Shawn Johnson East’s gymnastics career didn’t just teach her how to be a top athlete; it also taught her and husband Andrew East an important lesson about commitment.
“She had to do something like 16,000 reps to stick this certain movement on a balance beam,” Andrew, a former NFL player himself, explained while appearing on an episode of the “Jefferson Fisher Podcast.” “She’s not going to get it right the first time. There’s this try-fail, try-fail [thing].”
He said the couple began “applying that concept to how we had conversations — this is just a rep where we’re having this conversation.”
“When you zoom out — okay, this is just a rep. How can I learn from this?” Andrew said. “Next time when we have this conversation, let’s just keep that in mind, and then we’ll maybe tweak that one next time, just like she does with her backflip on a balance beam.”
Related: Olympian/Influencer and Ex-NFL Star Reveal How to Manage Marital Trials
He continued, “When you compound that over time and you give it a runway to do that by committing to something for an extended period of time…it really allows you to see the change.”
The couple recently shared some more advice about keeping a marriage strong in their new book, The Courage to Commit.
“They wanted something fluffy about our marriage,” Shawn told PEOPLE of the writing process. “But we weren’t interested in that. We wanted to do something that was really meaningful and purposeful instead.”
Speaking about the book’s title, she said, “In our athletic careers, our marriage, our businesses, any success we’ve had has always been when we’ve truly stuck with it.”
“When you have too many choices, very often you end up not choosing anything at all,” Andrew explained. “I was talking to someone this weekend who hadn’t picked a school because he hadn’t found one that felt like home, and I said, ‘How about you choose one and make it your home?’”
In a joint statement about the book, the couple said, “So often commitment is portrayed as a trap in today’s society, and we want to offer a different perspective that commitment can actually be so freeing and worthwhile, whether that’s commitment to a partner, a job or a hobby.”
Speaking to Nashville Lifestyles, Shawn shared that the couple “just constantly want to try to get better, and we want to learn, and we want to honor each other and have never given up.”
Shawn and Andrew’s former careers as professional athletes have taught them both important life lessons about never giving up.
Read Next: Shawn Johnson, Andrew East Explain How Marriage Changes Society
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
