Dorothy Hamill quotes: the former figure skater’s finest content.
“I’d always had a goal, and I always had something to work for and work toward—a dream.”
“And when you achieve that dream, it’s like, okay, now what do I do? It’s sort of like when you get to the top of the mountain. Once there? Nothing. It’s what you take away from the experience that counts.”
“Reading Norman Vincent Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking also helped clear my head of negative thoughts, making me think, ‘I can do this,’ as opposed to, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t know what I’m doing, and what if I mess up?'”
“It’s going to be a rocky road sometimes, and other times you’ll pinch yourself and say, ‘How lucky am I?’ Don’t expect everything to be rosy all the time. But unless you make mistakes, you really don’t learn.”
“When you fall down, you get up, and you continue on. You can’t worry about what has happened. You have to move forward. As bad as it seems, if you look at the rest of the world, it can always be worse. I try to keep it in perspective.”
“I think the things you learn from are the difficult times.”
“We have a tendency to avoid painful experiences and run towards pleasure instead. By creating immediate painful consequences for inaction, we can motivate ourselves to take the necessary daily action to achieve our goals.”
“The mind is pretty powerful. You learn to click into that zone and focus not necessarily on what you’re doing but if you’re doing it well.”
“You can always think of something you should have done better. These are the things you must work on.”
“Everybody has to deal with tough times. A gold medal doesn’t make you immune to that. A skater is used to falling down and getting up again.”
“You dream about standing on the podium, and then when it happens you think that there’s a switch, and all of a sudden you’re going to be this princess, and the world and life is going to be perfect. And that switch doesn’t turn on. I’m not saying that it wasn’t a fairy tale, because in so many ways it was. But when you have a lifelong goal and then it happens, it’s like, ‘Now what?'”
“The ‘now what’ for me included turning professional and wading through countless opportunities. My celebrity was a chance to reduce stigma and encourage others.”
“And as an advocate for health and living healthier lives, there’s little things that I try to do, especially when traveling. Taking the stairs instead of the escalators or elevators… and parking as far away from the store in the parking lot. Also, trying to eat well and eat healthy. The vitamins I take are really helpful and fill in the gaps when I don’t eat healthy on the run. Getting enough sleep. I’m in different hotels and even at home, I try to find ways to help me go to sleep and stay asleep when I do put my head down.”
“Keeping moving and finding something I really love and enjoy doing is most important. And spending time with my family and friends. As I’ve gotten older, I really appreciate them, and I’m trying to slow down mentally, emotionally, and try to not beat myself up if I’m not working out four hours a day. I have to say I do feel better, so that’s what I’m hoping to share with people of all ages. It’s great for us to take care of our bodies now.”
“Routines create success. I am still all about planning ahead and having a routine. Planning ahead is everything!”
“Find activities you have passion for and it will never be work.”
“Not all of us have the same goals, but I think when it comes down to it, we all want to live healthy lives.”
“I’ve really tired to clear my mind and have positive thoughts, rituals, habits. And just trying to be really aware of all of that and that’s been really great for me.”
“I was passionate. I found something that I loved. I could be all alone in a big old skating rink and nobody could get near me and I didn’t have to talk to anybody because of my shyness. It was great. I was in my fantasy world.”
“I worked as hard as I could. I was always the first one on the ice, and the last one off.”
“I always had the sense that nothing was never good enough—striving for perfection.”
“I think I dreamed about competing at the Olympics, maybe hoping to win a gold medal. Not that I ever thought that I would, but I dreamed about it.”
“To be the world’s best, you have to beat the world’s best.”
“I’m really very glad that I had skating to be my love and my escape. I think that it always gave me something that made me feel good, and it was music, and it was peaceful, and not a lot of the other stresses of life.”
“I was really a spoiled brat when I was a kid skating. Meals are cooked for you, you are driven to the rink, they make costumes for you. Your parents sit around and watch admiringly while you skate. You don’t have to think about anything but skating. You’re just plain spoiled.”
“I just found something I loved to do, and it’s taken me to places that I never dreamt.”
“My parents didn’t have a lot of money, but we never knew that. They really did the best they could.”
“My mother stopped working when she had my brother. She was a full-time mom until I started getting heavily into ice skating lessons, and it got to the point where they really needed my mom to earn an income.”
“My mother had made a significant sacrifice by moving the entire family from Connecticut to Colorado, so that I could focus exclusively on training.”
“I would spend four hours a day going in circles and trying to perfect the compulsory figures and no one ever saw those but the judges. They were so complicated and so hard to perfect.”
“I had a commitment to myself and all the people who were helping me skate. It’s like a marriage, you don’t walk away from it. It was a huge investment in everyone’s life—my mom and my brothers and sisters and coaches.”
“I had a lot at stake if I failed to practice consistently. Not only would I have let myself down and fail to achieve my potential, I would also have wasted the personal and financial sacrifices my family and coaches had made to support me.”
“And I’m so appreciative now. Better late than never.”
“It was quite an education, in so many ways. I got to do things I never imagined I would do.”
“I’m at a comfortable place in my life. I’m doing well. I am so lucky to have anything that I could ever want—and family and friends, and life is wonderful.”
Related: Michael Johnson quotes.
