TED Talks Daily - Why I love my bad days | Alexi Pappas

Episode Date: May 16, 2026

One month before the Rio Olympics, runner Alexi Pappas couldn't hit her splits in practice. She was begging her watch to change its mind. Then her coach told her to take it off — and shared the best advice she's ever received. That single piece of wisdom led her to break a national record and changed how she chases her goals, carrying her through ultramarathons, a memoir and three films. Bad days aren't a detour, she says — they mean you're right on track.Following the talk, host Elise Hu caught up with Alexi for a "Beyond the Talk" conversation to dig deeper – into what the rule of thirds looks like beyond sport, what it means to befriend pain rather than just survive it, and what she wants people to know about how to keep going even when you think it’s impossible. And a heads up: this conversation involves mention of mental health struggles and suicide.And afterwards, check out Alexi's own podcast Mentor Buffet, where she talks to athletes, actors, movie producers, DJs, chefs, authors, and other people she admires about who has influenced them along their journey. You can find episodes of Mentor Buffet on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. Usually, when we have a bad day, we want nothing more than for it to be over. The same was true for Olympic runner Alexi Pappas. One month before the Rio Olympics, she couldn't hit her splits in practice. She was miserable and begged her watch to change its mind. Then her coach shared some of the best advice she says she's ever received. And I love my bad days now.

In this talk, Alexi shares this advice and what she calls the rule of thirds, how this single piece of wisdom led her to break a national record and changed how she chases her goals, carrying through her ultramarathons, a memoir, and three films. Alexi knows this not just as an athlete, but as someone who's lived through some of the hardest days imaginable. I sat down with her after her talk to dig deeper into what the rule of thirds looks like, beyond sport, what it means to befriend pain rather than just survive it, and what she wants folks to know about how to keep going, even when you think it's impossible.

You can still commit to action without belief. I did not believe I would get better, but I understood what my doctor was saying, and I just committed to actions even without the belief. Her talk and our conversation are coming up right after a short break. And now our TED Talk and Conversation of the Day. I was one month out from my Olympic race in Rio, the 10,000 meters, when I couldn't hit my splits in a very important workout.

And I thought, what am I going to do? Am I good enough? I cried in lane one. Was I even worth it? If I couldn't do this in front of my five teammates, could I do it in front of thousands of people on the world stage? I begged my watch to change its mind when my coach, who was also an Olympian,

turned to me and said something calmly and confidently. Take your watch off, he said. What? Take your watch off. He never said this to me before, so I thought maybe I wasn't good enough. And he said, no, Lex, it's the rule of thirds. What's the rule of thirds?

I asked. And then he told me the best advice I've ever gotten in my entire life. The rule of thirds is that when you're chasing a dream, or doing anything hard, you're supposed to feel good a third of the time, okay, a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time. If you felt too good all the time,

it might be a sign that the ratio is off and you're not pushing yourself enough to go beyond the boundaries of your potential into the great unknown. You might need to dial things up. But if you feel too bad all the time, that might mean that you are fatally. or doing something unsustainable,

and you might need to actually dial things back. If you're within this ratio, then the bad days aren't bad. They just mean you're chasing a dream. That day, my coach had me take my watch off because it wasn't about pace. It was about effort. And I love my bad days, though.

So this rule has really changed my perspective, that day and for the rest of my life. That day, I got back on the track, and I finished the workout, giving a 100% effort, even when I didn't feel 100% fast. And then, I went to the Olympics, and I broke a national record, and I ran a personal best. And it was awesome. It was awesome. The Olympics is awesome. My coach was right.

Okay, he was right. And this rule has not only helped me in my running, but it's how I live the rest of my life. It's how I wrote my book, Bravely. It's how I've directed three movies, and it's even how I look at myself day to day, how I feel, how I think about my mood and my emotions. Okay, a few years after the Olympics, I guess I wasn't done running,

I went and entered this big ultramarathon, and that means it's over a marathon. And it was not just any race. It was the hardest race in the country, the Leadville 100-mile race in the Rocky Mountains, and it's 16 times the distance to my Olympic race, over 15,000 feet of elevation, and only half the people who start, finish this race statistically.

You go all night, it's wild. And so it's the opposite of the Olympics, right? It's not about pace or time or place. It's about being present and just continuing to move. And there was no coach out there to monitor my thirds. And during this race, I felt every feeling under the sun and under the moon. And, you know, it was like I was a bridge. capable Voyager in one moment, and then I was barely hanging on in others. A past me would have

felt really down about the really hard moments, and there were some really hard moments in the woods. But now I understood this was a part of a bigger picture of success. Now, in the same race, there was a point at which I felt like I couldn't run anymore. Like, I felt like I had metal rods in my legs, and I had to walk. And I actually walked the last 40 miles of that race through the night all night. But I didn't give up. And it really taught me to let go of control and just believe in the process and be really, really present. If we step back, the rule of thirds can help us see the picture of a bigger dream-tasting journey and evaluate and assess. And in a moment of pain, it can help us stay on our own team, even when there's no

coach or anyone else there to tell you that it was meant to be this way. Instead of asking yourself to be the best, ask yourself to try your best. And don't give up. Okay? It's a bad day. It's not a bad life. I think that that day that my coach taught me, the rule of thirds must have been his good third because that day he taught me how to understand understand and coach myself. Thank you. That was Alexi Pappas, and don't go away. My conversation with her is coming up. We get into what Alexi's learned from her time on the track and beyond about befriending pain, trusting the process, and so much more. Right after the break. Alexi, thanks for sitting down with me. In your talk, you describe your moment in Lane 1, where you

were crying and begging your watch to change its mind. Was I even worth it? you ask. And that's not just an athletic question. I think a lot of folks listening know it's never that easy. So what did it actually take to get off the ground that day? And how long did it take you to really embody this advice? Yeah. I mean, I think the truth was I was at the track with my coach and with my teammates. And the safe thing about being with your coach if you trust and believe in them is that you get to trust and believe in them when you don't feel the belief in yourself. And so that day I was with teammates who had already, you know, seen me plenty of times crying and in my best and in my worst and a coach who had been to the Olympics himself.

And so I think part of it was just deferring, you know, or suspending my own disbelief and trusting him when he told me, you know, to get up. see the situation differently, you know? I think that was the truth is that it did take some trust in somebody else. The rule of thirds that you talked about started as a training tool, but it's become how you kind of live your whole life now. So what was the hardest place you have had to apply this rule of thirds outside the sport? Well, it's interesting because this can apply to like, you know, a day in our life, right? Like you can have a day that just starts out like not great and it can still be a really good day. I think for me, where it has helped me is in really big creative

projects that take a lot longer than you would like. And ones where you don't have so much to show for it, but showing up every day is really important. So like putting a feature film together, for example, is so much time and effort and there's so much unglamorous work that goes in. There's a lot of knows, but that knows don't mean the project can't happen. And so I think it's helped me with the creative work that I do. I had like a big personal upheaval in my relationship. It really helped there. And maybe just growing up, right? Like for me, I've been through a big evolution post-Olympics and that has been, you know, a process. And so it's helped me a lot there too. You just talked about relationship upheaval and you've struggled with all sorts of other

pain in your life as well. You grew up watching your mom struggle with mental illness and addiction and sadly lost her to suicide. You have struggled with depression yourself and the subtitle of your book is actually chasing dreams befriending pain. Befriending is such a specific word which I want to ask you about. Not necessarily surviving pain or pushing through it, but befriending pain. Why choose that term and how do you relate to pain today? It's a great question. I mean, I think there's two kinds of pain, right? There's like good pain and bad pain. And good pain I associate with like the pain at the end of a race or at the end of a workout or maybe even the pain of writing something's really difficult for you. It's pain that you have signed up for and that you know you can reasonably get out of healthily and safely. So it might be a vulnerability. It might be in the act of getting stronger. It might be. pushing your limits. Bad pain is like, you know, if you're injured and running, that's really simple or if there's a mental health crisis going on, right? Or some, you know, there's bad

pain too. And so when I say befriending pain, I think it's befriending the good kind of pain. And it's trying to re-associate it as like a sensation and not a threat. So I think that's what it is to befriend it. And to know that if you sign up for something that you expect to be painful, then befriending it means when it comes you can kind of greet it like an expected guest at your dinner party maybe, right? Like you knew it was coming. I mean, there's a sense of like privilege in being able to like explore that stuff, right? Like running a race and getting to push yourself is a real privilege and an opportunity. So it's feeling a little less sorry for yourself in those circumstances too. I want to bring this back to running because you

have said that you feel most like yourself when running. With everything that you've been through, how has movement and just being in your body allowed you to connect with who you are? And how has this relationship evolved over the years? Yeah. It has helped me a lot. You know, it's interesting because training for the Olympics or training for any like specific athletic thing is really like an active nurture, right? Like you're, you're becoming very siloed, very specific. But to me, the part about running is the way that it connects me with, like, my nature and the way that when I'm doing it in, like, a free enough circumstance or when I'm, like, out on the trails or running with friends, like, I really do feel this sense that I'm connecting with, like,

more my nature and this, like, adventurous side of myself. And it makes me really happy. And even when I've tried to, like, you know what, I'll try tennis or, like, these other sports, which I love other sports, I just keep going back to running. And in terms of like expressing myself, I think it's just a really simple sport. And there's no rule that you need to look a certain way. Like the only point is to like keep moving. And so there's a lot of freedom if that's the guideline. This is inspiring. I need to like take a midday run actually, just listening to you. Talk about this. Like it is very easy, isn't it? If we have the mobility. Alexi, you went to the Olympics in Rio, broke a national record, ran a personal best, but then crashed afterwards and struggled with a deep depression.

In your book, Bravee, you write that you had been running away from failure rather than towards something, wanting to matter or wanting to prove you were worth staying for. When did that shift? All Olympians, I think, experienced some kind of dip after because it's just such a like adrenal post. it's so much of your time and energy. It's such a focal point in your life. And so there's going to be some, you know, aftermath. For me, it was like really severe because I was just, like, rejecting that that was even possible. My dad was like, look, you could do anything in this world except die or want to die. And it would be fine. He was like, you can, you can do anything, like, finger paint, like do whatever you want. And there was something about that where I was like,

you know, he's right. So if I was going to keep going and keep doing, this life that I wanted to, I think I was signing up for one that needed to feel like fun, honestly, and it needed to feel like I was running, moving toward expansion instead of moving toward like a target that I needed to get to no matter what. It was almost like after going to such a difficult place, once I started to feel that like lust for life again, I really felt it with a different orientation, right? And my temp pull was no longer, like, force and outcome at all cost. It was more meet myself where I am and move toward, like, this expansive feeling instead of this productive feeling and see if I can make a living doing that, which is challenging, but kind of more,

like, adventurous and fun, right? That's, like, what I'm doing now is, like, can I do what I really want to do, not know where it's going and still be able to have food and pay my bills, you know? Like, that's really what I'm doing now. A doctor reframed your depression as a mental health injury. Your brain's a body part. It can get hurt. It can also heal. Was that helpful to you in unlocking recovery?

How was the way that the doctor framed depression as a mental health injury potentially helpful to you? It was the most helpful thing. So Dr. Arpea, I just got to see him in Oregon because I, yeah, I went back there to do a 10-year anniversary of this movie I made Tracktown. And it was just so lovely to see him. So I've kept in touch with them. But yeah, when I was post-Olympic, I interviewed with a few doctors, which I recommend anyone do just like you would meet a couple coaches if you were trying to find a coach or a couple physios or a couple mental health people. Like you want to find the person that works for you, right? And when I met him, I was like, oh, I connect with this person.

It feels like someone I can trust, like you trust a coach. And I had nothing to lose at that point, but to be really honest with him. And when he relayed to me what was going on in this more athletic terms, meaning, you know, he said Alexi, like, this is sort of like an injury, but it's on your brain. It clicked for me, whereas before all the mental health stuff felt like this amorphous cloud that I was like, I didn't understand. is like that I was like enveloped by cloud like I can't touch this cloud but it's all over me and all of a sudden when he said it was like an injury I could look at every element of it just like I would an athletic injury which means this is going to take time I need to be patient this isn't going to heal overnight my actions are going to change first and then eventually the injury will heal what

works for me doesn't work for everybody else like all these things right that you think about when you're healing like a broken body part or a torn muscle, I started to apply to my mental health. And it was so nice because that is what guided me to know what do I do every day about this. How do I see myself? And then I felt helpful. And I think that's what we all hope to feel in anything that we're doing in our life, whether we're chasing a big dream or healing. We want to feel like we are helpful. And how did you learn to ask for help? Oh, I didn't. I was, I think I didn't until I was forced to because it was my dad and my brother that made me get that help after the Olympics. So I think, I mean, I was always like, I was always good about asking for help if it was about like achieving something, right? I was very unshy about like advice about being better. But advice about needing help, that was harder because that means you have to admit that you're struggling. And so I think once I was forced to get help and saw,

how helpful help can be and how, you know, unshameful it has to be, then, you know, like any other muscle, you can develop the muscle that asks for help and it can become a stronger and stronger muscle. And, you know, the truth is we are just these like creatures that are trying to have experiences and feel love and grow and, you know, self-actualize. And we're not supposed to know everything. And we have some resources that we can see right in front of us, a book, a podcast, people. But asking for help is just like smart, right? Because that means you're just asking for more information that you might not have or perspective or whatever else help can mean. Yeah. What do you want people who are listening to hear right now if they are sort of going through it

themselves or standing next to someone who is? I think if you're standing next to someone who is, well, you first have to remind yourself that the point is that the person you care about gets help and is okay. And then ask yourself, who are you to that person? Because sometimes we're not the ones that are going to get the person next to us to get the help. But we might be able to tell the person who could be that voice in their life. And so I think it's just about knowing, like, who are you to these people. And knowing that the hardest thing I think when I was asking for help at least was like this feeling of shame. And so just trying to reduce that there's any shame at all and just being present and calm as much as you can. And then being consistent, right? Because sometimes it takes

someone being there a hundred times for you to like actually go to the doctor appointment or ask for help or be honest. I think if someone is going through something themselves, if you think you know the future, that's when you really need help. Because I was like, I had all this certainty where I was like, oh, my life is ruined. And I was like, certain. I was like, I've already peaked and everything will be worse from here forward. And I was certain about that. And I think you can't have that certainty. And so if you are starting to have certainty about anything, then you are not well and that is okay but it means you need you need help because you're not the best reliable resource for yourself also if i'm being really really honest i had this weird apathy that led to

it was like a curious apathy and so i think it's okay if you don't believe things can improve it's okay if you don't believe it you can still commit to action without belief And I think that that's important to point out because I did not believe I would get better, but I understood what my doctor was saying and I just committed to actions even without the belief. Yeah. And so I think to encourage people to make a commitment even if they don't believe that it's possible. Yeah, yeah, I like that. Your talk ends with that line. It's a bad day, not a bad life.

You talk about how you've come to love the good, the bad, the crappy, and have learned to live with a kind of balance there. Tell us more about how embodying the rule of thirds in your life helped you understand your past experiences and really metabolize what you had been through previously. I had really bad food poisoning the day before this TED talk. Yeah, yeah. Like the worst in my life. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I've never been. bedridden. And that's a very like physical manifestation of the rule of thirds. Looking back, so I didn't get to like do the rehearsals perfectly. I didn't get to do all the. And I was like a little nervous

because this is like a big community and a platform. And in retrospect, I didn't have a lot of time to like overthink. Right. And therefore I think I was mostly myself on stage, which was nice. And it wasn't, I think I tripped up on a word or two. But I was my. myself. And like, I think that there's, that was a beautiful, like, looking back moment. But I think what it looks like in the scope of the bigger picture of your life, it's a great question and it's a big question. I don't know why, but my life, if I'm going to just speak from me, right? I have always felt like what I need to do with my life and my time is not always on a path and it's not always what people would prescribe to me like what I should do I've always known

sort of where I need to be moving but moving in the direction that has never been done before like the way I am is it feels feral sometimes that is hard because it means that I'm kind of going through brush and like clearing it as I go I don't know where things are going but I'm following like a really solid compass in my heart. And so when I look back, the rule of thirds is really applicable to like a lot of the times in my life when I've been paving a path that hasn't been done before. And it does feel hard. But I'm glad I did it because now it feels inevitable. But at the time, some of those intersection points where you're doing what's true to you can be really, they can feel, you can feel sensations that are hard. But if you have this rule and you look back, you're like,

oh, that was like a part of the ratio overall. I guess I'm just trying to say that it's not always easy paving your own path. But if you can see it as like a big, vibrant whole, if you can see the wholeness of it, it can feel good in a zoomed out sense, you know? All right. Your talk is built around a moment when your coach gave you exactly. the right thing at the moment you needed it. And now you have a new podcast called Mentor Buffet, where you ask people to talk about their mentors, how they were shaped by those mentors. What does the word mentor actually mean to you? And how do you approach mentorship in your own life? I love it. I love this word because it feels like when you learn it, you're like,

oh, I hope that happens to me. I hope I get one. Like, I hope I see. a shooting star. But for me, it was like, man, if I'm not going to have this one keystone mentor, I can either see the world as a place of scarcity or I can be like, okay, I don't have this one thing. I don't have a mom, but I can have everything else. And so I was really shameless about asking for advice and leaning on friends, big sisters for what's a period and like everything, you know? And I think the show for me is about giving some reciprocity to the word where you can reach for it, right? And a moment of mentorship is a moment where you learn, not a moment where someone tried to teach you. Because if they try to teach you,

you didn't learn anything. I don't really know. I mean, that's a moment where they're trying to mentor you, but are you mentored? Right. Right. Like, because you, and so I think what these conversations have opened up is just me learning. How do people learn? Who did they learn from? Even if it was like a moment observing someone from a far one time on a vacation or their third grade teacher that they observed every single day or a babysitter or a best friend or a director in a movie or a podcast. And so I want this show to expand how people think about mentorship and also to get little bits of wisdom themselves because we can't all be everywhere all the time. And so maybe you get a few nuggets of wisdom and then maybe you expand how you think about your own ability to learn and that it is

really all around us. That's an important thing to remember. Okay, let's go to the Leadville 100 because you walked the last 40 miles alone through the night and you said that there's an expression of you that can only come out when your body is strong enough to really access it and that you're also working toward that again now. What was happening inside you during those last 40 miles? And what's next for you now? That's a great question. So I got this advice from the person that paced me, actually, this guy, Mikey Mitch, who's awesome. He's an ultra runner. And he said, you know, there's so many decisions you need to make in an ultra marathon. It's 100 miles. It's hours and hours and hours. And he said, you need to not labor over anyone decision. You just need to keep making them, make decision, decision, decision. And if you, there's no wrong decision. There's just another decision. Like, you know, do you eat the macaroni and cheese or the chicken? soup, do you walk, do you run? Do you listen to music? Do you not? Like, there's a million things you decide. And what I was thinking in those last 40 miles when I didn't feel like I could run, but I felt I could keep moving, was I decided that I was going to keep moving however I could. And I, and I labored less and

less over those decisions. And so I wasted as little energy possible with like sitting for coffee with myself about decision-making and I was like all in the physical world and I was so present. But I had fun because it felt like such a privilege to be out in nature with my friend for as long as it took. So like, I don't know, it just felt like this big adventure. And then what I'm doing now, yeah, so I love running and I went away from competitive running for like what now 10 years. I've been guiding this blind woman Lisa. We're actually going to South Africa next month for the Cape Town Marathon. We just ran Boston, ran Diplo's first marathon with him. Oh, cool. That's right. Yeah. Just doing all sorts of fun stuff, right? But the Olympics is in L.A.

And I'm a little mischief. So I have a coach for the first time in like, I don't know, it has to be like almost a decade. And I actually just before I got on this call with you, went to my first private session with a weight trainer for the first time. I haven't lifted wait in like a decade like this. And I don't know what's going to happen, but there's a 30-year-old Greek record in the marathon. And that's a record that should be broken. And so we'll see. Oh, wow. Okay. So I'm having fun in life. And I'll tell you, I don't know where all of it's going. There's some great art projects going on. I'm writing another book. And I just got to live it to see it. Yeah. Fantastic. I love that attitude. Okay, Alexi, before we wrap up completely, we'll do a quick lightning round, so you don't have to overthink any of it. All right. Morning person or night owl? And why?

Morning. I like my latte routine. I love making my little frothy milk and things. Yeah, yeah, morning. What is a passion, a hobby, an activity that you do that's not related to any of your, business pursuits that you love so much that you could give another TED Talk. I started taking singing lessons this year as a hobby because I feel like I know my body so well. Like I know some singer friends and they know their voice so well, but they don't know their body as well. And I was like, this is a thing I use all the time and I don't know anything about it. So I have a singing coach and I'm learning about my voice. Very cool.

What's the first concert you went to? Celine Dionne. Oh my gosh. That's awesome. The queen. She sang on the edge of a boat. It was like around that, it was around the Titanic era. Also, my eighth birthday, the Titanic came out.

None of my friends were allowed to go at midnight because we were eight, but my dad took me. And like, what an awkward movie to see with your dad at midnight. Titanic. Oh, amazing. If you had a superpower, what would it be? I think I have to say, like not getting on an airplane to be somewhere. Oh, yes. Right? Like if I'm being like a practical adult about it, like teleportation, you know? Yeah, just being honest, that would be great.

What is advice that you are glad you ignored? Oh, man. When I was graduating Dartmouth, there were like so many voices in my head that were like, why are you running? Like, you should save the planet and do these things. And I don't disagree with doing good in the world. But there was a class day speaker that I really appreciated who said, as long as you're not hurting anybody, if you are actualizing the best version of yourself, you are helping the world. And so I'm glad I ignored the prescriptive versions of helping the world and rather tried to do what felt real to me and try and help that way. Yeah. And then what's a gratitude that you have in your life right now? My gratitude right now is that one of the things I decided was like I really just want to be myself and not think so much about how everyone's going to take everything I say and do. So I'm grateful that who I am has allowed me to have an abundance of wonderful people around me.

And I'm grateful that people accept me. Beautiful. Alexi Pappas, thank you so much for sitting down with me. Thank you. That was Alexi Pappas at TED Next 2025 and in conversation with me, Elise Hu. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.

This episode was produced and edited by Lucy Little. The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, and Tanzika Sangmar Nivang. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Baloerozzo. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.