MAYBE WHAT YOU NEED IS MORE JOY
There are many things I love about the Olympics, including the fact that it gives many less popular sports some time in the spotlight on the world’s stage. Honestly I don’t typically invest much time or energy following sports like curling, downhill skiing, or figure skating. But for two weeks, I’m fully invested - watching, cheering, and maybe most enjoyably, learning the stories of high level athletes most of us have never heard of.
One thing you’ll find in studying the stories of high performers - even those working to win someplace different than you - is that success leaves clues. If you’re willing to learn, there’s a lot someone else’s story can teach you, and usually something valuable you can apply to a winning pursuit of your own. Take Alyssa Liu, for instance, who arrived at the 2026 Winter Games a relatively unknown American figure skater, and who left Milan a hero of our country’s Olympic experience. Her success story offers some insight each of us might be able to learn from here today.
Like many high level athletes, Liu was declared a figure skating prodigy at an early age. She began skating at five years old, and almost immediately it became the singular focus of her existence. She was disciplined and committed from the start, and her focus and sacrifice paid dividends. By 2019, at the age of 13, Liu become the youngest ever US women's national champion, and when she arrived at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, she was considered our country’s best hope for a figure skating medal. She finished in 7th place. And then - at 16 years old - she quit.
After years of discipline and commitment and focus and sacrifice, Alyssa Liu realized that while she had worked hard all those years to instill those winning habits into her skating life, she had lost something, too. She had lost her joy. Skating wasn’t fun anymore. She didn’t enjoy it, even a little. The high pressure and high stakes of chasing championships slowly and gradually whittled away the reason she started skating in the first place…because she loved it.
I wonder how many of us pursuing success in some important area of our own lives can relate. Whether we’re working to win in sports, at school, at work, or at home, we talk a lot in the performance space about discipline and commitment and focus and sacrifice. But it can be easy for any of us to overlook the fact that if we aren’t careful, our relentless pursuit of some winning outcome can actually diminish one of the qualities that our very best in performance requires us to possess. What I'm saying is, if you’re someone who’s straining and striving and struggling to achieve something meaningful and significant, maybe what you need is more joy.
That’s the lesson that Alyssa Liu’s story teaches, and the lesson it invites each of us here today to learn. In the spring of 2024, after nearly two years away from skating, Liu stepped back onto the ice for the first time...and loved it. She started training again, this time with new parameters designed to keep joy at the forefront of her experience. What she found is that joy is actually a competitive advantage. On the Olympic ice in Milan, Liu’s routine was marked by a sense of fun and freedom that set her performance apart. The result was the first American gold medal in women’s free skating in 24 years. Alyssa Liu’s joy didn’t minimize her success, it multiplied it. I’m wondering today if the same might be true for you.
With that in mind, I want to challenge and encourage you here today to evaluate whether or not you’ve got what it takes to win in the areas that matter to you most. Alyssa Liu’s long and winding journey to the top of the Olympic podium leaves clues you should look at and learn from. Her story proves that when it comes to success, discipline and commitment and focus and sacrifice are essential. But if you really want to win, maybe what you need is more joy.
