Olympic Gold Medalist Mikaela Shiffrin on Blocking Out Toxic Mental Noise To Achieve Greatness EP 1470

0:01Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection. I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jospree Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

0:44So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there. I don't think confidence has to be part of it. belief is important for sure. Believing more because it just helps you have the courage to try. And that's the most important thing if we're really getting down to the nitty gritty is just having the courage to try despite the chance that you might fail. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

1:26And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

1:43What is the Olympics like? Was that the dream for you growing up? No. Well, it was a part of my dream. I had a little notebook when I was younger that was like, I'm going to be Olympic champion. I think it was something that was like, I'm going to be the youngest Olympic gold medalist in history. And that actually did happen. 15? 15, 16? How were you? I was 18. 18. 18. I was the youngest swallon gold medalist. Sure. So there's an asterisk on that. But that was one thing I wrote in a journal. But really, mostly my goals had nothing to do with the Olympics. My goal was always, I want to be the best skier in the world.

2:22I always looked up to Bodie Miller as my big idol. And he was, Like at the time, you know, he won the overall globe. He was winning individual races. He was like, and he was inspiring people. And one of my favorite movies of all time was his documentary Flying Downhill, which is like, I don't even know. I don't know if you can buy it somewhere now. Like, I don't, I would literally want to go back and watch it again, but I'm not really sure where to find it because I had it on a DVD and I don't like have a way to play it anymore. but that was like my most inspiring he really inspired me to truly be want to be a ski racer really he's like the reason i identified myself at eight years old as a ski racer and i just did you watch him on tv or in the olympics or what did you see i watched him on tv i watched him on we had uh we would get these dvds every year it's called like world cup winning runs and it's you You know, it's produced by US Ski and Snowboard.

3:19And it's like the crazy ski fanatics, like whatever, like your how-to videos and things like that. But it was just a compilation of all the season's best winning runs. And my parents used to get those DVDs and I would watch them. And it was like all Bodie's runs and just amazing. And then, you know, during the Olympics as well. But it wasn't, I think maybe what helped me sort of steer away from having the big, big Olympic dream was actually seeing some of what he experienced through the Olympics. What was that? He had great, great successes. He got the medals and everything. And he also had the terrible Olympics that I wish I could have gotten into his mind and known what was going on for him at the time.

4:12if it was about pressure, if it was about this or that, or if he just didn't really care because he was the kind of athlete who's like, I don't care about the one medal. I want to experience whatever it is that feels fulfilling in that moment. And it might not be winning the Olympic medal. It might be just experiencing the Olympic scene in a different way. And people always have an opinion and judge it and get right into it. And I saw that as a child. And it was like, I don't want to ever have to deal with something like that like do your thing why do people have to have an opinion about it right and the opinion itself is like adds pressure and that makes it harder I feel like that sort of watching him go through the the successes he had and the challenges that he faced gave me some insight into like my own philosophy and what I find important in skiing which is it's literally just about like it's it's kind of so boring but it's just about the turn and making really good turns interesting so it's like when you talk about the process and stuff and i know that gets i feel like in sports people really really want to hear about like your goals that you want to be the greatest of all time like the michael jordan story like the i know you're going to be NBA champion.

5:37Like, you're going to do this. You're going to be the greatest. And all of the hype and the pressure is built up. And then he does it. And it's like greater than. And I've always been like, I don't think I'm going to do any of this. I really just want to be a very good skier and ski well and ski fast. And maybe someday I can kind of be the best in the world. And if I can do that, maybe I'll hold on to it. And now it's been like 12 years of racing World Cup where I've been more or less at the top level and it's still like I'm still in disbelief but I still I always still go back to the days watching like my greatest idols like Bodie Miller and Yannick Koslitz and Anya Paris and all these these athletes that I looked up to and I don't know I just like you see the struggle that they have and you see it from an outsider's perspective and then now having gone through a lot of that and seeing it from the insider's perspective, we all feel it and experience it differently.

6:34Feel what, the pressure? The pressure or the failure or the success, whatever it is, everybody's inspired by something different. So some athletes, there's some athletes out there who literally can win races just because they just want to win it. Like just thinking I want to win this race gives them the right mindset and the right intensity that they just they do. They win it. And when I think I want to win, I never win. Really? Never, ever. But you rarely lose. Yeah. If I'm thinking about winning, I will not win the race. Come on. It's happened. It's almost like 100 % of the time. So what do you need to think about?

7:14I have to think about like the intensity of my skiing or like I have to think about racing the course versus winning. It always has to be like what's happening between the start and the finish line, not what's going to happen after the finish. Wow. And that's, I don't know, it's kind of, it's a little bit, I feel like it's a little bit corny, but it's so, it's like without fail. You got to focus on the next turn. Yeah, the next turn. Like the process of getting to the finish is what allows you to win the race. And that's where my mindset has to be. What do you struggle with managing more? Overcoming failure or having all the success?

7:57oh i mean i feel like it's been i've gone through phases i mean i'm only 28 but i have gone like i could sum my career up so far in different phases in the beginning it was it was almost like there wasn't pressure i didn't really have i had success pretty early but it was always like this is so surreal i wonder if it's even real it might be a dream because you're the young one on the circuit I'm young and people keep expecting it to not happen. I kept exceeding expectations and my expectations were so high. I didn't care about anybody else's. And, and then the, you know, that's like the first three to four years of my career.

8:37And then I started to like, then I had my first season where I sort of, I did struggle and I struggled a little bit more, um, like finding the fine tuning of my ski equipment and different things. And my first struggles with my coach at that time. and like when things weren't really clicking. I was, I might be the luckiest ski racer of all time that I got, that things clicked for me earlier than they do for most other athletes. I feel like that's really important is you have to click with the equipment you have. You have to click with the coaches you have. People have to be on the same page and the same mindset and the same goals.

9:13And for the first three, four years of my career, I had that. I almost, like I almost didn't have to try. Grant, like part of that was because my mom traveled with me as one of my coaches as well. And she like she fought battles for me. She helped to make it click. But she still does. But that like there are so many of these different variables that have to go into place, fall into place or I don't know, be forced into place that goes beyond just making good turns. And then when that came down to my job, which was literally just making good turns, I could do it. and so then I started having success early on and it was just like people were like this is not real this can't keep happening and then it did and then it was like everybody caught up and the media and public and just everybody watching caught up to it was it was this season I had I actually got injured but um i was out it was 2015 um 2000 the 2014 2015 yeah 2014 2015 season and i got injured like december 2014 and then i came back sebruary 2015 so i was like out for a good chunk of the season, but I had an MCL strain and a tibial plateau fracture.

10:38And then a bone bruise, which was probably the thing that like ends up holding everybody back the longest. There's surprisingly little research on bone bruising. But anyway, that's a totally different topic. So when I came back to skiing, I kind of focused more on just slalom. But that season was insane because I I started out the season in October and the first two races of the season were these two slalums in Aspen. And I won. I reset the record for the largest margin of victory in a World Cup. How many seconds? It was over three seconds, which is like, I mean, we win races, lose races by literally one hundredth of a second.

11:25and that's typical time differences two tenths three tenths is big five tenths is like insurmountable and then if you're getting over that like people dream of winning a race by maybe a second and i won this race by three seconds i was like i don't really i don't know what just happened after an injury that was before the injury so then it was the next race series that we went to where I got injured. And then when I came back in February, I kind of focused on just the solemn races for the rest of the season. I did some giant solemn races, but it was just like mostly focused on solemn. And I think my average, it was like my average time margin of victory for the whole season was over two seconds.

12:20So pretty much every single race besides one, I won by over two seconds. That's crazy. And then the one race was my comeback race. It was five tenths or something. And that season is like the worst thing that happened to me because it set everyone's expectations that I was now going to win every race by over two seconds for the rest of my career. So I came back the next season or, you know, when finish the season, you have your summer period training blah blah blah first race of the season was in finland for 2015 16 and i won it by seven tenths six tenths of a second she's slowing down yeah yes everyone was like are you worried the competition's getting so much better are you getting worse and it was this whole it was a weird weird thing where i'd never i never experienced a victory where people put such a negative spin on it and that was that like then set me into the next phase of my career which was a lot of like performance anxiety really and it all surrounded around like what media would say and what people around me would say and not the closest people but even then like even those closest to me would be like i'll be so great if you could just like stomp on this race like if you could win it by a second to like we want to get back there and and I get it I just was like I don't you're doing the best you can do I'm doing the best I can I don't think we're there like I actually think the competition is much stronger and what like that happened that was a moment in time or a season in time and I don't think we're going to be in a place where I win races by two seconds anymore.

14:12And, but that expectation that then lasted, it's like a four, it's like a four to five year delay, like took people four to five years to catch up to the expectations I set in the beginning of my career. And then it took them four to five years to figure out that that might not be the, what's going to happen all the time. It's just, it was just weird. So there's this phase where I was puking at the start of every race. Really? Yeah. Oh, terrible. Every race? Almost every race. Just because of anxiety? Because of anxiety. Was it more worried about what the people closest to you were going to say?

14:47What the media were going to say? It was media. It was like fear of losing, more just fear of what disappointment comes when you don't exceed the expectations. I'd been really used to kind of exceeding people's expectations. And then it was like, I'm still winning, but just winning alone isn't good enough anymore. I actually have to win by more. And if I'm going to exceed people's expectations, now I need to make winning by two seconds, three seconds a regular thing. That's a lot of pressure. I mean it is and it isn't it's sort of it's so much that it's like it's not realistic and I knew it at the time but I didn't know how to explain that and it just like it's taken me a long time to get the point net to to this point now where I just realized that people will catch up and I also realized like during that period of time you know after every race we go through the mixed zone and go through all the media.

15:47And I felt like the media was directing questions in a very negative way if I didn't win by a certain amount. Or if I had a really strong reaction one race, they were like, why is this one so much more important to you? And those are all fair questions. My mind would go there if I was them as well. But I would really answer, I would take their question so literally and answer to that. And now I realize people still do that. They kind of try to get into your mind and they say they ask a question, but it's insinuates that you feel a certain way instead of just asking how you feel. sometimes and there's nothing wrong with it honestly it's just like if you ask the same question over and over and you want to word it a different way sometimes sometimes a reporter might ask like you know is it really disappointing that you came in second this race this was this was um this season when it was the 85th the we okay so there are two slalom races in a row in the Czech Republic and I won the first one that was my 85th victory and then the second day everybody was thinking this is going to be your 86th and it for like for everyone around me it was a done deal and I was not there and mentally emotionally mentally emotionally I was just I was tired it was a really really long stretch of races I raced seven days seven races in 10 days and with travel like literally across Europe.

17:22It's just as much emotionally draining as it is physically because you have to mentally and emotionally prepare for hours before every race. Racing is probably more mentally and emotionally draining. Physically, you're prepared for really whatever it can get. You've been training so hard, be into it. And then they all just get intertwined. And then you're like, why don't my muscles work anymore? And sometimes all I need is just one recovery day and then I'm literally back to it. But I just - Back-to-back was tough. Yeah. Those back-to-back races, this was the last race series before World Championships this season.

17:55And I was like on a low, just drained. But I was having a good time. I loved racing. I won the first run of the second race. And so I went last in the second run. I was in the lead the whole way down. And I lost the lead in the last part of the course. And I lost the race by seven hundredths of a second or something like that. to um one of them atlena dura a competitor who is an amazing human like she deserts she skied so well she's she's been it's she was on the podium for like some of my very very first podiums of my career and she struggled and then had injuries she's come back like she deserved it and i didn't have any questions about that but for sure people were thinking this could have been 86 like this would have been the record matching performance and you could have done it here at the scene of your very first world cup race when you were 15 years old like it would have been fateful the whole thing it was all of this the puzzle piece it was all fitting together and it didn't happen right and i i was like people were asking this it was like i am so excited for lena i mean I get it.

19:12It's not 86. Okay. What did like whatever, but I'm so happy for her and I'm so excited about my race yesterday. And I'm actually really happy about how I skied most of it today. And I'm looking forward to work. Like I started to use this, this kind of positive reframing of the questions about how I really felt. And the, it was like wild how the, the mood around me shifted from being like walking on eggshells is she disappointed what's gonna happen you know is she gonna cry is she gonna throw a fit I'm like um I'm good right and everybody was like oh okay we can celebrate the second place too that's cool and I just realized how much more control I have than I ever knew before of like the closest people around me and their moods because I can help them like I can help them feel okay if I don't win a race they feel like it's their fault because they didn't do the work they did to prepare me but sometimes it's not on them sometimes it's just like the factors don't come together in the right way and the other athletes skied better and like it took a long time for me to realize that it wasn't it's not just me disappointing them it's also they're afraid of disappointing me and it goes the like the coaches want to do their best.

20:35They want to see me win because they care. Some people want to see me lose because they're sick of seeing me win. And that's like, there's this whole dynamic, this whole like culture in there. And you have to really, you have to kind of figure out how to separate those things, I guess. Yeah. Wow. Speaking of coaching, where would you be without great coaching in your career and in your life? nowhere i mean not yeah no my whole life is like i've been really lucky with my coaches starting off with my parents my first coaches in my life they both taught me how to ski and like i said my mom she's been my coach since i was since i learned how to ski but she traveled with me my first year in the world cup she still travels with me now and she is like Like people have a bit of a misunderstanding because they think it's like a frustrating thing for her and for me.

21:32People go up to her and be like, why don't you stop following Michaela around? Like, what do you do all day when she's skiing? Like she's on the hill. She's setting. She's helping set the courses. She set some of the courses herself. She videos. She's like pulling fence, setting fence. She does. She's literally just she's a ski coach. She's just employed by me, not the U.S. ski team. Right. So people like have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. And some of her friends even will be like, come on, like come hang out with me more. Michaela's fine. And they don't realize how much of an impact she has on my career and like my mental stability and just being able to exist in Europe for six or seven months at a time without being home, without being like I'm fairly familiar with most of Europe.

22:18We are up now, but you're still not home. right you know right right and that's something like trying to like inception people's minds they get it so they stop asking her those questions because she's like oh there's nothing like everyone around you making you feel like you're completely inconsequential and someone is like in your daughter's career and who is she to say that she's like important but i'm the one who says it and it's like oh wow anyway so sure so she's a very important coach So what's the biggest lesson your mom has taught you? Okay, there's a lot. And this might not be the actually most important lesson, but pretty early on, she and my dad kind of set this philosophy that things are worth doing.

23:13I don't know how to put this. It's more fun to do things if you can do them well. and there's a way to do them well so that it's fun and it comes with like a methodical approach and studying and learning and this could be with school it could be like math is more fun when you understand it and it takes a little work to understand it but then it's then it's like doing a puzzle that's actually fun or soccer growing up with my brother he's two years older two and a half years older than I am. And we both, you know, we both wanted to play soccer and try out for the local travel team in New Hampshire.

23:50And it was a really good team. And like we needed to practice. And my mom like helped us. She got the books and some DVDs and we would study like different drills and soccer, like things we could learn and the Maradona and all these like fun tricks and and just like learn how to juggle a soccer ball like the basics of that learn how to dribble properly learn how to like then you practice working on speed you practice running technique all of those things and it was a step-by-step like fundamentals and we would we worked on that in the summer and then we'd go back to our team in the fall and especially my brother's coach he was like okay taylor is a cinderella story of soccer because he had a growth spurt the year before.

24:41He grew a foot and a half. Wow. And he literally, he like lost the ability to run. And my mom brought him back. She taught him how to run again. She got him like coordination. She like bought him a unicycle to practice balance and all of these different things, like ways. Cause his whole, his whole goal was to get back on the team with his buddies. And he came back and he ended up being the fastest runner on the team and his ball handling skills were like light years improved from what they were. And his coach is like, this isn't, this is unbelievable. I've never seen something like this happen when a kid grows a foot and a half and it takes longer to get your coordination back than that.

25:22My mom's like, yeah, well, that's what happens when you like work at it. Sure. But it was all fun stuff too. Like all summer long, Taylor and I would just play soccer together and and with skiing it's the same I mean it's all like you learn the different skills and the fundamentals and tennis too tennis something we love and it's so much fun to do it when you're playing well and it actually stinks when you're not playing well so that's kind of our that's like a little bit of a family philosophy and my mom just happens to be like the greatest teacher that I know. She just knows how to break down movements and explain it in a way that makes sense that people can learn.

26:07Like Taylor and I have a joke that she will see somebody struggling on the ski hill and someone we don't know, just like someone public just skiing. She'll see them struggling, can't make it down a trail, and she'll go over to them and help them. And it's like five, it's like the five minute crash course in how to become a World Cup skier. And by the end of that literal five minutes getting down to the bottom of the trail they're arcing turns and like enjoying it i mean like this is literally the difference between people doing the sport and not doing the sport because it's brutal if you can't make it down the hill and it is so fun if you know how to like carve some turns and you can get down and that's like the motto of life What did she teach you during those seasons or seasons of high pressure with the media or not winning as fast or losing every once in a while?

27:01What did she teach you about managing stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and that psychological pressure? Well, she actually encouraged me to start talking to a sports psychologist. and she set me up with somebody that we knew actually a family friend but also a psychologist and she like for a long time I felt like I don't need a sports psychologist because I am actually very mentally stable and and you're winning and I'm winning and I'm strong and I just I've never felt pressure I not never but I didn't pressure wasn't something like I didn't really get nervous for the first bunch of years of my career.

27:44And... You were just having fun. I was just having fun. Even at the Olympics and the Sochi Olympics and standing at the start for the gold medal run, I was not nervous. Part of that, I was pretty sick, so it might have been a little bit distraction, but I was just like pretty... Not even confident, just like at Pete's. Really? Yeah. And then I got into a phase where I got really nervous. I didn't know how to handle it. And my mom, she'd help me focus on things that were in my control. Like she'd help me focus on skiing, the technical aspects and just things that I could control. As opposed to media or conversations or other athletes.

28:33Or just like the random blips and thoughts that you get in your head throughout a race day. You know, race day is, it's wild actually in ski racing especially. It's a nine to ten hour day from the time you get out of bed to the time you get back to your hotel room after the race is over. And during that period of time, you have two minute long intervals that are actually important. and the rest of it in 10 hours the rest of it is sort of inconsequential but also very important but those two minutes you need to be on and good and it's like sometimes you're like how do i manage this and your mind goes everywhere how do you prepare for this how do you prepare for it how do you get through it you literally your brain is like the thoughts that run through my head on a race day it's like I don't know how to ski this I don't I don't know the combination in a slalom court like this flush or I in a downhill oh my gosh downhill is crazy my mind goes totally wild because you're you're going like something between 60 to 80 um at any given moment and then you're going off these jumps and some of them carry pretty far like women's races are typically around 20 to 40 meters but there are some jumps where like I've gone 50 55 meters and I ever since I was little I had a kind of scary accident going off of a jump and ever since then I have like recurring images of myself falling off of a jump like crashing backwards hitting my head helmet flies off like my limbs are flinging around and And that is in a downhill without fail.

30:24When I see a jump, I'm like, I know that's not going to happen because I know what the technique needs to be. I'm solid in the air, but I have to like breathe and like focus myself. And I'll literally be in the course, racing it, skiing up to the jump, imagining myself messing it up. Really? Until the moment I go off and I'm like, no, now or never, you better do it right. Yeah. What has the sports psychologist taught you about how to not fully eliminate the memory of pain from the past of falling or potentially falling or whatever it might be, but how to know that's happened before so you're not reckless, but also be at peace knowing you've mastered skills to be prepared for this model.

31:10Yeah. Well, now I've worked with since since that first that first season where I started working with a sports psychologist, I've now worked with several different psychologists, a couple of different sports psychologists and now actually just like a clinical overall psychologist. And how helpful has that been? It's been really, it's been huge. And a lot of it was like learning things about myself that almost maybe got hidden over the years. Maybe I started to shift my focus from the things that were important to me to the things that seemed important to everyone else. and just finding a balance because both actually I feel like both things are important a lot of times we talk this day and age about self-care self-love and like just just placing emphasis on what's important to you but if there's people around you that you love it's okay if their opinions matter to you as well it's just like find the balance between what seems like it should be a priority and you should prioritize yourself but that doesn't mean that you discount what everyone else is saying it's just like take it all with a grain of salt do your own personal weighing situation and come out with like come to your conclusion based off what you think is most important but I didn't like I didn't necessarily have the balance at that time so with my first sports psychologist we we worked on finding a balance of what's like important to me versus what's important to the media or how like I started doing some media prep questions like we would figure out what people might say that would trigger me and give me that it's not just like it's not just puking it's it's feeling like you're choking that's what it is it like triggers not that anyone wants to know this but it triggers a gag reflex but it literally feels like in the collar of your shirt is too tight and you just you have this pressure point right here like your food stuck in your throat and that just like that triggers it will make you throw up yeah and and you were trying to figure out what's causing that choking why do i feel like some like the like something's closing in on my throat right now because there's literally like if you've seen me in the start it still happens sometimes but it doesn't scare me anymore like if i pull down my my race suit sometimes it feels like it's right there in my throat and i'll take my fingers and I'll just pull down my race suit like this.

33:45And that's normally a sign that I'm feeling nervous. But I don't mind it. It doesn't necessarily trigger me to go off on the side and puke or whatever. I'm just like, oh, I need a little space in my throat. And I'm comfortable in that space now. But it took me multiple psychologists to get to the level. Like the last one I worked with, actually heading into the most recent Olympics, we're talking a lot about being comfortable or getting comfortable being uncomfortable and you are likely to be uncomfortable when you don't know what the outcome of something is going to be right and you're not in control you're not in control and you want to be in control and that was a really like that's how I always used to I didn't care what the outcome was I really cared how I got there and then we'll figure it out like when I cross the finish line then we'll see if I if it was good enough to win or not and why do you care more now then than you did then uh I wouldn't I actually think I'm I've sort of come full circle a little bit now I almost it's almost like when I was first starting out um and some of that probably has to do with this season and the record kind of because like basically I this season I was like I don't actually I never felt like I should have been any the person who was close to resetting this record I didn't it wasn't a goal it wasn't on my radar actually ever like I watched like Lindsay do that get there.

35:33And I was like, that's happening for her. And I never, ever, I had never, ever thought that I would be that one. Um, so even getting that close this season, I was almost like, didn't want it to happen. I almost wanted Ingmar to stay the record holder for all of eternity. Why? Why did you not want to break the record? I just like, uh, why did you want to diminish your own greatness well i don't know i i i guess i just felt like if it happened then well if ever if it happened everybody would start calling me the greatest of all time and i don't see myself that way and it's like i do struggle a little bit when the world puts a label that doesn't coincide with my label for myself so i'm like i'm just I don't even know.

36:29I don't. Mikhail Shifrin. Like, I got a name. I don't know. I just the goat term is just like weird to me. I feel I feel like there's more than one. And the term itself, it implies that there's only one, but there are more than one. Like people will debate LeBron James, Michael Jordan, like any of the others for the rest of eternity. And I think that's good. I think that's a beautiful thing about sports and and skiing. I hope that people debate, you know, I'm part of the conversation like that in and of itself is enough of a win for me. But I hope people debate it for the rest of all time. Like, I hope it's part of the conversation that two American women are at the top of the conversation for greatest of all time.

37:14Like, that's really cool. That's really cool for American ski racing, for our sport, for lifting the sport up in the U.S. And I don't want to take that title. Like, I want it to be the conversation. because the conversation means people are talking about it and interested. And I just don't see myself taking that over. And I want Ingmar, I want him to be the legend that his name never ever disappears from the sport because he set the sport on the trajectory it is. So there's all these reasons why I was sort of conflicted about that. But in the end of the day, I just felt like, well, I'm not retiring.

37:58I'm doing well at this right now. If I keep skiing, if I keep skiing this way, I probably will break the record realistically. Break, probably reset. I don't like the break term either. Reset the record. Not in skiing. You don't want to start breaking skiing. No, it's in a break. So realistically, it was going to happen. So it was like, whatever. It'll happen when it happens. And just like letting that go and just not caring about it. It was like the beginning of my career when I sort of was just interested in finding out what my potential was. Right. Less pressure and seeing what you're capable of every race.