The Prison You Built Yourself

When I retired from competitive skating, the very first thing I did was start performing for people who weren't even in the room.

I don't mean literally. I mean every decision I made in those first couple years after the Olympics was filtered through a question I didn't even realize I was asking -- what will they think of me now?

I didn't want anyone looking at me & seeing just another athlete who peaked at 25 and had nothing else to offer. Another Wheaties face fading into whatever comes after the last race. I wanted people to know I was smart, that I could operate in business, that I wasn't just the guy who went in circles for a living.

So my reinvention didn't start from a place of curiosity or excitement. It started from terror -- pure ego-driven, fear-soaked reactionary scrambling. I was building something, sure, but I was building it for an audience, not for myself.

I forgot about me. The one person who should've been the priority the entire time.

Michael Gervais introduced me to a term years ago that explained half my career in four letters -- FOPO. Fear of Other People's Opinions.

And when he said it I remember thinking, yeah... that's been the operating system running in background of my brain since I was a teenager.

What makes it so dangerous is you don't feel it the way you feel anxiety or stress or anger. It sits underneath your decisions like a second floor you forgot was there. You think you're choosing what you want, but you're choosing what you think will make people approve of you, or at least not judge you. Calibration is so automatic you don't even notice it happening.

I did this for years & I'm someone who's supposed to be mentally tough. I visualized races down to the centimeter. I meditated daily starting at fourteen. Had sports psychologists & breathing protocols & pre-race rituals so dialed in they bordered on compulsive. And still -- FOPO was running underneath all of it, steering decisions I thought were mine.

The bars of that prison aren't physical but they're real. And the worst part is you built the cell yourself, brick by brick, w/ every choice filtered through "what will they think?"

It doesn't announce itself, that's the thing. It shows up disguised as professionalism, or caution, or "being strategic."

I've watched it operate in boardrooms & locker rooms & green rooms for the last decade and it looks different every time but the engine is always the same. Founders who won't ship the product bc they're worried about what investors might say if it's not perfect. Executives who dilute every bold idea down to something safe bc they're scared of standing alone in front of the board. Sales teams hesitating on calls bc they're performing for their manager instead of connecting w/ the prospect.

And I've done all of it myself. Every version of it.

When I was competing, there were races where I skated safe bc I was more afraid of looking stupid than I was motivated to win. I'd hold back on a risky pass not bc the math didn't work but bc if I fell it would be on camera & everyone would see it. The calculation wasn't "what gives me the best chance?" It was "what protects me from embarrassment?"

That's a terrible way to race. It's also a terrible way to build a company or lead a team or live a life, and most of us are doing some version of it without realizing.

Does the spotlight you're performing under even exist?

What I eventually figured out -- and it took longer than I'd like to admit -- the people whose opinions I was most afraid of? Most of them weren't even paying attention to me.

They were too busy worrying about their own FOPO. They weren't sitting around judging my career choices or my post-retirement moves. They were lying awake at 3am wondering if I was judging theirs.

Psychologists call it the spotlight effect -- we massively overestimate how much others notice & remember about us. We're all walking around performing for an audience that isn't watching.

I think about this constantly when working w/ leadership teams on executive presence. The leaders who project real authority & confidence aren't the ones who've somehow eliminated self-doubt -- that's a myth. They're the ones who've learned to act despite it, who've gotten better at catching themselves mid-calibration & asking a different question.

The question I ask myself now before any major decision is simple. Am I choosing this bc I want it, or am I choosing it bc I'm afraid of what someone will think if I don't?

Honest answer is usually uncomfortable. And extremely useful.

When I'm keynoting for corporate audiences, I sometimes ask people to do something that makes them squirm. Go back through your last month of decisions -- the real ones, the ones that mattered -- and categorize each one. Was this driven by genuine conviction, or was it driven by fear of judgment?

The ratio is almost always uncomfortable. Most people find 60-70% of their "strategic" decisions were FOPO decisions wearing a suit.

The safe hire instead of the bold one. The watered-down pitch instead of the real vision. The meeting where you agreed instead of pushing back bc the room was already leaning one way.

I'm not immune to this. I still catch myself doing it. Difference is I catch it faster now, and I've built a practice around checking source of the impulse before I act on it. That's what I mean when I talk about the inner game -- not that you eliminate the noise, but you get better at hearing it for what it is.

We all do this. We all perform for rooms that aren't watching. The work isn't to become fearless -- I don't think that's real for most of us. The work is to notice the fear, name it, & then make the choice anyway based on what you want rather than what protects you from a judgment that probably isn't coming.

Build for yourself first. The right people will find it.

I go deeper on this in Hard Pivot -- the messy, honest version of what reinvention looks like.

--AAO