Olympian Alysa Liu & Paralympian Ali Truwit on Winning on Your Own Terms

Allie, Alyssa, thanks for joining us. Thank you. How's everyone doing? So I feel, how many people in this room consider themselves competitive people or competitors? At the Forbes Power Women's Summit, I would assume that. I want to talk to, my first question for you all is, you know, you guys are expert world class competitors. You spend months and years for one moment. Tell me how you prep and what it's like when you're on that starting block, when you're about to get on the ice for that big moment. Like, what is your mindset? What can people here learn from your just competitive spirits and routines? For me, it's, my season is quite long. We start in like September, October, and we end in March. But my prep comes from like years beforehand. I like to, I like the saying, like, trust the process, because that's all you can do when you're training. Little steps at a time, and you just have to trust that that's making a difference and that you're improving. I really like the training aspect of what I do. I like it more than the competitions, actually. I kind of use competitions as an excuse to train. Otherwise, I can't justify working so hard every day. They're like, why are you doing that? And then I can just be like, oh, because I have a competition coming up. But really, I just want to do that. And so it's quite, it comes quite naturally for me. I enjoy training and sweating and working hard, I guess. Again, I used to roller blade, so I understand where you're coming from. That's great. Allie, how about you? You're on the starting block. You're waiting for the gun to go off. Like, what is in your mind? Yeah, I mean, similar to you, I really love the work. Growing up, my family had a mantra, work works. And it really taught me to get trust from the work, to get confidence in myself from the work that I had put in all season. So for me, behind the blocks is a time to reflect on all of the work I've done. And I think growing up, I would do all the work, and then I would almost defeat it by talking negatively to myself and letting worry and doubt and fear overtake my self-talk right before I competed. And I've learned now that the self-talk is, you know, the mental work is as important, if not more, than the physical work. So I make sure I'm putting in the physical work. And then behind the blocks, I'm really working on my self-talk to tell myself that I've worked hard for this, that I'm ready to take what I've worked for, that I have it within me to achieve more than I think possible. And also just reminding myself, I love Simon Sinek's Start With Why. And when the noise and the pressure gets loud, like in rollerblading, I'm sure. Always. Especially the way I do it, for sure. I remind myself of my whys, that I want to change perceptions around disability, grow the Paralympic movement, spread hope about overcoming trauma and hardship. And so that, for me, really anchors myself away from kind of the noise and the pressure and into, like, why am I doing this? Why am I hungry to go get what I worked for? Well, when you're in your, both of your Olympians, when you're in the pool competing, when you're on the ice, what is your, you black out? Is it just full muscle memory? Are you thinking at the time? Especially with, like, when I'm watching routines, I can imagine, like, is it just automatic? Like, what is going through your mind? Or do you just kind of almost blank, and then you're done, and you're on the podium? Yeah. That's how it happens. Just, oh, there I am. That's it. You wake up, and there you go. Yeah, it's just time travel. I'm really in the moment when I'm on the ice. Before my music starts, even during, like, our six-minute warm-up beforehand, I really love kind of being alone out there. It's kind of a feeling like no other for me. And I don't, like, blank out, per se. But I will say, muscle memory does take over. I have trained so much. And in practice, like I said, I trust the process. I train so much and so hard. And I just know I can do it. There's, like, no doubt in my mind. Because if I can do it in practice, I can do it in competition. There's not really any difference, as long as you don't set, like, unrealistic expectations upon yourself or allow other voices to kind of invade your mind. You just have to, you're out there for yourself. You're out there for you. And you have to trust your training. And you have to trust your mind, too. Wow, amazing. How about you, Allie? Yeah, I love trust your mind. I definitely focus a bit on where I am in the race. I swim some longer races. And so there is time to shift in the race, make comebacks, fight for the spot you're holding. So I kind of thrive off of being in tight races and in competition, and so paying attention to that. But also, I use a lot of mantras. I talked about kind of the power of positive self-talk for me. And mantras are a really easy go-to for me to practice in training and then be able to call on in the competition when it's easy to say I'm getting tired or I'm falling behind, to just call on those mantras that are going to keep me kind of infusing positive self-talk during my race. So I do a lot of those, like, you have more, you can and you will, a lot of those kind of mantras that help me just kind of keep pushing towards the wall. I love it. The name of this panel is Succeeding and Winning on Your Own Terms. What does in your own terms mean? And what does it look like if you do something that's what other people want to do versus your way? You both have interesting style. Like, Alyssa, you, obviously, besides winning two gold medals, people loved your story. They loved your personal taste. And there was joy out there, like you were doing it for yourself. What does succeeding on your own terms actually mean? What does that look like versus succeeding through someone else's system, someone else's goals? I feel like I've really learned what winning on my own terms means because I have won on other people's terms for so much of my life. I really learn a lot through trial and error. I really have to go through it myself to kind of realize I can't just be told to think or feel differently. I have to really grasp it myself. And so most of my life, like from, honestly, like 5 to 14, I cared a lot about winning competitions. I was like, if I'm not first, I'm like the first loser and stuff like that. It was quite intense. And every time I would fall on the ice, I would cry. I would genuinely cry. It felt like my life was on the line out there because I wanted to please my coach, please my dad, stuff like that. And I wasn't happy in training either because of this. But as long as I was winning these competitions, my life was good and I was safe. Or so I thought until, you know, 14, that's the time you start going to puberty, COVID happened. So all this kind of hit me and I was like, what am I doing? I was like, I am so unhappy with training and I don't care about winning these competitions. I was thinking back and I was like, wow, I've won so many competitions. Can I name every competition I've won? Not really, if I can't, then it must not have impacted me as much as I thought it would have. It didn't change my life. I always, after winning a competition, like what was next? I have to win the next. It was kind of a cycle. I couldn't, I don't know, I couldn't end it. I couldn't just fix it by winning a competition. So I realized like, man, I'm really depending on others' opinions and these expectations are set on me. I think I have to match them. But as I was going through this, I was like, I don't want to be doing this my whole life. I want to do what I want to do. And because of this, I was like, winning isn't really all that. There's usually some underlying reason why people want to win. For me, it was to get my dad's approval, my coach's approval. Once I didn't need their approval anymore, I was like, huh, my perspective on how I should approach my sport started changing too. Of course, this led to my retirement from figure skating. I went out and I tried a bunch of new things. I had to figure out what I wanted to do, what I liked, because I was doing what other people liked for so long. And so once I realized what I liked, I was like, huh, I kind of like this figure skating thing. I think I might go back. And so I went back, but I went back with my own mind, essentially, with my own goals, my own, I had a passion for it. It wasn't someone else's passion. And so it was, I don't know, really eye-opening for me to take a break from that. You have to know what your terms are to win on your own terms, yeah. Love it. Danielle, you were a collegiate swimmer, went to a little school in New Haven. What, after your accident, you went from, how did that change, again, on your terms? When you decided to get back in the pool, I know, just from your advocacy work, you're not just swimming for yourself, you're swimming for an entire community. Tell me how that looks, and maybe how competing now in the Paralympics was different than when you were at Yale. Yeah, I think I lost my foot and part of my leg in a shark attack two days after graduating from Yale. And it really did force me to hit pause and rethink my definition of success as I reentered the sport. And knowing that I had lost that love of the water for a little bit with flashbacks to the attack and things, I now knew how successful I felt to have regained that love of the water, to be back in that space after such unimaginable trauma. I think, especially heading into the Paralympics, for me, that was a level of pressure and expectation and media coverage around my performance that I had never experienced before, and the noise was loud. And it really helped me to anchor in my own definition of success and not anyone else's. And for me, I like my silver medals and my American records. I like to compete and win. I do care about that, but I also view my success as my ability to rise back up after life knocked me down. Thank you. Yeah, I view my successes as the ability to advocate for a community, to give back and have impact in a community no matter what's happening to me. I view my success as my ability to dig deeper even when my brain is telling me that I have nothing left. And so for me to reorient on those non-result-driven metrics of success really helps me, especially when I'm finding myself in those high-pressure moments. So I think that for me, especially thinking about, like you said, being able to advocate and represent for a community. We both are part of Team USA, and it is a really special thing to walk out with a flag on your cap or on your jacket and know what that means for me to thank heroes who saved my life, but that really helps you be like, I'm representing other people here, whether it's the Paralympic community, people with disabilities, our country. That's a shift of success and of pressure that I found hugely helpful to think about. On the topic of pressure and attention, I once did an interview with an Olympian, not to name drop, last name rhymes with Kelps, but he was saying, he was talking about kind of the mental challenge, and a lot of, especially Olympians, have this depression where Michael was like, listen, like 300, three years straight I'm just in the pool grinding, and then when the Olympics happens, I'm on every TV, I'm on every magazine cover, X, Y, Z, and then it's over, and then it drops again. How do you guys deal with that cycle where yes, you're always competing, but they're the big moments. We're talking about LA 2028. How do you deal with that? Melissa, you were on every screen in Milan. Then you wake up, and it's a Tuesday, and you're back in Oakland. How do you guys deal with that? Well, yeah, there's something in competition. I have a sports psychologist, and she always. The post-Olympic blues? No, it happens after every competition. There's like a drop, because you go from such like a. Like a dopamine drop? Yeah, yeah, yeah, this actually happens. Moira Forbes is gonna have a post-Forbes Women's Summit blues tomorrow. Okay, that might happen. But we're gonna celebrate her, and we're gonna celebrate her, and lift her up. You just have to be aware of it. Don't be scared of it, be aware of it. Yeah, no, there is such thing, and at Olympics especially, I was there for so long, and I was around my teammates. I was around so many athletes, and that's not my everyday. You know, where I train is, I'm pretty much by myself. There's not many other athletes with me. So it was such a high, but for me, it didn't really quite drop. I was traveling a lot. I did a show tour for figure skating, so I kind of like, I was still kind of in the high, and I honestly still am, but for the times that. I love that for you. I love that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, so sometimes staying busy, it really does this to you. But for, like when I think back to how life is, like when I go back home, and I'm back after a competition, I'm honestly happy to be back home, and like train again, and just be with my family, and stuff like that. You just have to be aware of it, and you have to do stuff that makes you happy. I think that's like what I would have said is, I think I definitely understand it, and experience aspects of it. I think something that we've all seen and heard today, and that we see from women all around us, is that women are multi-hyphenate, and multi-faceted. And me personally, I am taking on multiple careers right now, and to be able to come home from a competition, but shift my focus to a different career path that I'm pursuing, that keeps me kind of not falling too much into kind of the post Paralympic depression, because I get to pour my attention into something else that I'm loving and really excited about. And I think it's something that I've been so fortunate to look around and learn from other women, that we can be mothers, and authors, and work multiple careers at the same time. And so it helped me not limit myself, and say I'm only a Paralympic swimmer, but rather that I could take on multiple things at once, and in doing so not wrap my identity all into this one career and one sport, so that when I do come home, I feel like I have other areas I can then shift my focus to. Yeah, there's like multiple things that can feel fulfilled by. I love that. And speaking of a career's business, you're both not just leaders, and advocates, and athletes, but you're also great businesswomen, and you have big social media followings. Actually, tell me, before the Olympics, how many followers did you have? It was probably like 200K, something like that. And how many you have now? Like a million? Yeah, there's a little tension, a little tension. Just a little bit. But you both, you work with companies, you have great sponsorships. You both have such powerful personal brands that mean so much to you. How do you work with other brands? Because I know it's more than just money. Like when you work with a company and take on deals, you have to be very careful of your own brand. Like how do you choose to work with partners? I mean, for me, I'll say that becoming an amputee, I learned just how powerful the representation is, and how much it matters to see people with disabilities in these spaces. And when I hear from brands, I get really excited about, you know, what I'm thinking about is the exposure that it's gonna bring to a community that I'm now a part of. It matters to see someone like you doing a sport you think you can't do, walking a runway you think you can't feel confident and beautiful walking, and to change those perceptions that we hold all around us. And so when I work with brands, I'm really focused on adding Paralympians to their roster, adding people with disabilities to get exposed to their marketplaces. And that's what I'm really kind of taking into consideration. And then also, I think we heard Cindy talk about it too, kind of knowing your brand, what you hold near and dear to your heart, what you believe in, and thinking about what you're taking on. Does that align with, you know, what's important to you and the messages that you wanna spread to other people? Very cool. And I'm sure you had a few inbound messages after the Olympics. How do you choose who you're gonna work with? I also get really excited when brands reach out. I love meeting new people too, so that's kind of one of my main motivators. But I also think representation is important. In my sport, it's a very constricted view on what a figure skater should look like. And I've been told by maybe two people that I am not the traditional figure skater. So I like to kind of break the bounds of what a woman in sport can look like. Very cool. We have like a minute left. I could talk for hours with you guys, obviously. Pressing question, you're both Olympic athletes. What is your best Olympic athlete village story? I like trading pins a lot with other athletes, right? Yeah. You gotta do better than trading pins. Okay, okay. I saw the U.S. women's hockey team after they won in the dining hall and we all ate together and it was a vibe. That's cool. I love that. Yeah. That's cool. All right, I have two. Also, the beds are cardboard. The statements about that are true. Really? I don't think so. We got a mattress topper, but it was cardboard. What? Okay, I didn't notice. Well, okay, I'm gonna go fight for that equity next. But one, I would say out of the village, the arena that we performed in for swimming, it was 20,000 fans and it was the arena that Taylor Swift had performed in a few months prior and they did Monet Water Lily shows, light shows on the pool before we competed. So that was really cool. That's very cool, very French. Yeah, and then one thing I was excited about, they had a Michelin chef in the village and he would make golden eggs to manifest for all of us that we were gonna go get gold. So I really liked that, too. That's so cool. I love that. We're serving that after the summit tonight. Well, Allie and Alyssa, thank you so much. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you.