Bea Kim's Olympic Snowboarding Mindset Will Teach You How to Stop Comparing and Start Winning
It has never been easier to see what everyone else is up to. Social media is a highlight reel. We all know that, but that doesn't make it sting any less.
Scroll for thirty seconds and it seems like everyone is outworking you, outperforming you, and leveling up faster. When you carry a curated highlight reel of your closest competitors in your pocket, comparison gets easy and the chatter gets loud. It's much harder to put your blinders on and do your own thing.
Bea Kim has been putting her blinders on since she was six years old.
“Not a natural”
Bea's first days on a snowboard were not highlight reel material. On family trips to Mammoth at age 6, she struggled to link her turns. She rocked falling leaf down the hill while her brother (four years younger) linked his turns on his very first trip.
"You didn't look at me and think oh yeah, she's good," Bea said. "But [snowboarding] was something I really loved, and it was that passion and that love really drove me."
When Bea was ten, her family spontaneously entered her into a legendary banked slalom race at Mammoth held in memory of Jeffrey Anderson. She finished third. That podium was her first taste of something different, and she told her dad she wanted to take snowboarding seriously.
He hesitated. The Kim’s lived six hours away from Mammoth mountain. He told her there was no such thing as a Mammoth snowboard team. Right on cue, a kid rode past in a team jacket.
“Opportunity loves repetition”
Bea’s deal with her parents was simple: maintain good grades to keep snowboarding. In sixth grade she was invited to Mammoth's full time team, five days a week. Bea gleefully made the commitment, but it came with missing sleepovers and birthday parties. She made the U.S. rookie team at 13, the pro team at 15, and switched to online school.
"It was very much my decision," she said, "but extremely backed and well thought out by my family. I couldn’t have done any of this without the support of my family."
“Staying in my lane”
When asked how her mindset has evolved over the course of her professional snowboarding career, Bea says that one lesson has held: she can only affect what is in her control.
Worrying about which tricks her competitors are learning, or how much more time they get on snow? "What is that doing for me? Absolutely nothing. It's making it worse." She still knows what's happening around her. As she put it, she has her side view and rear view mirrors and knows where the cars are. But her focus stays on her own run, her own tricks, and how she can get better every single day.
Bea is now a freshman at Columbia, where internship recruiting for finance starts on day one: “everybody’s doing it.” What she won't do is pick a path just because everyone around her is on it. That lesson came with her from the halfpipe.
"What snowboarding also taught me... is that I only want to do things that I truly, truly enjoy, and that I truly love, and that fulfill me," she said. "I'm confident in my abilities to decide how I want to operate and how I want to work."
Bea tunes out what everyone else is doing, and trusts her own run.
I can certainly relate. I turned down an offer in consulting to build Back The Team, even though it felt like that's what everyone at Harvard does. Doing your own thing is a muscle you have to train, and it is one of the hardest things to do. That's why I tell people that you don't have to have an Olympic dream to build an Olympic mindset. Bea built her mindset in the halfpipe, and now she's using it to choose her own path at Columbia.
Your takeaway, in three steps
Be real with yourself about what you want. Especially if that's different from the norm. Bea knew at ten that she wanted to get serious about snowboarding, and she’s carrying the same self-belief into her studies and professional endeavors at Columbia.
Build a support system. Your dream isn't going to happen overnight. Bea's took years of 6-hour long drives to Mammoth, and her dad has been her number one coach the whole way. It takes grit and mental fortitude to get where you want to go, and no one builds that alone.
Find your people. A perfect recipe for success is having a community chasing a shared dream. Before the Games, Olympians who had been there before told Bea they wished they had stopped stressing and enjoyed it more. She took their advice and walked into her Olympic debut in Livigno calmer than ever. A rising tide lifts all boats.
The highlight reel will always be there. Your path doesn't have to look like anyone else's. Put your blinders on, lean on your people, and stay in your lane.
For daily mindset tips from my journey to interview 100% of the 2026 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Team, follow @backtheteam on socials. Mindset is a muscle. Let’s train it.
