It was great seeing so many prolific athletes using their platform to raise awareness surrounding mental health at the Olympics this year. From Simone Biles to Michael Phelps, the topic was front and center. Destigmatizing mental health struggles is long overdue in sports, and I'm glad we're finally having this conversation. Raising awareness is great but I also think that practical solutions are also important.
Life after the Olympics - especially your first - can be quite tough. The 2 best pieces of advice I can give to anyone going through this is:
1) Set brand new goals and anticipate ways to stay busy and engaged after the Olympics is over.
2) Try and do all the things you couldn't do while making sacrifices for your sport.
I worked insanely hard to get to London 2012 and once it was done, I didn’t have any new goals to move onto after the Olympics were over. I really think this hurt me. My first games coincided with finishing out my NCAA eligibility, so I wasn’t a part of the college swim team anymore. Because I derived such a big a part of my identity from my sport, without it I suffered a big identity crisis.
This is not new for most athletes and is incredibly common. Not knowing who you are when only one part of your life is missing isn’t normal, and it taught me how important the act of diversifying your identity really is.
Because I had another year of college before graduating, it didn't help that the environment I was in was also heavily tied to my swimming career. The whole reason why I was there in College Station Texas in the first place was for swimming! I struggled to find a sense of belonging and purpose without my sport in my life.
In retrospect, perhaps if I'd move straight after London to a brand new city and stayed busy, then maybe I wouldn't have slipped into such a difficult place. I learned my lesson because after my next 2 Olympics I changed my living environments quite drastically to allow myself to create a new routine. After Rio 2016, I moved to Tonga, which was a drastic change from where I'd been doing my training, which was in San Mateo, California. This time round after Tokyo 2020 (I finally know what to call it!) We moved apartments from Chelsea to Hell's Kitchen. This environmental shift also made the transition to normalcy much easier.
Then came what I call: “The Floating Years” (2012 - 2015) those were really hard. This is the part of the story where I moved to NYC after college, determined to establish an identity away from being an athlete and a swimmer. I made a decision back then to use this time of my life as an opportunity to begin a self-investment project. I invested time in things I missed out on pursuing because I was training for the Olympics.
It was an incredibly difficult yet rewarding time of my life where I learned a lot about myself!
I did it all baby. I wasn't too concerned with NYC partying and nightlife, I just wanted to explore being a weird art kid while trying to find myself for a bit. I took acting classes for fun at Upright Citizens Brigade and tried my hand at Improv Theater. I was told I was good but I didn't think I was very good lol.
My biggest regret and remorse from my childhood is not having enough time to do both sports and art at the same time. I took drama all 5 years of High School (in NZ, H.S. is 5 years) and I could never do the school plays because the rehearsal times always clashed with practice. I'd audition for fun, get the part I wanted, and then have to turn it down because it didn't fit in with my practice schedule.
The plays at my High School were competitive. Extremely so for the girls at least. I remember our drama class having 5 girls all with their sun in Aries, and boy did they create drama alright! Battling it out tooth and nail for the lead roles. Can you imagine?
I remember during my Junior year of High School I was a lead in the SmokeFree Stage Challenge Dance competition alongside my 2 besties Mihi and Tessa! It was a contemporary dance competition and I really loved the process of putting on a show together. We even made it to the finals!
It's a real shame that if you're an athlete in this world, you can't be taken seriously as an artist. I feel the two paths share a lot of parallels in their process alone. From staging and blocking, to rehearsing and perfecting, to technical rehearsals, costume and design, final dress rehearsals, matinee performances, and then finally: showtime baby! The process is very similar to that of putting together the perfect race they just slightly differ in terms of craftsmanship..
When I moved to NYC in 2013, I exposed myself to as much art as possible, in all shapes and forms. I went to comedy shows in the lower east side that my best friend Tommy and Gloria would host. I went to as many Broadway shows as I possibly could. Exposing myself to this kind of art changed me. I still remember the numbness I felt on the train ride home after watching Zachary Quinto in "The Glass Menagerie." Tennesse Williams moved me to tears on the subway ride home. All from the grave no less! Impressive.
I remember the first art show I went to in Chelsea. My High School BFF Shanta took me to her friend Rohan's art show, amongst many other art shows over the years because she’s good like that. I didn't really understand the art. It always made me feel stupid. As if there was a certain level of intelligence necessary to be obtained before understanding what good art is. This was all until Shanta said: "there's not really anything to understand, it's just what you think is cool or not cool." Typical Taurus to the core: keep it simple. This has always stuck with me whenever I look at paintings, artwork, or sculptures. I find myself asking myself: "is this cool or not?"
So as I preoccupied myself with art and trying to develop a sense of identity away from the pool, I slowly began to feel like myself again. Engagement is what was missing from my life. What better way to engage thyself than to self-explore and self-discover? One should never feel ashamed nor bad for investing time into one’s own identity.
Long story long: the best way to avoid a post-Olympics slump and identity crisis is to have things to do to keep yourself busy once you're done with competing. It isn't wise to invest all of yourself into your sport alone, find ways to stay well-rounded.
Yes, it might seem that in order to be successful at your sport you must put in the time, but it is healthy and normal to view yourself as many more things other than just an athlete who does a sport. Doing so will pay off dividends to good mental health in the future.
If you find yourself busy and it still is tough to move on from the Olympics, try changing your environment. Rewire your brain. Stay busy. Write down new goals. Commit to something new, like maybe a 30 day writing challenge that will push you to become a better!
Take it day by day and if it doesn’t get any better, talk to someone. Whether it is a friend, family member, or paid professional, sometimes venting about what you’re going through helps. Maybe they’ll have helpful solutions, maybe they won’t. The point is: the year is 2021 and nobody should be struggling with mental health in silence anymore. We are all in positions to practice empathy and compassion everyday, why not use them to make the world a better place for us all?
In any endeavor, you get the idea. Invest in other skills and work on different parts of yourself that have been neglected because of your sport and you'll experience both fulfillment and engagement that will serve in your best interests long-term. Mental health is important so look after yourself out there kittens.