By: JOHN SHUSTER
Living the life as the face of anything can sometimes be an intense
experience. When that face is very public, such as the head of a company, the president of a local organization or maybe the most recognizable name in the sport of curling in your country, it can be overwhelming. Over the past six years, I feel like I have found the recipe to remaining not only successful but also excited about that role in many things, both on and off the ice.
As a northerner, I get asked many times, “How do you survive those winters?” That answer for me has always been “curling.” It’s funny, but I think my answer to that question has also helped me thrive in my career. Curling is something that many of us do up here not only because we love it but also because it gives us something to look forward to weekly in those sometimes challenging deep-winter months. When a
person can have something to look forward to every week, whether it be a sport, a book club, a standing coffee date, a bible study group or something as simple as Sunday mass, it helps us move time forward in a way that can make those bone-chilling cold temperatures and heavy snowfalls seem somehow shorter and more tolerable. It helps move us chronologically closer to the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. This mindset for me has transformed the time frame from my first Olympics in 2006 to present day to seeming like the blink of an eye. Do not get me wrong; I have had more unbelievably fulfilling days and lots of memories in that span to last a lifetime. Not all of those memories, however, are the good kind.
Let’s take a step back to 2010. Following our team’s bronze medal–winning performance at the 2006 Winter Olympics, I set off on a journey to become an Olympic champion. I began by leaving the team I achieved that very medal with. It started by taking a leap into being the Skip, or captain, on my own, new team. That year, I led that new team to a World University Games gold medal. The next two seasons had their ups and downs and a few different team lineups, but in 2009 our team won the Olympic Trials and the right to represent the USA at the upcoming 2010 Olympics.
Feeling like I had it all under control, and recognizing I was where I had
dreamt and planned to be on my path to becoming an Olympic Champion, I found the 2010 Olympics to be the humbling experience that many hot, fresh 20-something professionals often have in many walks of life: ultimate failure. Being the arena that the Olympics are, however, my humbling was very public. It was public to the point that, following our last-place finish, many keyboard warriors felt it necessary to type and post some of the most gruesome things online. From 2010 until 2018, if you looked up Shuster in the Urban Dictionary (I do not recommend this place for anyone to find anything meaningful) it was listed as a verb meaning to fail to meet expectations, particularly at a moment critical for success or even slightly respectable results; or to choke. That definition remained there for eight years. It is much different now. At a low point such as this, one has several options: walk away and shield yourself from a repeat of the trauma, or continue forward and grow from the experience. As it is pretty well documented, we chose the latter. I say “we” instead of “I” because nearly every important decision a person makes is one that should not be made alone. Following that season, and at the conclusion of every season since, my wife, Sara, and I talk through our choice of continuing on with my curling career. Spoiler alert: We have only made the choice to continue on to this day.
The four years following 2010 flew by and ended with yet another trip to the Olympics in 2014. We finished near the bottom of the field again, but this time for other reasons than my personal failures on last shots of games like 2010. Following that second failure, USA Curling decided to go a different path with different players the following season in their quest to get a team back onto the Olympic podium in 2018 and beyond.
Deep down, I knew they were making the wrong decision, as I felt the failures of 2010 and 2014 gave me clarity into the ways that I and the fellow curlers in our country could grow to produce that international success in the future. Luckily, in our sport, whether you are a funded athlete or not does not play a role in who represents the USA at things such as the World Championships or the Olympics. In the USA, the team that wins our National Championship or Olympic Trials is the team that represents us.
My new team in 2015 did just that. Since being told by our national coaching staff in the summer of 2014 that we were not the players that were going to bring our country success in the future, three of us from that team have won the right to represent the USA at every World Championship and Olympic Games that we have competed for. Personally, the failures of 2010 and 2014 set up the learning necessary to fuel the successes since.
Although on-ice learning has been some of that education, I believe it’s my office-away-from-curling lifestyle learning that has been most impactful for me. I often refer to this in my speaking engagements: that how you lead your life “between the headlines” matters far more in succeeding than those headline moments. Married life, parenthood and really embracing activities (mine being fishing and hunting) that bring peace and clarity to your soul are the things that have energized my drive to be better on the ice as well.
“THE BEST ADVICE I CAN
PASS ON TO ANYONE
LOOKING TO LIVE A MORE
FULFILLING LIFE:
BE INTENTIONAL.”
For me, something as small as a trip down to the Brule River for a couple of hours, trying to solve the equation of finding a steelhead and getting it to bite (which is a fairly new venture for me) is just the break I need from the realities of everyday life. I strongly believe that taking those few hours for my own personal journey away from my career fuels me to be a better husband, dad, teammate and person. It is incredible how such small things can recharge our batteries to help us accomplish the goals we set forth.
Around the same time I began embracing this approach of empowering my soul through hobbies, I also have taken empowerment to the ice with teammates. My 11-year-old asked me what my superpower was not too long ago. My response, without hesitation, was helping and getting my teammates to play the best they have ever played. I don’t say this with arrogance; I simply am very intentional with how I approach each of my teammates to empower them to confidently be the best versions of themselves on the ice. Luckily, with the trust and vulnerability we are able to have with each other, personal and team success has followed.
The final piece of learning I needed in my journey was to remember who is the most important in this journey. Prior to 2018, my teams had reasonable success at the World Championships, but not at the Olympics. See, the Olympics meant more to me (and most sports fans), especially with the goal I had set for myself in 2006 of becoming an Olympic champion. The weight of not only that ultimate personal goal but also the hopes of our country’s sports fans proved too much for me to handle at the Olympics, until one walk across the Olympic Park with my wife, when she reminded me I needed to be the person who got my team there, not anything else. Following that walk, I truly embraced that my performances on the ice wasn’t for anybody else but myself, my teammates and those who were on this full journey with us. That freedom allowed the pressures of the moment and the stage to completely dissipate. I set out the last three games of round-robin play to give myself and my kids three games at the Olympics
that we could truly be proud of. What followed was truly that of fairy tales, as our team rattled off five straight wins and helped me reach that goal of Olympic champion.
Since I captured gold in 2018, life has indeed been different. Often I look back on it all and wonder, if not for that walk and the clarity that followed, how my life would be different. When thinking about that moment, it helps me reset to remember what changed and continue to strive for taking that mindset into all facets of my life. Personal successes, curling successes and the ability to share my story with others have followed. I can confidently state that February 18 and not February 24 (the day we won gold) will likely go down as the most important day of my journey so far.
Thinking back on all of this, I know my learned lessons from the past whirlwind of 18 years give me the best advice I can pass on to anyone looking to live a more fulfilling life: be intentional. Be intentional about finding hobbies and activities that help you move forward and bring you back to your center; be intentional about making major life choices while taking influence from the stakeholders in your life; be intentional about getting your satisfaction and joy from the things in life between the headlines; and finally, when you feel like you have found what that recipe is for your life that allows you to live better, remember it well. Write it down, if that’s what it takes. A short, dull pencil and a napkin will always beat a long-term memory.
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Follow along with John at the 2025 USA Curling National Championship at the DECC - Duluth Entertainment Convention Center!
Tickets are available at: U.S. NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS — USA CURLING
Or watch the game live at: USA Curling - YouTube