2022-07-14 22:24:37
Female Founder Interview: Amy Wilhelmi, Entrepreneur, Author, and AthleteAs part of our Female Founder series, The Startup Magazine caught up with Amy Wilhelmi. Amy is a successful multi-entrepreneur as the founder of Balance Wellness Collective and Ascension Mentality, business & performance coach at Strategic Voyages Business Consultants, and licensed mental health therapist. As a speaker, author, and athlete, she is on a mission to become a global go-to thought leader in making mental health for athletes normalized, approachable, and accessible. As an athlete herself, she “gets” the mental health struggles, challenges, mentality, and grit it takes to perform at such a high level.Ms. Wilhelmi is also the author of her book “Making Mental Gains.” This book is for individuals who feel stuck in their lives, personally and/or professionally. There are no hacks or gimmicks here. In her brazen, get-it-done style, Amy shows you how to move forward out of apathy through your everyday lifestyle habits, mindset, and belief system.Her second book, called “Ascension Mentality,” comes out later this year and tells the story of her own journey through being a high performer, challenges throughout her life, and how she persevered through those challenges to be the person she is today. For more background information about Amy Wilhelmi, visit www.amywilhelmi.com.By sharing her personal story of being a licensed therapist, performance coach, athlete mindset and mentality coach, and bikini bodybuilder, as well as sharing stories of others, Amy hopes that she can change the outlook for athletes so they have better mindsets, performance outcomes, and don’t feel like they’re struggling alone. Here she has shared more about her journey.TSM: Can you tell us, in 10 words or less, what is the central message of your work in mental health and wellness for athletes?Amy: I help athletes with mental fortitude, wellness, performance anxiety, perseverance in difficult states, and change.
TSM: With a bit more detail, what inspired you to work on mental health in athletics and how do you work with clients? Can you talk about your experience in bodybuilding as an example?
Amy: I am a competitive bodybuilder myself. And immediately after getting into this sport as an athlete, I saw a gap in mental health resources for athletes. Under most circumstances, athletes who struggle with their mental health would be easily labeled by common mental health professionals as “disordered.” The general public and most trained mental health professionals do not understand the mindset of top athletes and what it takes mentally to perform at such high levels. My work began because there was a glaring need for someone to help that was both an athlete themselves and an educated, trained, licensed mental health professional.Many athletes turn to their coaches when they’re struggling mentally, and then many coaches don’t know where to turn when the athletes’ problems are more than their training or capacity. That’s where I come in. I have a foot on both sides of the line. It’s my passion and my life’s work rolled into one. The “how” is individualized to each team or athlete themselves. But some main components are strategic planning and setting goals both short-term and long-term, check ins, accountability. I ask the following questions: Where are they at mentally?What are they struggling with?Where do they want to be?How do we get there together?
TSM: Many athletes—Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, tennis star Naomi Osaka and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps—had their struggles publicized as they walked away from competition or turned to other ways to cope with the next phases of their lives. Can you describe what they might be feeling or going through?
Amy: Overload. Burnout. Not enough rest. Not taking time to deal with whatever personal issues they have going on with the expectation to perform. We forget that these top athletes are human sometimes. They…
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