The Hardest Skill Nobody Trains

My best race was the 2002 Olympic 1500m in Salt Lake City. And the strange thing about it — the thing I keep coming back to yrs later — is that I barely remember it.

Not bc it wasn't important. Bc I was so completely inside the moment that there was no part of my brain left over to record it the way you'd record a normal experience. I could see the other skaters' positioning w/ unusual clarity, could feel my blade edge on the ice w/ a precision I couldn't normally access, could read what was about to happen a 1/2 second before it did. Time wasn't slowing down exactly, but the gaps between things were wider. More room to decide.

That wasn't mystical. It was the result of thousands of hours of mental rehearsal creating enough familiarity w/ the environment that my brain could stop scanning for threats & start processing information. Presence, in the version that actually matters, isn't meditation or breathing exercises or mindfulness apps (although those are fine). It's the ability to be fully in the room you're in, responding to what's happening instead of reacting to what you're afraid might happen.

My worst races were the opposite. I was in my head — replaying a bad training session, worrying about the skater behind me, projecting forward to the podium or the interview or what a loss would mean. My body was on the ice but my mind was somewhere else, and the gap between those two is where mistakes live.

There's a version of ambition that's the enemy of presence, and I lived inside it for a long time. It goes something like this: if I just get to the next goal, I'll feel different. Win this race, hit this number, close this deal — and then I'll be able to relax & appreciate what I have.

Except you get there and you don't feel different. By the time you arrive you've already moved the target. You've been so focused on what's next that you never developed the skill of being where you are.

I won Olympic gold in Salt Lake City in 2002. On the podium, medal around my neck, flag rising, anthem playing. And that night I felt eerily the same. Woke up the next day feeling the same. I was still the same person w/ the same insecurities and now a whole new set of questions about what comes next.

I kept my medals in a sock drawer for yrs bc of this — there was always a fear that being content meant going backwards.

I've watched this pattern in leaders too. People who've built incredible things but can't enjoy any of them bc they're already anxious about the next quarter, the next product, the next competitor. Always arriving, never there.

How do you actually train presence?

The leaders & performers I've met who are best under pressure aren't calmer bc they care less. They're calmer bc they've trained the ability to stay in the current moment instead of getting hijacked by the next one.

When you're present, your thinking sharpens. You hear what someone's saying instead of rehearsing your response. You notice tension in a room before it becomes a conflict. You respond instead of react, and in high-stakes environments the difference between those two is everything.

What finally helped me develop this skill — and I'm still working on it, it's not something you master & move on from — was getting honest about the word "enough."

For yrs I didn't have a definition of enough. Always more to chase, more to prove, more weight to lose, more races to win. After retirement, more businesses to build, more deals to close, more impact to have. The absence of enough is what keeps you on the treadmill of always-next, which is the opposite of presence.

I've found, at least for me, that defining enough isn't about settling or lowering standards. It's about choosing your own targets instead of inheriting them from whatever culture or industry or social circle you're in. It's asking "what do I want my life to feel like?" instead of "what should my life look like to other people?"

That question sounds simple. Sitting w/ it, without reaching for a premade answer, is one of the hardest things I've done.

The pursuit of speed taught me almost everything I know. But the pursuit of stillness — learning to be where I am instead of racing toward where I think I should be — that's what's made the difference since. And it degrades when I neglect it, same as any other skill.

The return on it is disproportionate, though. When you're present, you need less bc you're finally experiencing what you already have. I'm still figuring that part out.

I write about performance, reinvention, and the messy middle of figuring out what's next in my free newsletter Hard Pivot. Subscribe here.

--AAO