My guest today is May Ooi, Olympian, Former ONE Championship MMA fighter, Speaker and Business Owner.
Extremely valuable lessons learnt with May talking about what she went through as an Olympic Swimmer and taking a decade off before training and competing as a professional MMA fighter. Hearing that values and skills trained in sport - consistency, processes, patience, embracing failure, and the “never quit” attitude, are all reflections of life.
A very powerful session where she also shares about championing women’s leadership in sports organisations.
2.20 Since she retirement from high performance swimming
4.00 Why she came back to Singapore after 16 years abroad
5.43 The 10-year gap between retiring from high performance swimming to competing in MMA
6.35 How was the transition into another sport competing at the highest level
7.30 Specific skillsets honed and trained as a high performance swimmer that allowed for the easy transition into combat sports
7.45 Following consistency and processes are key to the success from one sport to another and to life as well
8.10 You cannot hurry the process
8.17 Being able to stay on long enough to experience the positive changes, significant improvements and eventual breakthrough
8.40 You need patience to live through the bad days and frustrations
9.50 Understanding how long to stay long enough before deciding to move on to the next adventure or next stage of life
11.00 What are you willing to give up to achieve your goals you’ve set for yourself
11.34 Translation of skills acquired from sport to professional and personal life
11.45 Sport and martial arts is a reflection of life
12.23 Constant growth all throughout her career as a high performance athlete with new skills and with experience and maturity be able to link different skillsets
13.15 Not done growing and still learning
13.25 Athletes have an advantage
14.00 Think, act or make a decision a certain way because of having been a high performance athlete
14.58 You can do and have everything perfect and still not win16.00 Understanding that there’s only so much you can do within your power
17.30 Overcoming the pandemic with a similar mindset
19.25 Seeing the good in the bad
20.45 Stopped having “low points” when it came to competition to have that professional mindset and move on
21.10 Overcoming a bad race in 1993 and coming back with strategic thinking
23.09 Swim each race even though its not perfect
24.00 Mindset is key to be able to turn things around
24.36 To build resilience, you need to “shock” the system
26.50 Learn, evolve, and adapt, to not shortcut the process
28.40 Setting a deadline to achieve a goal and if it doesn’t happen, move on
29.35 Retirement after the 2018 Asian Games
29.52 Best highs from high performance career
30.52 Continuing to be challenging herself with learning new martial arts skills
32.00 What would she say to her younger self?
32.33 No matter how devastating the losses there will be other opportunity, but you must be able to stay in the game
34.00 Being an advocate for women to be able to make an impact in leadership roles within sports organisations
36.43 Experiences and professionalism are important to be able to put oneself in a position of authority to influence and impact
37.00 Constantly learning, even to be a team manager and administrator/official
39.00 Even successful people who seemed to have all the best going are also struggling and learning daily
39.39 Takeaways
