I would say my brother is a much greater athlete, much better athlete than I am, just overall coordination. My brother is also much quicker to adapt to any kind of stress or load or practice than I am. So maybe, you know, maybe when I was growing up following him around, I was like, I've got to, you know, I've got to maybe do one more rep just to try to match him, 2 more reps, always. that might've been kind of driven into me just naturally. I would say my mom has more of a genetic, like, drive to, just an innate drive to continue to improve. She just, she really, really loves to improve.

Mm-hmm.

And I probably wasn't, I probably was born a little bit more complacent than that actually. Like, I'm the kind of person who could sit on the beach all day long and not move, and I would be totally fine with it.

By yourself or with others?

With others or by myself or just, I don't know, like—

What would be your preference, by yourself or with others?

Probably like with family.

Family. Is there a book or is there a cocktail?

It's probably a cocktail.

Cocktail.

Probably also a book.

It is.

There might be definitely some music involved and—

cut it loose? Or are you more reserved and contained?

I've changed. I mean, I wouldn't say I wouldn't say I party very hard. But I mean, I used to not drink anything. I had absolutely no interest. And after my dad died, that did change. But

what changed?

Well, I just started drinking a little bit.

Was that— was that

sometimes?

Was that to cope? Or was that because, like, you had some insight that, like, you know, like, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but like, what was— yeah, what was the trigger for that?

Probably a little bit, probably a little bit of a coping thing, probably a little bit less of a, you know, what we're told is less healthy method. But I also realized that in certain scenarios, I can control myself. I don't go like past my limit. I've— I think I've maybe been like hungover once in my life. Mm-hmm. And I've never blacked out. I always remember everything. So I felt like, okay, I actually am in a situation where I'm fine drinking. This is fun. And I'm good with it. Like,

yeah,

whatever. So it kind of started out as maybe more of, maybe more of a little bit of a coping thing, but then just became like,

yeah,

I don't know.

Well, there's evolution. Yeah, there's evolution.

I used to be like, I don't drink. I'm an athlete. I cannot afford to have one drink or I will absolutely not perform and it's going to affect me for months and months to come. And I'm a little bit, I have a little bit of a different mindset now.

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But

which is—

Which is just like, it's okay to have alcohol.

Yeah.

In your life.

Yeah. But I think there's probably— yeah, I think there's probably something else in there too, which is like, I don't— I'll go back to that buttoned up. I don't have to be buttoned up with everything dialed in. A matter of fact, there might be a little bit of an interesting competitive edge when I've got to kind of pull my shit together. And I don't have to be rigidly tight. I can be loose and still find the right edge and, you know, kind of put my mind and body and skis and snow together. And

that, that can tend to help. I, I mean, honestly, I think about a lot of, there was a period of time in my career, it was after I won my first Olympic gold. So it was after Sochi and then not the next season, but it was kind of the following 3 seasons. So this is probably around 2014. 16, 17 seasons, I had a ton of performance anxiety, like, like making me nauseous and puking at the start. And people are like, ew, that's disgusting. But I'm like, you don't understand. It's not, it's not like a stomachache. It's like you can't get air past this point in your throat. And you just, you're just, your mind is just spiraling of all For me, it was always all the things that people would say if I didn't win, because, or if I won, but I didn't win by enough of a margin, because basically there was this period of time where everyone thought that I should be, I should be winning races by 2 seconds, over 2 seconds. And when I didn't win by that much, I won by 5/10 of a second, or maybe just barely a second. Then they were saying, you know, Are you afraid the rest of the world is catching up? Are you, you know, what, what have you done wrong this season? They really were spinning it around into a very negative thing. And at the time, I was— I very much let the media and external kind of sources sort of dictate how I felt about my own performances. And I'm currently working on listening to myself first and how I feel about performances first. I've become over this past season, something that I've improved a lot at is sort of the self-coaching and kind of looking, looking at myself first and asking, what do I want to improve? And always making sure that I have something I want to improve before I talk to my coaches, before I talk to anybody, and definitely before I speak to any media. And that is incredibly helpful because it just like takes a little bit of importance away from the external sources.

Oh,

but wait, wait, there's a

but. There's a but. I was, I was ready to like get the pedestal out and say, come on, like, look, look, this is for real though. Before you go to the but is I can't tell you how important you living that way and sharing the importance of living that way is for, I'll say little girls, but for all of us. You know, like to be able to point to the importance of knowing yourself, being honest with yourself, having the courage to live in alignment that way. And like, we need this, Michaela. Like—

No, I know.

You needed it, right?

I needed it for sure. It was, it's just kind of a step, another step. And I wouldn't even call my skiing career, just call it like adulting.

Yeah. Right.

Because you do have to, at some point you have to look at yourself and say, what do I actually think about this situation? And I can't look at what my parents think about, like, I literally can't ask my dad. That's right. And I can ask my mom, but now I kind of, I feel like I have a sort of understanding Of what I think. And then she is very knowledgeable and wise. And so we bounce, like I get advice from everywhere constantly, but I always, especially with skiing, I always kind of, let's just get to the bottom of a run. And before I see the video, before I get any input, it's always like, okay, what did I feel that run? What do I think could have been better? What do I want to try to change for the next run that might be faster? Sometimes it's slower, but you have to experiment. And it just, you have to have that. But people, the thing I think is a little bit tricky with this topic—

Is this the but?

No, this is not. The but was that I hadn't figured that out yet at that point in time. So, it was very like—

That's right. Yeah.

Very externally motivated. Not motivated. I was always internally motivated, but I—

The caliber. I think about it, if I'm hearing you, I'm calibrating from the external world more than I, I, I need to or want to. So I was— my tuning fork wasn't connected to, to me.

Like, I would have been— I would cross the finish line and I'd think, oh, that, that was— there was a really good section of that run. I feel really good about this. But immediately I'd think, oh no, what's everyone gonna say? Do they think it's positive or negative? And one person, one media, one somebody would say something negative, and that would completely derail— or, you know, it might have been my coach at a point and say something that I just— it really took me down and really, really bothered me.

I think the greatest constrictor for human potential is the fear of what people think of us. And oh yeah, FOPO. It's clever. Fear of people's opinions. Like, do you— can you speak to that at all?

Well, so, okay, so this is, this is then the other but that I was getting to. I go off on tangents all the time. I think that right now, especially with this world of kind of creators and influencers and, and just everybody promoting the idea of self-care, which is incredible, especially like fundamentally great, but there's so much, there's so much of the world right now that's like everybody's just trying to put content out there that tells everybody that they're taking care of themselves and they feel really good because they've taken steps and now they're better and they're not struggling anymore. And like, look at me, I'm an influencer. Look, I'm doing great. So you should eat more broccoli or you should, I don't know, you should do more self-care. You should practice meditation. Like there's just all of this input. There's so much stimulus around this topic of basically like listening to yourself and taking care of yourself. And I've seen a lot of it. I watch it all the time. It's on my Instagram. It's not like I look up YouTube videos of people who seem to be able to speak to their own journey. And I do think it's really helpful. But it's interesting because I just, I wonder how real it is because I don't think anyone in life is just good. I really don't think that anybody's just like, happy, good, I hit a button, I did the things, I've improved, now I'm good, I'm never going back, and I'm smooth sailing for the rest of my life. I definitely don't see that in my future, at least.

Mm-hmm.

I think it's important for young people to know that there will still be struggles. Like, you can be overall happy and generally in a good place, And still have struggles during the week or during the day. And you can still be trying to find your own voice and how that matters to you. Some days I feel my voice is louder than others, and some days I can't hear my own thoughts or my own voice at all. And that's just, that's just like the highs and lows. And there's a lot of factors. Fatigue is a factor, just being emotionally exhausted and Sometimes you just get too tired to think for yourself and you need the advice and support from others. And there's so many different factors in it. So when you see like influencers going on YouTube and saying, I just really believe in myself and I just trust myself and I just cut all the toxic things out of my life, I'm like, that is so good for you, but I'm just not sure how we know for sure when something's toxic. You have to test it. You have to test the waters. It takes time to know when things are negatively or positively impacting your life. And just like cutting toxic things out of your life on a whim, when there's a 5 or an 8-year-old looking at your page and saying, oh, if I see something toxic, I'm cutting it out of my life. And then all of a sudden they're lashing out at their parents because their parents told them they shouldn't eat as much candy or that, you know, there's some level of discipline. And now all of a sudden the kid's like, you're toxic for me because because you're not making me happy. It's just a— it's a more complex issue, I think. But developing the ability to find importance in your own voice and with things that you care about, like first being your own coach first, I think those are really important things.

I think that's the essence of psychology. What you just— the last part of what you said is like the study of yourself. The study of self is what psychology is. And that's how you get to know your voice, to know the values that you're pushing up against, to know when you're over the edge, pushing too hard, or you're under and playing it safe. Psychologically and emotionally, if you're not studying, I'm not sure you'll ever get good. Right. And so at life. And I think what you just described was the good life for you. And if you were to put it in a sentence or two, what is— how would you say, what is the good life according to Michaela Shiffrin?

Oh, the good life for me is listening to my own voice before I listen to others and always looking for the best way To be a better coach for myself.

I think that that relationship you have with yourself is held up by the research that came out of Harvard. A 75-year study of Harvard on the good life basically pointed to 2 things: purpose— have purpose, okay? And the second is relationships. And all relationships begin with the relationship with yourself. So you're starting literally at ground zero for one of the pillars. In life,

yeah. At 28 years old, how

about it? We all take different paths.

You know,

my wife always like lovingly says with great compassion, like, "Hey, we're all just trying to figure it out."

Yeah.

You know, like

we're just doing the best we can.

We're just we're all trying to figure it out. Some people are doing better than others. You know, some people are better at being friends to other people. But yeah, are you a friend? Do you do you like? your relationship with yourself? Are you a friend to yourself? Oh, I didn't expect— yeah, I didn't expect the pause. I thought you're gonna kind of be like, yeah, I've got there. But you're saying no. Yeah.

I don't think I'm always a friend to myself. I guess it just kind of depends. I mean, you hope a good friend would be honest and truthful. And even sometimes that can be It can be hurtful at times, but if you're honest, then that's your first step to improving. And one of the psychologists that I see back home says we honor those we love by being truthful. So that's, you know, there's some days where I'm probably not the best friend to myself because I'm not really truthful to myself. But then, you know, maybe that's nice because I'm just like, I just need to What would you say, like bolster my emotions? I just need, I just need myself. Like, I just need to vent to myself. And I don't want to know the answers. I just want to vent and I just want to spiral.

Does that fall into a thousand pieces? I'm fine. Yeah. Is that sound like you're shit talking yourself? Or does that sound like you're kind of complaining? Or like whining? Or is it more like anger? Like what? Or is it more of an anxiety? Like, oh my God, I don't know. Like, I fell on corner 3, 3 times. And if I can't get that corner, like, it's all— my whole life's gonna fall apart, which obviously is not the case. But like, what's the tone? It's a

little bit of everything. I mean, there's anxiety. I have anxiety a little bit around the Olympics. Just, I've, you know, I have 3 Olympic medals, but after Beijing, There's this little, there's a little trigger in my mind that's like, what if, what if I go to '26 and I still don't win a medal? You know, then what are people gonna say? Like, there's still a very, there's still a part of me that listens to the external thoughts and opinions for sure. I don't, I don't think anybody, I don't know anybody. I certainly know for myself, it's, It's not possible yet to literally block out the noise completely. It's more— I'm more of like, I like let the noise flow through. And that's a little bit more manageable than being like, oh, I'm not listening. I don't like— that's toxic. It's more like, well, I heard that and I'm just going to choose to let it pass through.

So that hello and goodbye idea takes time. It takes great practice. Yeah. And I'll explain, I think you might like this. So I practice the same way. Like, oh, look at that thought. That's interesting. I'm thinking that I might arrive at the gates for an Olympic run in '26, and I might have this narrative that I kind of fell apart in the previous Olympics. I was the highest expectation, whatever, whatever, and I couldn't finish a run. Fuck, is this going to happen again? Does that sound— Yeah. Sounds about right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Part of that theory, like, I know that it's, I know that it's not real. It's possible that I don't win a medal at the next Olympics. That's for sure a possibility. But the theory that because, you know, the theory of like being cursed about it, it's almost more just like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more I think about it, the more it would tend to get In my head, and I give it you know I give it more strength by doing that. But it's not an actual curse; it's just literally like things happen, and they happen one way or they happen the other. I don't know. It's it's almost it's so much more simple than what you know when I'm in when I'm in my my spiral, and I don't I actually really don't spiral about this. But before this season, we had our World Championships in France. And that's, you know, in ski racing, we consider World Championships and the Olympics, those are our big events. And World Championships is every 2 years. So obviously the opportunity to perform comes around a little more often, but it's in a lot of ways, World Championship medals are almost more coveted than Olympic medals. So it's a big, it's a big race. Yeah. It's pressure. You've got all the same kind of vibe. There's a lot more media surrounding it. The look of it is very similar. You just don't have all the other sports and all of that, but you still have like, you have an enormous awards ceremony and the post-race media and all of that stuff. So going into this World Champs this year, I, I was skiing amazing and felt really good about it. And the first race I did was Alpine Combined. And I was in a really good position to win the gold medal. And it was, it was literally on the second to last gate of the course. I messed up and I didn't finish. And there's a lot of reasons why I feel like that happened. But I like, the long and short of it is I got through the— I, I sort of missed the gate and then still skied through the finish. So I was like, and I could see my time. I literally won the gold, but I missed the last gate.

Oh,

you know, it was like, I actually—

I mean, that's so easy to jump on that train, like curse, or here we go again. Yeah, that's so—

All of the media was like, is this a thing? You never do this.

So how did you wrestle that down?

I just kept, I kept skiing. I just kept training.

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So you have—

I mean, I didn't wrestle it down.

You didn't?

I, I was— no, I was like, I don't know, it could be. I don't know the, like, the workings of the universe. I would love to ask somebody if there's actually a curse on me, but I, I find that hard to believe. I'm not a believer in that sort of a,

Okay, so what if you and I just made the decision right now that we're going to drop the word curse? Okay, just going to drop the curse thing. But I want to know, what do you replace it with? Like, okay, my job is to put myself in the present moment more often in the right vibe where I feel powerful and I can adjust. That's my responsibility is to put my mind in that. Right. Okay. So That's all I'm gonna do. And fuck, I blow the last gate. Okay, well good. It's gonna, maybe it's gonna be a little bit harder now, but I'm up for it. Yeah. I do hard things.

Yeah.

Do you do hard things?

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I've never, with, there was something, um, I realized at the very beginning of this season, which I think was a pretty key moment, um, is at the races in Killington, Vermont. And I, and the, the slalom race, I was in the lead after the first run. I lost the lead. on the second run, and 2 athletes who had never won a World Cup before, they tied for the win. My 2— one, Wendy from Switzerland, and then a girl, Anna Sven Larsen from Sweden. And they're 2 people, I, I love them. They're one of— they're 2 of my favorite, favorite competitors on the World Cup. And I was like, my first instinct was of course disappointment for myself, but then like simultaneously I was So happy for them. And it was like emotional for me to watch them because Wendy, it's a longer story, but Wendy has come in second place to me. I think it's like 30 times at this point. Like she's the athlete with the longest string of second places without a win in her career. And that's like, that's a strange sort of record. And people talk to her about it all the time. And she's just at this point, she's like, whatever, just leave me alone about it. The next slalom race, she won that one as well. And it was a standalone victory too. So it was like, I mean, it was just real. It was really, really cool. That's the whole point.

Okay.

But wait,

wait, wait.

I, okay, wait, the point of this is that, so people were asking me how disappointed I was that I didn't win. And because a lot of this was, you know, we were already starting to talk about The record. And the world was like, all eyes are on Mikaela and if she's gonna get this record this season. And every single race that I didn't win, it was like, ooh, time's running out. Well, I finally said to someone, first of all, I'm really happy for Wendy and Anna. And second of all, I don't think I care if I don't win another race, actually. I mean, I wasn't in the position. I didn't, I didn't do the job it took to win today. And I'm not sure, like, I am not here because I want to win these races, which is a very strange thing. Um, it's probably only partly true, but I have— I, this year I was so obsessed with a specific way that I wanted to ski that for most of the races it completely took over my mindset. And I really, like, I really put the thought of winning out the window. This interview that I did, it was the first time where I really altered the way that people were perceiving, like, how they talked to me and how it affected me. This person was kind of making it seem negative. I was like, I don't feel negative at all. I did not do the skiing it took to win, clearly, but those 2 women, they did. And that was so cool to watch for them. That's incredible thing. And also, I don't think I care if I'm gonna win. But the point, and this gets back to your point earlier, was more that I know I can do the work it takes to win again or to have the chance. So I'm not like, I'm not afraid of doing that work. And that's, that's the most free I've ever felt in my career, just standing here being like, I don't care that I didn't win. I know I can work hard enough to get back in a position. I might never win again, and I don't really care about that either. I just care that I'm willing to work hard enough to do it.

It's so good. It's so good for so many reasons because, okay, that was 2023 and you ended up getting a win, right?

Yes.

Okay. So it's awesome. Like, we'll celebrate that all day long, but you know, I'm going to go here. Okay. So let's go to 2022 Beijing Games. You're favored to win. You're supposed to break the record and get your 3rd gold. You have 2 do-not-finishes. You hit gates, you wiped out. Okay.

Yep.

All right. That's what we're talking about, this trauma that's setting up this, the C word that we're no longer using, right? Yes. So, okay, good. Because I really like what you just did is that I can do hard things. I can do hard work, and I actually like the hard thing. It there's a narrative around that that will give you some real juice, some real power about it. But we'll get to that in a minute. I would love if you could help me understand. I watched,

yeah,

and I watched. I watched the interviews. There's two things I want to understand. Yeah, the gate. When you're at the the starting gate, and I want to do two parts of that. Like when you're at your best, what does that look like? And but we'll save that for later. But right now, I want to I want to know like the first twenty seconds after you wiped out. You were on the side. Tell me about that first twenty seconds. I want to understand the two minutes. I want to understand the two days following. Like I want to. You're laughing. That's really good that you're

laughing. That's just because it's a— I almost guarantee it's not. I don't know what you think. You might not be— you might know enough in your life to not think anything at all. But, um,

oh, that's a cool— wait, that's a cool statement. That sounds like our mutual friend Per Lundström that would say something like that. Like,

yeah, it's like, you know what, I— one of the greatest lessons I learned from life was from my favorite YouTuber who's who's not doing it anymore, Jenna Marbles. She said at some point, this was years and years ago, she was like, I've learned that the best thing to do in life is have no expectations of anything. Like, have bad expectations. Set your expectations so low that you really, you just, you have nothing. You just don't have them. But keep your standards high.

Oh my God. This is like what I live by.

Really?

No, seriously. Like, I don't do bad expectations. I just do. I'm not interested in expectations. I'm interested in the best possible, highest standard of the way I respond. Like, and that's that's what I teach my son too. That's cool that you're I love that. Okay, come on. Twenty seconds. First twenty seconds.

First twenty seconds. The first twenty seconds. So I ski off. We were talking about the third race that I did after, right?

Yes.

But like the slalom. Okay. So I skied off the course and the way this hill was set up, it was quite wide and the slalom course was set on the very far skier's right. So there was all this space on the skier's left. And normally we don't really have that space in World Cups. It's just like the course is in kind of the center of the hill. So you kind of need to— You need to really pull off to the side. And so that's what I did in this race, but the— it was just all this open space. There was nowhere really to hide. And the first thing I was thinking is like, I just need to get off the course because my teammate Paula was going to be skiing. I was, I think I was bib 7 and she was bib, oh, like 10 or 13. So at that point she's starting to get into the gate and I didn't want her to see me. I didn't want her to know what was going on. She doesn't like, she doesn't really ever want to know what's happening when she's at the start. And she's a damn amazing slalom skier. So this, like, she also had the potential to medal. So I was like, I've got to get out of the line of vision. But I was so, I went out, I mean, I went out on like the 5th gate or the 9th gate. I was so close to the start. I pulled all the way off to the side. Oh my God. But there's all these cameras around, and they just found me. And I'm just, I'm just sitting there. I like took off my skis. It was just a gut reaction. I thought I was way out of the view line. I didn't. I thought I was hiding. I didn't think that there were all these people like cameras on me until I looked up for a split second, and I saw one camera guy with his like, and he was just like pointing at me. I'm like, there's a race going on. My gosh! But it was just a, it was a really weird zone because I, I could have walked about 15 steps up the hill and been at the start again. Like, I, it, it's just not really something I've ever experienced in my career. And I didn't know if there were actually rules about how soon I have to go down to the finish. But the way skiing works is this is all in the first 20 seconds.

Literally. Mm-hmm.

The way skiing works is you have every, every 15 athletes, there's a TV break. And during the TV break, that's when they send course workers and people who need to get down to the finish area. So a lot of times if you're an athlete and you haven't just basically skied down the side of the hill immediately, then you have to wait for the TV break. Or that was, that was sort of the thought I had in my head. And it's basically just don't disrupt the race. Don't ski down the side of the hill while there's somebody on course. So I was thinking, easiest thing to do, I'll gather my thoughts on the side of the hill. I'll wait for the next TV break. And then my coach came up, one of my coaches came up to me and sat down next to me. And then I was like, oh, now I'm feeling emotional. And it was, then it was like the flood of realizing. All that, you know, the Olympic chance was gone. And I still had 2 more races to compete, 3 more races to compete in. And it, it was like I had a shot in those races too. It was just not, it wasn't where the biggest expectations were for me. But you know, the funny thing about DNFing twice and then being at the start for that slalom race, I was skiing really good slalom in Beijing. My training, I had some of the best training days of my life in Beijing on the prac— like in our practice sessions. And after the giant slalom, the very first race when I didn't finish, I thought about going back down to my room and holding up and whatever, crying and feeling emotional. I thought about just staying out the whole day and watching my teammates. And what I decided to do was change, go back all the way down to the village, which was like a 45-minute gondola trek, change all my gear to slalom gear, go all the way back to the top of the mountain, another 45 minutes, and train some slalom. And then by the time I was done with my slalom session, I could go to the finish for the GS, of the second run of the GS, and watch my teammates Compete. So I got a full training day in that after that race. It was one of the best moments of my life. It was just peaceful. And I knew that the GS race was going on and the whole world was focused on that. And I was just like, I'm just up here training Solem, doing my preparation. And it was the greatest, it was the greatest feeling. So I was skiing well. I was prepared. There's just, there's a lot of, a lot of different factors. And I almost don't even wanna say that pressure was a big factor. It was almost like I just had so much intensity. Normally that's a good thing, but it just, it was like you go slightly over the limit. Mm-hmm. And that means, and especially with slalom courses and GS and slalom, There's no room for— there's no room for errors, basically, at all.

That's right. Well, you have to put it literally at the edge of the envelope, which is at the edge of out of control.

Yes, but not go over.

That's right.

And it's particularly that way in certain conditions of snow when it's really, really aggressive, completely man-made snow. It's very— it's grippy. It's like— I made this analogy the other day. It's kind of like changing from like a grass field to a turf field. The grip is just like, like gritty and it hurts your knees to ski on it and it grabs at your skis. And when you make any kind of an error on that kind of snow, it's just, it's like constantly an explosion waiting to happen.

It's such a breath of fresh air in so many ways about the way you describe that, because that's not the narrative 99% of the world made up. And the breath of fresh air to me, assuming that this— you're not just making this story up to prop yourself up, which I don't believe that from our conversation is how you work.

Yeah.

But your, your commitment was to be a good teammate.

Yeah.

Not to be a dramatic something on the sidelines, you know, like, everyone look at me, I'm so distraught, I'm sorry I can't get it together. But This is my life and you guys just figure out how to work around me. It wasn't any of that.

Yeah. I mean, I would say it was like being a good teammate was probably my second thought. My first thought was fairly selfish, was just to say like, get me out of here, get me out of this, get me out of you. And then I thought—

I see.

And it was, and it was partially like, get me out of you. And also like, get, just get me out of the race. Get, allow the race to continue. Don't bother the other athletes. And that includes competitors. And then it was the thought that Paula's about to get in the gate and I don't want her to see me. I don't want her to see me at all. So I need to get as far over to the side as possible. And if I can like climb under the fence and really get up, like I will, but then—

Yeah.

But then my, our PR manager was at the bottom and she said, Mikaela, she's required to come down through the finish area and walk through the mixed zone. She doesn't have to stop at anybody, but she has to. That's an Olympic requirement.

That's right.

For media. So I

was

like, oh, I thought I was just gonna like slink away outta here, but I guess not. And so then I needed to like, get myself all psyched up to go through media yet again and have something else to say, you know.

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Okay, so, Michaela, thank you for taking us, me, through that breath of fresh air to hear how honest you are and the courage you have to work from the inside out. Can you take us home with helping me understand, like, what does it feel like? What is the mindset that you have when you're at your best?

I feel very clear. It's like imagining a pool of water and it's just not muddy. It's just clear and you can see like the pebbles on the bottom. And I just feel so much clarity. Specifically about what I want to feel with my turns. It's like a technical and a tactical thing. Um, the, the movements that I actually want to make in a course, and I only get that from preparation and training. It takes, you know, lots and lots of time and lots of practice. And then I finally, I know I'm ready to race when I know the feeling that I want to have. And I don't have to be sure that I can do it. I just need to be sure what the feeling should be. Because a lot of times I don't do it. But for the most part, it just gives me something to think about, focus on. And then that clarity combined with sort of intensity of focus, that That's when I'm at my best.

What a gift you are. And I just want to, like, honestly, it's— you're a work in progress, and so am I, and everyone I know is. Some people want to play like they're not.

Yeah.

And I just love that you're, you're inviting people behind the scenes.

Oh, thank

you. You know, and to see your life. And it's a, it's a vlog series on YouTube called Beyond the Slopes.

Beyond the

Slopes.

And Moving Right Along. They're sort

of

series.

Come on. Oh, there's— wait, is it 2 series?

Beyond the Slopes is one. Yeah. BTS Beyond the Slopes. Oh, I

see what you did there.

Yeah, that's like the summer edition. It's a little bit more—

Okay, cool. And what's the second one?

Yeah, the other is Moving Right Along. And that took, that took us through this past season on a couple— it's like 7 episodes. And then I I think we're gonna be able to do a season 2 following and chronicling this coming race season as well.

Very cool. Nice job. And look, I, I love how you're operating and working and, um,

thank you.

You've got a whole new community, I think, in the Finding Mastery community that's like, that's cool. Like,

thank you.

Go Michaela.

That's cool.

Yeah. So

that means a lot. Oh gosh.

Yeah. All right. So keep kicking ass, doing your thing, being honest. Making mistakes, correcting, compensating, adjusting, being honest. It's awesome.

Thank you.

I appreciate you. Thank you.

Oh God, you too. Thank you so much.

Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined once again by Dr. Joe Dispenza, bestselling author of Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself and You Are the Placebo. Can changing the way we think actually change our physical health? Joe returns to explore how we can break deeply ingrained patterns Rewire our thinking, and the provocative research he's conducting into the mind's potential influence on healing. So join us Wednesday, October 28th at 9:00 AM Pacific, only on Finding Mastery.

All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com/newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors, and we take our recommendations seriously, and the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com/sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, One of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring. Come on.