WHY do gymnasts beam when they "stick" a landing? No, it's not a gymnastics riddle. The answer is that there's no better feeling than the one that comes from a landing without a fall or a wobble. It's like the exclamation mark at the end of your routine.

If you know what the word stick means, or if you've seen gymnastics on TV or done it yourself at a local gym, then you know more than I did when I first started. I'd never seen the Olympics. I didn't even know what the sport of gymnastics was. As a five-year-old, the only thing I cared about doing was whatever my big sister did. She was doing gymnastics, so I did, too.

It wasn't long before I realized I was crazy about gymnastics.

Everybody wants to learn how to turn a cartwheel or do a flip. Why? Because it just looks like fun. And I think the fun of gymnastics was one of the biggest reasons I got so passionate about it. It was neat to learn new skills and to perform harder and harder routines. By the time I was nine, I'd decided that I wanted to start competing.

Gymnastics is a whole lot of fun, but it takes work, too. I knew this before I began competing, but once I started at my coach Steve Nunno's gym, I really understood it. We practiced four or five hours each night after school, and four to five hours on Saturdays. And we didn't just learn new tricks or spend time bouncing on the trampoline. We did conditioning, running, and then about an hour on each event—floor exercise, balance beam, uneven bars, and vault.

Practicing like that, day after day, could be hard sometimes. Conditioning meant lots of sit-ups and push-ups, leg-lifts and handstand push-ups. And I spent hours and hours repeating and fine-tuning, as I rotated through the various events. At first, there's a lot to think about in a routine. For instance, are your toes pointed? Are your hips square? For an event like the beam, you also have to make sure that you're not falling off, and not wobbling, and that you're landing your flips and completing your turns.

It all pays off in the end, though, because after hundreds of repetitions, things start to feel second nature. Even though you might have a mental checklist that you run through at the beginning of a routine, you don't have to be thinking about the position of every little toe and finger. Your body just knows what to do.

For this reason, gymnastics taught me a lot about the value of perseverance. And the importance of listening to criticism and using it to your advantage. My coach could be pretty tough on me. And no one likes being criticized. But what I learned was that I could do so much better if I remembered that his corrections were supposed to help me improve.

If you ask me what goes into the making of a super gymnast, I'd say it takes good coaching, a supportive family, lots and lots and lots of practice, stamina, strength, and persistence. A gymnast who wants to succeed should be dedicated and ready to work hard. A willingness to listen is important, too, and to respond, not react, to criticism. And definitely patience—patience with yourself. It's great to strive for perfection, but that should be balanced with patience for the days when you don't perform your best. A love and passion for the sport can help carry you through those days, too. If gymnastics drives you, if you truly love it, then you want to keep going even on the tough days.

How you think about things, I found, really matters in gymnastics. For instance, even though I loved competing on the beam, I tried not to pick a favorite event because once you pick a favorite, the others seem to become your least favorite. And you really don't want to think in terms of a least favorite.

Choosing whether to focus on the positive or the negative also made a difference both in practice and in competition. I'd call what I was doing prayer—kind of a continuous prayer to know that God was with me, even in midair! There's no room for thoughts of failure or frustration when you're thinking about and listening to God. So when doubts tried to creep in or when things seemed hard, I'd make an effort to keep my thoughts focused on God. It was reassuring to know that I always had God to lean on, no matter where I was or what I was doing.

This was especially helpful when I made the Olympic team in 1992. I was ecstatic! But I was also incredibly nervous. Often, I found myself thinking: "What if I mess up? I don't want to mess up!" But when I took a step back and realized that I was there to have fun and to express God and to be the best I could be, that helped a lot.

Some of my favorite Olympic memories are from the Atlanta Games in 1996, when I won the gold medal on balance beam and our team won the team gold. Talk about an incredible feeling!But there was so much more to my Olympic experience than just that—so much more that was memorable, too.

What a lot of people don't realize is that the girls we competed against at the Olympics were girls we'd competed against before—lots of times. In fact, many of them were our friends. So, going to the Olympics was like getting to see your friends from all over the world again. And you also think: "Wow! I'm representing the United States."

Looking at my gymnastics career, some people might think that my greatest accomplishment was making the Olympic team or winning various medals. But what I'm proudest of is the fact that maybe, through gymnastics, I was able to help others in some way. Whether it was introducing someone to the sport, inspiring someone with my hard work, or just showing kids that gymnastics could be fun—I think that I was able to make a difference in people's lives. That, to me, is my most important accomplishment of all.