{"id":13970,"date":"2019-11-07T10:07:40","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T18:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/?p=13970"},"modified":"2019-11-07T10:07:40","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T18:07:40","slug":"lindsey-vonn-embraces-her-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/lindsey-vonn-embraces-her-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"Lindsey Vonn Embraces Her Humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A wonderful article about Lindsey Vonn<\/a> that describes the physical, psychological, and emotional challenges she faced as one of history’s greatest ski racers and following her retirement. A nice reminder that those whom we revere from afar are as human as we are (to paraphrase a well-known saying, Lindsey “puts her speed suit on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us.”).<\/p>\n

A key message from the article is that all of the success in the world has little meaning if someone is struggling in their physical and mental health. As a consequence, the well-being of athletes should take precedence over results.<\/p>\n

\"\"States Lindsey, \u201cThere were more downs than ups, I would say. I dealt with immense pressure to be perfect. A lot of the time, with athletes, we\u2019re expected to be perfect. I even look up to other athletes, and I think, \u2018Wow, he has such a perfect life. I can\u2019t imagine it\u2019s not perfect.’ But it\u2019s a total misconception, everyone struggles no matter what job you do, there\u2019s always expectation, and not everyone handles everything the same.”<\/p>\n

She adds, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to feel 100% confident without skiing,\u201d Vonn said. \u201cA lot of times I feel just incredibly insecure, without that anchor in my life. Some days I wake up and I feel like I\u2019m a complete failure, and other days I wake up and I feel really good.\u201d An important warning against athletes becoming overly invested in their sport and putting all of the self-identity “eggs” in one basket.<\/p>\n

Back in 2012, Lindsey was diagnosed with depression; \u201cTherapy and medication drastically improved my life,\u201d Vonn said. \u201cI never told anyone this was something I struggled with, not even my family, until after I was divorced [in 2011 from Thomas Vonn]. It felt like it was a step I needed to take to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Atomic\"I have always admired Lindsey’s talent and determination. Now, I admire her even more for her vulnerability, inner strength, and just plain humanity.<\/p>\n

Remember that it’s always better to look a human being in the eye than look up to an idol on a pedestal.<\/p>\n

Bravo to Lindsey for your decision to leave our sport reasonably healthy and on top and best wishes in this new and exciting chapter in her life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A wonderful article about Lindsey Vonn that describes the physical, psychological, and emotional challenges she faced as one of history’s greatest ski racers and following her retirement. A nice reminder that those whom we revere from afar are as human as we are (to paraphrase a well-known saying, Lindsey “puts her speed suit on one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1516],"tags":[227,267,1042,60,153],"class_list":["post-13970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ski-racing","tag-injury","tag-lindsey-vonn","tag-mental-health","tag-psychology-2","tag-ski-racing-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}