In his inspiring TEDx Talk, U.S. Olympian and figure skater Vincent Zhou shared a deeply personal journey of triumph, adversity, and rediscovery. Through vivid storytelling, he detailed his early love for figure skating, the challenges he faced with injuries and mental health, and how he redefined success on his terms. Zhou’s story resonates beyond the skating rink, offering universal lessons about resilience, purpose, and the power of self-reflection.

Key Takeaways:

Here are five key takeaways from his talk that highlight the wisdom he gained through his experiences.

1. The Power of Rediscovery and Perspective

Vincent’s journey highlights the importance of rediscovering one’s passion, especially after experiencing burnout, depression, or setbacks. After initially quitting figure skating due to injury and mental health struggles, he realized that skating wasn’t the root of his pain—his own overwhelming ambition was. This revelation allowed him to approach the sport with renewed joy and perspective, emphasizing the value of reconnecting with one’s purpose on healthier terms.

2. Success Comes Through Adversity

Vincent’s story underscores that true success is often forged through adversity, pain, and sacrifice. From a debilitating injury and depression at 12 to the crushing disappointment of missing the 2022 Olympics due to COVID-19, he faced numerous challenges. Each trial forced him to dig deep, ultimately redefining success as not just external accomplishments but internal growth and resilience.

3. The Importance of Taking Risks Despite Fear of Failure

Vincent faced a “lose-lose” situation before the World Championships: compete with minimal preparation or withdraw and risk lifelong regret. His choice to compete, despite almost certain failure, taught him that trusting even a “frayed thread of hope” can lead to unexpected opportunities and success. This decision to confront his fears head-on highlights the transformative power of taking risks in the face of uncertainty.

4. Mental Health and Self-Reflection are Crucial in High-Pressure Environments

Throughout his journey, Vincent’s battles with mental health were as significant as his physical challenges. His candid reflections on depression, isolation, and the importance of finding purpose beyond external validation serve as a reminder of the need to prioritize mental well-being. His rediscovery of joy in skating came not from chasing medals but from letting go of fear and embracing freedom.

5. Resilience and Internal Motivation Define Success

Vincent ultimately found that success was not about medals or titles but about resilience, grit, and staying true to himself. His ability to rise from the depths of despair, reconnect with his love for skating, and perform at his best despite overwhelming odds exemplifies how internal motivation and self-trust are critical to enduring and overcoming life’s challenges.

Vincent Zhou’s story is a testament to the strength of the human spirit. His words encourage us to face our own struggles with courage, to reevaluate our definitions of success, and to embrace the possibilities that arise when we choose to believe in ourselves.

Read the full transcript of Vincent’s speech below:

Transcript

When I was young, my tireless ambition led to soccer ball shaped marks on ceilings, toppled bookshelves, and various forms of property destruction. To remedy this and keep me from flying around the house, my parents put me into a lot of sports to tire me out so I could fall asleep and dream of flying instead.

One of those sports was figure skating. True to form, in beginner group classes, I was already zooming around the rink, too excited to follow the instructors. Consequently, I failed my first test, so my mom put me into private lessons to learn discipline.

This approach worked. Before long, my relentless will to tackle challenges head-on resulted in rapid development, and I began outpacing skaters three times my age and size. After a few years, at age 10, I won my first of three national titles.

However, I discovered the hard way that the road to success contains great obstacles, and with great motivation comes great disappointment. At age 12, I underwent surgery for a major injury. I was bedridden for months, but even worse, the crippling depression that followed took me out of competition for two years and caused me to undergo critical changes in my identity as a developing teenager.

The trophies on my wall were replaced with obscure quotes of melancholia, and my favorite colors turned from bright neons to the muted earth tones of solitude. By 13, I knew what it was to languish in empty-handed soul-searching from sunrise to sunset, numb and hopeless with a vast, empty pit inside myself.

Although my knee recovered, my mental health deteriorated. Skating, which once brought me joy and motivation, became the cause of my pain. I quit. Devoid of purpose, I returned home to try reintegrating myself into a normal school life.

Over time, my animosity towards skating slowly began to fade into an aching acceptance, like a healing scar. I started to realize that skating wasn’t the cause of my pain. My own overpowering ambition was.

I’d pushed my body too far, and the consequences had caught up. One summer afternoon in 2014, a friend invited me to an empty public session. I thought to myself, why not? And I went in with no expectations.

I was trying triples like I had never left. In saying yes to my friend, I began to tear down the walls of inhibition between myself and skating that had been erected by injury and depression. In taking this step, I opened myself up to an entire new realm of opportunities and meteoric growth.

I took this newfound determination to the world stage. As the 2022 Olympic season rolled around, everything was going right. I was in the best shape of my life, winning major competitions against the best skaters in the world, people who hadn’t lost in years.

There was a tangible buzz around me as a serious threat for the Olympic podium. Champion even. I knew I had a chance to achieve this and fulfill my potential. And furthermore, being in that position validated all the trust and sacrifices I had given to this uncertain dream for the past 16 years.

In Beijing, the night before my event, I was sitting on my bed deep in visualization when the US Olympic Committee called to deliver news of my positive COVID test. There was shock first and foremost, but also this overwhelming cognitive dissonance where I knew I was supposed to be doing my final preparations the night before competition, but instead I was packing my suitcases and being sent off in an ambulance to the quarantine facility.

I had to keep snapping myself back to reality because every time I closed my eyes, it was to do my visualizations back in my room in the Olympic Village. I was devastated, but what happened hadn’t even fully sunk in yet.

At some point, I tried to film myself vocalizing my thoughts as a way to force myself to process. However, I ended up sitting in front of the camera for over two hours Because every time I opened my mouth, all that came out was broken sounds.

There was an outpouring of love and support from my family, friends, team, and hundreds of thousands of internet strangers, but at no fault of theirs, I still felt utterly alone. I was just numb and hopeless, and the vast pit from my depression in 2013 had returned.

On the third day of quarantine, the final results for my event came in. Seeing them and realizing I could very well have meddled was this follow-up blow, like a tsunami after an earthquake that nearly leveled me.

Over the course of my quarantine, retaining my sanity was a struggle. Despite telling myself that this moment would not define me, and I should be proud of everything else I accomplished, I couldn’t find solace in any of that, because it just felt like I had lost my entire life’s work in the blink of an eye.

My coaches tried to refocus me towards the next opportunity, the world championships in five weeks. And so to prepare, I did visualizations and off-ice training in my little room. But it was useless.

The validation of my journey I had felt only days prior was gone. Alone with nothing but my own thoughts for company, the days passed in a hazy blur of misery. Being released in that room a week later when I finally tested negative was simultaneously empowering and crushing.

I was happy to breathe fresh air again, but happy? Who was I kidding? I had just lost the one thing I had given my entire life to. Any happiness felt undeserved and misplaced. I said hello to my teammates, hugged them and smiled.

But it was just a performance, and I was good at performing. I returned home with only four weeks left until Worlds. I didn’t give myself a single day off. Before I even ate a proper meal, I was already back on the ice.

I knew I was suffering and my plan and instinct was to immerse myself in my work and lose my pain in the effort and physicality of training, motivation as usual. Until I realized I had none. My body wouldn’t work.

It was like trying to run upright in a pool. My entire mind was consumed by defeat. The next morning brought the bitter realization that what happened in Beijing would never change. This overwhelming sense of loss hit me and left me completely empty inside.

The chasm for my depression was back in full force. I remember trying to approach my skates to go to the rink, but the sight of them was so painful that I physically… recoiled. I sat down in a corner somewhere and cried until my arms went numb and my vision went blurry, and at some point my mom, the strongest woman I’ve ever known, sat down next to me and we cried together.

She’d never done that, ever. She told me it was okay if I gave up, okay if I withdrew from worlds, and that she would understand. My mom, who had unwaveringly drilled tenacity into me since I was a kid, told me it was okay to give up.

And so this idea of withdrawing from worlds festered. Competing meant almost certain failure because competing after almost six weeks of little to no training would end in disaster, casting me even further into that void I was all too familiar with.

But on the other hand, if I didn’t take that risk and withdrew, I would never sleep soundly again, knowing I allowed myself to not even try in the most critical moment. I would have to live the rest of my life having left skating on the bitterest of notes without closure.

It felt like a lose-lose situation. When my mom started planning a vacation in Yosemite, the week the competition was supposed to take place, reality hit. I knew I would never find peace within myself if I willingly let a 1% chance of redemption slip through my fingers, even if the other 99% held dire consequences.

So as a result, I chose to compete, hanging on to nothing but a frayed thread of hope. When I stepped on the plane of worlds, I suddenly realized I had just done the hardest part. Deciding to trust that frayed thread of hope to hold my weight, I felt liberated.

I no longer had to fight my doubts and what-ifs, just like stepping onto the empty public session again after nearly quitting. An entire realm of opportunities opened up in front of me. I remember for the first time in years reveling in my rediscovery of speed and freedom.

Every rip of my blade against the ice was pure joy. I finally learned in those moments to let go of my fear and trust myself. After nearly losing what I’d lived and breathed my whole life, rediscovering it in the most unlikely place allowed me to treasure it more than ever.

After some of the best practices in my career, I started to realize I had a chance to meddle. The impossible materialized into an opportunity that dared me to believe in it. And believe in it, I did.

Competition day came, and I skated really well. Far better than I had dared to hope a week earlier. I skated first in the last group so one by one my competitors followed and when the third to last skater score came up I was still in the lead.

I had done it in that moment all the collective pain and despair from the last six weeks collided with the triumphant catharsis of achieving the impossible at my last competition. I fell to my knees crying and by the time I opened my eyes again the next skater had finished.

My teammates were celebrating alongside me and my coaches came running with tears in their eyes no words necessary to describe our shared emotions and pride. During the victory ceremony all the highs and lows over the years replayed in my head too brief to fully grasp yet too present to ignore.

As I relived my journey I realized I derive meaning through adversity, pain, and sacrifice, and without any of that, there is no meaningful success. Success was the depth of my passion and grit. Success was my ability to rediscover motivation in my darkest hours and stay true to myself despite incredible odds.

The adversity I faced forced me to search deep within myself and eventually discover the root of my motivation. I spent so many years trying to define success via external accomplishments, but in the end, I realized that this whole time, success lay within.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you.