My guest today is Joscelin Yeo, Olympian, former National Swimmer, former Nominated Member of Parliament, Mother, and Sports Administrator.
I have known Joscelin’s brother since secondary school days when we were playing water polo as rival in different schools, but I never really had a chance to get to meet and know Joscelin on a personal level. But I believe that it’s never too late for things to happen, and in fact this podcast interview could not have happened at a better time.
Joscelin talks about how sport is a lifestyle choice and not a sacrifice; the ability to understand one's internal drive to push pass the most physical, emotional and psychologically difficult times; and about growth and how community is key to making that happen.
0.05 Joscelin introduces himself
1.50 How she handled a full-time intense routine all 17 years she was swimming for Singapore
2.40 The golden girl of the 1980s
3.00 Journey of pushing pass the many times of giving up
3.30 Growth came from having to juggle so much at a time
6.00 Desire from within and fire in your belly
6.20 Her first retirement at 12 years old
8.55 Go out there and enjoy what you’re doing
9.10 How a coach helped her change her mindset
9.50 Dealing with media was a key resilience building exercise
11.00 Swimming is a one-shot-one-kill sport
11.54 How to get into the right mindset pre-race?
14.18 Learning to deal with unplanned things on the spot
15.00 Prep work is all done way before the competition
16.15 How should parents motivate their children in high performance sport?
17.17 How a parent can help their children push through a difficult period of wanting to give up to build resilience?
18.58 Is a child doing the sport because they enjoy it or because that’s what the parent enforces?
19.18 Internal drive to have longevity in sport
20.00 What was her internal drive?
20.38 You have to enjoy what you’re doing. From the training to the racing. And having different motivations at different life stages.
21.26 Progression builds confidence
22.09 She was a student of the sport
22.40 Sport helped her also apply skills to school work
26.00 Most significant sporting high
28.30 Most significant sporting low
32.29 Everything she planned and trained for could not happen due to unforeseen externalities
33.17 The need to re-evaluate why she was swimming and what for
35.14 Trying for the next Olympics with the transition of graduating from college to finding work and being a semi-pro athlete
37.52 Retiring after the 2006 Asian Games
38.25 Having the self-awareness to know that she didn’t have the internal drive to keep at the same intensity to give 110%
40.39 How she decided to move on because she knew that her internal drive would not take her for another 2 years to the next Olympics
41.30 Being an athlete is not about sacrificing something else for sport but its about choosing one lifestyle over another
44.15 Most enjoyable phase of 17 years in high performance swimming
45.40 How even though swimming is an individual sport, she leant more about teamwork when training in the US
46.00 Learning the culture and power of competing with each other and not against one another
48.00 How she has taken this skill and applying it as an Exco with the Singapore Swimming Association
50.20 Have fun, go out there and enjoy yourself and don’t be too concerned about what others think about you
