We live in a world where we are told the only way to get ahead in life is to work, work, work, and grind out life until you eventually “make it.”
We’re told to devote ungodly amounts of hours and labor into the tasks at hand, and if we dare require a break, that is the equivalent of failure.
Now, we have an Olympian to show us another path to greatness: Alysa Liu.
Practically born into the world of figure skating, Alysa Liu started her career at just five years old and was competing in major competitions as young as 10 years old. She became the youngest skater in history to land a triple Axel in an international competition at 12 years old at the 2018 Asian Open. Then she became the youngest woman to win the US title at 13 years, and the youngest skater to win back-to-back US titles in 2019-2020.
Alysa Liu was a star from the moment she stepped onto the ice, but the cost came in the form of exhausting hours, extreme regimes, and non-stop grinding hard work. Eventually, figure skating became her entire life, and she had lost herself in the demanding pressures that the sport asked of her. It became less of a passion, and instead, it became a job that consumed her whole being, and that was when she, at just 16 years old, retired from figure skating as a whole. When everyone believed she was at the peak of her career, she shocked the world by pulling back and leaving.
In the meantime, she studied at UCLA, climbed Mount Everest, and found hobbies and passions that she enjoyed. In other words, she found herself.
In this pursuit of discovering who Alysa was, she began to remember the love she once had for figure skating and decided to return, but on one condition: Everything had to be on her terms.
She trained when she wanted to, ate what she wanted, skated to the music she wanted, created her own choreography, and wore what she wanted to wear.
And guess what? She came back and won two gold medals at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games and became the first woman in history to do so.
She proved to the world that not only do we benefit from taking breaks in life, but that it is necessary for our mental and physical success.
Previous generations before us grew up with a focus on these ideologies of working themselves to death, or that you just needed to follow the traditional formula of life until one day it eventually paid off. But these older generations missed out on one of the most important lessons of life.
Life is meant to be enjoyed.
We all have a purpose and a place here on this Earth, but we’re not meant to be miserable every waking second of our lives, and we are the only ones in control of how we live. As humans, we’re meant to find the balance of a passion to keep our hands busy and a passion to feed our souls. The breaks we take in between our work are meant to remind us that we are human and that there is always more to life than what we see in our tiny worldview. It’s up to us to remind ourselves of our humanity, and to put in the effort to change our own lives if we find it’s not what we want.
Bottom line is, take it from an Olympian. It’s important to show up and put in the effort, but also to step back and take care of our physical, emotional, and mental needs. We have one life; make sure you enjoy it.