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Michael Phelps

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Michael Phelps Shares Lessons on Success

By Dinah Wisenberg Brin

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For years, world champion swimmer Michael Phelps, who won a record 28 Olympic medals, would look in the mirror and see a swimmer rather than a person.

After a mental health crisis and 45 days in a treatment center nearly a decade ago, “I felt like a different human,” the 23-time Olympic gold medalist told the audience Thursday at Charles Schwab’s Impact conference in Philadelphia.

Phelps, 38, shared several lessons on finding success, both in achieving specific goals and in life overall, as he recounted his legendary swimming career and mental health challenges.

Finding the Right People

Phelps’ story illustrates the importance of finding the right people, both professionally and personally.

His first step as a swimmer came at age 7 when his mother enrolled him and his sisters in lessons. The future Olympian was afraid to get his face wet, so his teacher flipped him on his back and allowed him to get comfortable in the water. When he overcame his fear, “I just flipped over, and the rest is … history,” he recalled.

That early teacher, Cathy Bennett, now serves as programming director at the Michael Phelps Foundation, which offers a learn-to-swim curriculum through various nonprofits.

Another early figure in Phelps’ journey became the pillar in his career, as well as a father figure and now grandfather figure to his children. Bob Bowman, Phelps’ only coach from age 11, remained in that role throughout his roughly 20-year career, helping the young swimmer achieve his formidable goals.

“What coach-athlete relationship can you find that’s lasted more than two decades?” he asked.

“We had so many growth opportunities that we had to go through,” Phelps added, noting their relationship evolved as Phelps grew into young adulthood. “There’s not a person on this planet who could have coached me to the success that I had but him. He was the only coach.”

Working Toward Goals

“Everything that I learned in the early stages of my career were things that I almost perfected or sharpened throughout my career,” Phelps said. “The goal setting that I was taught at the age of 11.

“I think that’s where the Olympic dream started from,” Phelps recalled in the onstage conversation with fellow Olympic gold-medal swimmer Rowdy Gaines. Bowman told him to write his goals down on a sheet of paper. “I said I wanted to win an Olympic medal,” and “he said, ‘OK, in four years you can do that.’”

“He showed me confidence. He believed in me,” Phelps said. “When you tell a kid, ‘I can put you on the Olympic team in four years,’ who’s not going to say OK? … So I listened to everything that he told me for four years. I made my first Olympic team. At 15 years old.”

The swimmer was ticked off, however, to receive a piece of paper congratulating him for coming in fifth place. “I’m not going to get a piece of paper. I’m going for a medal, that’s it,” he said.

At a time when other athletes would typically take a break, Bowman told Phelps he’d get back in the water and start training the next day, “because in six months you’re going to break a world record.”

Phelps was ready to get started. “We were trying to do something that no one else had ever done before. … Guess what happened in six months? I broke the world record.”

When they first started working together, Bowman broke down Phelps’ strokes and started over. The swimmer repeated those strokes throughout his career, working to perfect them.

Along the way, Phelps and Bowman learned important lessons, including ones taken from watching herniated discs end Phelps’ sister’s swimming career. If anything hurt, Phelps went to see a physical therapist. He was being stretched every day, and physical recovery was part of his everyday routine, he said.

Phelps encouraged others to pursue their goals. “Nothing is impossible. Nothing you dream of is impossible,” he said. “So believe in yourself, it doesn’t matter what it is, it doesn’t matter what you’re trying or what obstacle you’re trying to overcome. … It’s possible, it is.”

Seeking a Bigger Challenge

Phelps won eight medals in the 2004 Olympics, and might have won nine had he not dropped one event that he felt confident could have earned him another gold medal. Instead, he wanted to go up against the world’s No. 1 swimmer at the time in another event, where Phelps placed third.

“That was something I had to do because that gave me a chance to then four years later to come back and win the 200-free, break the world record … and be perfect in 2008.

“So that moment that I had where I didn’t go for perfect in 2004 gave me the motivation and the fire inside of me to push me through those difficult days where I didn’t want to get up, didn’t want to get out of bed,” Phelps said, alluding to his mental health struggles.

“It’s impossible to feel perfect every day,” he said. “You can feel good every day, right? You can get something productive out of every single day. But on those days where you don’t want to get out of bed … try to get 10, 20, 50% out of that day.”

“That’s what I had to do to if I wanted to have a chance to do something that no one had ever done,” to find a breakthrough, Phelps said. “It’s preparation. It’s all it was.”

Training Hard

Avoiding the disappointment with coming in second was a driving force for Phelps, who had 10 workouts every week, sometimes two or three times a day. He said he did every one with intention.

“I want to stand up on top of the podium, I didn’t want to be second. … It sucks being second,” he said. “I remember my losses more than any of my victories.”

“How do you change that? By putting in what you put in. How bad do you want it? … If I wasn’t going to do the work somebody else was, somebody else was going to take all the golds.”

Mental preparation was important. Among the exercises that he and Bowman did while preparing for a big meet was visualizing what could happen there — what Phelps wanted to happen, what he would do if problems developed, or if he had the worst race in his career.

There was nothing for him to think about on race day, he explained. “I had already played every single tape in my head.”

Other mental exercises also have been important to Phelps’ success, such as putting aside disappointment over a given race. “I cannot let one race affect the other races,” he told the audience.

Throughout his career, Phelps said he learned that “if we control what we can control, then nothing else matters. … Everything else will take care of itself.” This lesson worked for him on the water, and now he’s said he’s trying to make it work as “a fish on land.”

In response to an audience question about his financial life, he said his longtime financial advisor, Frank Zecca, has been very helpful: “I’ve been so lucky that he treats me like one of his kids.” 

Being Authentic

After the high of his wildly successful 2008 Olympics, Phelps said he “tried to fake my way through” the 2012 Olympics, which he indicated isn’t one of his favorite topics. He took some time away from the sport after those games, and “that led me to some dark roads where I found myself in some … situations where I didn’t want to be alive.”

Phelps checked himself into a 45-day treatment center. He called it “the scariest feeling of my life” going into treatment with strangers and no phone. At first he had walls up but then lowered them, and “it allowed me to be comfortable with who I am.”

After exploring and releasing his feelings for 45 days, Phelps said, “I looked in the mirror and saw a person, I saw a person that feels emotions.”

In an interview with a Sports Illustrated reporter shortly after treatment, Phelps “unloaded everything out of my system. … I was like this is it. This is the real me and what you see is what you get. And from that point forward that climb back to the top of the mountain, going into the 2016 Olympics was the easiest climb of my life. The reason why, was because I was my authentic self, I was being my authentic self.”

“That’s the one thing I try to do every day. That’s one thing I tell my kids to do every single day.”

As for the 2016 Olympics, “It ended how it was supposed to.” His first-born son was in the stands, and “that was the perfect ending of a perfect career. I was able to hang my suit up on my terms.”

Prioritizing Mental Health

Phelps, who called loneliness the No. 1 cause of depression, described his days now as looking “like a roller coaster. Up and down, up and down,” but said his wife is “a rock” who loves him and in whom he can confide. He encourages others to find someone they love and can trust to talk to about anything they’re going through.

He also has friends on a group chat who reach out to him, which “is the most meaningful, most impactful thing in the world.” The swimmer encouraged people to reach out to family and friends and offer others a high five or a hello. “We don’t know what other people are going through,” he said. 

Phelps also urged others to talk about their own struggles. “That’s one thing that changed my life and it’s the reason why I’m sitting here today,” he said.

Saving Lives

Now, “trying to save a life now is bigger than anything I’ve done before. … That’s my mission,” Phelps said.

“If I can pay as much attention to my mental health as I do to my physical health, I can become a superhero, my own superhero,” he said, noting the importance of self-care in his life. To be his best self, and the best dad and friend, his own cup has to be filled, he said.

“If I can save one life that’s a hundred million times better than winning a gold medal,” Phelps said.

Pictured: Michael Phelps. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Dinah Wisenberg Brin

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