When I reflect on my ten years on the U.S. Ski Team, I don’t regret a single race. I don’t regret a single crash or lackluster result. I don’t regret not soaking up the incredible locales to which I traveled. I don’t even regret my final year, when I pushed my damaged knee to compete before I should have.
When I reflect on these things, I don’t regret them because it is easy for me to recognize that, at the time, I was just doing my best. I had the mindset of a focused and driven professional athlete. I won’t pretend that my poor performances, crashes, and DNF’s didn’t hurt — they did — but there isn’t one of them that I’d want to go back and actually change.
And yet, I cannot claim to have a career of “no regrets.” I can’t say there’s nothing I would change. After all, the bulk of my career was laced with the longest and most damaging mistake I think I’ve ever made.
Several years ago, I was reminded of that mistake during the briefest and most casual of encounters.
I was leading a ZGiRLS huddle at the Lindsey Vonn Foundation Summer Camp for Girls, and Lindsey herself walked into the room. I had just asked a group of girls, “who has beaten yourself up after a disappointing loss or poor performance?” (As always, every single girl raised her hand.)
I agreed, “Me too… I used to be so hard on myself.” And, because my former teammate happened to be in the room, I continued, “Lindsey could probably even attest to it. Linds, didn’t I used to get really down on myself?”
Without hesitation, Lindsey responded to the girls: “Oh my god, Libby was SO bad!”
Sure, Lindsey was responding to my baited question, but still, her reply struck me. It wasn’t just a compulsory reply — I could tell that Lindsey was sharing a lasting memory. My heart sinks when I think that’s what people remember about me.
I often reflect on how my mental wiring has changed since retiring from ski racing. In many ways, I feel like I am a completely different person now, than I was then. You could say I’ve learned a bit about self-compassion, and while I still have progress to make, I’ve come a long way. I’m not nearly as mean to myself as I used to be.
“Perspective” means “the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance.” Looking back on my ski racing days, the fact of the matter was, I simply didn’t have the perspective that I do now. I didn’t have the capacity to grasp that bad races were not the end of the world. I didn’t have the capacity to understand that I didn’t have to beat myself up so badly. I didn’t have the capacity to just be kind to myself and let go.
I don’t blame myself for lacking perspective back then––after all, that’s life. That’s being young. That’s figuring things out the “hard way.” But, I do regret not figuring it out sooner. All of that mental anguish, all of that internal bullying, all of that emotional torture. It was miserable. And so unnecessary.
The thing is, I know I’m not alone. I have yet to meet a girl who says that she’s never hard on herself. Research even shows that girls struggle with failure more than boys. I see it all of the time: the gloom that spreads across a girl’s face when she’s engaged in some kind of silent internal battle. We’ve all been there.
Harsh self-criticism may be common, but regret has taught me that there’s another way. I can’t go back in time and erase my mental boxing matches, but I can refrain from stepping back into the ring now.
*Modified from an essay originally published in 2015 at zgirls.org
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