She Stopped Trying to Win. Then She Won Everything.

What Alysa Liu's Olympic gold can teach every college student about the pressure to "figure it all out" — before you even start.

In January of 1994, a figure skater named Nancy Kerrigan was walking through a corridor at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit when a man appeared, swung a baton at her knee, and ran.

He had been hired by associates of her rival, Tonya Harding.

Hired. To break her leg. So she couldn't compete.

I've played competitive sports my whole life. I understand the fire and the very human desire to win. But this was competition so completely devoured by fear and desperation that it had crossed into something unrecognizable. At some point, the goal had stopped being I want to skate beautifully and become I cannot let her beat me. The joy left the building. What moved in instead was dread.

When dread takes the wheel? Terrible things happen.

Fast forward 32 years.

It's February 2026. The Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. Twenty-year-old Alysa Liu glides onto the ice for the women's free skate — the most pressure-soaked four minutes in figure skating — and does something that stops the arena cold.

She waves at the crowd.

Not a nervous pageant wave. A real, full, I'm so happy to be here wave. Like she's arriving at a party she's been looking forward to all week.

"I don't really feel pressure. I feel excited and happy to be there. That's the stage I always wanted to show my programs on, show my dress off, and just get myself out there." — Alysa Liu

She won gold. The first American woman to do so in 24 years. And afterward — sitting in the leader's chair, two skaters still to perform, the whole thing still undecided — she was grinning.

"Maybe I'm just happy," she told reporters. "I've got no poker face."

Here's what you need to know about Alysa Liu Version 1.0.

Prodigy. Won national titles at 13. Made the Olympics at 16. Pushed her body to its absolute limits — quad jumps, relentless training, the whole grinding machine.

And at the 2022 Beijing Olympics? She said it plainly: "I hated skating."

So she quit. Tossed her skates in a closet. Gave herself permission to just be a person for a while. Eighteen months later, she came back — but on completely different terms. No more quad jumps. No more grinding through practices she dreaded. She told her coaches, "I'm coming back for the joy of it." Take it or leave it.

They took it.

Alysa 2.0 — powered by joy instead of fear — is the version that won the Olympics. Her own coach summed it up perfectly: "We know she wasn't here to win a medal. She was here to skate and to enjoy it."

The gold medal was almost a byproduct.

I know this feeling from the inside.

When I was about to graduate from college, I was in full panic mode.

Both of my parents had passed away. I had wonderful older siblings, but I was fiercely determined not to rely on them. I had no safety net — none. Which meant one thing drove every career decision I made: I have to pay my bills. My career choices were driven by fear.

So I did what a lot of scared, smart kids do. I chased prestige. I interviewed at investment banks and management consulting firms. I wanted a title that sounded impressive enough to drown out the fear. And I landed a job at Andersen Consulting — now Accenture. Dream job. On paper.

On day one, they sat me down and told me my first assignment: COBOL programmer.

I was a Spanish Literature major.

I stared at that screen full of code and felt something I had never felt before in my academic life. I had always excelled in school. Always. But sitting in that cubicle surrounded by people who clearly belonged there — I didn't feel like an imposter. Imposter syndrome implies you might actually belong but don't believe it yet. This was something else entirely.

I felt like an alien in a foreign world.

There was not an if-then statement I could stomach. I was abysmal at it, and everyone knew it. The fear that had driven me to chase that prestigious job had landed me somewhere I had absolutely no business being.

Here's what saved me: I stopped hiding what I couldn't do and started loudly naming what I could. I told anyone who would listen — I speak Spanish, I understand people, I know how to build relationships and communicate. Eventually, someone heard me. I was moved into Latin American SAP marketing, a role that matched my actual aptitudes and skills. It became a dream job — the real kind, not the paper kind.

Fear of not paying my bills drove me to chase the wrong thing. Learning who I actually was pointed me toward the right one.

So what does any of this have to do with your job search?

Everything.

Here's what I watch happen over and over with graduating seniors: they enter the job market for the first time — terrified, comparing themselves to every classmate, scrolling LinkedIn at midnight watching people announce offers — and they immediately make it a competition.

They chase titles that sound impressive at family dinners. They take the offer with the biggest number. They optimize for what looks right on a resume instead of what feels right in their gut. Just like I did.

The job market is competitive. You're not imagining that. But here's the problem: when you're so focused on beating the person next to you, you stop being the most compelling version of yourself. You perform a version of "hireable" instead of showing up as the real, specific, irreplaceable human you actually are.

Alysa Liu didn't win by trying to out-skate her competitors. She won by being so fully, authentically, joyfully herself that the judges couldn't look away.

Joy is not a soft strategy. Fully expressed, unapologetically owned — it turns out joy is the competitive advantage.

After she won, Liu didn't run to the scoreboard. She ran to the bronze medalist and hugged her. Both women overflowing. Genuinely thrilled for each other. Because when you're deeply grounded in your own lane, other people's success doesn't subtract from yours. It just adds more joy to the room.

Imagine bringing that energy to your first job search.

Here's your permission slip.

You do not have to have it all figured out right now. I promise you — nobody does. The ones who look like they do are just better at hiding the panic.

What you can do, right now, is get curious about yourself. Not your GPA. Not your internships. You. Your values — what actually matters to you when no one's grading you for it. Your real aptitudes — not just what you're good at, but what you lose track of time doing. Your genuine interests — the ones you've maybe downplayed because they didn't seem serious enough or profitable enough.

That intersection is your Olympic free skate program. And when you perform from that place, you won't need to watch what anyone else is doing.

Tonya Harding operated from fear and a desperate need to eliminate the competition. We know how that ended. Alysa Liu operated from joy and an unshakeable knowledge of herself. The results speak for themselves.

You just wave at the crowd. And skate.

One question before you go:

What's one thing you're actually great at that doesn't show up anywhere on your resume? Drop it in the comments — I read every single one.

And if this resonated, I'd love for you to share this newsletter with someone you think might benefit from the message.

Every other week on the getCAREERcurious podcast, we feature real people walking purpose-filled paths — messy, honest, and worth listening to. Find us on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Not sure what kind of career you actually want to build? Start there — before you're five years into a job you hate. The getCAREERcurious Compass is a free tool that helps you get clear on your values, aptitudes, and interests. Think of it as your unfair advantage before the job search even starts.

Because you only get one wild and precious life. Let's make the work part count.