Make This the Year You Take More Risks and Go After Your Wildest Dreams. Olympic Champion Alpine Ski Racer Lindsey Vonn Shows Us How

As a downhill ski racer who has won three Olympic medals and 82 World Cups, Lindsey Vonn knows a thing or two about taking risks.

The most decorated female ski racer in history has met her fair share of challenges as well. There were the physical injuries—Vonn has torn ACLs, broken bones, and faced the crushing disappointment of not being able to do the thing she loved most because her body simply wouldn’t let her. There were the emotional wounds as well, like the bouts of depression that made it hard for Vonn to get out of bed, let alone train for high-stakes competitions or go about her daily life.

Yet through her personal and professional highs and lows, Vonn found solace on the slopes—and she’s taken the hard-won lessons from her competitive life and applied them to her life now, a process she writes about in her new memoir, Rise: My Story.

We sat down with Vonn to talk about her impressive career, the power of taking risks, and the secret to embracing your inherent resilience so you can turn adversity into opportunity.

You’ve taken more risks than the average person! Any advice for those of us who want to step out of our comfort zones?

For me, it’s always about calculated risk. I never felt I was risking that much ski racing because I was always prepared. I’m a downhiller, so I’m a little bit nuts. But I always felt I was in the best shape I could be, I visualized the course—I was prepared.

I think the same goes for life: Prepare as much as you can so you have confidence to take risks.

You won’t succeed every time. But the most important thing is that you try. If you fail, you’ll learn from that and you’ll get back up. You’re never going to make it anywhere if you don’t take risks and just stick to your comfort zone.

You talk with refreshing honesty about your battle with depression in your new book, Rise. How has opening up about these hard times helped you?

For a long time, I didn’t talk about it at all. I’ve been dealing with depression since I was 18, and I didn’t tell anyone until I was 26. Not even my parents, or my siblings, or my best friend. For me, it was important to come to grips with what I was dealing with and not be ashamed of it. And once I told everyone, it was a relief. These days, it’s so amazing that everyone’s talking about mental illness. There’s less stigma surrounding it.

For me, finally talking about depression was something I needed to do to move forward with my life, and I think it gave me a lot of strength—personally and professionally.

Once I talked about it, it opened the floodgates of support. For many years, I felt like I was all alone. But once I started talking about it, I realized I had so much support—and that made me feel better and stronger.

What I want everyone to know is that there’s no need to suffer in silence; you have people around you, whether you know it or not, who can relate. But nobody will know what you’re feeling unless you say something. So, find the courage to say something. When you do, I think it’ll be hugely rewarding.

When you come back from as many injuries as you’ve faced, you know a thing or two about resilience. What’s the secret to being more resilient?

It’s all about picking yourself back up. We all have things we’re dealing with, whether physical, emotional, personal, or professional. No one is perfect. That’s a fact. It’s important to understand that we’re all going to fail. When we do, it’s up to us to pick ourselves up, brush it off, and keep moving forward.

My mom is a prime example of how to do this. She had a stroke when she gave birth to me. I never skied with her or ran with her, and she never complained. That’s due to her positive outlook on life. What I’ve come to learn is that it’s all how you frame it in your mind: You can turn any adversity into something positive.

I absolutely loved the part in your book where you talk about there being no one-size-fits-all approach to self-expression:

“… you can be competitive and be feminine. You can be strong and be feminine. You can be outspoken and be feminine. You can be aggressive and be feminine. These things are not mutually exclusive. Wanting to succeed, and being vocal about it, is not a negative. Including—and especially—if you are a woman.”

What did you learn about the importance of being your authentic self throughout your career? How did you learn how to drown out the haters and use their negativity as your fuel?

I’ve been dealing with a lot of different forms of judgment my whole life. It’s not something I’m immune to, but I developed a way of dealing with it—a thick skin, so to speak.

I always maintained my authenticity with myself. No matter what people said, all of those things made me more confident in what I was doing. I felt like, No one is me. I’m the only person like me. So, if I can continue to work hard and be myself, inevitably in the end I’ll be the last one laughing. That’s always the approach I had. It took me a while to get there, but it’s why I am where I am right now—and why the people who made fun of me are not here!

To learn more about Lindsey Vonn, visit lindseyvonn.com. And order your copy of her book Rise here. 

Photo of Lindsey Vonn used with permission of U.S. Ski & Snowboard.