If you look at Sunny Choi's resume, you might think she's a natural-born performer.
The 34-year-old is a breakdancer who's competed in three world championship events since 2019. She earned a silver medal at The World Games 2022 in Birmingham, Alabama, and is hoping to secure a spot in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
It'll be only the second time that breakdancing, also known as "breaking," has been included in the Olympics.
Performing defies Choi's introverted nature, she says. "I was debilitatingly shy [earlier in my career]," she tells CNBC Make It. "I used to just sit in the corner and watch everyone else dance, but it drove me nuts. I was like, 'I really want to do what they're doing.'"
Going from the sidelines to a global stage required "a lot of a learning curve," Choi says. Her strategy, which she sums up in three words, involved turning her introversion into an advantage, she adds: "Observe a lot."
Choi grew up doing gymnastics, where routines are typically predetermined. Breaking is often improvised, and seeing a group of breakers for the first time — on the street, during her freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania — presented a daunting prospect, she says.
Instead of jumping in, she hung around the edges and watched. She repeated the strategy for a while, every time she saw a group of breakers, she says.
"Because I wasn't in the thick of the action and I wasn't trying to be, I was watching what interactions were like, watching how other people danced, figuring out what spoke to me, what I resonated with, what I liked to watch, what felt successful," says Choi.
Eventually, Choi got shoved into the middle of the circle, with no choice but to perform, she says. By that point, she had observed enough to know roughly what she was doing, and says the results were significantly better than if she'd pretended to be an extrovert and jumped straight in on Day 1.
Today, Choi still uses a few strategies to keep her natural shyness from stymying her ability to compete. She uses breathing techniques to focus, and repeats a mantra of affirmation to herself before going in front of a crowd.
She also obsessively adjusts her hat to calm down during a dance battle, she says: "There are worn out spots on the front part of the rim from me smashing it on my head over and over."
It all serves as a reminder that her shyness isn't a weakness, Choi says. Rather, she gains an advantage by giving herself time to step back and absorb moments whenever she is, as she puts it, "out of my element."
"At the end of the day, it's just a game of repetition. You just have to keep doing it and figure out what works for you," says Choi.
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