Amy Purdy, Paralympic Medalist: How to Turn Your Greatest Setback into Your Greatest Strength

The ONE Thing

NOVA Media

Business, Careers, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At 19 years old, Amy Purdy went to work feeling a little run down. Within 24 hours, she was fighting for her life in the hospital. She beat the odds, and survived a life-threatening infection - but she would ultimately lose both legs below the knee as a result. What followed wasn’t a comeback story built on motivation posters. It was a masterclass in agency. In this conversation, Amy walks Jay through the moment she asked a life-altering question from her hospital bed: If your life were a book, how would you want the story to go? That question became her anchor. From there, she visualized a future that didn’t yet exist and worked backward, one problem at a time. Amy shares how she became a pioneer in adaptive snowboarding, literally building the prosthetics she needed to ride again. Along the way, she discovered that challenges don’t block the path. They create it. The same tools that helped her survive her darkest days became the tools that carried her to Paralympic medals, entrepreneurship, and the stage. This episode is about clarity, purpose, obsession in the right direction, and learning to “bounce forward” when life removes the familiar path. Challenge of the Week: Set aside quiet time to visualize your best self. Don’t negotiate with reality yet. See it. Feel it. Then ask, what would have to be true for this to happen? Start there. *** To learn more, and for the complete show notes, visit: the1thing.com/pods. We talk about: [00:00] This Is a Story About Agency, Not Limitation [02:30] They Gave Me a 2% Survival Chance. She Beat the Odds. [11:45] The Idea That Led to Agency [15:04] Find The Power to Solving Your Own Problems [17:16] Turning Failure Into a Design Problem [21:21] Amy’s First Successful Run [24:45] Everyone Feels incomplete [28:03] The Power of Visualization [33:26] Turning Pain into Purpose [40:16] From Success to Survival [44:06] Visualizing Your Best Self Links & Tools from This Episode: Pre-order Bounce Forward by Amy Purdy Read On My Own Two Feet by Amy Purdy Adaptive Action Sports (organization founded by Amy Purdy) Follow Amy Purdy on Instagram: @amypurdygurl Free Resources Want to be a guest or share feedback? Email podcast@the1thing.com Produced by NOVA

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey gang, I'm so excited to share this episode with you. It's incredibly powerful. Today I'm
0:05.1	interviewing Amy Purdy. At age 19, Amy lost both of her legs. But that did not stop her.
0:12.9	She went on to become a Paralympic medalist. She started her own business. She's written two books.
0:19.7	She has not let her physical limitations
0:22.5	stop her from living her best life. So anybody who's ever felt like they have their own
0:28.9	limitations. How do we overcome? How do we find our resilience? How do we find our ingenuity?
0:35.5	Throughout this episode, you'll hear Amy again and again
0:38.5	having to solve her own problems because no one in the world had tried to before. There were no
0:44.1	artificial legs for someone who wanted to snowboard until she created them. There were no
0:49.5	dancing feet for someone who wanted to compete on dancing with the stars until she made them for herself.
0:55.8	It's a show about agency. I hope you'll be as inspired as I am to hear Amy's story, and I hope
1:01.3	you'll check out either of her books. She has her first book on my own two feet, but her brand new one,
1:07.9	which is she's telling her full story and how she navigated these
1:10.9	challenges, is called Bounce Forward.
1:13.6	Please enjoy my interview with Amy Purdy.
1:15.4	I'm Jay Papazan and this is The One Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
1:33.3	Amy, welcome to The One Thing podcast.
1:35.6	Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
1:37.6	I know. I was thrilled to meet you at Jim Quicks event. I still remember when the book was young.
1:43.0	You promoted it. You had a picture of you sitting
1:45.4	on the steps with the book. And I thought, oh, how cool where the book is reaching. It reached a lot of
1:51.7	crossfitters. Like it caught on in the athletic world really early on. Yeah. I think because people
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