Lessons from a Viral Routine: Overcoming Self-Doubt to Reach a Perfect 10

By now you’ve seen it. The Internet-sensation video of Katelyn Ohashi’s perfect routine on January 12, 2019.

It’s pure joy, embodied and expressed in two minutes.

An article by the LA Times discusses Ohashi’s challenges of returning to her sport and how her coach at UCLA, Valorie Kondos Field helped her to reconnect to her love of gymnastics.

The most interesting lines in this article:

“A sports psychologist asked each gymnast to share: What is the greatest obstacle keeping you from success?”

What Ohashi revealed became a story Kondos Field repeats in nearly every interview she gives about her.

“She said, in front of her whole team and coaching staff, ‘I just don’t want to be great again,’ ” Kondos Field recalled. “And it was like I’d been socked in the gut.”

Ohashi’s mind-set was a response to years of pain, starting before she was even a teenager.

From there, the article recounts years of body-shaming and competing through physical pain.

You can read the article for yourself. I won’t recount it here any further.

Instead, I’d like to focus on the excerpt above, the mental shift that occurred for Ohashi, and how it applies to you.

I ask you, “What is the greatest obstacle keeping you from success?”

Take your time to answer.

It’s easy to blame other people, places, and/or things. It’s easy to take on a victim mentality.

In the end, the only true answer to this question is your desire not to be great.

I hope that sentence shakes you to your core.

You may be angry with me for writing it. I hope you are, because that means I touched a nerve.

What are you going to do about it – blame me or look inside yourself to ask why you feel the way you do?

Ohashi’s coach chose to connect with her and build trust, rather than overwhelming her with feelings of obligation because she was a scholarship athlete at UCLA.

Obligations to others (you know, like family, friends and bosses) that tend to be forced upon us when we’re not doing what those others want us to do.

Our only true obligation is to ourselves and our own excellence.

Excellence is internal.

If you are still angry with me for calling you out and challenging your story of who you are and what you can (or cannot) do, you have two choices:

1. Stay angry and stay stuck. How’s that working out for you?

2. Answer this question: How can I help you to write a new story of who you are and what you can accomplish?