TRUE STRENGTH

Elizabeth Smart: The 5-Word Mantra I Use to Overcome My Fears

The victim advocate and kidnapping survivor has endured the unimaginable. The only thing that scares her now? Stepping on stage at her bodybuilding competitions.

Elizabeth Smart may have had an entire country learn her name because of a crime, but she has never let that experience define her.

Smart was only 14 when she was abducted at knifepoint from her bed at night by Brian David Mitchell. He and his wife, Wanda Barzee, kept Smart captive for nine months until her highly publicized rescue by police in 2003.

More than two decades later, her life is vibrant, busy, and full of love. Smart, now 38, is a victim’s advocate, a wife, and a mother of three. In August, she launched The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart podcast, where she interviews fellow survivors of violent crimes.

Of all Smart’s moves, however, none took her devoted fanbase by surprise as much as her pivot into competitive bodybuilding.

“I feel like there’s been so many things that have been positive for me,” she told The Looker. “The confidence I feel in my own body. The celebration of my body that I feel bodybuilding has become for me.”

Smart has gained more than mere muscle definition and impressive strength from bodybuilding.

“It’s also been very empowering for me because I think for years I kind of lived thinking I had to preserve the image of what and who Elizabeth Smart was,” she said.

“This has been an experience for me to be like, ‘It’s OK to show my whole self. It’s OK to pursue the things that I want to pursue. And I can be who I am, and if people don’t like that, that’s OK.’”

The moment before stepping on stage in a bikini is still “terrifying” to her, even after multiple competitions.

“Months and months of training come down to 30 seconds of stage time,” she told The Looker.

“And the whole time in my mind, I’m like, ‘Smile, but don’t look glazed. Suck in your core but don’t flare your ribs. Do not fall over. Make it look flowy and elegant, but make it look natural. Make it look like you do this all the time.’”

“And then half the time, I’m like, ‘Oh, I totally had my glaze smile.
Oh, shoot, I forgot to engage my core,’” she added. “I have 100 percent tripped on stage, or stumbled before.”

Despite feeling scared the moment before stepping on stage, Smart has a mantra that helps her meet the moment.

“I tell myself every day, ‘You can do hard things,’” she said. “While I’m backstage, I’m like, ‘You’ve worked for this for months, and whatever your placing is, it doesn’t matter. You’ve already won because you showed up.’”

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Thinking about pizza or a cinnamon roll also helps.

Smart said she tells herself, “You just need to step up on stage, smile, do the best that you can. You can do hard things, and then, you have the best victory meal.”

Smart upholds a disciplined workout schedule that includes five to six 45-minute workouts a week and 10,000 steps a day.

Still, she admitted that keeping up with her diet was “1000 percent” the most challenging part of competing.

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“The hardest part is if I let myself get hungry,” she said. “And the most convenient things around are my kids’ snacks… It’s the Goldfish or the Oreos.”

But Smart doesn’t see occasional snacking as a failure. She emphasizes that it’s important to her to approach bodybuilding from a healthy place and not damage her body with extreme diets or exercises.

Smart shocked her fans in April when she posted her first photo on stage, standing in a bikini and flexing her muscles with a victorious smile. But it wasn’t her first, or even her second, competition.

It took her four competitions to find the courage to post about her new hobby online, as she feared it would make people perceive her and her advocacy work differently.

Some negative comments have appeared under her posts, but they haven’t derailed her ambitions.

“One of my boundaries is that I don’t read comments because I don’t want my victory to be tarnished by someone else’s vitriol,” she said.

She is thrilled about her new “passion project”: an ethical true crime podcast, The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart, that gives survivors a voice rather than sensationalizing their stories.

Smart said her confidence grows every time she sets a goal and meets it.

Her next one? Stepping on stage in early spring with a refined physique and even more muscle.

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Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

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