The #1 shift leaders make to flourish
What an Olympic figure skater’s burnout — and triumphant return — reveals about the one shift that separates leaders who achieve versus those who truly flourish.
What if the next great chapter of your life isn’t about working harder at what you love, but learning to play at it again?
You’ve built something real. Whether it’s a business, a reputation, a life that you’re proud of, you’ve found success. And yet, the things that once felt effortless have started to feel like labor. The fire is still there, but it’s changed. You’re not necessarily burning out, but you’re not burning bright, either.
This disconnect comes from a lack of Intrinsic Motivation.
CASE STUDY IN FLOW: Alyssa Liu
Two-time U.S. Figure Skating Champion & Olympic Competitor
At 16, Alyssa Liu walked away from competitive skating. Not because she wasn’t extraordinary; she had already claimed back-to-back national championships. Alyssa’s departure was for another reason: because she was depleted. The sport that was supposed to be her passion had become her prison. Skating demanded everything from her, and she gave everything, until she had nothing left.
Then something shifted. She found herself missing the ice, and returned to skating on one condition: this time, it would be on her terms.
What she returned to wasn’t just a sport. It was an integrated expression of everything she loved: fashion and clothing design, music, movement, performance, and art. All of her interests, integrated into a single creative current. She wanted to show the world what a person can become when they are fully, freely alive.
Five Forces That Brought Her Back
When we look at Alyssa’s return through the lens of intrinsic motivation, we see not one driver, but five, working together:
Curiosity — Fashion, music, design, performance; multiple interests feeding her soul.
Passion — Where those curiosities converged into something wholly her own.
Purpose — Sharing a new vision of human possibility, and bringing her gift to the world.
Autonomy — Returning on her terms, with complete control.
Mastery — Seeking to grow freely, with joy rather than anxiety.
Notice what happened when all five elements of Intrinsic Motivation were present simultaneously. Alyssa didn’t just return to the skating status quo. She transformed her skating, and herself within it.
Deliberate Practice vs. Deliberate Play
Deliberate Practice got you here. Deliberate Play is what’s next.
The performance world has long worshipped deliberate practice: focused, structured repetition at the edge of your ability, designed to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. It’s how you built what you’ve built.
But the research, and Alyssa’s story, reveal that deliberate practice alone is exhausting. It’s designed for achievement, but it doesn’t nourish the soul. And at some point, achievement isn’t the goal anymore. Fulfillment is.
Deliberate Practice — Closing Gaps
Externally benchmarked
Structured around weakness
Driven by outcomes
Sustained through discipline
Focused on: How do I improve?
Deliberate Play — Finding Edges
Intrinsically meaningful
Structured around curiosity
Driven by engagement
Sustained through joy
Focused on: What lights me up?
Flow isn’t built in comfort; it lives at the edge of your capacity, where challenge and skill are in dynamic balance. Therefore, deliberate play is not the absence of challenge, but instead seeking that edge with curiosity and wonder, rather than anxiety and pressure.
This is precisely where Alyssa found herself when she returned to the ice.
What This Means for Leaders Like You
You are not a 19-year-old athlete. But you may be standing at a remarkably similar threshold.
You’ve arrived at a place where the business can run without you. A place where you can choose to remain in your zone of genius—the area where your talents, strengths, and skills are aligned—without being obligated to do everything else. A place where the scoreboard you’ve watched your whole career starts to matter less than the day to day life you’re living.
The next step is not retirement. It is an integrated reinvention of the leader, the creator, the parent, the partner, the mentor, and the human being whose best chapters are not behind them.
Alyssa didn’t return to skating as it was. She returned to skating as it could be, tied to everything she loved, expressed entirely on her terms, purposefully brought to the world.
So live like Alyssa. Ask not what you should do next, but what you want to do.
Exercise
Set aside 20 uninterrupted minutes this week. Find a quiet place. Sit with these questions and allow them to genuinely land before answering.
Curiosity: What are three or four things you find yourself genuinely curious about right now, not because they’re practically useful, but for a deeper reason? Where do those curiosities overlap?
Autonomy: If you could design the next chapter of your life with complete freedom, without the interference of obligations or external expectations, what would it look like? What role would your business play? What new role would you step into?
Purpose: What is the gift only you can bring that people in your world most need from you right now?
Joy: Where in your life do you feel the joy Alyssa felt when she returned to the ice? And where is that joy most conspicuously absent?
Answer honestly, and allow yourself to be guided to a new kind of motivation.