Apolo Ohno shares his most valuable lessons for overcoming challenges
with resilience, creativity, and purpose.
In speed skating, a hard pivot is an aggressive shift of direction that
requires courage, practice, and split-second timing. For Apolo Ohno, the
most frightening hard pivot of his life didn't happen on the ice--but
rather, when he had to hang up his skates for good. "After my final
Olympics, I felt confused, vulnerable, and adrift without purpose," he
says. "Yet that's when I realized my experiences had given me something
much more valuable than medals and memories. I had tools I could use to
shift my life in a new direction--and most importantly, these were tools
anyone could benefit from."
With Hard Pivot, Apolo combines practical guidance, personal stories,
and deep insights from the psychology of success into a resource to help
you through challenging times. Here he shares his most valuable lessons
and tools, condensed into the Five Golden Principles:
- Gratitude: A daily practice to help you maintain perspective,
cultivate empathy, and alleviate stress
- Giving: How to elevate your life's purpose by offering your time,
attention, and resources to others
- Grit: Exercises to build mental stamina, resilience, and toughness
to persevere through hard times
- Gearing Up: Ways to prepare yourself to meet the unknown with
flexibility and grace
- Go: Develop the courage to take risks, learn from success and
failure, and come back stronger
When life drastically changes--whether by choice or circumstance--the
hardest part is often letting go of what was familiar and stable. Yet in
Hard Pivot, Apolo provides the tools and inspiration to create a new
life filled with greater purpose, wisdom, and joy. "You can trust
yourself," he writes. "You can lean into the curve, pick up momentum,
and speed down the track to success. In that pivotal moment, you might
even find that you're having the most fun you've ever had. You're in
flow. You're enjoying your precious life. And you're winning."
