From "Have To" to "Want To": How Alysa Liu Won Olympic Gold

Alysa Liu, Autonomy, and the Real Secret to Elite Performance

Alysa Liu just won Olympic gold.

She retired at 16. Was traumatized by the sport. Wouldn’t go near an ice rink.

And just delivered a career-best on the biggest stage on earth. It’s the most compelling comeback story in sports right now.

At 13, Liu was the youngest US national champion ever. At 16, she finished 6th at the Olympics. She was a prodigy being told what to eat, what to wear, what music to skate to, and when to train. She lived in a dorm alone at the Olympic Training Center.

And she was miserable.

“The rink was my home for far too long... And I didn’t have a choice,”

So she quit.

She’d lost something essential: the feeling that any of it was hers. She had no autonomy. What happened to Liu is something I wrote about in Do Hard Things. If we stay narrow for too long, and are pushed by external incentives (parents, coaches, accolades, achievements), it changes our relationship with our pursuit. It’s a viscous cycle. We gain notoriety and status. People start labeling you as the runner, writer, or skater. Everyone around us sees the shiny objects and “potential,” and they stop seeing you. The alure of potential blinds us and everyone around.

We start to over-identify with our sport, hobby, or job. After all, we get so absorbed in the task that it becomes hard to create space between it and our sense of self. That pulls us away from the initial interest and joy that served as our initial fuel. The external measures that tell us if we are successful or not become more important. And before we know it, fear or anxiety has evaporated or replaced joy. We’ve moved from want to need to have to. We get trapped.

That’s exactly what happened to Liu. The girl who once attacked triple jumps because she loved the feeling of flight had become a girl performing under obligation. Gone were the days of intrinsic joy and wanting to play or perform. They were gradually replaced by external drivers.

It’s what psychologist Ellen Winner found when she set out to explore what set apart the prodigious and gifted. They had what she called a rage to master, an intrinsic pull to pursue their craft that came not from winning or something external, but a mix of joy and curiosity. Winner found that a parent or coach could support and help fan the flame, or be over-controlling and extinguish it.

Far too often, the allure of success pushes us to the latter. That’s what happened to Liu.
So she went the other direction. She went to Nepal. Trekked to Everest Base Camp. Got her driver’s license. Dyed her hair. Attended college. She lived life.

As Liu put it:

“Quitting was definitely, and still to this day, one of my best decisions ever.”

She built an identity that wasn’t tied solely to the ice. She figured out who she was as a human being.

In psychology, we call this creating self-complexity. Where you create a robust sense of self that isn’t solely tied to one pursuit. You realize you can be a mother, dad, scientist, athlete, artist, sister, and person who loves dogs all at once. A complex sense of self makes us resilient.

Then in early 2024, she went skiing and felt something she hadn’t felt in two years: an adrenaline rush.

If skiing feels like this, what would skating feel like? She went to a public session. Landed a double axel and triple salchow on the spot.

Two weeks later, she was back, but this time on her own terms.

She came back because she wanted to.

“I choose to be here. I loved that I was able to come back and choose my own destiny.”

The Power of Having a Choice

That shift from external obligation to internal choice is the point.

Self-Determination Theory is one of the most established frameworks in psychology. According to self-determination theory, the level of autonomy, or “the desire to be causal agents of one’s own life,” is intricately tied to our well-being. It serves as one of the three basic psychological needs that allows us to flourish and bolsters our motivation. When we feel like we can have an impact on whatever it is we do, we are better off. The ability to have control is central not only to overcoming adversity, but also to being a happy, healthy human being.

And it’s reflected in our brains. When we are given a choice, our brain responds as if having a choice is the reward in and of itself. The striatum, an area linked to reward processing, lights up when we have the ability to choose.

A study of over 200 men and women found that when athletes trained in an autonomy-supportive environment, it was related to satisfying their basic psychological needs for well-being. Controlling environments were associated with thwarting an individual’s basic needs and lower overall satisfaction. Furthermore, they found that those in a supportive environment tended to have higher levels of mental toughness and better performances.

Her coach, Phillip DiGuglielmo, nailed it: “For many years she was dropped off at the rink. She was told what to do. Now she comes in, and it is all collaborative.”

She picks her own music. Designs her own costumes. Controls her training load.

“No one’s gonna starve me or tell me what I can and can’t eat.”

Psychologists have tied the benefits of such ownership to fulfilling some of our basic psychological needs: self-efficacy, identity, a sense of belonging, and having a place to call our own. When our environment allows us to be who we are, we feel and perform better.

Creating an Environment to Thrive

We often get performance wrong.

We think the path to greatness is more control, more structure, more sacrifice. We push young phenoms to “grind”, to be disciplined...Not realizing we’re often extinguishing the flame that makes them great.

In a meta-analysis of over 100 studies with 70,000 participants, researchers found that when individuals’ extrinsic aspirations dominated their intrinsic ones, it was “universally detrimental” to their well-being. It’s not that we need to have solely intrinsic motives. It’s the balance that matters. When we tip too far to the external, we languish instead of thrive. When winning is all that matters, it might work in the short term, but over the long haul, we increasingly play out of a place of fear. And perform worse.

When our self-worth is dependent on outside factors, we have what researchers call a contingent self-worth. We derive our sense of self from what people think and how we are judged. We give over control to external factors. That’s the trap Liu was caught in. Her entire world revolved around being told what to do, when to do it, and how well she did it.

Liu’s career-best came AFTER she walked away, lived her life, and came back with agency.

Tonight she skated to Donna Summer’s MacArthur Park with platinum blonde streaks, a lip piercing, and the biggest smile in the building. Career-best 226.79.

First American woman to win Olympic gold in figure skating in 24 years.

It was pure joy.

Her message to the camera: “That’s what I’m f---ing talking about.”

Everyone wants to know the secret to elite performance. It’s not complicated.

Give people ownership.

Let them bring themselves to the performance, instead of squashing the joy and authenticity out of them.

In a survey I ran for Win the Inside Game, I found people perform up to their potential when they felt secure in who they are and what they’re doing, when their motivation is from joy, instead of fear. That’s the recipe for freeing them up to perform.

Alysa Liu retired at 16 because skating wasn’t hers anymore.

She won Olympic gold at 20 because it finally was.

Be yourself. Go all the way.

-Steve