These challenges didn’t always translate to emotional difficulties, but when they did, I often didn’t know what to do about them. As athletes, we are taught to suck it up, to deny pain and fear, to push through debilitating injuries, to persevere through anxiety and depression. It is hard to know when you need help and which emotions are “normal” when you have spent years in a physically and emotionally demanding environment.

Recently, I have been contributing to a documentary project, “The Weight of Gold,” that addresses these themes. I’ve learned a lot about just how hard it is for some athletes to get the help they need — sometimes with tragic consequences. Steven Holcomb, a three-time Olympian and gold medalist in bobsled, was found dead of an apparent drug and alcohol overdose at the United States Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, N.Y., last year. Days before his death, he had said in an interview that he couldn’t fathom what he would do with his life after the Olympics.

If there is one thing I have learned in my own post-Olympics life, it is the importance of finding new goals, a new sense of purpose. When I entered college, I had never learned to write properly, and the equations in my math classes looked like hieroglyphics. But I put the same focus into college that I put into skating, and when I graduated with honors in 2016, it was one of the greatest moments of my life.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. Phelps, who has become an advocate for mental health issues, recently said that the emotions he experiences doing this work “are light years better than winning the Olympic gold medal.”

Olympic athletes need to understand that the rules for life are different from the rules for sports. Yes, striving to accomplish a single overarching goal every day means you have grit, determination and resilience. But the ability to pull yourself together mentally and physically in competition is different from the new challenges that await you.

So after you retire, travel, write a poem, try to start your own business, stay out a little too late, devote time to something that doesn’t have a clear end goal — in short, do everything you couldn’t do when you were training. There are endless ways to find purpose and meaning after the Olympics. Just give yourself some time. Learn to live for the process again without being defined by the results, the way you did when you first started your sport.