Speaking and performing in public is the number one fear in us humans. That's right, people fear being judged, getting embarrassed and failing in public to be more scary than death. Yes, death, just let us in for a second. We are more worried about our egos and confidence being damaged than ceasing to exist on this planet. Now imagine competing in the Olympics. You've been physically straining your body for three months straight to get to this point. You're so run down, you're actually sick. It's your final performance of the entire event, so it's your last chance to take home the gold for your country. And hundreds of millions of eyeballs are on you. I'm getting excited just painting that picture.

Well, today's woman of impact found herself in that exact situation. Oh, and I felt to actually mention she was 16 at the time. Now despite all of that work in against her, to share drive and resilience, she got on that balance beam, blew the judges away, and I'm sure you know, took the gold. But as we all know, and as cheeses it may still sound, but it's true, what goes up must always come down. And after suffering a serious injury, weeks before the 2012 Olympic trials, she was forced to back out, and as a result, retire from the sport completely. But the badass that she is, She didn't let this define her. She didn't let her life's work become her soul identity. So what did she do? Well, she did what she does best. She handspring and split-leaped her way to being the youngest contestant to take home the trophy on Dancing With the Stars. Now in New York Times best-selling author with appearances on apprentices, adventure capitalists on CNBC, the Tonight Show, the Late Show, Ellen and Oprah, as well as having close to 83 million views on her YouTube channel. Guys, it's just so incredible to see how this woman is writing her own story. So please, help me and in the Founder of Fit Life, whose tagline is real, not perfect. The woman who co-founded the Body Department, a site dedicated to providing an outlet where people can talk about body image, wellness and fitness in a healthy way. The woman who not only has a gold medal, but even more impressively has a heart of gold. The wondrous Sean Johnson East. Thank you. That was quite the intro, my gosh. Seeing what you've done in the Olympics was so incredible. And I'm sure most people watching or hearing this has seen that incredible moment. But I had no idea what happened leading up to it. So from the outside, you and you're like, oh she nailed it, like, gold medal, amazing. And then I come to find out how sick you were, what you had been through. So take me through the mindset of going through that, still performing to the elite level that you did. Oh my goodness. So for most athletes, you usually compete and train for a couple weeks at a time, you take a week off, you kind of let your body rest, your mind rest, your recoup, you go back out. Well, with the Olympics, Olympic trials, a little bit selection for the United States team, I had been competing and training every single day for over three months straight.

And this was over eight to nine hours every day with hardly any sleep.

We would compete until like midnight or 1 a.m. get four or five hours sleep and have to

do it again.

And this was the very last competition on the last day and my body was just done.

My mind was done.

And I went into the warm up just kind of like out of it. I just wanted to lay on the couch. I wanted to watch TV. I wanted to eat at Cheeseburger. I could have cared less about the Olympics. I kind of took a deep breath, set a prayer, and I just said, you know what? This is your last chance to show the world. The 16 years of dedication and work and blood, sweat, and tears you put into this, You can't give it up. My body went into like autopilot. It did everything for me. I didn't even think through anything. And when I landed my dismount and finished 13, I remember looking at the judges and one of the judges kind of like gave me a nod. Like, good job. And my coach gave me a huge hug. I looked at my parents in the stands.

They were bowling.

And I saw number one by my name on the scoreboard. And I was like, ah, I did it. Well, it reminded me of, so there's a quote that I love by Bruce Lee. And he says, he doesn't just think kick. He just kicks. And that's how he's gotten to be as good as he is to forget that the mind is even there and your body just reacts.

Do you think that that's what happened to you,

that your mind had been so like worn down that the best thing that probably could have happened was that you were that tired that your body just took over? Absolutely. I mean, there's a reason why elite athletes train not only their mind but their body and vice versa. We put in thousands of hours of conditioning and going through the repetitions, but we also put in thousands of hours of working our mind, trying to get focused and learn how to control nerves and learning how to control the negativity and keep it out of your mind, those doubts and fears. And on that last day, the fear and doubt was definitely there, but I think because I was so tired and I was so exhausted, my mind just stopped fricking. And thankfully, because I put in, as inally, athlete, those thousands of hours of kind of body work, my body was just like, you know what, we got this as time, like mine just go away, and we'll do it for you. And it worked, but I think it was just a clear indication of if you put in the hours It'll it'll pay off at some point. Yeah, and so talk to me about them and the tactics that they taught you to steer off the fear and the negativity Okay, so my coach was a firm belief probably like the biggest believer in mental training that I

had ever come across in a career. I would go to practice every day and work four or five hours and he would say, okay, this is body training. But when you go home, it'll be mind training. And at the end of my practice, he would say, here's your assignments. When you go home, they'd say, I want you to picture yourself, like close your eyes, picture yourself walking into the arena, the competition, whatever it is you're training for.

So the Olympics. He said, I want you to hear what the audience sounds like. I want you to see and feel what the beam feels like. And picture every move you will make and do it 20 times in a row perfectly. So if you make a mistake or you picture yourself making a mistake, you have to start over. Like you go back to zero. And every night when I would go home and he'd say I want you to picture the Olympic arena during preliminary competition in your beam routine, picture it 20 times in a row. It's really difficult. And it would take me hours. Why does it get difficult? I think it's hard because just by nature, I think because of insecurities and fears and doubts as a human being, we naturally picture ourselves failing. I think it's just like almost like the negativity coming in and seeping into your subconscious because you're always like, oh, what if this happens? What if that happens? And my coach was a believer that if you picture it, it will happen. And doing these repetitions mentally, I would get to a point where I could picture 200, 500 routines back to back perfect. And it just kind of strengthens your mind in a way where if you can't let even the image of yourself make you mistake come into your brain, your body shouldn't be able to respond to it.

Do you still use that now in other things that you do? I try to, if I ever find myself in a situation where I'm getting nervous, I'll be like, okay, picture yourself doing it the right way, and it's all muscle memory. I mean, they are just even scientific proofs that shows if you picture anything, Your body is actually doing it just on a smaller scale.

So you have to teach your body to do things the right way,

even when you're out of practice and picturing yourself. Yeah. I mean, it's so hard to do that as an adult. You were six, six, six, seven years old. Yeah. Like, for people at home, like, guys, do you remember what it's like at 16? I mean, it's so scary. Like, the biggest thing that I have to deal with,

I think, was like, you know, getting on a bus and maybe getting picked on also. I feel like that at 16. But like, you're in front of hundreds of millions of people. So all this practice that you've got, like, I get the importance of it. And like, on the day though, How do you just not break?

I honestly have no idea because like being 27 years old now,

I feel like I could never do it. Oh, okay. Like, talk to me about that. Oh my gosh. There was something beautiful about being 16 because as a kid, you are innocently naive. You don't have all the life distractions. You're not capable of thinking of all the repercussions that can come of such a monument to an event. And you can't even comprehend the magnitude of the situation. But as an adult, you can. And the weight of that pressure can sit in a different manner as an adult. As a kid, my biggest fear was disappointing my family. And that is a huge weight to bear, but it's not as big as everything that could possibly

probably come with it.

And so as a 16 year olds, I was conditioned and trained to deal with my performance in

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