10 degrees Fahrenheit. 6:47am. The same parking area at the ice rink.
I could see my breath crystallizing in the headlights as we pulled in. Same parking spot I'd used for years. Same crack in the asphalt I'd stepped over thousands of times.
For a decade and a half, this was my church. My sanctuary. The only place in the world where everything made complete sense. Where my purpose was clear as the ice I skated on.
Then one day, after all of the Olympic glory—I walked out of that rink for the last time. Retired at 27. And I realized I had absolutely no idea who I was anymore.
I call it The Great Divorce. My first true love was gone forever, and I hadn't even started processing the grief.
Here's what nobody tells you about building your entire identity around one thing: You don't realize you've done it until that thing is gone. I had no academic education to speak of. No work experience beyond signing autographs. No training in finance or business or anything resembling a normal career path. I had spent 15 years going in circles for a living—literally—pushing everything else away.
The Olympics gave me structure I didn't even know I was dependent on. Coaches who calibrated every movement. Teammates who understood without words. An external validation system that confirmed daily I was on the right track. I knew exactly what to do at 4am every single day for fifteen years.
This is one of the themes I explore most often as a keynote speaker—the moment when the thing that defined you disappears and you're left standing in the wreckage wondering what comes next. Whether I'm delivering motivational talks to Fortune 500 executives or working with leadership teams navigating massive organizational change, the pattern is always the same: identity crisis isn't a bug in your system. It's a feature.
It's your psyche forcing you to finally answer the question you've been avoiding your entire adult life: Who are you when nobody's watching? When there's no medal to chase? When the crowd goes home and you're alone with your own thoughts?
I've worked with CEOs who sold their companies and felt this same emptiness. Founders who achieved the exit they'd been chasing for a decade, only to wake up wondering what they'd actually been running toward. Executives who climbed to the top of their organizations and realized the view wasn't what they expected. The industry doesn't matter. The achievement doesn't matter. The pattern is universal.
In workshops with leaders going through career transitions, I often have them write two lists. How others define you—job titles, roles, achievements, the labels people use when they introduce you. Then how you define yourself when nobody's looking, when there's nothing to perform and no one to impress.
The gap between those two lists? That's where your next chapter lives. That's where the real you has been waiting all along.
One thing I've learned from advising founders and executives through their own transitions: the people who navigate this best aren't the ones who rush to fill the void with the next achievement. They're the ones who sit with the discomfort long enough to actually hear what it's telling them.
The person you're meant to be isn't in the glory days behind you.
They're waiting ahead.
And sometimes you need someone who's been through it to help you see that.
About Apolo Ohno: Apolo Ohno is a sought-after keynote speaker and leadership advisor known for translating elite performance principles into practical leadership behaviors. His work focuses on authentic leadership, executive presence, and the Gold Medal Mindset - helping executives and teams perform with clarity under pressure, communicate with conviction, and lead with credibility when the stakes are high. In his keynotes and workshops, Apolo helps leaders identify the unseen patterns, narratives, and habits that quietly limit performance, then replace them with a repeatable system for focus, resilience, and decisive action.