Shawn Johnson East

But it just felt like a safe place to go.

Four years.

Four years.

I loved, hmm, there's so many things here.

I don't like trying new things, kind of going back to the very beginning of this podcast because I'm afraid to fail.

Mix into that, I'm very shy.

I love watching dancing.

I think it is a beautiful art and it's always been something that I want to do.

I was even a kid who like wanted to do dance classes, but I would feel so intimidated by just like my shy nature that I didn't know how to.

And so I wanted to do dancing because I wanted to perform, but I didn't know how to get through that fear.

So my first season, the only thing I had a hard time with was like balancing my confidence.

And so fast forward the four years after digesting, I won the first season, which really helped the confidence.

But digesting it for three, four years and then going back on it, I felt so much more confident than I was at 16 that it almost felt like a redemption tour for myself where I'm like, let's go dance, not be thinking through every second of the dance what people are thinking of me and let's like go actually have fun.

So it just felt

Like the second time I could do it, I could do it and actually have fun and not be paralyzed by people's judgment, which is probably non-existent.

Melissa Rycroft, who's a really close friend of mine.

Well, and her partner was Tony Devolani, who had not won before.

So it was iconic that he got to win All-Stars.

She was phenomenal.

She's a beautiful dancer.