Crowding Out Doubt

You have skated in so many competitions. Can you tell us about a moment where maybe you felt like I don't know if I can do this? I just, you know, I'm not feeling the confidence. It's not there.

Many times I mean believe it or not even at the Olympics I knew how trained and prepared I was but there's always that little voice of doubt that's like. Like, you know, what if you make a mistake and, you know, it's all possible in skating right? No matter how much you just one little.

One little fall.

Fall or slip. Can it just means so much. So there was always that doubt and I think it was, you know, a little bit of the mental preparation that I did before was a lot of visualization and seeing myself doing exactly what I wanted to do out there on the ice. And then a lot of positive talk. And I think, I don't know, I think nowadays they call it I don't even. I can't remember now what they call it. But it's, you know, really blocking out the negative and instead of saying, "Don't do this. Don't do that." It's more like okay skate fast, like bend the knees like you know you can do it. All that positive.

You would say those things to yourself in your head?

Yes, yeah definitely and you know there's always that last minute chat that you have with your coach. And I would just, you know, I could hear her voice and the things that she would typically say to me. Like, you know, keep moving. Take one thing at a time. And try to force those thoughts into my head versus the thoughts of doubt.