Grant Hackett: The Mindset of a Champion & How to Rebuild When Life Falls Apart

**Sarah Grynberg** (0:00)
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Grant Hackett is one of the greatest swimmers this country has ever produced.
Two Olympic golds in the 1500 back to back at Sydney and Athens, 10 world titles and for a decade simply unstoppable. But away from the pool, his life took a much harder turn than most people ever realized. In this conversation, we talk about the heartbreaking loss in Beijing and everything that came after the swimming stopped, the anxiety, the very public unraveling and the long road back. We get into who you are when you're no longer the person everyone told you you were, and what Grant has learned about shame, rebuilding and parenting through his hardest years.

**Grant Hackett** (1:20)
Yeah, the 1500, I just felt like one, I was good at it. So you sort of tilt towards to your point what you're good at.
And it was something that I felt I just really enjoyed the almost the suffering and the pain that came with it. It was like I knew when it got really hard, I could absorb more pain than the others. And I think for me, that's something I could do in training. And I knew that would transfer to racing, even on a bad day. And I think that's probably why I spent a decade probably winning that race, because I had that mentality.

**Sarah Grynberg** (2:02)
Through my years of studying and researching the connection between human behaviour, personal growth and transformation, I have discovered the keys to unlocking greatness within others. In this podcast, I share stories and experiences from my own teachings, along with conversations with inspiring guests, to help you learn the simple tips, habits, practices and strategies to cultivate an extraordinary existence. My hope is that this conversation leaves you feeling a little less alone in whatever you're carrying. Because if someone who reached the very top can be this open and honest about the ups and downs, then maybe the rest of us can be a little kinder to ourselves too.
Grant Hackett, welcome to A Life Of Greatness.

**Grant Hackett** (2:50)
Thank you for having me.

**Sarah Grynberg** (2:51)
When we think of you, we obviously think of the Olympian and the incredible swimmer that you are. But your life has evolved a lot since then. Just talk us through what it is that you do now with yourself.

**Grant Hackett** (3:03)
So now I'm a CEO of a top 200 company on the ASX. So it's called Generation Development Group. We've got three different businesses. Father of four kids, married for the second time. I had two children out of that marriage, Eddie who's six, Olympia who actually turns three tomorrow after shooting this.
Yeah, and I would say probably more settled in my skin at age 46 than I was as a 20 year old Olympian.

**Sarah Grynberg** (3:28)
Yeah, that's incredible because, you know, what we find with sometimes with a lot of athletes, and we will talk to this maybe a bit later, is that after they finish their career, they lose themselves a bit, right? But from a young age, your dad always said to you that it was important that you had something else under your belt and it wasn't just that you were a good swimmer.

**Grant Hackett** (3:53)
Yeah.
Yeah, we always had a bit of a saying, you retire to something, not from something as an athlete. And so, but I was always fascinated with business. So for me to move into the finance world and to go down that path felt very natural. But at the same time, you're almost interrupted by this professional sports career because it's right in the middle of when you're preparing for life. You're sort of going through it as a teenager and as a young sort of 20-year-old at the Olympic Games. And all of a sudden, financially, you're doing quite well at that level.
And it's quite funny because a lot of your friends or peers aren't. They might be a silver or bronze medalist at the Olympics or might be as consistent in performance. Therefore, they don't get sponsors. And, you know, so they're working really hard on their careers outside of sport. But you see the ones that you know or a high profile, they're often doing quite well. And I think that's the big problem is if you financially didn't do too well out of your career, you're all of a sudden using all those skills and expertise as an athlete that got you to maybe an Olympics or a world championships. But you know, you've got to go out in the real world and make it. And it's often enough, I've seen a lot of my peers that are almost at that second tier of performance, but still got to a very elite level that have done incredibly well. But it's often enough we see a lot of athletes that have done exceptionally well, who we all know, who have all been paid the big sponsorship dollars that don't do terribly well afterwards or have this period of flux on their transition because they don't need to go to anywhere else and almost not forced to go anywhere else. And so I think earning a little bit too much money for some athletes through their career can be a problem into that next phase of their life because they don't have to get on with it as quick.