Champion for Change: Alena Olsen’s Mission

Speaker 1: [Music] if you're looking to pursue anything the first thing is just try your absolute hardest like everything you have aim it at that one thing if that's really what you want I'm Melanie bar welcome back to the Shep podcast your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave I'm here to talk about everything from Having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges I live in the city now but I grew up in a town of a thousand people I've navigated major life leaps a senior level corporate career worked in professional sports and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business technology family and making meaningful connections with you and the Sheil it Community I also love a good workout and dose of self-care magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so turn up the audio open your favorite Notes app grab your favorite drink and here we go welcome back to the Sheila podcast thank you for joining us Elena what initially attracted you to rugby especially after playing volleyball and soccer in high school and I also have to say congratulations on your incredible win in Paris oh thank you so much yeah it's been a dream the past couple months since Paris and I'm just so grateful that I found rugby two of my cousins played rugby when we were growing up in high school and one of them played at the University of Michigan which is where I was going and they were like you should really try it out and honestly so much feedback from my coaches in soccer their feedback is like you're just too aggressive you got to tone it down please don't foul those kinds of things I knew that I liked being competitive that is useful on a rugby field so I gave it a and I absolutely fell in love with it I love that you didn't stick with one thing and that you tried something new and listening to you talk in other interviews you mentioned how it brings a sense of community too I have a daughter she plays club soccer but it's interesting to think about trying a different sport yeah what's nice about the college environment is that there's so many open doors and it's about trying new things but there were two things that really made me fall in love with rugby one of them was the contact element of it and being able to use my body but the second one was the people once you show up to your first practice and I hope that women and girls that are showing up to their first practices after this Olympics are experiencing the same environment that I did but if people are so excited that you're there they're like oh my gosh somebody that's interested in rugby because there's so few of them they're like come here we want you to learn everything we want to teach you everything we want you to love rugby as much as we do we want to be your friend nothing else matters you can be here for fun you can be here because you want want to be competitive but we want you to be here and enjoy the sport with us and it builds a really awesome group of friends I love that and Community is what it really is about that group of friends and that team being able to have the chemistry and work well together yeah I think that's one of my favorite things about team sports and that's such a special thing that you get to experience by doing all those things hard things fun things with all your friends tell us about your debut on the world rugby 7 Series in Glendale and scoring the game changing dry what did that mean to you for the longest day that was probably like the best day of my life thinking back and now after the Olympics I'm not sure it could still be the best day I haven't done the tally on both of the days but I had been playing rugby for a while I had come into the full-time national team environment and it was a pretty Rocky start for me I showed up but I didn't have a contract and I wasn't getting paid and so I always had one foot in the door one foot out the door I need to make sure I have a job because this dream could be over and then eventually I did get cut for a brief period of time but then we got a new Coach and he's like you can stay around for longer he ended up being the coach that gave me my first cap and I was so happy to be there because that's the goal in your head I just want to get my first International cap so I was just happy and although very nervous felt like he had prepared me really well to beat there and honestly it felt like it landed in my lap I was with all my teammates it was a big team play but right in front of me the se's just parted and so I was like am I supposed to run this anybody else want this but I just took it and I ran it and yeah it's funny how those moments show up in your life I love that you had the confidence to take it and you mentioned being cut we all have those setbacks at times in life and how great is it that your coach probably very thrilled that they said come back and be with us knowing all that you've achieved but tell us about that setback and what advice do you have for others who might be going through a setback right now it's all part of the process no matter who you are and I'm talking about like our team there's so many players on our team that have different kinds of setbacks and no matter who you are it's going to come you're going to face rejection or failure a lot of it is continuing to show up the same way you were before you want to make adjustments but if my process is to make sure I'm getting this many passes in spend this much time kicking making sure I'm doing this conditioning no matter how I feel after that failure to still be able to show up the next day and do the job because if I decide that I want to go for it again then no matter how I feel I still have to continue the process of building myself to become a better athlete and become a better teate person how has being an Olympian shaped you both on and off the field that one's a hard question has to be an incredible feeling yeah it is part of me is like it's the goal that I've been working for a very long time but also does the Olympian title change me I still very much feel like I was the same person I was before the Olympics it was an amazing experience and I love that we were able to share it with so many people but it doesn't fundamentally change who any of us are or were before we played in the games but the Journey of getting there has taught me a lot about resilience and dedication courage and I know I can throw a lot of words out there but I don't feel like you have to have confidence but I at least know that I can do hard things I've been able to show that to myself and no matter if it's on the field or off the field challenges are going to come and I feel like I'll be able to handle them so often we can up against something and think oh I'm just going to quit and I love that you're sharing the message to just keep pushing forward because look at all that you have achieved it's it's amazing yeah and most of those days especially very late in the fourth or however many years you've been doing it you don't want to and it's hard to get yourself to do it but I think that's the key is being able to consistently show up even when you don't want to you also have a passion for environmental sustainability what role do you think athletes and sports organizations can play in helping our environment it's been really cool to see how athletes in general have brought a lot of topics to the public so people can discuss them and learn about them a lot of social issues and and I guess what I'm hoping is that like one of the next big topics for athletes is environmental issues where in the public eye people are watching us and observing the things that we do so talking about it so that people at least have discussions about it or can educate themselves on it that's I think a big deal especially in the US but also being leaders so sporting organizations doing more at their events so when people come to their events they can witness and see what it looks like to be more sustainable and how easy it could be to bring back into their own homes and their own lives but then also asking more from their sponsors and Partnerships because it should go both ways if I'm an athlete and I really care about the environment and I want to I have a sponsor I want to partner with somebody I want to align with their values so them being able to ask something for me but me also ask them could you be more sustainable what ways could you guys be more sustainable to make this like a partnership that I feel good about but like that done on a big scale if you think about the Olympics or if you think about FIFA the NBA and them asking big corporate sponsors to be more sustainable I think could make a really big impact I worked for the Los Angeles Dodgers and I was actually just at the game not long ago looking at the stands the quick thing that you go to is Plastics and bottles and how do we do that when my daughter had looked at me and she said wow how fast does this get cleaned up when the game is over and I at home have tried to stop buying plastic water bottles I just stop buying them because you think about what it does to our oceans and our landfills and how it goes back into whatever we're eating or consuming it's amazing when you try to be more aware of it when you're at the grocery store or at the shopping mall and you're walking around you can see how many things are just used one time they're so disposable like the wrapping the packaging of things and I guess every time you visit the trash can and you put something in it you should think where did this come from how did I use it and is there a way that I can avoid the visits that I'm taking to the trash it's so true I get groceries delivered every so often but I have a stack of paper bags and I thought I wonder if there's a place I can drop these off yeah where they can be reused because I really try like when I'm doing my own grocery shopping to use a sustainable bags and always have my bags with me but sometimes if you have them delivered they can stack up but I thought where can I take these instead of just throwing it into the recycling yeah that's amazing because recycling is really good for some things but I also think in a lot of ways it's a copout to reducing and reusing it's definitely the last solution in the chain for me of course like throwing something away is the last one but in terms of the three Rs recycling is the last one I was also thinking about recently Electronics I've been cleaning out my office and then my kids have old iPads and where do you drop those off so it's interesting having that conversation because we all have so many electronics now where is there a place where we can put them where it will be safer for us the environment and it's really cool to see a lot more solutions coming along because like you said this is something that everybody is experiencing and it's really hard for everybody to make so much effort for just like a small stack of electronics but if it were easier for all of us to do then it's a bigger impact maybe that's a sports team bring your electronics and drop them off on your way to the game because seriously I have a stack of them and I thought I don't want to just put these in the trash that just doesn't feel right it takes an extra thought process to think about what can I do with them but we all have old earbuds or they they don't work anymore I remember when I was helping my mom clean out some of her stuff and she had a bunch of those TVs with that go all the way back with a big bath on them and I'm like I have no idea what to do with these and then I tried to research places and they're like we don't even take those anymore so yeah definitely had to work really hard just to figure out what to do with big Electronics what advice would you give

Speaker 1: say watching film cuz that's not always easy to do sometimes you watch it and you it's harder to watch yeah there is a little bit of an awkward period but you also learn this happens all the time I'm like oh my God that was a horrible practice I don't even watch it back and I watch it back and I was like oh that was not as bad as I thought it was look at all these other things happening but then also sometimes I'm like that was such a good play I can't wait to clip it and put it in my memory bank so I can watch it on a bad day and then I watch it I'm like yeah that wasn't as good as I thought it was so it's always nice to get a second look at the things that happen and instead of ruminating on mistakes yeah we're always so critical of ourselves and I love how you said putting those plays somewhere where you can watch them again to feel proud of yourself yeah that's a really big thing that actually I should put more credit to that brought me a long way in really tough times was like oh I did something this is a folder just for me to watch whenever I need a little pickup but there's also a lot of really funny clips in there too I love that that's so fun magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one way that you make sure to find and live your joy we've talked a lot about what you do and what you're passionate about but what do you do for yourself yeah that's a great question because when the days are really long and they're working us really hard it's really easy to be tired and pessimistic we work with our sports psychologist fair amount Joy is something that I want that keeps me going how can I find that more in my day a lot of times honestly it's really being able to connect with my teammates and connect with people that are in my environment and see them smile or talk about something that has nothing to do with rugby just be laughing together that joy and laughter comes from the people that I'm around finding ways to build our relationships that don't have to do with our performance on the field or technology we're all so Tech driven that just being with someone and you're so lucky that you have your teammates too cuz it's got to be such a good feeling to have that Community with you yeah and you know that a lot of times they're feeling very similarly to be able to bring two people out of like a darker place is better than just one yes thank you so much for joining us today will you please tell us a little bit about Paris before we wrap up oh of course it was amazing I will say before we played very stressful a lot of pressure the heat was on and people weren't sleeping well weren't eating well but we got to the Village beds were fine I know people have complaints about the beds I thought they were fine the food was okay the muffins were great I'm just covering the these basic questions I get but honestly The Village was amazing just to see so many people that are so good at what they do all in one spot was unbelievable and meeting a lot of people that I have met online before but never met in person that's really cool too and Paris was just beautiful they did such a good job LA's got their work cut out for them because they had a lot of the events at Big venues or monuments within the city so Paris just felt like it was made to hold an Olympic event with the public transit they were super sustainable with how they built the village and how they built the stadiums how was playing for you and winning oh man that was the biggest crowd we've ever seen I think we had 66 69,000 something like that it was packed it was weird cuz you like couldn't hear anything but also at some point you couldn't even hear the crowd like it just felt quiet because it was so loud but I loved the crowd they had so much energy and God I love my teammate so much because I can't believe we pulled it off still after we won I'm pretty sure I just cried for 48 hours straight I just couldn't stop congratulations it's amazing thank you so much please share with us how and where we can find you mostly Instagram my tag is Miss elenius it's a play on the word miscellaneous or LinkedIn I love LinkedIn I think that's my favorite social media platform and then you can find my team we play hopefully if we keep the same deal with media we play on peacock so you can find us either live streamed or watch the games after they've been recorded thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our Sheil it website or at Sheed on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave