I am honored to have welcomed former Olympian and Alpine Ski Racer Christin Cooper for a BonneFire Intimate Chat. The video above offers a taste of our exchange about the balance of excelling as an individual and as a team member, both as an elite athlete and in business, and the journey of transitioning from one high-stakes career to a new venture– in her case as a restauranteur.
Says Christin: “It’s easy to look back and think that I knew what I was doing. In fact, it was petrifying. It was petrifying to leave the world that you know, and the way it’s ordered and all of the rhythms of an athletic life in which you know you can be successful and sort of take a leap into, you know, ‘well, what’s next?’…
“The biggest challenge, and the beautiful challenge, I think, is to recognize that you know a lot about the world, and it’s a matter of transferring that knowledge into a new field.”
She shared that she’s found that the lessons she learned while striving to improve in skiing are applicable to everything else. Each mistake or failure would lead to an opportunity to evaluate her performance and how to improve next time. She says: “Ski racing is fabulous for learning lessons, because you are constantly getting knocked off out of your skis into the snow. Most great champions in ski racing are actually quite humble, because we get knocked down so often… It is a constant learning curve.”
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