How To Overcome Stress, Fear & Negative Thoughts To Reinvent Your Life | Hedvig Wessel
Here are the top 10 key takeaways from Dr. Rangan Chatterjee's conversation with world champion free-ride skier Hedvig Wessel about overcoming fear, managing stress, and reinventing your life.
1. Trust yourself
Hedvig emphasizes the importance of self-trust as a fundamental skill for success and wellbeing. When facing difficult decisions or challenging situations on the mountain, she relies on her ability to trust her instincts and judgment. She repeatedly tells herself "I can trust myself" as a personal mantra.
This self-trust was particularly important during her return to competition after taking a break. Despite feeling scared and unmotivated, she had to trust that she had the skills and preparation to succeed. Developing self-trust allows us to make decisions aligned with our true values and capabilities rather than being swayed by external pressures or self-doubt.
2. Use breathing techniques to manage fear
Breathing serves as a powerful tool for Hedvig to regulate her emotions and manage fear in high-pressure situations. Through her decade-long yoga practice, she's developed various breathing techniques that help her remain calm and focused when facing dangerous mountain conditions.
Her approach is often simple yet effective: breathing slowly and consciously, feeling the breath move through her chest and stomach. This practice creates a direct connection to her morning yoga routine, triggering a sense of safety and calm. By controlling her breath, she can control her mental state, allowing her to perform at her best even in frightening circumstances.
3. Create a balance between nervous energy and performance
Hedvig explains how managing her nervous energy is crucial for peak performance. She highlights the importance of knowing when to activate and when to conserve energy, noting that being nervous for extended periods is mentally exhausting and counterproductive.
She uses various techniques to control her nervous system, including music to distract herself when waiting and breathing techniques to focus when it's time to perform. As a professional athlete, she's learned to recognize when she needs to be "on" and when she can allow herself to decompress. This skill of energy management extends beyond sports and can be applied to any high-pressure situation in life.
4. Morning routines create stability
Hedvig emphasizes the power of consistent morning routines for grounding and mental preparation. Her personal practice includes yoga, breathwork, and journaling before checking her phone or engaging with the outside world.
This deliberate approach allows her to connect with herself first, rather than letting external inputs dictate her mindset for the day. She believes this morning ritual has transformed her from being perceived as hectic and unfocused as a child to becoming more calm and present as an adult. By establishing this foundation of stability each morning, she creates a solid platform from which to face the day's challenges.
5. Learn to transform failure into growth
Instead of viewing setbacks as permanent failures, Hedvig reframes them as valuable learning opportunities. When analyzing her ski runs, she focuses on "what was good and what can be better" rather than dwelling on mistakes or shortcomings.
This positive mindset helped her cope with coming in second place for three consecutive years in the Free Ride World Tour. Rather than seeing these as failures, she viewed them as stepping stones and lessons that ultimately prepared her for eventual success. This perspective shift transforms potentially discouraging experiences into catalysts for improvement and resilience.
6. Practice being present
The high-stakes nature of extreme skiing forces Hedvig to be completely present in the moment. This experience of total presence is something she actively seeks to recreate in other areas of her life through practices like yoga, breathwork, and mindful awareness.
She notes that experiencing true presence repeatedly on the mountain makes her want more of that feeling in everyday situations. To achieve this, she creates intentional moments of focus by putting away distractions and engaging fully in one activity at a time. Though she acknowledges it can be challenging, she finds that these moments of presence make her more effective and fulfilled.
7. Make active choices about your life direction
Throughout the conversation, Hedvig demonstrates a commitment to making conscious choices about her life path rather than following conventions or expectations. This includes her decision to switch from Olympic mogul skiing to free riding, taking a break from competition despite her success, and ultimately deciding to retire from competition after achieving her goal of becoming world champion.
These decisions weren't always easy - they often involved facing fears and uncertainties. When struggling with whether to return to competition, she used a powerful visualization exercise with her psychologist, standing on pieces of paper representing different choices to physically feel how each option resonated with her body and emotions. This intentional approach to decision-making has allowed her to create a life aligned with her values and aspirations.
8. Balance competitiveness with intrinsic motivation
Hedvig describes a healthy relationship with competition, where external achievement is balanced with internal satisfaction. While she worked for years to become world champion, she emphasizes that her true satisfaction comes from the feeling of skiing well and being present on the mountain.
She has achieved this balance by developing a strong sense of identity outside of competition. Through practices like yoga, journaling, and maintaining healthy relationships, she knows who she is beyond her athletic achievements. This foundation allows her to pursue competitive goals without them defining her self-worth or happiness.
9. Find tools to maintain balance
Hedvig applies principles from Ayurvedic health practices to maintain balance in a demanding lifestyle. She recognizes that intense output needs to be counterbalanced with intentional recovery and stability in other areas of life.
When traveling for competitions, she brings elements that create a sense of home and routine - her own breakfast foods, a rice cooker, yoga mat, journal, and candles. These small but significant choices help her establish control in unpredictable environments. She also adjusts her diet and activities according to the seasons, aligning with natural rhythms to support her wellbeing throughout the year.
10. Know when it's time to move on
After achieving her lifelong goal of becoming world champion, Hedvig made the decision to retire from competition. This choice demonstrates her ability to recognize when a chapter of life has reached its natural conclusion, creating space for new experiences and growth.
She describes feeling a tremendous sense of relief after winning, as if a weight had been lifted. Rather than continuing with competition out of habit or expectation, she chose to pursue other skiing adventures and creative expressions that excite her. This willingness to move on reflects a deep understanding that life evolves, and that holding onto past goals can sometimes limit future possibilities.