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Employees unlock up to ?1,000 tax free with a new options card digital gift card. With options card, there's no fees and no fuss. Your full balance is yours for up to 5 years. Shop your favorite brands and see your balance at all times in your mobile wallet. It's simple to buy and simple to use. Send instantly by email. No admin, registration or forms required. You can even regift and share your options card with family and friends. Buy now at optionscard.au. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger show on the choose yourself network. Today on the James Altiger Show. I think once I saw my first Olympic games and registered what that was, like watching Cristy Amaguchi win the Olympics, I wanted to be at the Olympics one day. I didn't fully understand what it was. I just knew that this was when the whole world stopped to pay attention and pay respect to the athletes. There was a magic around the Olympic Games. Okay. But a 1000000 young girls saw Chrissy Yamaguchi win and think to themselves, boy, I'd really like to be in the Olympics for ice skating. What do you think made you a little different? I think I have a laser like focus when I find something that I'm interested in, and I just latch on like a dog, and I don't let go. And I'm just obstinate, and it just repeat, repeat, repeat. And that's what I found with ice skating. I wanted to go back for lessons, and it just became obsessive. And for me, it was wonderful because it just felt right. I felt at home, and it gave me something to apply myself towards every day and it this incredible sense of purpose. What's so painful about the Olympics is you have a few minute window every 4 years, and you just hope that it's right. It's like the eclipse that happens at the right time for you when the Olympics Oh, we're gonna get to the 2006 Olympics. Believe me. Sasha Cohen, world famous ice skater. I can't even go over all the medals you won, but you won the nationals a billion times. You've won medals in all sorts of tournaments. You were a silver medalist in the 2006 Winter Olympics. You totally reinvented yourself after your amazing ice skating career. You went from and I'm gonna miss some steps, but you went from ice skating to I feel like you were figuring it out with fashion and acting, and now you're in the investing investment banking world. You work at Morgan Stanley. Welcome to the show. Thank you. You you've done very well with 0 notes. I'm impressed. I I have made quite a few leaps and transitions, acting. I was at 60 Minutes before I came to Morgan Stanley. I was at a small start up. So I've been doing a little bit of trial and error, but it's been a a good learning process. Well, when you say trial and error, where oh, and I wanna get into the ice skating and how there's there's so many things I wanna cover. So I wanna cover basically how to be the best in the world at something, which clearly we're at ice skating. Then I wanna go from how do you go from these super highs to figuring out, oh my god, it's the age of 25. I I I I can't be the oldest professional ice skater in the world. I gotta figure out the next thing. Like, that is a process that took a decade. And then, but I didn't know. What's what's the, small start up that was before that that you were involved in? I was working at Zig, and I was a 3rd employee. It's it's kind of a cross between it's like the Instagram of news, basically, where you could follow events or people in real time, and it would aggregate every news publication globally on a person or topic you're interested in. And it was a really cool experience. You got to you know, I got to wear a bunch of different hats being the 3rd employee. Ultimately, there were some fundraising pauses, and I I went to 60 minutes, which was an incredible experience. When you say you went there, it wasn't like you were an intern there. Were you you were what what were you doing there? Well, I wasn't running it. I I was a a research associate, and I helped with the opioid crisis story, which was incredible. I was cold calling the pharmacist and trying to track them down and get them to talk to us. But it was you know, I did a lot of different things from finding, tape for for different episodes, and and I got to see the the process of how segments were put together and how to really eliminate bias because battling the, you know, the right and left, it 60 minutes really tries to kinda, like, walk this straight line and and and give news to America. And I was kind of on the receiving end of getting emails, and, you know, no matter what you would do, everyone would think it was biased to either the left or the right. So I got to I got to see a lot of different different angles of how 60 minutes puts their shows together. It's so interesting because if I related to this, if I say an opinion out loud that someone disagrees with, if they're a republican, they think I'm a democrat. If they're a democrat, they think I'm a republican. Like, everybody You can never win. Yeah. You can never win. But at the same time, bias is hard to eliminate from the news. I'm just even though this is a total tangent from your whole story, I mean, you know, Fox News is biased one way. MSNBC is biased the other way. They're clearly biased. They kind of define themselves now by their bias. How do you really eliminate bias? I think certain channels definitely cater to a certain audience, and I think 60 minutes really tries to be as straight as possible and not insinuate anything. But I think it's difficult because everyone is seeing the news through their lens and their personal experiences. So anything can seem like an an affront. If you go from watching Fox News to watching 60 Minutes, it seems like it's way left. Right? And if you go from watching CNN to CBS, again, you're feeling like it's it's not what you representative of what you've been hearing. And so it it is a fine line. I think the best thing everyone can do is just watch everything so you can just see that everything is is a version, and and you have to do your homework and not reinforce the the feedback loop. Well, I might get back to this because it's such a fascinating topic, but I do wanna get to ice skating and your rise up to the the 2006 Olympics. I know as a young girl, you started as a gymnast, then you switch to ice skating, and you got much more interested. What was what was the thing? What was going on in your life? Are you were you like just this incredible natural athlete as a 3 year old? Or what what happened? I was basically the most hyperactive child, and I destroyed the house. And my mom decided to put me in gymnastics for 3 hours a day to use up my energy. And my family got a docile, well behaved child. And from there, I started ice skating because a friend of mine in gymnastics skated, and I fell in love with it, just the speed, gliding. And for a while, I did both. How much do you think in that very beginning period there was natural talent versus skill? I don't know if I had a lot of natural talent. I think I had a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of energy to burn. Would you argue that somebody is probably talented at the thing they have most enthusiasm for? It's possible. It's possible. I think I everything I have is in experientially is within sports, and I think, again, I'm trying to carry that over and find that in in the real world, which I find is a little bit more difficult. But I was a super hyperactive child. I loved to run, climb trees, cause trouble. And so when I found gymnastics as an outlet and then skating as an outlet, it it allowed me to to develop my myself athletically and then also artistically because skating is a sport where you pick your music, you design your costumes, you you train to be at the highest level you can be, and at the same time, you have this this incredible structure of a 1 year plan, a 4 year plan for the next Olympic cycle. And Were you thinking that early, like Olympic cycles? Pretty early. I think once I saw my first Olympic games and registered what that was, like, watching Christy Yamaguchi, win the Olympics, I wanted to be at the Olympics one day. Even didn't fully understand what it was. I just knew that this was the important thing. This was when the whole world stopped to to pay attention and pay respect to the athletes, and it was just it was there was a magic around the Olympic Games. You don't Okay. But a 1000000 young girls saw Kristi Yamaguchi win and think to themselves, boy, I'd really like to be in the Olympics for ice skating. What made you what do you think made you a little more different? I think I have a laser like focus when I find something that I'm interested in, and I just latch on like a dog. And I don't let go. And I'm just obstinate, and it just repeat, repeat, repeat. And that's what I found with ice skating. I wanted to go back for lessons, and I it just became obsessive. And and for me, it was wonderful because it just felt right. I felt at home, and it gave me something to, like, apply myself towards every day and it this incredible sense of purpose. It sounds like also your parents you you had a lot of help along the way. Like, no no it's the whole thing no man's an island, but, like, you were essentially homeschooled, I'm assuming From the age of 12. Yes. From the age of 12. I'm assuming because your parents were very supportive of your efforts to be single-minded in this focus of achieve getting to the Olympics. Were was that were they, like, you know, annoying ice skating parents, or what where's the spectrum of them being supportive to being too much on this side? I think my dad was in his own world, and my mom was very supportive. She spent, you know, most of her day driving me between school and the rink and ballet and Pilates and physical therapy and costume designer. So she really she gave up her life to support my dream. And and I you know, as an 8 year old, you can't do that without a parent to put in that kind of time. What what was the indication at, like, at, like, 12 that that you might have a shot at being the best in the world? I made into nationals at the age of 12, but 5 levels below the senior level, which is where you need to be to compete for a spot on the Olympic team. And so at that time, there's promise, but there's hundreds of girls that have promise and you you don't know and I guess when I was 17 I made my first Olympics and which was in Salt Lake City and just go but even going in it's it's your body is so fickle, sports are so fickle, timing is is fickle, you see gymnasts and they win 1 Olympics and they're not there 4 years later because their body has changed or they're injured, and so you just never know. The year before the Olympic trials in 2002, I had broken my back, and I I missed I missed nationals completely. Okay. You'd broken your back. I did. I had that stress fracture in my back. Damn. A year later, I can't ice skate as much. Like, what happened when you broke your back? I had I had a bone stimulator. I had to take 3 months off. How did you break your back? Through falling, just repetitive, just repetitive stress on the same point from, like, landing jumps and lay back spins where you basically bend yourself in half. And I was growing at the time, and it just kinda whacked everything out of place. So so how old were you when you broke your back? 15 and what? 15 and a half. So if I was, let's say, doing something and then broke my back doing it, I would never do it again. Why did you decide, oh, I broke my back and was almost paralyzed for life and not to in addition to all the trauma of just even looking at an ice skating rink and remembering your Because once you understand what the Olympics are and what they mean, it's consuming. There's nothing else. Was your love for getting on the Olympics more important than your love for ice skating or fears about your health? Olympics was tangled up with ice skating, but it was just this incredible frustration with my body for not cooperating and knowing that you have to be patient enough to let it heal. Because if you try to come back too soon, you're sending yourself back, And that's the biggest push pull and this painful internal struggle because when you're not you can't train because you have to heal, so you're just in your head 24 hours a day. So you're thinking at age 15, oh my gosh. I'm losing a billion. I'm losing that change. I'm losing time. And how like, the Olympics are 471 days, you know, away. It's just you're literally counting down, and you're watching videos. You're seeing your competitors continue to progress while you're off the ice, and it's it's all consuming. And you're kinda freaking out because you can't do anything. You just have to sit with those thoughts and wait. I mean, after you broke your back and, by the way, I don't even know what happens when you break your back. Like, did I had a bone stimulator. Yeah. I I couldn't put pressure on on my right side. I had incredible sciatica, and I just had I had to have a bone stimulator and not move it and not have any impact and not do any contortion moves, which is skating is half of that, what I did. So it was incredibly say your style and I'm sorry to be an interrupter, but particularly your style is heavily contortion oriented, just from what I've what I've watched. So, obviously, you went full force into that after breaking your back. But, like, the moment you broke your back, again, I've never met anyone who's broken their back. Did that moment hurt incredibly? Which might be a naive question. So it was something that happened over time. So it's like you feel this you feel a twin of pain, which gets more and more until you got to start scaling back your practice sessions. And then going into the nationals, I had to withdraw because I would go up into a jump, land, and have this sharpshooting pain, and then just kind of collapse. When you had to not when you had to withdraw, did you cry? Did you insist that you could go? I was at nationals when I withdrew. So I went to the practices and withdrew before the competition because I was not able to train. I was not landing the jumps I needed to. I was making it worse, and it was just, like, how it's the most frustrating thing when your body doesn't cooperate with you and something that I experienced later in my career at my 2006 Olympics, not to the same extent. But sports and bodies are, not always in agreement, and then you're in your mind and you're, like, did my body not cooperate with my mind, or did my mind not cooperate with my body? And it just in sports, you're never good enough, and you can always be better, and you're always trying to be ahead of your competitors. So when your body fails you, I think it's really hard to figure out how to process that. So so in a generalized sense, always no matter what you're gonna pursue, something's gonna fail you along the way, and you have to kinda overcome that to, really achieve, you know, to be the best. Whether And what's so painful about the Olympics is you have a few minute window every 4 years, and you just hope that it's right. It's not like you can say, oh, hold on. I'll record this performance or do this later and send it in at my peak. You just have to hope, it's like, you know, the eclipse, that it happens at the right time for you when the Olympics Oh. Stay. We're gonna get to the 2006 Olympics. Believe me. But I'm just curious again. The first time so so you you're sitting there. Your back's broken. And you didn't answer the question. Did you cry when you withdrew from the nationals when when you realized you couldn't do it? I'm sure I cried. I think early on, I learned to put up walls and not let people see how I felt. I had a press conference, and it's you know, you're trained at such a young age. So you're gonna try your best, and you still believe that next year you can make the Olympic team and this is what you need to do. But you, you know, you hold yourself together, but I remember just watching people compete, earning spots on the world team, and just being crushed that I wasn't there. And then there's just doubt that sits with you. How will I be able to to keep up, and how will I be able to get everything back that I need to to get a spot next year? Yeah. Right. Because how not only how were you able to keep up, but then still exceed everyone else. How were you able to do that? Like, when you first went back to the ice, were you scared? I wasn't scared. I think I was trying to be smart because I'd seen people that come back too soon, and then they are set back for another 4 months. And I just didn't have the time for that. So I played it a little safe and took a little extra time and came back in slowly, and then I just I just trained my a*s off. I was in physical therapy, Pilates, ballet, skating, off ice. It was just from morning until night, and then I would come home and watch the videos that my mom would record of my jumps and my program and see, I don't like that. I don't like where my arm is or that's the reason I'm not getting enough height and just relentlessly pursuing and just counting down the days. So in terms of, like, strengthening your back, what helped the most out of all these different things you're Core. Core supports your back. So Pilates and I had specific exercises in physical therapy, also keeping your sacrum aligned because every time you fall badly, you kind of knock your hip out of whack and then you you put, you know, more compression in your spine. So strengthening my core was the single most important thing into supporting my back. And you could really feel the difference from, you know, over time from from strengthening your core? Because your body has to brace. Right? When you fall in from impact, something has to hold you together. And if you don't have a strong core, then other parts of your body take the brunt of that. You know, with with ice skating, I sort of see it as one of those skills where it's divided up into lots of micro skills. So there's the jumps. There's the dancing. There's the contortion type stuff that you mentioned. Musicality, artistry. Dancing. Yeah. How many micro skills do you think there were? Because it seems like to be the best in the world, you have to be the best at each one of those or at least most of them. You don't necessarily have to be the best at each one, but it's the cumulative package. And I think a lot of it is performing under pressure, and a lot of it is just continuing to believe and fight even when everything looks impossible. So you've you've brought that up a couple of times, like, the psychological aspects. So so what you're sort of saying is, at that level, assume everybody is has kind of mastered the basic micro skills of jumping, dancing, artistry, you know, whatever. How important then is the psychology? In any high stakes moment, because you have high stakes moments now even in your current job and career. In any high stakes moment, how important is the psychology versus you know, assuming you know the basic micro skills? Controlling your emotions and your mind is of utmost performance. Obviously, people are coming in with different levels of talent and capability and technical difficulty. But if you don't perform, if you make through mistakes, then someone that's not as good as you that skates a clean performance is gonna place ahead of you. And and so it's going out to a huge ice rink all alone. No one can go with you, not your coach, not your mom, not anyone that that you've trained with. And you know that you have a few minutes, and on the other side of it, your life is gonna be different. And there's no doing over. And so to sit with the enormity of what that means is very difficult. And the only way to do it, I think, is starting from a young age and more and more pressure is just normal. How how would you do it, though? Like, let's say before, you know, let's say before the 2006 short program, what were you were you kind of hypnotizing yourself? Or what what do what do peak performing athletes do at that moment? Control of your mind. Your mind wants to say, what if this happens? What if that happens? What if I make a mistake? How am I gonna do it? It feels impossible. I'm skating last. There's all this pressure. I've waited for years. And you can very easily go down this tangent, but you have to bring yourself back. How? And it's it's self talk. It's positive self talk. Being I'm prepared. I'm ready. I'm gonna do this. I can. And then you just keep it very, focused on the next task. All I have to do right now is get up my jump rope and warm up. Then all I have to do is you know, you have your routine. Then I do my abs, and then I jog, and then I stretch, and then I get on the bike. And because if you're thinking too much, like, oh my gosh. If if I fall 3 times, then this is gonna you don't think about that. You just think about You just really try to keep yourself present. What about the second before you're going on the ice? Every I think everyone has different routines and mental preparations, but it's just this deep breath, the like, the enormity of what's about to happen. And then luckily, you have the music. I would always lose myself in the music. So you go and you take that opening pose, you hear your name, and then the music starts. And then you can kind of get lost in the music, and and then you and your your voice is like this step, 3 turn, Mohawk, crossover, crossover, breathe in, out, exhale, jump. You know? So you're really guiding it with markers as you go. I'm I'm gonna get a little more into that when we talk about 2,006 in just a minute, but I'm just curious about your opinion. What do you think of the so called 10000 hour rule, where if you spend, you know, it's by Anders Ericsson, Malcolm Gladwell's written about it. But the idea is if you spend 10000 hours working at a skill, you could become among the best in the world at that skill. Do you think what's your gut feeling on that? I think it's definitely true, but that doesn't mean that you're gonna do it when the time counts. Right. Because of the psycho psychological aspect. You don't think the 10000 hours could help. Part of the micro skills you're sort of separating out always that the psychology is not really part of the micro skills of that skill. It's it's a different skill. The psychology is a different skill. It's just a totally different skill. And and, like, how do you use how do you use the the the methods you that by which you got great at ice skating and the methods by which you got great at the psychology, how do you use them in your current career, let's say, in in bet in the investment world? I think in the investment world and in life, what you realize is that 9 days out of 10, you may doubt yourself and you may not feel good, but you have to keep showing up and you have to keep putting in the work. And then, ultimately, over time, that shows itself. And you also get to know your own insecurities and your own thought patterns, and then you can kind of discount them because that's not necessarily representative of reality. I'm a perfectionist. I always doubt that what I'm doing is good enough, or if I'm gonna be as prepared as I could be. And so I recognize what my patterns are. And so I think when you see your thought patterns and your tendencies as a child in sport at the Olympics, preparing for a presentation, figuring out what I'm gonna do with my life, preparing for a final at school, I recognize that in me that it's never enough. It's never good enough. And so everyone has a different framework. And I've heard you mention a couple times what I am guessing is your insecurities right now, which is that when you were young, all you did was ice skating, basically, up until the time you were in in the Olympics, essentially. And now, you've you've mentioned you've mentioned it even right before this podcast, it was 10 year you're you're 10 years older than everyone else pursuing this career, the the type of career you have right now. And probably you didn't have the chance, probably feel like, oh my gosh, they were all being obsessive at the age of 15 about this career while you were off ice skating. How can you catch up and exceed? Where do you feel how do you take kind of the skill, the meta skill set of learning ice skating and the psychology and apply it now to the career and and dealing with those insecurities, which I'm guessing is what your insecurities are? Well, I think what I learned in skating is you you put in the work and to to persevere. And that any you can get good at anything if you put in the time and you have the discipline and the tenacity, and those are skills that I continue to apply when I'm learning a completely new topic. So what if you're persevering something you're not gonna get good at? Well, how do you know you're not gonna get good at it? Like, what if you tried to learn, I don't know, the piano right now? I mean, maybe, I guess, perseverance, you feel you can get good at it. I guess I would never be concert pianist ability, but I think anything that you really put time into, you have a huge runway for improvement. And what else do you need? Do you need a mentor or a coach? I think you need a lot of curiosity and you need to be relentless, and it needs to matter to you. And so you do it at, you know, the sacrifice of other things, and that's what I did with skating. I didn't want to go to school. I didn't pursue anything else, and it was all ice skating. I thought, how do I become the best at this, and what are the supporting activities I need to do? And I found a sports psychologist, and I would journal, and I would watch videos of the best skaters, watch videos of myself and compare. And so I think you can do that with other things in life, and I think I do that now in trying to keep up with the world. I'm always listening to, some informative book on Audible or a podcast or reading. I just there's no second that I'm not trying to ingest information, connect dots, and and elevate myself. And and it seems like you focus and and this is like a natural thing, but you focus obviously on the things that you're enthusiastic about. So what if someone's listening to this, and they're 40 years old, and they're a little unhappy with where they are in life or what their job is or where their career's taken them, and they're looking for a change. How do how does the how does somebody find what they're enthusiastic about? Like, obviously, when you were young, you kind of stumbled into it almost literally, and then you've kinda figured it out as you're older. But how does someone figure that out? I think patience turning over a lot of stones. You're not gonna know what you're interested in until you try a bunch of different things. And, you know, I've been reading books, you know, from, you know, like, physics on, Richard Feynman to bad blood and understanding how Theranos fell apart. And so from a business level, from a from a a scientific perspective, I'm always learning. And, again, I I was liberal arts was my love, philosophy and poetry, and I was a political science major. So the science aspect is all very new for me, but I'm understanding how how helpful it is and how absolutely instrumental it is in the world we live in today. So you're enthusiastic about it, and maybe you got that way by kind of randomly finding books that people would recommend or Exactly. A lot of times, books that I heard recommended on podcasts. And then I you know, as soon as I hear it, I immediately write it down into my notes, and then I would get a sample of it. And if I liked it, I would continue and read it. What would you feel? Would you feel like this excitement, like, you would start connecting ideas from other like, what would what would excitement look like to you? What would it feel like? I think I'm an insanely curious person, and I think that was a lot of the reason I was hired for the current role that I'm in is I ask questions. I'm not afraid to ask dumb questions, and I'm constantly putting together different mental models and trying to connect dots because I'm I'm a generalist and I'm not a specialist, and so I'm trying to see things at a higher level. But it's I love learning, and I love ex you know, whether it's traveling and meeting new people or understanding just the kind of the breakdown of all the worlds that exist within within physics. And and so I think you feel excited when you're you're learning something new, and whether that's through a person or through a book or an experience, you should have this sense of excitement and this feeling of expansion. Among, not necessarily your peers, but just among people in in general, when they wanna learn something, how do you see from your experience learning ice skating and getting to be essentially the best in the world at at something that's very important to millions of people? When you see other people learning, do you ever see to yourself, oh, they're learning it wrong, or they're learning it not the way I would learn it, because you've got this experience of learning how to be the best in the world at something? Like, what what extra thing did you learn about being the best in the world, something that other people that you could maybe tell other people, hey, do it this way, learn this way? Within skating or in general? No. In general. Because because you learned not many people learn how to be the best in the world at something. So there's some extra quality of how you learn things. What what do you and you look if you look at somebody who's learning something, can you see, they're not quite doing it the way I would do it because I've got this experience from when I was 12 that gave me that extra push. So first of all, everyone does things in a different way because people have different bodies, different minds, different, levels of endurance, and that's fine. But what you need is to be obsessive, and it's not healthy because you do something to be great at something is at the expense of something and, usually, everything else. And so it's the unhealthy, obsessive quality where it's so easy to just not have friends, to not be social, to put everything into one thing. It's that obsessiveness, which I think is what creates greatness. And because the obsessiveness is also gonna give you kind of the time and energy to look at the videos of your prior performances. Think of all the micro skills that you need to learn. Look at all your competitors. Look at all the opportunities coming up to perform or whatever. It's your fuel. It's your fuel. It's in my mind that return on. Obsessive. So this is almost like your competitive edge as you're reinventing yourself to to the investment world, for instance. Exactly. It's whatever I think whatever you're obsessive about, whatever means more to you than anything else is where you will put your time. And do you think everybody can find something to be obsessive about, or do you think some people are just not gonna get to that level of obsession? I think it's a choice because that doesn't necessarily bring happiness, and people have different goals, so I think we all start with a fundamental, like, the hierarchy. We want to find happiness, and people have different roots to happiness. It can be power. It can be fame. It can be money. It can be greatness. It can be family, love, experiences. So whatever way you're wired will inform the way that you choose to spend your time. Right. So my guess is you're more you're more willing to be obsessive. I'm more obsessively wired, unfortunately. So how does that affect let's just I'm going on a tangent, but let's just say your romantic relationships. How does it affect you being obsessive about something, and your boyfriend's like, wait a minute. Come on. We gotta go. Like, what do you do? You know, it's very much it's like, why are you so focused on this? It's just kind of been relentless. But it's I don't know. I think you you kind of accept who people are in relationships. You know, you it either works for you to have someone that's you like that about them. You like their ambition, their drive, the way they are in the world. And if that doesn't work for you, then you probably have to find a different partner. Did you have situations where you had a partner where they were thought they could do that but then realized they couldn't? So I've kind of had opposite examples where I'm recently divorced, and I was also in a relationship before that that didn't work out. But it's been challenging for me to go from a world where I didn't date. I spent most of my time with my mom, most of my time with my coach focused on skating in an ice rink, tired, cold, hungry. And, you know, dating was the farthest thing from my mind, and I really learned to my my love was ice skating, and so everything was for ice skating. And so, I think I am still learning how to do that in a relationship because I wasn't on a a team. I wasn't as a pair. And it's a different psychology you develop as an individual athlete or even your own emotions, and your development as a person is not anywhere as important as your success as an ice skater. And so when I finished skating, when I moved to New York, went to Columbia, traveled, like, you know, just constantly explored, met new people outside of the world of sports, I'm learning to kinda take down the walls and learning to unlearn 20 years of experiences that made me a good ice skater. I mean, that might be a factor of age too as you and you're also in a more social kind of career than ice skating. You know? So now your those walls are coming down. But We're adaptable. Right? So it's I adapted my mind, my psychology, my habits to be the best ice skater. So that's different than what you need to live in New York City or to be a student or to have a job. You know, it's or to be in a romantic relationship. These are different skills you need to learn. So so I'm gonna get back to that. I'm always gonna get back to different things. 2,006, I just wanna you you won the silver medal, which is unbelievable, of course. You're 2nd best person in the world at a a sport that millions of people love. But does silver just suck? Like, because, obviously, everybody's only going for the gold. That's very true. I think for me, it was one of the hardest experiences of my life because, again, going back to the body being fickle, 3 months before, I was at the top of my game skating perfectly. I felt like I owned the world. A few months later, injured. I had equipment problems. I had to take time off. I got sick. By the time I got to the Olympics, I had ionophoresis, which is like a steroid treatment, 3 times a day. I was starting to make mistakes. I wasn't able to do run throughs of my program, and I was not prepared. And how devastating it was to go into the most important event of my life, the 2nd Olympic Games, that I had painstakingly white knuckled my way through the last 2 years of training, which was very difficult, and to get to the to get there and not feel prepared in the way that you wanted to be. So so so let me ask. So I watched just last night the the short program, and you did perfectly. That was all bravado, and I call it walking the pirate's plank. That was the first program that I'd done like that in 3 weeks because it just my training was abysmal going into that. And just psychologically, that wrecks you, but you have to still fight. It's like you're one person going out against a 100 people, but you just have to just go yelling, screaming, kicking, fighting, and that's what you have to take with you even though you know that the odds are against you. And but but but looking at your face right before the program started, you and maybe this is bravado or not, but you looked happy. You looked confident. Is this part of the self talk at that time? Like, what were you saying to yourself at that moment? Fake it till you make it. You wear a mask. You put on the demeanor that you need to have. You can't go into battle with doubt. So whether it come from a place of honesty or not, you learn to you learn to pull something out deep within. And, again, it's that charging, fighting, yelling, screaming, going into battle. What were you saying at exactly that moment? So my memory isn't great, but I probably would have said something along the lines of, like, you can do this. You're gonna do this. You're the best. And you just, like, you just you just you you try to find that fire, that fighter inside, and then you kind of let that go, and you you let the music take you. So so so midway through, things are going perfectly. You've done these incredible jumps. You're doing the the the artistry is incredible. Do you do you ever does your brain ever leak in the sense that you start thinking, oh my gosh. I'm gonna win this. Like, you start thinking ahead, and you still have 5 more jumps to go. You you don't because you know that it's precarious. Right? So I think you don't have this moment of relief until all your jumps are done, and then even then, you wanna be careful not to be careless and fall on footwork or a spin. But you have an, like, immense sense of relief, and then you can enjoy where you are. You can enjoy the all the years of training, the millions of people watching, knowing your families in the crowd. Like, you can focus on how much like, the love that you had when you were a child that you don't really see in the day to day because of the pressure and the expectations, and then that comes out. But halfway through, that's at the end when it's boom. You've you're the you're first. You did everything great. That was, like, a perfect program. You usually have you usually have maybe a minute when most of the hard things are out of the way. And in the short program, my 3 jumps were in the first roughly in the first half. And then it was a spin and a spiral sequence and footwork, and it just I felt like I was on fire, and it was this incredible 60 or 90 seconds of holy s**t. I am on top of the world. I did this. This is incredible. It's just it's an it's a high that I've never had before. So now let's go to the long program. In the first 30 seconds, it fell twice. And but before the long program started, a, your face looked completely different. You didn't really look You've been listening to the commentator. I I was listening to the commentator. You but but I also was just noticing the face of the difference between the short program and the long you're you were in a frown as opposed to smiling at the same time that the commentator was saying you had, in your trial run or whatever, you you weren't doing as In the warm up, I'd fallen. And I think when you went to a short program, you know you have 2 things ahead of you, and the long is weighted, much more than the short program. So it's almost a start, whereas the long program is this finality. And I didn't get to practice the day before because of my injury. I didn't practice that morning, which is unheard of. And so I didn't feel prepared. But, again, it's summon the strength. I'm not ready, but I'm gonna pretend that I am, and I'm gonna go out and fight. But I felt that. I felt aside the normal pressure that anyone would feel going into their last Olympic games, I had everything else of not having the preparation and being injured. And so when I fell on my first jump, it was like the wind knocked out of me. A dream just, like, dissolving. The audience just, and no time to process that, but get up and go into the next thing. And you still have 5 minutes to go. Yeah. Not 4 4 minutes to go, but it's literally you have to get up and and keep going. And a lot of times when people miss a few things, you start missing a lot of things. You give up hope. You just all you wanna do is get yourself off that ice. And I just kept bringing the sense of resiliency, the continual fight. Like, everything was a fight. Everything I went into. And, thankfully, it somewhat clicked. I don't know how it did because it felt like my world had just fallen apart. What do you mean it feels like? You you were able to complete the program? I was able to get back into it. So considering I wasn't prepared and I was injured and I missed 2 things, the fact that I was able to get it back together and complete the rest of the elements, which ultimately ended up earning me a medal, that is somewhat miraculous, and that took something very deep within. I can't, pronounce the the name of the woman who who won. Shizuka Arakawa. So so she when did it help her that you went first? Because after you kind of fell the two times, she was able to kind of ignore the artistry and just make sure she landed every jump in order to get it. She made mistakes too. And, basically, everyone made, a few mistakes that night. But, you know, she had a different style. She, is a very talented skater, but she wasn't as emotive and expressive. And everyone has a different unique style in, in skating. I think that's kind of what makes it such a wonderful sport is you can see personalities shine through. So it no no one had the night they wanted to have. And luckily, because everyone messed up, I was still on the podium. A girl, Irina Slutskaya, who messed up quite a bit, also made the podium right below me. Whereas if this was another Olympic games and everyone had given perfect performances, we would not have been on the podium. So so the day after, when you wake up and you have the silver, which is this amazing accomplishment There was no sleeping. We were in Italy, so we were ahead, and we immediately went to start doing shows and media and the morning circuit. And every interview would replay my falls and basically probe me until I cried, and then the interview would stop. And that was, you know, that was my next few hours. And then it was immediately into practice because we have an exhibition, And it is just pushing yourself through, but you are numb, and it is so much pain, but you do not want to feel it. So you just start to try to push it down, and everyone you see just tells you how heartbroken they are for you, and how could you do that. And you just kind of smile and learn to pivot the conversation, but it's just there was many, many years of having to compress that and put that down, but it's it was it was rough. And so after that, you know, you had spent all your life, of course, pursuing this one dream, not to kind of keep rehashing this horrible thing for you. And then, obviously, you find great joy and happiness in reinvention and and and reinventing your career. When did you realize, okay, I'm gonna have to now try to be the best in the world at something new, and then again at something new? Because you've reinvented a couple of times. I mean, you were an actress. You had a fashion you were trying to go do have a fashion line, and now you're on Wall Street. I think I'm relentlessly curious and always trying to find where I fit and find my passion and and to be exploring. And so the first thing that I did was decide to go to school. And it was the greatest gift that I gave myself, and I gave myself permission that there wasn't a purpose behind it. I wasn't becoming the best at something. I wasn't I wasn't visible, but I was read I was so curious. I was spending all my free time in the public library when I was when I wasn't touring. And so I'm was, like, at the age of 25, I knew I was ready to go to school, and I knew I wanted to live in New York. And so I applied to NYU in Columbia. And I came and it was the greatest gift that I gave myself, and I could just be a person. I didn't have to be a figure. Although, were your classmates intimidated a little bit? Like, oh my god. I was Alex. You know, my legal name's Alexandra. I was Alex. No one knew who I was, and it was wonderful to be a person and not have to be a skater that somebody knew or that there were expectations in the next season, and you're not good enough, and this person's better. And I could just take philosophy and take poetry and history and be a person. I I allowed myself to be a person, and I think that was incredibly transformative. And then that was the time when, you know, when most people are in middle school or high school and writing for the school newspaper or interning and figuring out what they wanted to be, that's when I started to to start putting the pieces together. How did you decide that finance was gonna be the thing that you would do? So I think, you know, from the age of 16, I started following The Price of Gold, and I would always watch CNBC. And Why would you follow The Price of Gold? Is that because you won the gold medal? No. I was just competitive. I was when I was my medal gonna be worth? No. No. I think I was always trying to figure out what can I sell and how can I how can I compete, and I loved the the energy and what was projected of what finance was? It was, you know, it was elbowing. It's who's smarter? How are you gonna it was something that could be measured. And and for some reason, that that really appealed to me. You know, from the a young age, I would buy stuff and try to sell it. I would sell my sister's toy soldiers. I was always trying to figure out how to make money. Yeah. She was very upset, but she's still upset. And and I think I love that competitive aspect and also the people. I love real to be around very ambitious, competitive, intellectual people, and I've I've found that. But what I didn't realize is that I also have an incredibly creative, side that loves the arts. And so I'm filling I'm backfilling that in other ways in my life. But skating, I got to do everything. I got to be competitive. I got to be artistic. I had a platform to speak, and I I got to, you know, to push myself technically as an athlete. And it's it's very hard to find something where you can do that again. So so you mentioned earlier there are many ways people find happiness, whether it's success or financially or fame or whatever. What's what's your what do you feel is your route to happiness at this point? I'm still finding it, but I think that I've realized that I may not find something that's as obsessive as skating was for me, and that's probably a good thing. And for me, I was a big fish in a small pond when I continued to tour, and at the end, I started to feel like a monkey in the circus. And I was living in the bowels of an arena, and it was Groundhog Day every day. And I didn't wanna live like that, and I was ready to be nobody and to be a tadpole in the ocean and just take it all in. So instead of, like, giving out, I wanted to take in, and I'm still figuring out the way that I can convert that into give you know, putting out again. But I think I've just been in a in a phase where I'm intaking so much information, but it's balance. And so I think the key right now for me is is balance. Well and I think also one thing you've done that's been so incredibly helpful is so many Olympians get depressed afterwards. They don't know how to come back after such heights as representing their country in, you know, the the most famous sporting event in history and showing how that you can reinvent and have a fulfilling life, with many outcomes that you don't have to be obsessed about any one of them, I I think that probably helps a lot of people, and I know that's kind of a message you you share to people. Exactly. And I've written about that, from the The New York Times and Sports Illustrated, and I'm actually collaborating on a documentary that is going to be released soon called The Weight of Gold, which, Michael Phelps is in and a lot of other athletes, and it goes into the issues of depression and trying to find yourself after. But I think what athletes forget is the the sacrifice and the pressure and the weight of the world that they had and the fact that they couldn't develop themselves and all these other things as a person. So, yes, these moments these moments of greatness and meaning and purpose that come at the Olympic games and that sense of everything you're directing when you're training, but it is so wonderful when you can travel and not have to be at the rink on Christmas or doing sprints in the track on the 4th July when all your friends and your family are at the beach. And you can learn about different things, and you can live life. Like, the world is so big. And if you allow yourself to put aside the the career in sports and that identity and say it's okay that I'm nobody now and I'm putting the pieces together and be a person, it's an incredible world to do that in. So it's, again, different metrics for happiness and success, but there's there's more to do than we'll ever have time to do, and I think that's the attitude to have. Well, Sasha Cohen, world famous ice skater, now on Wall Street, done many other things. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast and talking about all this. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I'm slowly putting the pieces together, but it's it's been a pleasure. Thank you. And good luck on all future endeavors. Thank you. Likewise.
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