My journey through my first two Olympic experiences taught me exactly what it means to stop living in the past, and how powerful it can be when you learn to come back to the present.
Failing in My First Olympics: The Weight I Carried Forward
When I qualified for my first Olympics, like most athletes, I imagined the perfect story. But what happened there was the opposite of perfect. I failed. And that failure didn’t just stay in London, it followed me.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was beginning to live in the past. Every race after that first Olympic experience carried echoes of what happened. I’d get to a World Cup or a World Championship and feel a surge of pressure that didn’t belong to the moment I was in. It belonged to an old moment I couldn’t let go of.
My thoughts sounded like:
“What if it happens again?”
“What if I choke under pressure like last time?”
“What if London wasn’t a one-time thing, what if it’s just who I am?”
And sure enough, the more I feared repeating the past, the more I recreated it.
That is the trap of past living: when you expect the worst version of your past to show up again, you start performing as if it already has.
It took years to recognize that the failures I kept experiencing weren’t because I wasn’t good enough, they were because emotionally, mentally, I was still stuck in a moment long gone.
Winning Olympic Gold: The Other Side of the Same Trap
People assume that the danger of living in the past only applies to failure. But success can hold you hostage just as easily.
When I won the Olympics, it was the greatest moment of my athletic career. I celebrated it. I appreciated it. I was proud of it. But I also knew I couldn’t live there.
Success makes you comfortable. It makes you nostalgic. It tempts you to build an identity around something that already happened instead of the person you’re still becoming.
After becoming an Olympic champion, I had to learn the same lesson all over again but from the opposite direction. I had to find the balance between honoring the win and not letting it become the ceiling that capped my future growth. Because if failure can haunt you, success can hypnotize you.
Both directions can trap you in past living if you don’t recognize what’s happening.
My Coach’s Best Advice: “You Can Go There, But Come Back to the Present.”
At one point in my career, when he could tell I was drifting too far into the past or into the future my coach said something that changed my entire perspective:
“You can go there, but come back to the present.”
Simple. But powerful.
You can think about the past.
You can think about the future.
Both are useful. Both can guide you.
But you cannot live there.
You can reminisce. You can reflect. You can dream.
But you must return to where your hands and feet actually are. They are here, right now, today.
That advice carried me through the biggest moments of my career and still shapes everything I do now. Because being present is one of the most important skills in peak performance, whether you’re on the Olympic stage, a keynote stage, or in a boardroom.
Why Being Present Matters
In sport and in business, presence is power. The present is the only place where action happens. It’s where confidence is built. It’s where momentum starts. It’s the only place where you can actually influence the outcome.
When you’re stuck in the past, you bring old emotions into new opportunities. When you’re stuck in the future, you pressure yourself with expectations that haven’t happened yet. But when you’re present, you’re free to execute.
Learning this changed my results. It changed my mindset. And ultimately, it changed my life.
How to Stop Living in the Past
Here’s the framework I now teach, built from my own journey:
1. Visit the past but don’t live there.
Use it for lessons, not identity.
2. Pay attention to your thoughts.
If you find yourself expecting old outcomes, that’s a sign you’re still anchored to them.
3. Celebrate your wins, but return to the work.
Success is a moment, not a lifetime pass.
4. Honor your failures, but don’t rehearse them.
Reflection is productive; rumination is a trap.
5. Choose the present on purpose.
Every moment gives you a chance to reset.
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re struggling to move on from something that went wrong or holding onto something that went right remember this:
You can go there, but come back to the present.
The past can teach you. The future can inspire you.
But the present is where your power lives.
And when you stop living in the past, you finally give yourself permission to build the future you’re truly capable of.
– Connor Fields
