Carolyn Beckedorff

I often wonder how many extraordinary people wasted their entire lives waiting for permission that never came. Nobody tells you this: Permission isn't granted. It's taken. You get to tap yourself in whenever you want. You can just do things.

Are we identifying talent — or early maturity? ~90% of elite athletes weren’t standout juniors. In alpine skiing, peak performance comes much later than our systems assume. Thank you @SkiRacingMedia skiracing.com/the-myth-of-th…

The biggest unlock of my 20s: Ask for things. The raise. The introduction. The favor. Most people never ask because they fear rejection. But your silence guarantees it. If you've done the work, ask for the crazy thing. The world rewards those who ask. Closed mouths don't get fed.

Never underestimate a single word of encouragement on the trajectory of someone’s life. Most people are only told what they are doing wrong and never what they are doing right.

Grateful for the thoughtful coverage by Ski Racing Media: skiracing.com/inside-winterf… This piece by Nicholas Unkovskoy and Sophia Tozzi highlights the long arc of development — from the junior ranks to the collegiate circuit, through the Continental Cups and beyond — and the athletes moving along this path. 🙌

The less you take yourself seriously, the "luckier" you will get in life. Get rid of your pride and fear of embarrassment. Put yourself in situations where you will grow regardless of whether you feel like it or not. No one is watching, no one cares. You're gonna live your life, die, and be vaguely remembered for one or two generations if you had a loving family, that's about it.

“It’s a collaborative effort and with a strong culture you can accomplish anything.” You don’t accomplish anything special without people buying into something bigger than themselves. When the culture’s strong, the results take care of themselves.

If a thing be close to one's heart Logic has no place.

Powerful……

Success boils down to building the right type of wealth, the one that involves freedom: to become who you want to be, to nurture your unique talents, to enjoy laughters and deep conversations with your family and friends, to watch your children grow up and patiently guide them, to take calculated risks without feeling anxious, to read timeless novels slowly, to build your ambitious vision on your own terms.

People waste so much time chasing the wrong people. When you meet someone who is meant to stay in your life, you know it. You neither judge them nor feel judged by them. There is no taboo but you respect each other’s boundaries. The conversations feel effortlessly stimulating.

The best things in life happen offline and are not documented. The ordinary walks and laughters with your family. The long conversations in person with old friends you effortlessly trust. The satisfaction that comes with tough trainings done with peers who also value their growth as a person. It’s so easy to lose track of what you truly value, especially when you are surrounded by people who are confidently wrong. Earn your freedom online, then learn the value of being disconnected, that’s when you will start truly living your best life.

We all agree on the value of coaching for athletes. But what about for coaches? Atul Gawande once said, "Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance." This sentiment doesn't just apply to athletes. The best leaders learn alongside the people they lead. They don’t just build systems for others, they also build systems for themselves. And sometimes, the best system a coach can leverage is getting help and guidance from another coach.

It's sad that very few people ever take the time to write long, meaningful letters to their family and friends anymore; everyone is always "busy" and afraid of bothering, and they are missing out on the joy of being intellectually and emotionally deeply connected to someone else.

Underrated truth: The people who elevate your life aren’t always loud. They show up quietly. They keep their word. They support you in the dark. They celebrate you without keeping score. Cherish them. One loyal friend is far more valuable than a hundred fair-weather ones.

The best conversations happen between two people who need nothing from each other yet want to spend time with each other.

Strive to become someone who can be genuinely happy for others; one day, you will suddenly notice that you already earned everything you needed and wanted along the way, because a confident and happy version of yourself is a precondition for generosity and love towards others.

If there was a tutorial to life, it would actually be quite simple: 1) Read books to avoid the common time-wasting mistakes, most of the wisdom you need for a happy life is actually written down in timeless novels 2) Accumulate a wide range of experiences and meet a lot of people, don't be scared of surrounding yourself with people who are much better than you, have a point of comparison to figure out where you are mediocre, average, good, great 3) Physically move to a place where you will be able to learn from people who can make the great greater, don't underestimate the importance of long-term serendipitous encounters 4) Once in a while, you will bond with someone effortlessly, they might be from another country, they might be decades younger or older than you, but keep these people in your life, they are rarer than you think 5) As you experience the mental ups and downs of life, clarify what habits and routines you need to stay the highest-energy version of yourself, stick to them, and keep in mind that average people will always have something judgmental to say when you do things differently 6) Invest in your financial education and have fun learning about new technological tools as they are being invented: as you get older, opportunities may narrow down, but as long as you capture and compound some of the value that you are creating, getting wealthier as you get older should be inevitable 7) Call your parents and grandparents while you still can, you will only start truly understanding what they went through and start feeling grateful once you have kids yourself, "you will get it when you are older" is actually underappreciated wisdom 8) Marry someone that you are happy to love and support, someone who figured out what they wanted from life and who has the courage to make choices, someone you choose to share the inevitable ups and downs of the journey with, a perfect marriage requires tolerance to imperfections 9) Keep making "new" mistakes, the kind of mistakes that most people never make because they never even had the courage to try; once in a while, when you expect it the least, you will get a breakthrough that will set you up for an extraordinary life; you just need to be mentally resilient and patient until it happens 10) Be serious about your ambitions, but don't take yourself too seriously, you're gonna be on your deathbed one day, self-reflecting about the life you've had; a lot of people you crossed paths with will be gone already, and whether you find peace will depend on the stories you wrote with others, you can't lie to yourself about your own journey

The more you enjoy competing against the best version of yourself, the luckier you get in life.