From Last Place to World Championin 13 Months — Here’s the PartPeople Miss

By Jason Shelfer

Host of The Living Lucky® Podcast | LivingLucky.com

Everyone loves the headline.

Last place to World Champion in 13 months. World records in trick skiing. Silver in Jump. Named USA Adaptive Athlete of the Year and International Adaptive Athlete of the Year. Inducted into the US Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame. All of it happening in the same season of life, all of it happening to a woman who had been paralyzed from the chest down since she was 15 years old.

When I tell that story from a stage, I watch people lean forward. And I understand why. It’s an extraordinary story. Jana is an extraordinary person.

But here’s what I always say next, because it’s the most important part:

The headline is not the story. The headline is the result. The story is what happened every single morning before Jana ever got on the water.

Let me back up.

In September 2024, at 49 years old, Jana entered her very first adaptive water ski competition. She had been paralyzed for over three decades. She had won Paralympic gold (20 years earlier). She had competed on the world stage in basketball. And she had never, not once, competed in adaptive

water skiing.

She finished last. Not a close last. Last.

And I want to be honest with you about what that day was like, because I was there. There is a particular kind of humility that comes with finishing last at something you care deeply about, in front of people who have dedicated years to their craft. It would have been completely understandable to walk away from that competition and decide it wasn’t for her. To file it under “tried it, not my thing,” and move on.

Jana didn’t do that.

What she did instead is exactly what she has been doing since she was 15 years old, sitting in a rehab lobby at Craig Hospital, writing four words in a journal on the first night she didn’t cry herself to sleep.

She asked better questions.

Not “Why am I so far behind?” Not “Is it too late for me?” Not “What made me think I could do this?” Those questions have answers too, and none of them lead anywhere worth going.

Instead she asked things like: What did I learn today? How can I be more effective next time? How is this happening for me? How lucky am I to be out here on the water doing something I love, with everything ahead of me?

Those are not passive reflections. Those are active instructions to the most powerful filter system Jana owns. Every one of those questions sent her RAS out looking for evidence of growth, possibility, and momentum instead of evidence of limitation and defeat.

And then she did something else that I think is just as important: she got coaching. She invested in people who knew more than she did. She showed up to practice with the same commitment she brought to the Paralympic stage decades earlier. She applied the formula — the four questions, every morning, written by hand — as consistently as she applied any physical training.

Thirteen months later, she stood on the podium in Mulwala, Australia.

World Champion.

I want you to sit with that timeline for a moment. Thirteen months. From last place to the top of the world in thirteen months. Not because Jana is superhuman — although she is remarkable. But because she applied a formula that works, with a consistency that most people never sustain, from a mindset that refused to let one hard day write the whole story.

This is what Living Lucky® looks like when it’s not a concept anymore. When it’s a daily practice.

When it’s the thing you do before the world gets loud, before the doubts show up, before anyone else has a chance to tell you what’s possible.

I've been asked dozens of times since Mulwala: what was the turning point? What was the thing that made the difference? And my honest answer is that it didn't start with a turning point. It started with a Starting Point — the moment Jana answered the first question in the 4-Minute Formula with complete conviction: What do I want to experience? Her answer was unambiguous. I'm going to be World Champion. That declaration wasn't a wish. It was a decision. And everything that followed — thirteen months of turning points, every morning choosing the better question, every session applying what she learned instead of retreating from what she didn't know, every time the old story tried to surface: 'you finished last, remember?' — she had a practice that drowned it out.

The 4-Minute Formula was part of that practice every single day. Four questions, one minute each,

written by hand before the day began.

What do I want to experience? Set the intention. Tell the RAS what to look for.

How do I want to grow? Stay in expansion mode, not survival mode.

How would I like to contribute? Keep the focus outward, on something bigger than the scoreboard.

How lucky am I? Find the evidence. Every single day. Even the hard ones. Especially the hard ones.

That’s the part people miss. They see the gold medal and they think the story is about talent or determination or some rare quality that not everyone has. But the story is about a practice. A repeatable, learnable, four-minute-a-day practice that anybody willing to pick up a pen can start

tomorrow morning.

You are not Jana. Your finish line looks different than hers. Your version of last place looks different, and your version of the podium looks different too. But the formula that takes you from one to the other is the same.

Ask better questions. Write them down. Do it every day. And then watch what your brain does with them.

Thirteen months is not a long time. But it is long enough.

The 4-Minute Formula Journal is the same daily practice Jana used on the road to Mulwala.

Available on Amazon and at livinglucky.com.

How is it that every time I show up, ask better questions, and bet on myself, life has a way of meeting me exactly where I need it to?

Write that down. By hand. Every morning if you can. And see what thirteen months of that does.

Start Living Lucky® — the headline is the result. The practice is the story.