At 22, Eileen Gu is already the most decorated freestyle skier in Winter Olympics history. She’s also a Stanford University student, and a multimillionaire whose endorsement deals have helped push her net worth north of $20 million. And now, she’s just revealed the brain-training ritual she credits for all of it.
“I spend a lot of time in my head … I journal a lot. I break down all of my thought processes,” Gu said to a reporter who recently asked the Olympic champion to take readers inside her mind. “I apply a very analytical lens to my own thinking, and I modify it.”
And in her eyes, that’s a starting point for how anyone can unlock more success in their life.
“You can control what you think. You can control how you think. And therefore, you can control who you are,” she added. “And especially as a young person, I’m 22, so with neuroplasticity on my side, I can literally become exactly who I want to be.”
For Gu, the real “flex” isn’t just the medals or the money—it’s that every day she can rewire her brain, tune her mindset toward the future she wants and get one step closer to becoming “the person that me at age 8 would revere.”
Ultimately, Gu’s edge isn’t just physical training, it’s treating her brain like part of the sport, something she can coach, condition, and improve. And that’s the part another self‑made multimillionaire, Arianna Huffington, says more aspirational young people need to pay attention to.
Arianna Huffington says Gu is using the science of elite performers
What Gu’s doing is exactly how top performers quietly use science to their advantage, Huffington said.
“Athletes don’t just magically create routines and habits,” the 75-year-old Huffington Post cofounder and CEO of Thrive Global wrote on X. “They’re supported by coaches who use the principles of behavioral science to set them up for success. That means using techniques to reduce decision fatigue and lower stress.”
She added that Gu’s brain‑training ritual and real‑life success highlight the power of our mindset.
“Through neuroplasticity, the small choices we repeat every day can strengthen our neural circuits and rewire our brains to make certain behaviors more automatic, which is exactly what Gu has trained her mind to do,” Huffington added.
Neuroplasticity isn’t just a trendy buzzword. Scientists have confirmed that your brain really does have the ability to change and rewire itself—reshaping its connections based on what you repeatedly do, think, and pay attention to. It’s why learning a new skill feels clunky at first and easy with time. It’s why habits, good or bad, tend to go on autopilot.
According to Psychology Today, your brain doesn’t stop growing in childhood; its ability to expand continues throughout your life span: “The importance of neuroplasticity can’t be overstated: It means that it is possible to change dysfunctional patterns of thinking and behaving and to develop new mindsets, new memories, new skills, and new abilities,” the publication explains.
And Gu is using that to her advantage. As she made clear, she’s not spiraling about how she looks or replaying awkward conversations—she’s in her own head specifically to fine‑tune how she thinks, reacts, and ultimately performs.
“Yes, I spend a lot of time in my own head. Yes, I think a lot,” Gu added. “But it’s not really in an egotistical way. It’s in a tinkering, like a scientist way.
“I’m always trying to modify. I’m trying to think, ‘How can I be better? How can I approach my own brain the way that I approach my craft of free skiing?’ So that I can be better tomorrow than I was.”
And already, that approach has turned her into the fourth-highest-paid woman in sports, ahead of stars like Naomi Osaka and Caitlin Clark.