Hurdles to Heroes: The Unstoppable Sarah Wells, Founder of Believe Initiative

At some point over the course of your life, you’ve felt as if you’ve failed and aren’t good enough. We tend to lose faith and trust in ourselves, and give up hope. But in our most recent interview, we talked to someone that has been through it all and has the secret to conquering this feeling: Sarah Wells, founder of the Believe Initiative.

Sarah is a Canadian Olympic athlete in 400m hurdles. And she went from thinking she was completely unathletic to qualifying for the Olympics all with one mindset, which is to believe in yourself. This led her to start the Believe Initiative, an organization that visits high schools all throughout Canada and teaches their students the importance of self belief and the places it can get you.

Her Journey 🎯

Sarah began her journey in high school after trying out for almost every sports team but not making any of them. She was upset and assumed that she was just unathletic. But a little while later, she was in gym class and her teacher told her that she should try out for track and field. She was hesitant, but as she recalls now, her teacher believed in her when she didn’t believe in herself, and ended up leading her to qualify for the Olympics, which seemed unimaginable years prior. Through this journey, Sarah suffered many bumps in the road, such as a femur injury that left her out for over 9 months. But, she persisted and believed in herself throughout the entire process, allowing her to come out strong and manage to reach her goals.

After the Olympics, Sarah realized that she knew something many other people didn’t. She explained that many people perceive the concept of believing in yourself as something fluffy, and wouldn’t actually do anything. And, at times, Sarah thought this too, like when she got injured a second time, believed in herself as much as possible, but still wasn’t able to get back out there fast enough. But this taught her an important lesson, which is that believing in yourself isn’t enough: it’s that you have to believe that you can do it, not that you will. This motivation will allow you to work as hard as possible to reach your goal, be it reaching the Olympics, getting a degree, succeeding in a program, getting a job, building a relationship, or anything. Some things are out of your control, but what’s most important is that you work as hard as you possibly can to achieve your goals.

And so that’s when I really learned that if I believe in myself more strongly after not making the Olympics even more so than when I did well then clearly, we don’t build self belief through achievements, we build self belief through action through standing on your version of a start line, whatever that is for you and going for it anyways.

It took her years and many experiences to build up this knowledge, and now she works to share it with others, specifically high school students that are beginning the next chapter of their life, where it matters the most.

And so I started the Believe Initiative to stand on stages, share that story and help other people just maybe spark that moment of self belief that they could foster over time and achieve their own wildest dreams. And so we’ve now done this with thousands of students all across North America. There’s about 100 schools that run this program, and we got a few newcomers maybe coming up next year. And now I’m doing that and it fills my soul. It makes everything I’ve gone through in my Olympic journey so worthwhile, the triumphs and the moments where I didn’t get what I wanted because ultimately it led me to doing this and this is something I love so, so much.

She also learned the importance of setting goals and sticking with them. After she injured her femur and finally got back into training, Sarah tattooed the word “Believe” on her arm, and promised herself to get the Olympic rings underneath it. And she managed to 6 months later, when she made the Olympic games.

Useful Tidbits 🧠

Throughout the interview, Sarah gave a ton of useful tidbits that are insanely helpful for students that are building up their lives and trying to figure out how things work. Here are some of our main takeaways from them:

1. Believing in yourself isn’t a fluffy thing that will make all of your problems go away. Instead, it’s a form of motivation that will allow you to have more faith in yourself and want to show up and work hard even more.
2. It’s just whatever you kind of spend your time doing, enjoy doing, even just here and there, there’s a way to use that to solve problems, take action, do those things.
3. And it’s that like believing in yourself is just not like one part of the entire thing. You also have to put in the hard work too in order to make your goals or dreams a reality.
4. Use the “Three Cs” to cope with anxiety & pressure:

Consistency:

Like if we just simply remain consistent, we chip away at that goal, then ultimately, those add up and you don’t know how far you could get in a year. It’s six months or, you know, years from now where you suddenly realize like, whoa I’ve developed so much in that time.

And, remaining consistent and each day just showing back up for the goal was how I was able to kind of like stay focused on now and take little steps forward.

Choice:

The second thing to focus on would be reminding yourself that you have a choice in what’s going on because when we start to doubt ourselves, when things go wrong, we feel like it’s happening to only us and that we don’t have a choice.

But it’s important to understand that we can’t control what other athletes are doing and how they are training, but instead, how much work we put in.

Cataloguing wins:

When you feel like you’re falling behind or are not doing well, the best thing to do is keep a journal of all of the things you’ve gotten better at over time. This helps you keep track of all of the things you’ve gotten better at, and understand how much you’ve improved.

TL;DR 😅

• Sarah is an Olympics Hurdler who also won a pair of medals at the Pan Am Games in Toronto.
• Sarah has established the Believe Initiative — an organization that inspires students all across North America.
• Sarah’s gym class teacher inspired her to believe in herself and try out for the track and field team and eventually she was able to make it to the Olympics.
• Hard work is equally as important to believing in yourself no matter what goal you have in mind.
• Discipline; staying committed to goals is a key factor in success.
• Using the three Cs: Consistency, Choice and Cataloguing Wins is a great way to deal with anxiety and pressure.

Rapid Fire 🔥

1. Who’s your biggest role model? Her sister, Athena
2. What’s your dream job if not athlete or founder of Believe Initiative? Exactly what she’s doing now!
3. What’s your favorite hobby? Anything outside (picnic, hiking)
4. What’s your favorite store? Aritzia
5. What’s your dream destination? Tokyo or New Zealand
6. What’s your all-time favorite movie? Serendipity
7. Dogs or cats? Dogs!!
8. What’s the proudest moment in your life? Making the Olympics & being her brother’s best man at his wedding :D

Check out our podcast for this episode here:

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