Yeah, I say put mental health first because if you don't, then you're not going to enjoy your sport and you're not going to succeed as much as you want to. So it's okay sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself because it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are rather than just battle through it.
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Question
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Identity & self
Question
In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?
Daily life
Question
What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong?
Values & belief
Question
What do you value most in your friends?
Relationships
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Even more simply, you can ask yourself this question: "Do I truly care about equality for all people in this country?" If the answer is yes, then demand to be a better, more educated, more empathetic version of yourself. And demand the same of every single person you know.
First-person essay, The Players' Tribune, 6 October 2016 source ↗
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Simone Biles
United States artistic gymnast
Recorded
Post-competition press conference, Ariake Gymnastics Centre, Tokyo Olympics, Rev, 27 July 2021
source ↗
Charlie Munger
Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023
Luckily, I got at a very early age the idea that the safest way to try and get what you want is to try and deserve what you want. It's such a simple idea. It's the golden rule so to speak. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. There is no ethos, in my opinion, that is better for any lawyer or any other person to have.
Desmond Tutu
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
Dream. Dream. Dream. Be like God, dream because God believes in you young people. Most of God’s best collaborators and partners have been young people. Joseph, David, Jeremiah, St. Francis. They are young, young, young. And in many ways Jesus was young. Many of those who have been God’s best works — fellow workers have been young. And don’t allow oldies to fill you with their cynicism and disillusionment. Dream. Dream that this world can become better as you do dream, in fact. I mean, when these young people go off and work as Peace Corps and other volunteering groups in poverty stricken places where they don’t get any better headlines for dreaming the good things. Dream. Dream. Dream. Dream that this can be a world without poverty. Dream that this can be a world without war. Dream that this is a world that will recognize that every human being matters.
Norman Borlaug
Plant pathologist and agronomist; Nobel Peace Prize, 1970
Study broadly. Don’t specialize too early. Read history. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to specialize, but within the limits that you have to take obligatory courses to get a degree, keep your general education as broad as you can, because you never know what doors are going to open to new opportunities — ten, 15, 20 years down the road — because of changes in science and technology.
Recorded
Academy of Achievement recorded interview, American Academy of Achievement, 12 May 2008
source ↗
More from Megan Rapinoe
View profile →I wish I wasn’t so rash, but would I be me if I wasn’t?
I am kneeling because I have to do something. Anything. We all do.
I can understand if you think that I'm disrespecting the flag by kneeling, but it is because of my utmost respect for the flag and the promise it represents that I have chosen to demonstrate in this way. When I take a knee, I am facing the flag with my full body, staring straight into the heart of our country's ultimate symbol of freedom — because I believe it is my responsibility, just as it is yours, to ensure that freedom is afforded to everyone in this country.
Humor and honesty. And, like me, they always think the unnecessary last drink is a great idea.
“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” —Emma Lazarus. Perfect happiness exists only in my imagination at the moment.
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