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Introduction

High Achievers

People often ask me what it was like to compete at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. They tell me that they can’t imagine anything more incredible. But I always tell them that I feel my peak moment wasn’t at the Olympic Games themselves but at the Olympic Trials six weeks earlier.

In the last few hours before that race, many thoughts zoomed through my head. I knew I had the proficiency to compete at the elite level. As an athlete, I had made the sacrifices asked of me. I had regulated my behaviours to achieve my goals. Through all my training and many competitions, my attitude had always been to keep learning, keep trying. Although my failures had taught me more than my successes had, I was acutely aware that each win and each loss represented only a moment in time. But I had done the work, recommitted after every bout of bone-shaking doubt, and I knew I could achieve the results. I competed on the last day of the six-day trials, and leading up to my race, I had heartily supported my teammates, encouraging their success. They reciprocated in turn, telling me how much they believed in me, too. Warm, positive feelings abounded.

As I stood on the blocks, I felt a deep sense of belonging. I never once in those moments doubted my identity as a world-class athlete. That I had spent many years preparing for this event filled me with assurance. As I jumped into the water (backstrokers start in the pool), I said to myself, “Here we go. No matter the result, I have done everything I can to give it my all.” I wanted this, and even though I was nervous, I had mentally trained to control these emotions. Before the starting buzzer sounded, I looked up to see my entire family in the stands. I had always known that they supported me, but more importantly, I had come to realize that they would love me no matter the result. They were a secure base. There are no guarantees in high performance sports, but as the starter said “Take your mark,” I was filled with an unflagging certainty that the race was mine to own. I had no fear and I was ready.

I touched the wall at the end of the race, exhausted, heaving to catch my breath. The times flashed up on the board. I knew what I had to do to make it to the Olympics: meet a qualifying standard and come in either first or second. I looked around and saw my coach jumping up and down, my friends running toward where I would exit the pool, and my family hugging each other in the stands. As I write this I still feel the emotions of that moment. The heavy weight of dreams lifted, my emotions skipped from joy to relief, from excitement to an incredible sense of honour. I was going to compete at the Olympics. For the next few hours I celebrated with family and friends. And then the reality hit me. I had spent my entire career wanting to make an Olympic team. I now had six weeks to reset my goals. I had never before this moment contemplated my race at the Olympics.

At the Olympic Games, with thousands of people in the stands, reporters and commentators whirring about, the lights of television cameras beaming, and the eyes of millions of people in their homes watching me, I was terrified. I was the same elite athlete I had been at the trials, but my attitude now was one of fear. “What if I mess up in front of all these people?” I didn’t feel I belonged with my fellow competitors, and I couldn’t identify as an Olympic finalist. My confidence faltered and, along with it, the belief that I could put together a better performance than I had at the trials. Although I often used adrenalin to fuel an amazing performance, now I simply couldn’t channel it. I swam slower at the Olympic Games than I had at the trials.

I HAD STARTED getting serious about swimming at age fourteen. Some family friends and coaches saw potential in me, and with my parents’ naive consent, I left my family in London, Ontario, to attend high school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at Pine Crest, well known for its swimming and diving teams.

I received a full athletic scholarship at the University of Michigan and was a multi-year All American in five events (100-yard backstroke, 200-yard backstroke, 200-yard individual medley, 400-yard individual medley, and 400-yard medley relay team). For my junior and senior years, I was the captain of the Michigan Wolverines swim team.

At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, as Melinda Copp, I represented Canada in the 200-metre backstroke. I finished sixth in my heat and nineteenth overall. The reality was that I prepared myself to make the Olympics, but not for my life beyond that. Over the course of my swimming career—the ups and downs of training, the failures and successes along the way—I was incredibly happy and fulfilled. I had more fun and excitement than I could fully appreciate at the time. People around me challenged me to achieve things that I never thought I could. Like many athletes, I planned some things down to the tenth of a second, and other things I simply did not think or worry about.

Many of you probably have a story like mine, in which years of preparation and training came together to achieve a dream. You may also have felt the reverberations of uncertainty that inevitably surface after you accomplish a life goal. Although I prepared myself to make the Olympics, it’s fair to say that I did not prepare for my life beyond that point.

When I left competitive swimming in 1985, at the age of twenty-two, I had just graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in communications, and I was ready to enter the professional world. Success and winning had defined me. I felt proud and confident. My post-sport career, I was sure, would be just as stimulating and affirming as my athletic career had been.

And then something unthinkable happened.

Nobody offered me a job.

Walking around my adoptive city of Toronto, I would mull over my situation. “I know how to work hard,” I would say to myself. “I listen and follow advice . . . I know how to set and achieve goals . . . I know how to follow tight and tough schedules . . . I know how to succeed. Why won’t someone give me a chance?” Until that point, I had been encouraged and celebrated. I was an Olympian, and yet I couldn’t find a job. I even had trouble getting in the door for an interview.

After leaving the world of competitive sports, I felt like the metaphorical fish out of water, and I needed to find a new pond to swim in. But I had no idea how to do that. All I knew was that I felt alone and like a failure. I craved new ways to win, to be recognized, to feel confident . . . and to afford an apartment. I wanted to be in good physical shape, but fitting in “exercise” around trying to find a job was a foreign concept to me—my previous life had been about training to the point of failure, day in and day out. I envied my non-athletic peers and fellow university graduates who had already started their careers, and I was watching them score win after win. But I myself was falling apart.

Eventually I did put my head down to focus on pushing forward, one objective at a time—something I learned to do well during my athletic training. After some time, I received an offer for an entry-level job at an insurance company. I was incredibly relieved to no longer feel as though I were treading water.

But the echoes of my intense athletic life persisted. Driven to prove myself, I naively set my sights on running the whole company one day. I was on “athlete auto-pilot”: give me a task and I would do it faster, and better, than anyone else. But after a couple of years into the job, I found myself staring down a career path. I had declared a goal—and I did not back away from goals—but I had begun to question whether I truly wanted it. Was I replicating habits I’d formed as an athlete simply to be seen as successful? Tough questions such as these forced me to reassess myself and my goals.

A few years later, I married and was blessed to become pregnant. Although I had happily chosen family life, having my first child was a wake-up moment. As an athlete and in my early career, life had been all about me. I was far from a selfish person, but I had lived a selfish life. Now life was no longer about just me. My husband Jim and I were solely responsible for our daughter (and then our son and second daughter). My all-in attitude was “Be the best parent you can be.” But a voice inside me was constantly whispering, “I need something more.”

So I went searching.

Over the next three decades, I discovered new aspects of myself and worked through several careers. I bought a franchise, was named best new franchisee, and then sold the business when one of my children needed more attention. I stepped back from professional life, focused on my family, and volunteered in my community. Each new job, each volunteer position, each new venture, I gave it my all, always optimistic that by working as hard as I had in my previous life I would achieve the results I desired—and I did. But the longing for something more never left me, and I kept searching for that missing piece.

Throughout those years, I started over many times and negotiated a few messy middle stages. In retrospect, each adventure, every experience—positive or negative, joyful or gut-wrenching—added a valuable piece to my puzzle. Finally, twenty-seven years after I left sport, I figured out my own personal next, where my passions and purpose were fully engaged. I discovered that my true joy comes from coaching people, particularly those who have ambitious goals or those who feel they’ve suffered a setback and want to establish new goals, even if, in the current moment, they feel as if they are treading water or, worse, sinking.

This brings me to an event that eventually led to me writing this book: the death by suicide of my neighbour, canoeist John Wood, who ended his life on January 23, 2013, a death that rattled all who knew him.

John participated in three Olympics (1968, 1972, 1976) and won silver in the C1 500-metre canoe event at the 1976 Montreal Games. He was a business colleague of my husband, the father of four children roughly the same ages as ours, a fellow golfer, and an all-around good guy who volunteered and tried his best to leave a positive footprint on the world. Despite all this, John suffered, mostly silently, from the disease of depression.

For me, the taking of one’s life is a result of an illness that is no different from cancer or heart disease. But like many other friends and relatives of people who have died by suicide, I kept turning over the question of why John, a seemingly intense but kind person, had done what he did. Tragically, he took his reasons with him. After his death, I spent time with his widow, Debbie, who has since become a good friend. She said that John was always looking for an intense, athlete-like experience. He was trying to rediscover the deep passion he had experienced while competing at an elite level.

Over the years, I had often contemplated what athletes experience physically, emotionally, and mentally, both on and off the athletic stage. John’s death prompted me to dig deeper into the experiences of athletes as they move into a post-sport life. My conversations with Debbie helped lead me from questions of why and toward wondering how. How could I, as a professional coach, help others who are going through athletic transitions? How could I add value to this complex and relevant topic?

I am a big believer in the importance of pivot points—those times in life when we undergo fundamental changes—and 2013 was a tremendous pivot point for me: I had just lost my father to cancer, I was thrown by John’s death, and I was also acutely aware that my life was experiencing major adjustment (Jim and I became empty nesters). The upheaval motivated me to research how athletes who had achieved great success at a young age discovered new forms of fulfillment and joy after their athletic careers ended.

Questions upon questions spilled out into a list. What happens when athletes stop competing? What happens to them when they get injured and can no longer perform at the high level others expect of them, and that they expect of themselves? What happens when their natural desire starts to wane, or when they can no longer keep up with younger athletes hungrier or more talented than they are? Who are they then?

Some athletes transition out when they are still teenagers, especially those in sports such as gymnastics, where youthful talents are admired above all else. The careers of athletes who compete at a college level or in professional leagues may end when the players are in their twenties or early thirties. A very few athletes, such as Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Steve Nash, and Serena Williams, will transition out of sports later than that. The experiences that come with seeking out a different form of work, relationships outside sports, and a new sense of meaning can range from being uncomfortable to being profoundly disruptive and discouraging. In some situations, the transition can lead to extreme and even self-destructive acts.

In October 2013, about nine months after John died, I decided to interview one hundred people who identified as having made the successful transition from a level of high achievement to their next stage of life. Little did I realize where that determination to interview so many would lead me: back to my athletic mindset. When you discover a personal next, you find the determination to make it a reality. My project was to figure out how to make a difference. I began with athletes located across the United States and Canada. I ended up interviewing Olympic and World Championship medal winners, and professional athletes from the CFL, LPGA, MLB, MLS, NBA, NFL, NHL, NWSL (National Women’s Soccer League), PGA, and UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale), as well as amateur and college athletes from basketball, canoeing, cross-country skiing, cycling, downhill skiing, dragon boating, equestrian sports, field hockey, football, hockey, kayaking, rowing, rugby, soccer, swimming, synchronized swimming, track and field, trampoline, volleyball, water polo, and wrestling. As I embarked on these interviews it became evident that I could learn how others survived life-altering events such as retirement, major illness, or a change in family circumstances, so I searched out approximately twenty non-athletes who identified as having positively transitioned to another life phase.

All told, I completed 103 interviews, and after they were transcribed, I had around two thousand pages—about one million words—of incredibly personal and heartfelt stories. As I pored over the material, I saw a larger story, too: a series of interlocking experiences that form the shape of an arc, one I call the “arc of transition.” This arc depicts the ascent to a personal best, the valley of a messy middle, and the eventual incline to discovering a personal next—new goals, new meaning. Not only that, but out of the wisdom of these million words emerged key practices that high performers use to achieve their goals.

So what can elite athletes teach us about navigating major life and career changes or going from a personal best to the next peak performance? What can we learn from a top executive who’s been packaged out, or from someone who walked into a doctor’s office expecting routine test results and left with a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness? How do people continue when a child, spouse, parent, or sibling dies? Anyone who strives for a personal best will face a personal next. In this book, I share the major lessons distilled from these interviews. My goal is to help you in your own transition from one peak performance to another.

I wrote this book to trace how people get to their achievements, to discuss frankly the often chaotic experience of transition, and to help with the challenging and sometimes painful journey of finding a personal next. I know how difficult it can be for someone who has achieved great heights to let go of past glories and find a new path to meaning. This book will help recalibrate how you see performance, and specifically peak performance—not as a capstone event but as one of many important but distinguishable peaks you will have in your life. Between each of those peak performances there is usually some kind of major or minor transition. This book offers tools to assist you in that transition period. Personal Next is also for all those who influence, encourage, and celebrate achievers: parents, friends, coaches, trainers, fans, employers, business partners, and life partners. I want to shine a light on all stages of the high achiever’s often heroic journey.

The first two sections of this book describe the arc of transition and the nine practices that high achievers develop as they work toward a personal best. Chapters 1 through 9 are divided into three stages that mirror the arc of transition: its initial ascent, its dip into the messy middle, and its climb toward a personal next. These chapters dive deeply into the points on the arc of transition and, through the stories of interviewees, illuminate some of the main issues at each. Whether you are an athlete or someone else who has dedicated portions of your life to the achievement of deeply personal goals, my hope is that you will read the stories in this book and say, “That is just like me! I am experiencing that!” Through my coaching practice and research, I have learned that although the stories of high achievers may be different, their experiences are relatable, no matter what discipline you pursue.

The “Time Out” sections at the end of the chapters include questions based on those I asked the people interviewed for this book. Many of these high performers commented on the deep self-reflection stimulated by answering the questions, and I hope they will bring you new awareness, too. In the “Practices in Play” exercises that conclude each of the three stages of the book, I invite you to engage with the nine practices of high performers, using a journal to track how these practices have manifested in your experiences and how you can harness them for future goals.

As an Olympian, I am deeply proud of my swimming career and the experiences it provided me. Like all such events, however, now that it is over, it only lives in the past. Holding on to past personal bests to define your present self can hinder you from discovering potential new versions of yourself and as-yet undiscovered opportunities and successes that exist only in the future. As you will see, I fundamentally believe in repurposing, not retiring. I believe in filling life with opportunities to learn and grow, with challenges and failures, explorations and experiences, relationships with and feedback from friends and colleagues.

New opportunities are doors to potential, but we must choose to engage with them. Transitions are inevitable and essential elements of the process of actualizing potential. All of us will travel through both small and large transitions during our lives. For me, sport was a starting point on the journey.

I choose to keep moving toward my personal next, and I hope you will, too.