Thank you for having me today.

I think first and foremost, growing up in a single-parent household, I grew up in the Seattle region in the Pacific Northwest. My father coming to the United States as a Japanese immigrant, not knowing how to speak a word of English, not having a single dollar to his name, and essentially seeking the American dream of trying to figure out what is going to be possible for him to survive in this country, the kind of hard work and discipline, an immigrant mentality. My dad was very early on, in my early years, was adamant about always providing to me a series of questions versus always answers whenever I would ask him something. So, for example, I'd ask him a simple question about why is the world like this or why does this person do that? He never would give me the answer. He instead would prompt another question of myself to then ask myself if I could find the answer in some capacity. You combine that with the fact that I had this enormous amount of energy as a young kid, sports was a natural outlet for my father to place me into the after school activities because he didn't want me to basically get into mischievousness after school. He would align my schedule to try to wear me out by the time I got home that I wouldn't be able to kind keep him up at night because it was a single-parent household and my father worked all the time.

I stumbled upon this sport of short track speed skating at a fairly young age. At the age of 14, I had moved from Seattle to upstate New York in Lake Placid to train and be a part of the Junior Development Olympic Training Program. It was there that I learned about structure, about teamwork, about mentorship through my coach and also about my own passion and drive for the sport.

All of it, fundamentally, started from my father. He was always planting in my brain, "Apolo anything that you desire, you can achieve in some level, in some capacity." He was always, strongly making these statements around, no glass ceiling, you're going to break through these things, there's no limitations to how you live your life, and your mind is the most incredible asset that you have. In ways, as a child, he would say certain things to me. My father would always give me praise for the work and the effort that I gave versus the result. I didn't know that at the time, what he was doing was curating a way of thinking to focus on process much more than the prize. While we have the target and the bullseye, which is ever so important to remain focused on, because we use that metric and we use that target to propel ourselves, simply focusing on the target is not enough. That reverse engineering and that process of what the Olympic cycle will look like 4 years from today is really hard to do. That's forecasting 4 years of your life in advance. That was one of the beauties and one of the lessons that I learned throughout the Olympic path. It started with my father.

That's a great question. Growing up, I didn't really know my identity in terms of my biracial background, being half Japanese, my mother was actually adopted. Her background and ethnicity is a mystery to her, until we had the technology to do these swab tests and to then go and see what kind of DNA heritage that my genetic makeup will give me.

I think the influence from the Japanese culture was apparent, although my father left that culture at the age of 17 because he didn't like the rigid protocol like environment when it came to academics. That's the primary reason that my father left. He felt like he was studying from one test to prepare for the next test and the next test. I thought it was actually very mature of my father to say, what does this have to do with me living life. I don't understand why this test is just preparing me for that test, which prepared me for this. He thought that there was more to the world than just that. At the time, he saw the United States as this incredible opportunity to explore what curiosities he had in his mind. He didn't have to follow this rigid career path that was already laid forth for him. My grandparents were very much against him moving out of Japan. That was completely abrasive. It was against the norm. So, my father showed some natural kind of resistance to what that looked like and he came to this country. I don't think my father can help in the way that he thinks, my father still counts in Japanese in his head. Even though he's been in the United States and he's an American citizen, he's been here for longer than he's ever been in Japan, he still speaks fluent Japanese. He's an American, but he's got this really interesting blend of Eastern and Western influence. He has molded his own style in the way that he has approached.

How that has influenced me as I grow older is I yearn for nature. I'm at my best when I'm in nature, when I'm closest to nature. While I love the bright lights and the city and the electrification of the New York City, of Hong Kong, of London, of Shanghai, of Tokyo, I feel the most grounded and in tune with my inner voice and that inner compass. It's very easy for me naturally to become distracted because I have a curiosity of a cat. I love to explore and get immersed in the different opportunities and businesses and people and cultures and food. For me, nature allows me to wipe away all the distractions.

One thing that I think that the Asian culture, especially the Japanese culture, has shown me is that while it may look very shiny over there on the other side of the grass, the reason why it looks so nice and the reason why that grass on the other side looks so nice is because of where you're actually standing. This is where you actually should be. It's not until you go when you leave that and you go to the other side, "Hey, my grass is actually really shiny over there. It looks really good." You kind of ping ponging back and forth, what have I been doing for the past 6 years? I was just chasing these things that look like they were better, but the main thing, my true north, that inner voice, that's what makes me happy. That's what makes me fulfilled. That's what's actually I'm really perhaps really good at.

Again, that's a very simplistic view of how that has influenced my life. It also, on the sporting world, gave me a tremendous amount of insights because of my father always posed these interesting questions. He would ask me, Apolo, I know you want to win. I was a hyper competitor, but only concentrating on the outcome is not going to simply allow you to hit that target. I give this example. If you think of someone who's an archer. In this beautiful form of archery, which is highly prized also in the Japanese culture, you see someone pull the bow back. When they let go of the bow, that bow is going towards a target. The Archer, him or herself, the sole focus is to hit the target, hit the bull's eye. As soon as they let go, it doesn't matter how much they scream, yell or shout, the bow is not going to change. It's going to do whatever it can, whether the wind takes it, whether something happened. That focus on the process of the preparation, the heart rate, the calmness, the instantaneous flow of letting go and almost you surrender to what that result will be, which takes a lot of confidence and ability. It is so hard as we live in a society where we do not like to accept what the outcomes are. It doesn't matter if we don't have control over them. We refuse to accept them. That's a strength, but it's also a hindrance that can really weigh on you. That phenomena played out many times in my life in the sport of short track speed skating.

For many of the viewers who have no idea what that sport is, we race on the inside of a Olympic sized hockey rink and there's several skaters that race against each other at the same time. We go at 35-40 miles an hour, leaning over these impossible angles. Strategy is a big part of this. You can probably run the same race 4 different times and get 4 different winners. The difference in a 40 second race between the person who's first and the person who is fourth, who's off the podium is very small. You have to get to a point in your career, all of us did, where you can accept the outcome and to realize that a lot of things perhaps are not within your control. That focus on process versus prize was really important in the world that short track gave me. That is one of the most incredible insights that I carry with me today, and I've been almost 11 years retired now.

I find that these interesting insights that both my father gave me, that life has given me, that I learnt from traveling and talking to the person next to me on the plane. There are these incredible lessons all around us. Until we find ways that we can find that, it's actually quite challenging because, it's much easier to only focus on the prize and want the prize, which like these medals behind me, you can see. But the reality is, these medals are just pieces of metal. The story behind them, the 4 years, 8 years, the 12 years is really where the insights are. That's where the life lessons are. Those are the things that I take with me the most.

You mean like a specific location?

I think I'm partial to mountains just because I had grown up in the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, so I'd seen the Rockies. I had lived in Salt Lake City and the mountains there. I'm just very familiar with that. I love water, mountains, woods. One of the most profound experiences I've ever had, growing up in a single parent household, not having a lot of money, my father was a genius in showing me that nature can be a teacher and a tool that I can experience for free. We would go to these areas that were very remote in the Pacific Northwest, and we would just explore and walk and we would talk and we would sit. My father would sketch. He would sketch the trees. It was a very powerful experience and one that I find to be the most valuable now when I'm actually really facing a ton of hard questions.

There are 3 places that I love the most right now. By the way, I've traveled all over and I love all of these new places. But the ones that I seem to always go back to are in the Pacific Northwest, there is an area called Moclips or Copalis Beach. It's very rugged. It's not what you would think as a white sandy beach. The ocean is very rough. I don't recommend always getting inside of it because it's really cold. Most importantly, it's very quiet and there's not a lot of people there. It rains often. So, it's very rich and lush with this green. Another place would be that's dry, the Salt Lake City and the mountains up in Park City or Eden, Utah, and then Colorado and Colorado Springs. I spent a lot of time up and down those mountains on my bike and hiking. Those are the places where I've found to just go and walk.

Tonight, I'm actually taking a walk through some of the mountains here in California with a friend of mine. It's a time where I'm able to shut off, turn my phone off, connect and be present. I always see it as a form of healing. When I was younger, I was in all these amazing places and I just didn't know my connection with it. Every year that I grow, I find that, that happens to be where I can become integrated back into this world that I feel solidified. I feel like time starts to slow down and it's hard because we live in an era where digitization and the acceleration of efficiency and effectiveness and how we work is really important and we thrive on those things. I notice that it takes me about 3 days to truly decompress and not have that conditioning mechanism to reach for my computer, to reach for my phone. Those are the 3 places that I find that really help me provide that center and recognizing the true north and also to remind myself not to get too distracted because it's so easy today.

I always say that I think sport found me versus me finding sport. I was athletic as a child, but the inner voice or that conversation that I would have introspectively, that reflectionary period, started really early. I'll give you one particular example of that and why that's been such a big proponent of my life is.

I'm going to accelerate through this story. At the age of 14, I went from relatively unknown as an athlete in the United States to training with a junior development program for 8 months and then actually winning the overall U.S. championships. What that means is I was now ranked as No. 1 in the United States amongst any age groups, not just as a 14-year-old or 15-year-old. So, technically, I was the captain of the team as we went to go compete at the world championships and abroad, at the age of 14. I couldn't go out to share a drink with our team, who was 35 and 37-years-old for another 7 years. It was a very awkward situation, technically, being the captain. I'm just a young kid who still has braces. From that moment in time, which was 1997 until 1998, which was an Olympic year, the year that I was supposed to make the Olympic team in Nagano, Japan, my grandparents were supposed to come, because it's not too far from their house, my father would be returning back to Japan to show his parents, hey, I left against your will, but look what I have helped create and curate into this world.

It was a perfect story where this half-Japanese American was coming back home to compete in an Olympic Games. At the Olympic trials in 1998, I finished last, number 16. My father was devastated, not only because of the fact that I didn't make the team, but more so because of how I lived and trained during that year. I was essentially throwing an opportunity away. Without getting too granular on the details, because I know we have a limited amount of time, my father took that as an opportunity and he actually saw a potential negative habitual pattern that I was creating in terms of my process. It was easy for me at that time to shy away from putting myself completely out there for the world to see, even though I was expected to win and it was easier for me to just self-sabotage in a way, because at least subconsciously, I would be able to tell myself, well, I didn't really try 100%, so therefore, of course, I didn't make the team. But if I would have, maybe I could have made the team. It was much easier to say that versus saying I gave 100%, I gave all that I have, and it just wasn't enough. It wasn't my time. That's very hard for us to deal with, that radically transparent mere conversation we can have with ourself. My father was not a proponent of that. He was really adamant around, I don't care how you perform, I don't care how the result adds up, I care about what you do in your preparatory phase.

He took me from those Olympic trials. We went back to that cabin that I had told you about in the Pacific Northwest, that's very remote. There is not many people there. I always joke around and say, if you're part of the witness protection program, this is where you are sent, because you just don't see many people. It's a beautiful place, but at the time, in December, it rains all day, every day. I had been there many times with my father for holidays, and that's where we would spend our time and energy. I'm 15 years old and my father gave me some tough love. That tough love unfolded in a way that my father said you were going to stay here, alone without me, until you figure it out what it is you'd like to do with your life, at the age of 15.

That created obviously a very abrasive relationship between myself and my father. I had already been a young teenager and thinking that I was the man of the household and all those things that come with that. I think he also felt that he didn't have a choice, because anything else he was telling me, I just wasn't listening, I was throwing away this incredible opportunity. While I'm there at this place alone, I literally see no other humans for days on end. I'm there and I have food, clothes and I have a journal. There were no video games. There's no social media. There's no computer. There's no phone. There's a payphone down the street, but that's it. I was in my own shell of my brain.

That's when the introspective conversations began. That's when the questions arose, internally day and night, throughout the middle of the day, on long runs, on long walks. When I walked on the cold beach, when it was raining, and I was still going for long jogs. While there was no parting of the clouds or the sea or some beautiful thunderbolt came down and said, oh, here's the answer. The reality is, I came to a conclusion and came to a decision to say, I'm willing to take the chance. I'm willing to go down the path of uncertainty. I'm willing to be uncomfortable in this pursuit to see, do I have what it takes to be a part of the Olympic team, and I am going to make that choice and I'm going to make that commitment, not only for my father, but to myself. That was really hard to do.

That was the moment also in which something else clicked and changed within me as a young teenager. That was my first introduction into the world of how powerful this actually really is. As we navigate through the human life experience, most of the trauma, most of the pain, most of the desire and want and fear, it's all created within this same little realm which is in here. That began this process down, a very exploratory phase of sports psychology and Eastern medicine and Eastern philosophy, and just dove much, much deeper into the realm of the psychological aspect, the human behavioral aspect, the mental visualization and the breathing that I couldn't possibly imagine. Nature gave me that very early. It gave me answers, not in the way that I think we would normally think, but it gave me answers to my own calling. We call that inner sanctuary, the inner sanctum between our two ears, between the self, between our spirit.

The power of belief and hope is so visceral. We can't measure it. We do things that go against the laws, it seems, of physics at times. I just think that maybe perhaps we haven't found a way to measure these things yet. I'm sure at some point we will, maybe it's got something to do with this electricity, who knows what those elements are. I've experienced them. I know when all of the odds have been stacked against me, I have risen above what we normally thought was physically possible. I've skated times and done passes and performed in training and in competition in ways that I've never explored before, when everyone else would essentially count me out. I think that this is the testament to what we can do. There's no guaranteed outcome here. Nature, my father, that upbringing and those elements were just incredibly powerful tools to remind not only ourself, but the world of what's possible and to continuously pursue that question, both internally and externally.

I think that's beautifully said. You articulated that in ways that many of us can relate to. I call it self-sabotage or perhaps getting in our own way, and we do it often. That's why human change and human transformation is so hard to do, because we've got hardwiring conditioning. We've got millions of years encoded into our DNA of responding and reacting a certain way when something happens, whether it's fight or flight, whether it's fear, something in some capacity relates back to that. When we have been living as an experience on this planet for, let's call it 10 years, doing something a certain way and then finding out later that that is not the most effective or efficient or will suit the outcome that we need, changing that's really hard. It usually, from my experience, has always resulted either in someone hitting rock bottom and having that shock be so visceral and so powerful, they now no longer will accept what they were doing before as a standardized baseline of how they perform or what they do, whether it's reaching for a particular food, whether it's doing a habit. Whenever someone talks to you, maybe you're hyper defensive, whatever those things are. These are conditioning mechanisms that unless you are reminded constantly, to perhaps to take a beat, take a second, remind yourself of what the original goal and intention was. It's easy to revert back. It's very easy.

The reason is, we like to go towards things that we understand, things that we find and identify as being comfortable, and that is having normalcy. That's what makes us feel like we've got this sense of control. It's when we stretch outside of that zone, we get into, what I call the yellow zone. Green Zone is exactly what I just said. It's going throughout your day, doing the routine, doing the things that you know at the back of your head. There's nothing wrong with having a routine. That's important. But, I do think for growth and for change and for transformation to occur, there needs to be some levels of resistance. It's just like training. The calluses that I have on my hand are the perfect example. This is because my hand has been training to build up the resistance. Your mind is the same. Your mind has to become calloused. The only way to create that is through a series of repetitions and mechanisms of repetition so that you can break the existing conditioning. Because, you are trying to change something within a one-week period when you've got 10, 20, sometimes 30 plus years of history doing. Of course, it's going to take some time. It's not supposed to be easy. That's why you did it before for so many years.

For some of us who've been able to transform from self 1.0 and evolve towards a self 2.0, it's not without this back and forth. You try, you fail, you try, you fail, it's through that repetition. I believe that's really important. First, identifying and recognizing, looking in the mirror, this is my own personal process, having the open conversation where being vulnerable and saying, look, I'm not perfect. I make lots of mistakes. You are complicit in your own actions and in your own failures. Absolutely. You are complicit in those. Some of them maybe perhaps are out of your control, but you have a role in some capacity. We know, Apolo, that you are not operating at 100% full potential. That's a part of the human experience. The beautiful thing is you don't have to become relegated to what you were. You don't have to say, I am what I am, and I'll never change and I'll never progress and I'll never do these things. That's a decision for you to make.

The next step is first identifying and then accepting and being OK with that and then saying, now I will make the step forward, to begin this transformation, to begin those steps towards improvement, towards pushing the envelope, not going so abrasive that you are now in the red zone, you can no longer accept any more information, everything is happening too fast and it's just not working but going into the yellow zone and embracing the challenge, embracing the grit, embracing the difficulty and the opportunity that lies at the end of this tunnel. That is exactly what you said. We go from, we want to make this change and we will always be pulled back to self 1.0 because that's what's comfortable, that's what gives us warmth and that's what's familiar.

We all know what that feels like. Whether you had micro trauma as a kid and someone made fun of you, that didn't feel good. Kids can be brutal, or you were singing and people told you, you are terrible at singing or that maybe perhaps that had done something to you, now, later on in your life, you react and respond in a certain particular way. Recognizing these things, accepting them as they are, knowing that this existence and this experience is highly flawed, but it's also perfectly flawed in the same way. The sooner that you can recognize the opportunities and the challenges that are in front of you, the faster you can accelerate your process towards moving towards that change.

I do those things on a daily basis. I still utilize that in terms of the way we performed on the ice as athletes, in terms of the entrepreneurship activities that we have, in terms of helping and seeking insights from others, and then just reaching out to other humans across this country and across this planet of, "Hey, you've got this reservoir of untapped potential within you, and you don't even know it. You don't even know the power you have as the gift of life that has been given to you." It's time to wake up. It's time to stop pointing and start holding up the mirror, looking inward at first, seeing who you are today and accepting that person. It's all good. This life and experience is a gift. What you do with that is really up to you.

I wrote a book called Zero Regrets: Be Greater Than Yesterday. I think that's an excellent question. I've always tried to pursue a life of zero regrets, knowing that that is probably impossible. I have had many regrets. I've had many mistakes, many shortcomings and many failures, personally and professionally. I think the number one thing I don't know if I regret, but if I could go back in hindsight, 2020 and make a change, it would be in the way that I interacted with the world and my teammates for about 10 years. I'll explain a little bit more in terms of context and texture.

There were many years where I was just so disciplined and committed to the path to where nothing else in the world mattered to me. There's beauty in that. There's also on the other side, the world of balance. It can actually be toxic where you are tied to the outcome, but you're also tied so religiously to what you're doing. It's a beautiful way to hone in this laser-like focus, but it also limits your view of the world because you are less open to adaptation in other areas of your life. For 15 years of my life, I did not care, nor did I want to explore other facets of my personality or show both to my teammates and the world the vulnerabilities and the passions that I actually had for the people that I raced against, because I wore this poker face, because I never want to seem like I was weak. I wanted to be indestructible. I never wanted to be tired. I brought a level of intensity out of a fear for failure, mainly, that never allowed me to breathe and enjoy. Enjoy the fact that I had just won a World Cup medal, enjoy the fact that I had just won a world championship or I just had an amazing practice today. It was always had to do more. I need to do more. There is more to do. Someone else on the other side of the world is working harder, that is better genetically designed for the sport than I. I am so far behind.

For the longest time, these medals behind me that are laid out, were in a sock drawer until February of this year. My whole life. It's not like I have them in some incredible display case or I show them around or carry them with me when I travel. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was like, "Man, Apolo, you've had some pretty awesome experiences and you shouldn't shy away from them. You don't always have to think of yourself as the underdog. You don't always have to operate as if there's this hamster in the cage and you just need to keep running and running." Because you'll do that and 10 years will fly by and you'll look back and say, wow, that was an incredible experience, and it was necessary and it was a part of those chapters of my life.

Back to your question, to me regret is something that you would change, and I'm not sure that I would actually change anything. Without getting too much into detail, I've had some devastation in my life. I've had real pain, real loss, real stress where I've thought I'm not going to make it. This is it. I was only on earth for the Olympic period, and that's it. I'm not supposed to be here for anything else. Maybe I've thrown everything away, whatever that is. Then there's another inner voice inside, I think, that says, don't think that you are, but know that you are, seek purpose, seek something greater than yourself. While I have many things that I can go back and perhaps change, perhaps improve upon other businesses or opportunities I perhaps would not have explored and explored others. It's made me today so incredibly grateful and also hungry at the same time to continue.

I think regret is something that is a painful conversation to have with our self, because all of us have huge opportunities missed, big mistakes made, trauma, pain, anger, rage, sadness, fears. To me, they seem to be really similar across the world. Doesn't matter if you are a billionaire. It doesn't matter if you live in a village 20 miles from the nearest running water. Our human experiences are actually much closer than we realize. I think the existence is in how your perceptions of this world are. While I still continue to play the manmade game, and that game is one that is governed still a lot by the paper finance and the money that we live in, I choose to play that game. I also choose to turn that game off at times.

I'm just grateful. I love that question of regret. I tell my fiancee all the time about this missed opportunity and that one. She kind of chuckles and laughs. The one thing that she always tells me, you've had a lot of experiences. That's the takeaway. Whether I did that investment or this opportunity or I tried that, didn't work, I'm still here and I'm still getting after it in some capacity. I'm still eager to learn. I'm still naturally curious. I'm still grateful. I still have this inner fire to grow, personally as an individual, to know that I'm imperfect, then I can continuously move. Regret, I have many. Would I change them, probably not.

I think originally, the lifelong learning stemmed when I retired, I call it my first great divorce. I'm writing the new book called Hard Pivot. A pivot, in speed skating is when you're in the corner and you have to basically do a complete 180 on one leg and go in the opposite direction, very much like what a lot of people are facing today with all the challenges that we have. We're all pivoting and we're all adapting and we are all reinventing in some capacity, whether it's personal or professional. It is required and change is constant.

When I retired in 2010, 10-1/2 years ago, I knew right away that I needed to find other facets of my personality and passions that I was hopefully going to seek and find as exciting and as powerful as the Olympic experience. I was determined to find it. It was that great divorce. Essentially, I had my first true love, which was sport and sport had taught me, nurtured me, carried me, it had shown me to be strong and had shown me to choose strength over weakness, to choose discipline over inconsistency. It allowed me to choose all these things, and taught me so much. Like that, it had told me that I was going to be done. It had a younger suitor, one that was more attractive, better marketed, greater possibilities of sponsorship, greater story, genetically designed to go faster than I could ever possibly imagine. There was nothing that I could do to ever come back to that first true love. Most Olympic athletes go through that process, and it's really visceral. It's almost like this violent breakup that you have.

I hit the ground running because I was really afraid of not being able to find something that I was as passionate about like I was in sport, but then also like the world had expected me to succeed at the same level performance in the world of business or whatever career that I was going, in the same way, which was not really true. It was just in my own head that the world thought that. I was just setting my own personal expectations and goals. But I had not put in any of the work. I spent 15 years of my life crafting to do one particular thing. Overnight now, I want to be the best in something else that I've got no experience in.

The lesson there was I needed to have full immersion. I actually was behind in many areas of my life. While I had been advanced in some areas far beyond many people in their 50s and 60s, because of what the sport and what the life lessons and insights gave me, there were some areas where I was still a 15-year-old. I had not actually matured at all. The only way for me to accelerate that process was to go and do. That's exactly what I did. I just started saying yes to a lot of things. I traveled like a maniac. I surrounded myself with people from different areas of the world, different businesses and opportunities and cultures and food. These experiences were so important. That's where that lifelong learning and desire came from. I lived in a bubble that I thought was the most important in the world, egotistically speaking.

This is so funny. I actually thought everyone watched the Olympics when I was skating. I really believed that. I was like, what do you mean you don't watch the Olympics? That seems odd. And they're like, I've got a lot of other things that are actually a lot more important. I also didn't know all of the things this world has, both in terms of its darkness and in terms of its light. I had a narrow view, and it wasn't until I started traveling that I had both the perspective on wealth and poverty, on having and not having. I also saw the opportunities around the world that existed and the way that people think, the way that people eat and share, and the commonality amongst everyone, amongst all borders. That lifelong learning was just inspiring to me.

I only studied athletes for so long, and some philosophers. Now, I was studying just people. I was just interested in the human behavior. I was interested in why does this guy, who is seemingly on the outside, is so incredibly successful in business? It looks like a serial entrepreneur is a master of reinvention, why does he or she continuously keep getting up and going to work. What is that? It's not work. This is a part of what they desire. This is what makes them happy. They like to play the game. That playing of the game is a part of their process. That's where they find inspiration and motivation and fire.

I too love to learn. I love going to conferences. I obviously love speaking and I love spending time with people. I love seeing the flicker of light go on in someone's head or seeing the soul come alive, so to speak. Because, I have been in a dark place, and then I've also seen some light. I've seen the flicker that turns into a flame, which turns into this man or woman on fire.

These books here and I've got many more over there. I just find it fascinating. People have an innate ability to articulate ways that I struggle with sometimes on pen and paper. My book that I'm writing now, Hard Pivot, is really centered on reinvention and the struggles associated because of the human behavior conditioning that we all have. To find this similarity, commonality amongst those who somehow figured out, they are naturally curious, even when they are not an expert in their field, they just want to learn more. It's not because of just wanting to consume and just be this consuming monster, but it's because they naturally are curious. There seems to be a commonality there amongst those who've this ability to absorb information, retain it, and then utilize it and wield that as the tool that it is. Like a knife, it can carve the most beautiful of sculptures and it also can stab yourself.

I am no expert. I am absolutely, definitely not a guru. I'm a guy who's had an incredible life experience in sport and in traveling the world and in entrepreneurship. I just love to learn and I love to grow. I think that when 10 doors close, one of these has got to be open. That's kind of how I live my life. I'm just grateful to continue learning.

By the way, I learn all the time. It's not like there is a business tycoon in Hong Kong that I'm learning from. It can be just a friend who's sharing his or her experiences. It can be someone who I've known for a long time, where we're having a deeper conversation. They reveal something to me, and then that happens to be something really powerful insight that I'm like, wow, that was profound. I need to write that down.

Life is what you make of it, and it's also the perception of those things can be greatly beneficial to how you look at the world.

Most people ask me, what is your favorite Olympic medal? Most expect me to grab one of the gold medals. My first medal I had ever won is from the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Games. You can see there it says, "Light the fire within."

The reason why this medal is so powerful and important to me, I know that we're running low on time, so I'll try to make this story really short. September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and in the East Coast and the Pentagon. I was supposed to go to practice that day. We didn't, obviously. 6 months later, the Olympic Games happened in Salt Lake City. It was the first major event in this country that there were that many people around. Many people, not just Americans, around the world were really uncertain. They were on edge. People didn't want to travel. They didn't feel safe. They were uncertain of what was happening in the economic climate. People felt like we weren't living that traditional American dream that everyone thought. As we walked in the opening ceremonies and I saw the special forces with their night vision goggles, standing on top of the rooftops, waving to us as we were walking in, as I was in the opening ceremonies and saw them bring in the American flag into the arena that was flown in New York, there wasn't a dry eye in the place. It was a time in which our country was brought to its knees. I was humbled. It was shown to be vulnerable. It was shown to be imperfect. It was shown to also be divisive. A lot of polarizing opinions and values.

The thing that sports somehow changed was this cheering for Team USA, not to beat everyone else, but really to cheer for a team collectively, unifying. I was 19-years-old at the time. I didn't truly understand the power that this held. In my first final, in that 1000 meters, the one in which I had this medal, I was supposed to win. I was the favorite. I was the top guy. I was in the lead with 2-1/2 laps to go. I was in the lead with 1-1/2 laps to go. I was in the lead with a 1/2 lap to go, 4 seconds remaining in the race. I was in the lead with a 1/4 of a lap remaining. 2.5 seconds remaining in the race. I was in the lead. I could see the finish line. I thought I was going to win gold. At the snap of a finger, I was knocked down and an athlete had fallen into the side of me and I had fallen down. We had taken out the Canadian behind us. A Chinese athlete had fallen down a corner before. So, 4 athletes had fallen into and crashed into the pads. I ended up stabbing myself in my own leg and scrambled to my feet. I see the guy who was a half lap behind, this Australian skater crossed the finish line and win gold, and I threw my skates across the finish line. I didn't even know what place I actually got. Confused, I get off the ice, I rip my racing suit down. I noticed a hole in my leg because I had fallen and basically stabbed my own leg. My natural first response was like, I was supposed to win that race. That was my gold. It was taken from me. That's not fair. That race should be rerun. There were a lot of things here that I'm not OK with. I was pissed. I was angry.

In walks my physio, the guy who's going to essentially stitch my leg. He's got this twinkle in his eye and he looks at me and he's like, that was the most incredible race I've ever seen in my life. That was crazy. That was amazing. I was like, but, you know, I didn't win. He's like, what? No, man. Did you hear? Did you feel it? Did you feel the electricity out there? We've never had that since September 11, 2001. As I go and get stitched and I walk out to the awards ceremony, I get up out of the wheelchair and I walk onto the podium. Right before I get out there, a reporter sticks a microphone in my face and says, "What does it feel like to have lost the gold medal?" I said something along the lines of, I didn't lose the gold, I won the silver. I go and I put my arms up as I stand on the podium and I celebrate while people are cheering.

Reflecting on that, that medal was reflective of the state that we were in, I think, as a country. The fact that you think that you are going to win, you think that you are number one and you think that you are deserving of a very particular result that you feel is yours and no one else's. Then something happens that is out of your control, or maybe you were complicit a little bit in that outcome and you are knocked on your butt, you fall down, you crash and maybe even hurt yourself. Your true character and built is what happens next. It's very easy to stay down, very easy to not continue on, even when it seems like everything was not going your way. If you don't get first, I don't want the result at all.

We scrambled to our feet and we finish. We continue on, we continue to carry that struggle further. That representation of what that race was, was the first real life lesson that became a part of my soul.

It is almost 18-1/2 years ago that first race happened. That story and that race and that lesson I carry with me today in everything that I do, that when I don't get the result that I wanted, when something happens, when I perhaps fail and I'm knocked down, I remember that it is only a failure if I stay down. It is only a failure if I accept to end it, to stop it, to not continue on. There's nothing wrong with accepting a result. I had to accept that silver. I think it's more in line with what we do moving forward and to continuously keep growing and keep getting back up.

Now I'm incredibly grateful for the color of that medal, and I would never change it to gold. Hopefully that provides some context and some story for each and every single one of you who are potentially listening to this. In your own lives, as we go through the ups and downs of what the life experience has, and to realize and recognize that this is a part of these chapters. You may have the pen in your hand as you write and manifest what you believe that you want and what you believe that you deserve. The reality is, you probably won't get every single thing that's there, but you will be able to get the opportunity to react and respond in ways that perhaps will greatly enrich your life in terms of fulfillment, happiness and growth. I seek that on a daily basis, not perfect in any means. I make mistakes daily, but through the work, Hitendra, of what you do, not only for large scale organizations and companies and leaders, but also for people and to recognize the human experience can still be molded in a way that will make you smile. That to me is life.

I'm actually living my dream. It took me many years to recenter and refocus and recalibrate what I deem to be a purpose in life, to help other people see the inner power that they actually have and to make the shifts and make the reinvention and make the transformation and adaptation in any environment and situation, to make that choice to do so. That's what I'm doing now through this book, through this digital program that we're creating, through all the speaking and the podcasting that we do together.

These are things that I believe are typically thought about from the corporate environment in the old world as the soft skills in your business. I argue heaviest, no, these are the hard skills, these are the fundamental things that you need in your life, in the work space and at home and everything else that you do. The sooner that we can start teaching that in the academic field, earlier in junior high school, in elementary school, in preschool, in high school, in university, the greater that we have a richness and openness and an adaptability in how we approach problems, how we approach results, how we respond and react to the everyday interactions we have moving forward. It's going to take a lot of repetition. It is going to take a lot of time and energy and commitment from millions and millions of people. That's what I yearn for. That is my dream. My dream is to feel and touch and see and hear the sense of camaraderie, the sense of unification and solidarity, the sense of we come from all over the world, in different ethnic and cultural, beautiful backgrounds. All of us were on this floating rock, floating through space. We are on an island, floating through life. Don't forget that these borders are so built up in a way that you look like an alien over there, and I'm an alien over here.

We share so much in common. It's beyond our wildest dreams. While we've got our own unique attributes and strengths, that's what makes the culture so beautiful, rich, depth and history, the fact that we've gone through beautiful times and really dark times. This is another test. This is another opportunity for us as people to tap into that reservoir of potential that exists. The sooner we do that, we will progress and we will go far beyond our wildest expectations and even dreams.

I'm living the dream. The thing that I find the most important is conversations like these reinforce the importance of me focusing on what it is that I do in helping people to have and live a pursuing life of zero regrets, knowing that they're going to have many. But, every day is a new chance at trying to tackle that goal.