- Olympic superstar Simone Biles repeats a mantra her mother instilled in her when she gets overwhelmed and self-doubt creeps in. Speaking to college graduates at Washington University in St. Louis, she promoted a work-hard-play-hard philosophy, and said being the best version of herself allows her to hold her head high.
Even the greatest athletes of all time struggle with self-doubt. Olympic sensation Simone Biles embodies a philosophy that allows her to hold her head high—even when the crown starts to slip.
“When I start to get in my head, and doubt myself, I reflect on what my mom instilled in me from a very young age: to be the best Simone that you can be, each and every day,” she told Washington University in St. Louis graduates at its commencement address Monday.
“In order to be the greatest ‘you’ of all time, embrace the opportunity to be a leader.”
Everyone struggles with being overwhelmed or second-guessing. Even Simone Biles—star of the U.S. gymnastics team and revered “GOAT” with 11 Olympic medals—can let the doubt creep in. But in passing down her mother’s words of wisdom to the next class of go-getters, nerve-wracked graduates can see that even people at the top of their game have to cope with stress.
“Go out there and write your own story—only one that you can tell,” she continued.
The gymnastics GOAT says being bold is better than being perfect
Biles knows a thing or two about hitting her mark with extreme accuracy—it’s the kind of talent and drive that solidified the U.S. gymnastics team as one of the best in the world. But she assured the graduates that sometimes things go belly-up, and that’s alright.
“The world doesn’t need you to be perfect,” Biles said during her speech. “It needs you to be bold, it needs you to care, and to keep going even when things don’t go as planned.”
While the athletic legend espouses a non-perfectionist idea of what it means to succeed, she drove home the point that it takes a lot of elbow grease to get there. They need to be committed to their goals to get to the top—but it’s a ‘work-hard-play-hard’ lifestyle, with passion at the center.
“Success in education, like in athletics, requires sacrifice and dedication,” Biles said. “There is a lot of fun along the way, but to make it to the top, you also really need to find joy in the work.”
How other leaders handle overwhelm in their positions
Biles isn’t the only success story who still grapples with crushing pressure and self-doubt. CEOs running trillion-dollar operations like Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai have their own methods to cope. The tech executive repeats two things to himself in times of stress.
“One is: making that decision is the most important thing you can do. You’re breaking a tie and it unlocks the organization to move forward,” Pinchai said at Stanford’s Business School in 2022.
“The second is, with time you realize most of those decisions are inconsequential.”
Taking a step back to get perspective is one way of managing the overwhelm; and billionaire philanthropist Melinda French-Gates has her own workaround. In giving away mass amounts of her $30.6 billion fortune to charitable causes, she can beat herself up over the impact of her work.
“If I get tough on myself about philanthropy, I remember what Warren Buffett said to us originally, which is: ‘You’re working on the problems society left behind, and they left them behind for a reason,” French Gates said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
“‘They are hard, right? So don’t be so tough on yourself.’”
