ALYSHA NEWMAN: THE IMPORTANCE OF SLEEP AND POST-ATHLETIC GOALS
JANUARY 22, 2021
“The more work you put in and the more time you spend on alternate aspects of your life, the more doors you will open for yourself, and I think a lot of athletes underestimate that. We all know Olympic athletes are underpaid. We all know female athletes are underpaid.
But you can be one of two people in that scenario. Are you going to be the person who sits there and feels sorry for themselves, saying ‘aw, poor me, I’m not making enough money,’ or are you going to do something about it the way me and many other athlete-entrepreneurs have been doing.
Doing other things, building my brand, trying to start a business, looking into real estate, building an empire outside of track so that my mind can be at ease about my future while I’m actually competing on the track. That’s my mentality behind building a brand, because I really think it’s a powerful thing to have that peace of mind that, ‘yeah, I’ll be okay even if track doesn’t work out.’
I love pole vaulting and track and field, but to me, those things are just the first chapter of my life, and my life is a book of at least 20 chapters and I want all of those chapters to be fulfilling by giving the most I can and making people’s lives better. It’s my journey, it’s my story, and I’m excited and confident about this current chapter as well as all the ones that will follow.
I’m a very goal-oriented person, and right now my main, priority-one goal is to break the pole vaulting world record. But there are lots of things I’d like to do post-track, like becoming an actor and acting in a superhero movie. That’s something I’ve always wanted, I’ve always seen the power in becoming a character and really living through that character's eyes to create something special.
It’s something I’m passionate about, so I’ve been looking into acting coaches and things like that. I believe it’s something I could try out and see if I’m good at for a year or two in the future. I’m also very intrigued by interior decorating and event planning. I love bringing beautiful spaces to life, bringing people together in a happy setting, and upgrading new spaces.
If you know me, you also know that I’m very passionate about sleep, I get about 12 hours of sleep per day. However, I do often wake up in the middle of the night because I have so many ideas flowing in my mind, ideas I just have to get down in my notebook. I wake up, and I have so much adrenaline that I just need to get all the ideas and the steps I have in my mind down on paper.
One of those ideas has become One Body, One Life, a startup I’ve been working on over the last few months that I’m really excited about. We’re going to start out with sending my fitness boxes to subscribers but what we’d love to do in the end is turn this into a two-in-one, holistic, self-care app.
Ideally, it would be a convenient, mobile, one-stop shop for the user to check up on anything related to their health and well-being. The ‘One Body’ side would be more physical health focused, such as tracking your nutrition and your workouts.