Alysa Liu just became the first American woman to win Olympic singles gold in figure skating in more than two decades.
After she skated off the ice, she looked into the camera and said, and we're paraphrasing for the blog, the actual quote was a little more colorful, "That's what I'm talking about."
But the quote that actually stopped us wasn't the one from the ice. It came later, in a 60 Minutes feature, when someone asked her about the process of competing at this level.
"I love struggling, actually. It makes me feel alive."
Not "I love winning." Not "I love competing." Struggling.
That's a different mindset than most of us carry into a training session, a sales meeting, or any arena where we're trying to get better at something.
The Moment Most People Quit Is the Moment That Actually Matters
Here's the part of Alysa Liu's story that doesn't get enough attention:
She retired at 16. Not because she failed, she was already one of the best in the world. She walked away because she had hit her goal: making the Olympics. The scoreboard went quiet. And for a while, so did the drive.
When she came back at 19, everything was hard again. Her stamina was non-existent. She'd take a few jumps and need several minutes to recover. She couldn't back-to-back anything. She was the best in the world, but now had to be sloppy again before she could be elite again.
She talked about this in a December 2024 interview: "It was so hard. It was so weird. Yeah, even in practice, it was hard. It was all so physically challenging. But I enjoyed the struggle, honestly, I really did."
She didn't enjoy it because struggle is fun. She enjoyed it because she understood something most people don't, that the messy middle IS the work. Not a detour from it.
Why Your Ego Is the Real Competition
There's a reason most people never make it through that messy middle. It's not laziness. It's not a lack of talent. It's not even a lack of discipline.
It's ego.
Your ego doesn't care if you improve. It cares if you look bad. And getting better at anything requires a season of looking bad - on the ice, in the gym, in the sales call, on the whiteboard.
We call this the Ego Gap. It's the invisible barrier between drifting through life on autopilot and competing for the person you're capable of becoming. Standing at the edge of the Ego Gap, you face a choice every single day:
Protect your image. Or pursue your potential. You can't do both at the same time.
Alysa Liu chose potential. She got back on the ice and was genuinely bad at things she used to do without thinking. She let herself be sloppy because she understood that sloppy-in-process is the price of elite-on-the-other-side.
The Competitors who never reach that elite level aren't the ones who lacked talent. They're the ones who let ego protect them from the exact discomfort that would've made them great.
The Freedom to Be Sloppy IS the Competitive Advantage
We talk a lot in the Compete Every Day community about standards. Show up. Put in the work. Don't cut corners.
But there's a version of 'high standards' that actually kills improvement - and it looks like this: refusing to attempt anything you can't do perfectly.
If you only practice the things you're already good at, you're not training. You're performing. And performance protects your ego. Training pushes through it.
The day Alysa Liu climbed back into the rink and could barely finish a run-through, she was competing harder than any champion coasting on yesterday's trophy. Because she gave herself permission to be in process. To let the work be messy. To stack one ugly training session on top of another until they compounded into something gold.
That's the Beat Yesterday standard in action. Not "be perfect." Not "make it look good." Just be better than you were yesterday - even if yesterday's version of you could barely get off the ice without a break.
One Question Before Your Next Training Session
Before your next workout, next rep, next sales call, next meeting — ask yourself this:
"Am I doing this to look good, or am I doing this to actually get better?"
If you're only willing to do the things you already know you can nail, your ego is running the show. You're drifting toward a Default Outcome instead of competing for the one you actually want.
Cross the Ego Gap. Let it be sloppy. Stack the days. That's the work.
Alysa Liu didn't win gold by being perfect from day one of her comeback. She won it by loving the struggle enough to keep showing up even when all she had to offer was sloppy.
That's the Competitor's <indset. And it's available to every one of us, the moment we stop protecting our image and start competing for our potential.
If your team is navigating the gap between past success and future performance, Jake Thompson helps organizations build the mindset and systems to sustain it. Explore Jake's keynote programs here.
