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111: Why Change Feels So Scary—Especially When You Didn’t Choose It · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Hey superstars, welcome back.
• 0:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Polly here.
• 0:26
  Samantha Pruitt: What's up?
• 0:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Beautiful human.
• 0:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Sam Pruitt in the house.
• 0:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's go.
• 0:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's go.
• 0:31
  Samantha Pruitt: All right.
• 0:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Having so much fun today, dude.
• 0:33
  Samantha Pruitt: It's so good.
• 0:34
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, you guys, just before airing, Samantha and I've just been we've basically recorded a whole nother podcast right now.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: I should have on all sorts of crazy going on.
• 0:44
  Polly Mertens: But our topic today, I just wrote, you know, put it into the space.
• 0:47
  Polly Mertens: So it's for force change.
• 0:49
  Polly Mertens: So why change feels so scary and how to unlock growth on the other side.
• 0:53
  Polly Mertens: It's all about change, right?
• 0:55
  Polly Mertens: Change, change, change.
• 0:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Change will do you good.
• 0:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And this is going to be the theme song of this episode.
• 1:03
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:03
  Polly Mertens: And like it's like, yeah, your brain is going to see it scary, and we'll talk about that.
• 1:07
  Polly Mertens: But like, embrace it.
• 1:09
  Polly Mertens: And there's a there's a yeah, there's so much good stuff in here.
• 1:12
  Polly Mertens: So part of this was because you were listening to this podcast, uh, this wonderful, amazing human, Maya.
• 1:18
  Polly Mertens: Uh, she's got TED Talks and stuff and a great book.
• 1:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Um Shankar.
• 1:22
  Samantha Pruitt: S-H-A-N-K-A-R.
• 1:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Why have Shankar?
• 1:26
  Polly Mertens: That's our inspiration neuroscientist out of Stanford who went on to, you know, do TED Talks and stuff like that.
• 1:31
  Polly Mertens: And it was like, change is a good damn topic.
• 1:33
  Polly Mertens: And while we agree with like a lot of what we've heard, we neither one of us read her damn book, but I'm sure it's amazing because she's like worked in the White House and all this stuff, so she's super human.
• 1:43
  Polly Mertens: Oh, she has a podcast too, right?
• 1:45
  Polly Mertens: But we're like, well, we can give our own damn spin on change because I think we've been through a few changes ourselves.
• 1:51
  Polly Mertens: Dude, dude.
• 1:52
  Samantha Pruitt: I think of myself as a game changer kind of person that goes out in the world like seeking change.
• 1:57
  Samantha Pruitt: But if I do a little historical moment, and I've been doing that recently, and I'll be doing that for the next year in this course, uh Year to Live.
• 2:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, um, you know, you do a life reflection.
• 2:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And so every now and then, you know, there's glimpses of your life, however, you but if you do a little bit of an inventory, what I notice for myself personally is it's been nothing but change.
• 2:18
  Samantha Pruitt: And then the reality is everybody's life is nothing but change.
• 2:21
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 2:22
  unknown: Right.
• 2:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Just pay attention.
• 2:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Open your eyeballs, it's changing every minute, constantly, all the time.
• 2:28
  Samantha Pruitt: A lot of it you don't even notice.
• 2:31
  Samantha Pruitt: It's subtle undercurrent.
• 2:32
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 2:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 2:34
  Samantha Pruitt: But that's living, that's life.
• 2:37
  Polly Mertens: And one of the things we want to talk about that she talks about in her book and her talks is about forced change versus like chosen change, right?
• 2:45
  Polly Mertens: So the changes that we choose, like to be a better human, to stop being an asshole, whatever.
• 2:49
  Polly Mertens: Like the things that we want to get up to, our goals, our dreams, our self-expression, our self-evolution, if you will, those are all, I mean, they can have moments of suckness, right?
• 2:59
  Polly Mertens: Depending on what it looks like.
• 3:01
  Polly Mertens: But we don't see that as like.
• 3:04
  Polly Mertens: It's like, oh my God, I'm getting up to this and I'm growing in this way, and I'm shedding that old identity, and it's yucky a little bit.
• 3:11
  Samantha Pruitt: We have a hunger for that kind of change.
• 3:12
  Samantha Pruitt: We seek that humanity, and we have a hunger for it, unsatiable sometimes.
• 3:17
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:18
  Polly Mertens: And then there's the life hits you on the side of the head, or the detours, or the accidents, or the diagnosis, or the deaths, or whatever moments, big, large, however they impact you.
• 3:30
  Polly Mertens: I think the larger the impact, the longer the rebound, you know, the blowback, if you will.
• 3:36
  Polly Mertens: But both, you know, how do we navigate those is what, you know, and how do we not, you know, just go down into a spiral that we can't get ourselves out of in those moments as well.
• 3:48
  Polly Mertens: So we talked a lot, I think, in the world and other podcasts about habit change and growth and getting up to self-expression.
• 3:55
  Polly Mertens: So we're probably not gonna focus that much on that because you can go listen to those.
• 3:59
  Polly Mertens: But I think most of what we should talk about today is about that I didn't want this.
• 4:04
  Polly Mertens: Like this, I didn't, I didn't ask for this moment, right?
• 4:07
  Polly Mertens: Whatever that looks like.
• 4:08
  Polly Mertens: And how do we, you know, navigate through that?
• 4:12
  Polly Mertens: What's the path through that?
• 4:14
  Polly Mertens: So what are you or do you want to start with a story?
• 4:17
  Polly Mertens: Like any any stories that we want to tell to, you know, talk about?
• 4:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:22
  Samantha Pruitt: The neuroscience part of it is really interesting to me because there's a ton of science, and it's like, you know, the people don't like change.
• 4:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, it's scary.
• 4:32
  Samantha Pruitt: They like things to stay the same, they like consistency, they like knowing.
• 4:37
  Samantha Pruitt: And there's actual shot science that um one of the studies, which I thought was hilarious, is people would be brought into these study rooms and it was gonna be electric shock.
• 4:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, and some people were gonna get it, and some people weren't gonna get it.
• 4:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And so half the room was told you 100% will be receiving an electric shock at some time, and they're monitoring their brains, their cognitive response to this and their neurons firing and all that kind of stuff.
• 5:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, it's just a matter of you know when you're gonna get it, but you're gonna get it.
• 5:05
  Samantha Pruitt: And the other side of the room is you may have a 50% chance of getting electrical shock today, right?
• 5:11
  Samantha Pruitt: And the difference in these two brains was fascinating, these two people's brains.
• 5:16
  Samantha Pruitt: The people that knew, without a doubt, shadow of doubt, they would be shocked if we had much calmer brain activity response.
• 5:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, exactly.
• 5:27
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, emotional aid regulation was yeah, brain, brain activity, I'm sure, and then tied to nervous system regulation was a different exactly blood pressure, heart rate, all of the correlations, all of the things that are impacted.
• 5:41
  Samantha Pruitt: And then the 50-50s, hell was breaking loose.
• 5:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, just the anticipation, and they call it um cognitive taxing.
• 5:51
  Samantha Pruitt: The ambiguity caused cognitive taxing.
• 5:54
  Samantha Pruitt: It was basically exhausting these people, the not knowing.
• 5:57
  Polly Mertens: Knowing, right?
• 5:58
  Samantha Pruitt: The not knowing, and really that's what we're talking about with change is first of all, none of us can know.
• 6:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, okay, but how can we be at peace with that and not run around, you know, henny penny, the sky is falling, emotionally taxed, exhausted, um, having these responses to every little thing.
• 6:17
  Samantha Pruitt: And a, how not to feed that cycle and create more of that than you need to have in your life.
• 6:23
  Samantha Pruitt: And some people let it rule them, and it causes a lot of disorders, by the way, which is really unfortunate.
• 6:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And then it's gonna happen, things will happen inevitably to all of us, including disease and death and aging and changes and whatever, and how to best be prepared and how to maybe ground yourself in that knowing, find comfort, believe it or not, in that process.
• 6:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and I think that's kind of what we're about today.
• 6:47
  Polly Mertens: The the one thing I just want to clarify is um just to give people their power back, is when you say, you know, we or the human, right?
• 6:57
  Polly Mertens: We don't like this or whatever.
• 6:59
  Polly Mertens: So I want to clarify between you, the observer, the spirit, the the one in the background of this, and then the mind, right?
• 7:06
  Polly Mertens: So your mind does all this stuff.
• 7:07
  Polly Mertens: This is the way your brain is built, not you, the soul, the spirit, the you know, the one who's uh experiencing this.
• 7:16
  Polly Mertens: You don't want this, right?
• 7:17
  Polly Mertens: Your brain operates this way.
• 7:19
  Polly Mertens: I just want to create that distinction.
• 7:20
  Polly Mertens: That's all.
• 7:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, the brain.
• 7:23
  Samantha Pruitt: That brain, boy, she is, he is, they are tricky, tricky, tricky.
• 7:28
  Samantha Pruitt: So we have to start with what you were just touching on, which is identity.
• 7:34
  Samantha Pruitt: The source of all this is this sort of identity battle that we have.
• 7:38
  Samantha Pruitt: And when change comes into our life, yeah, unwanted change, we're talking about specifically, it is an identity crisis of sorts.
• 7:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Why is that?
• 7:47
  Polly Mertens: So, a couple things I want to say from a hypnotherapist standpoint and all the things that I've read about neuroscience.
• 7:54
  Polly Mertens: So your two million-year-old brain is designed to have certainty from what it knows, like whatever you have experienced, read about, seen, like your known information that your brain has.
• 8:12
  Polly Mertens: That's safe, that's survivable, like it knows this, and it knows even like avoid that, like it, like that's a known problem or something like that.
• 8:22
  Polly Mertens: Anything outside of that, so like if you had like a circle, anything outside of that circle that it didn't know, like I don't know anything about that, right?
• 8:30
  Polly Mertens: It's like death to the brain.
• 8:31
  Polly Mertens: It's like at all costs, avoid that, right?
• 8:34
  Polly Mertens: And so that's that ring of uncertainty is there's the known, safe, survivable.
• 8:41
  Polly Mertens: I can live, I can, I can function in this way.
• 8:44
  Polly Mertens: You know, we would call it like the hyper-controlling, you know, when you see people like that or whatever, it's like this is known.
• 8:50
  Polly Mertens: Your brain is designed to keep you in that.
• 8:53
  Polly Mertens: And when we talked about identity, however, you've evolved, right, to create an identity for yourself through experiences, through lived experiences, whatever, how you identify yourself.
• 9:03
  Polly Mertens: One of the strongest forces in the human psyche is the need to stay consistent with that known.
• 9:10
  Polly Mertens: Like, I am this way.
• 9:12
  Polly Mertens: How you identify yourself, I'm this, I'm not that, I can do this, I can't do that.
• 9:17
  Polly Mertens: To stay consistent with that, it's this insurmountable, like force.
• 9:21
  Polly Mertens: Like I was just talking with our friend Jen this morning, and she was like, I have to get myself to do this thing.
• 9:27
  Polly Mertens: Like, let's I think it has to do with public speaking.
• 9:29
  Polly Mertens: She's like, I have to get on these stages because I need to, you know, in order to grow my company, grow my business, blah, blah, blah.
• 9:36
  Polly Mertens: And she's like, My brain, my body feels like it's in a prison locked down, like, ah, like death will happen.
• 9:44
  Polly Mertens: That I told her that I was like, your body and your brain perceive standing on stages as death for some reason because you haven't, like, what could go wrong and stuff like that.
• 9:52
  Polly Mertens: So it's a super powerful force.
• 9:55
  Polly Mertens: If you can get it going in the direction, what I told her is I was like, well, I just want to point out to you that just as powerfully as it's keeping you from doing that, because it you've a s it associates whatever it associates with powerfully anti.
• 10:09
  Polly Mertens: Once you can get that turned in your favor, like it's a force of good.
• 10:13
  Polly Mertens: Like it can, you know, like that's what gets you on these ultra things and these amazing things that you've gotten up to in your life, Samantha Proud, is like you see that as a good thing to get up to.
• 10:23
  Polly Mertens: And it's like you're a force of nature, girl, you know.
• 10:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I seek those things out, but I wasn't always that way.
• 10:29
  Samantha Pruitt: And a really striking example of what you're referring to is people staying in this known where they feel like they have some control is the cases where people are in abusive relationships or in really toxic jobs.
• 10:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Those are two really big ones that you see quite frequently.
• 10:45
  Samantha Pruitt: And they'd rather stay in the abusive relationship or the toxic job because it is a known entity.
• 10:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Rather than knowing these things, could literally kill me because they're horrible for me and I don't deserve them.
• 10:57
  Samantha Pruitt: But going out beyond that bubble is scarier, and so their mind has can their thoughts and their mind have convinced them that that is a rational decision.
• 11:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 11:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And any outsider would go, hell no, right?
• 11:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Not to go.
• 11:13
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, exactly.
• 11:14
  Polly Mertens: It's it's fascinating how the brain is designed that way, you know, and we won't go into like how it works, whatever, but just no, like that's why change feels so damn hard, right?
• 11:26
  Polly Mertens: And I just want to, this may be the segue to why when these force changes or these unexpected changes, especially at the identity level, like we were talking about you with you know how what's happened to your back and recently.
• 11:39
  Polly Mertens: And I mean, you are like athlete 100% head to toe, inside and out, through and through, like see yourself as this athlete.
• 11:46
  Polly Mertens: And so you get this left curve thrown at you called, you know, your back injury, you know, injury, and it's like, oh, surgery and what's gonna happen, or whatever.
• 11:56
  Polly Mertens: You come out of that, and it's like, I'm still an athlete.
• 11:58
  Polly Mertens: So, like, what what new capacity and stuff?
• 12:01
  Polly Mertens: So, whatever, if you're you know, oh, I see myself like I was telling you about my story of being married, and then the idea of that was a chosen one, but you know, like, oh my god, my brain was like, you talked about being in relationship, going out and not being married, but what but that meant this, and that meant this, and that meant this, and all this uncertainty, and like, can I navigate inside this relationship?
• 12:23
  Polly Mertens: All the things that my needs aren't getting met and whatnot.
• 12:25
  Samantha Pruitt: So this is why it's so hard, and we want to really show compassion and understanding.
• 12:31
  Samantha Pruitt: A, we've been there a thousand times, each of us individually.
• 12:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh plenty of things have gone terribly wrong that we didn't want to happen.
• 12:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 12:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, we there is a grieving of the loss of your identity attached to not only who you think you are right now, how you identify, but your future self that you envisioned for yourself.
• 12:52
  Samantha Pruitt: You were marching down this path to be a married woman, to be a business owner, to be an iron ultra woman, to be a whatever, fill in the blank of your thing.
• 13:01
  Samantha Pruitt: And then all of a sudden, that changes.
• 13:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 13:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Out of your control, something happens, something transpires, and it all changes.
• 13:10
  Samantha Pruitt: And you feel like in that instant that your world and identity have just been shattered.
• 13:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 13:15
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's pretty brutal.
• 13:17
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you don't have the skills to move through that, you can stay stuck there.
• 13:22
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's what what we're really hoping to get with people today is like help them work through that.
• 13:27
  Samantha Pruitt: There's no reason to be stuck in that phase.
• 13:30
  Polly Mertens: And we likened it when before we started recording, it's, you know, when there's an external loss in our life, like there's a loved one, right?
• 13:40
  Polly Mertens: That passes away, that there's a grieving process.
• 13:44
  Polly Mertens: Like we, we as a society, as a culture, expect that.
• 13:47
  Polly Mertens: Like we've seen it enough, depending on how old you are.
• 13:50
  Polly Mertens: Like you you just know, like, oh, there's gonna be grief.
• 13:52
  Polly Mertens: There's something that happens to our heart, right?
• 13:54
  Polly Mertens: And I think we don't associate identity loss in these instances where it's like, oh, I'm no longer an athlete because I got paraplegic or whatever, right?
• 14:03
  Polly Mertens: That there's going to be an adjustment period that your heart, your mind, your I look in it too, like when when I thought about the being married or whatever, it was like a dream, like I lost a dream, like you talked about a vision.
• 14:16
  Polly Mertens: It was like, oh, that dream is dead now, right?
• 14:19
  Polly Mertens: So, like, however, you, like you said, you saw your life going.
• 14:22
  Polly Mertens: I called it a dream, uh a vision, that's no longer that that door is closed.
• 14:28
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 14:29
  Polly Mertens: And you grieve the loss of that self, that that thing, just like you grieve the loss of a loved one, is what it seems to me.
• 14:37
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's healthy to do that, to allow yourself that process and to be open and honest about it and fully express it, not pretend it's not happening or be in denial over it or try and medicate it away because it's there and it needs to be reckoned with almost right.
• 14:54
  Samantha Pruitt: And yeah, I think one of the ways you reckon it reckon with it is to get re-grounded, if you will, in your values, your sense of worth and value system that are unconnected to those things, to that identity, to that particular thing.
• 15:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, it's very difficult to do with the loss of somebody that you love.
• 15:14
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, my sister-in-law, my brother recently passed, and my sister-in-law is in a heavy grief, and I'm in a heavy grief period.
• 15:19
  Samantha Pruitt: That's my brother.
• 15:20
  Samantha Pruitt: This is her husband, right?
• 15:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Died very young.
• 15:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Should not have happened.
• 15:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Everybody's in this place of like, what does life look like now?
• 15:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 15:29
  Samantha Pruitt: And for her, her life looks completely different than she ever envisioned, right?
• 15:34
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's going to be a very slow and tender process that she needs to give herself and all of us who have lost pieces of ourselves or people that we love should allow that process to happen and not to shy away from it.
• 15:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 15:50
  Samantha Pruitt: But if it's something that happens, let's say I have lost businesses, um, opportunities, I've moved a lot, and you know, there's lots of stuff that happens in life.
• 15:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Life is chaotic as hell.
• 16:01
  Samantha Pruitt: And since I was young, we moved a lot.
• 16:03
  Samantha Pruitt: So this is kind of a part of my story, apparently.
• 16:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Hello.
• 16:08
  Samantha Pruitt: See how I why I can live out of a tent in a backpack.
• 16:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, bring it.
• 16:14
  Samantha Pruitt: But if my values are still clear to me and I feel grounded in them at my root, then I still feel stable and secure and confident to move forward because it's that value system that gives me the strength and the comfort and the wisdom to move beyond the incident, if you will, the circumstances, if you will.
• 16:39
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm not a different person because I don't have that job anymore, that business anymore, that home anymore, dah-da-da, whatever the thing is.
• 16:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Even if I could never run again with this back injury and going into back surgery.
• 16:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Of course, I made a deal with the surgeon going into the operating room.
• 16:55
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, that's a whole other thing, which he made good on.
• 16:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I made a bet.
• 17:02
  Samantha Pruitt: But if it I came out the other side and it was told to me because of the discovery in the surgery or whatever, you won't be able to run.
• 17:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, first of all, I would have tried anyway, because that's my nature.
• 17:13
  Samantha Pruitt: But that's why I couldn't.
• 17:14
  Samantha Pruitt: That's just a good.
• 17:29
  Samantha Pruitt: And even now, I will be slower.
• 17:31
  Samantha Pruitt: I might not be able to do the same things or whatever.
• 17:33
  Samantha Pruitt: It's gonna look different.
• 17:35
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's because it's grounded in my value system.
• 17:39
  Polly Mertens: And I think one of the things that I appreciated about that book and that uh Maya had shared in a couple of stories that I heard her talk about is she talks about how she was a prodigy in um learning to play the violin and da-da-da, whatever.
• 17:53
  Polly Mertens: She had this bright future as a violinist, and she was super hyper dedicated and loved it, and it just was like, ah, and then at 15 had an injury and it disappeared, right?
• 18:04
  Polly Mertens: And I was thinking one of the things she talks about is how she went on after the grieving period, she went on a path to discover what was it about that, not just violin, this physical thing and the playing of it that was important to her.
• 18:23
  Polly Mertens: I get you on values, but also like, you know, there was like you talked about she had a community, she liked connecting with the audience, you know, she probably loved the discipline of like the practicing or whatever were the things, right?
• 18:37
  Polly Mertens: Where can you take that experience and recognize?
• 18:40
  Polly Mertens: Oh, that's what I love about this.
• 18:43
  Polly Mertens: Like you, if you, I mean, you have a connection to nature, right?
• 18:47
  Polly Mertens: And moving or whatever.
• 18:48
  Polly Mertens: Let's say you, I mean, I don't think you'd ever be bedridden, but it's like, what if you couldn't get outside or you couldn't, whatever?
• 18:54
  Polly Mertens: Like, well, what, like, what is it that those experiences or that playing of the violin or whatever was meaningful to you that gave your heart a tap on the, you know, tap in the heart, uh, connection was important to her, or the discipline, or being able to improve herself, or you know, connect with the audience.
• 19:13
  Polly Mertens: I we talked about the fabric of the identity created this community that she was a big part of, and that got ripped away, right?
• 19:20
  Polly Mertens: It doesn't mean you can't have community ever again.
• 19:23
  Polly Mertens: You just don't have that one, right?
• 19:25
  Polly Mertens: Or you you can't ever again connect with people or be in nature, whatever.
• 19:29
  Polly Mertens: It's like it's just gonna look a little different.
• 19:32
  Polly Mertens: So finding the nuggets of what that brought for you, what that meant for you, and can you recreate it as closely as possible in a different place or somewhere else?
• 19:42
  Samantha Pruitt: And even better, how can you use that sort of pivotal moment in your life, one of the many that will be coming your way?
• 19:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And be like, dang, okay, what's possible for me now?
• 19:56
  Samantha Pruitt: So after you've moved through the grief and after you started to process and you know, grounded yourself again in this value system we're talking about, like how can you go?
• 20:04
  Samantha Pruitt: So, what's possible now?
• 20:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And maybe there's things I would have never made time for, had room for, had awareness about that are possible for me now because this thing went away.
• 20:20
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 20:21
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 20:21
  Polly Mertens: And one of the key points that I really, as we talked about talking about change, is helpful for me or as I look at this and the work that I've ever experienced is knowing that our brains are meaning-making machines.
• 20:38
  Polly Mertens: If we don't guide that meaning-making with our own lens or give it some guardrails or direction or intention, we can quickly, especially feeling in a place of grief and loss, go down a p spiral of hopelessness, helplessness, you know, devastation, doomsdaying, whatever.
• 20:59
  Polly Mertens: We can just not as easily, but just as readily choose questions and empowering direction and intention to guide the brand.
• 21:07
  Polly Mertens: Like, well, what else could this mean?
• 21:09
  Polly Mertens: Or what's the best, you know, like what could this mean for my future?
• 21:13
  Polly Mertens: Like, and and guide it in a direction of possibility.
• 21:17
  Polly Mertens: Like, wow, I wonder what's possible now that I'm not doing that other thing, right?
• 21:23
  Polly Mertens: Type of thing.
• 21:23
  Samantha Pruitt: So or that I've experienced this moment in time, you know.
• 21:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, it's been a year of illness and death in my family and in around me, and it's continuing to be that way up until even this last week.
• 21:38
  Samantha Pruitt: So the death is on my mind.
• 21:41
  Samantha Pruitt: How can it not be?
• 21:42
  Samantha Pruitt: It's been a big part of my journey for the last year and a half, really.
• 21:46
  Samantha Pruitt: And like I said, it continues to be.
• 21:47
  Samantha Pruitt: So the gift in that for me is that I have very wide open, full awareness and full open heart to understanding and experiencing my own existence in this body, in this lifetime, and that of all humans that I interact with, and of course, my loved ones, my friends and family, at a whole other level, right?
• 22:14
  Samantha Pruitt: To the points that literally I'm gonna spend the next year studying in this program around death and dying and coming to the terms and taking an inventory of your life, right?
• 22:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Like this is how passionate I feel about it.
• 22:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And I feel what an incredible gift I've been given in these circumstances that I got to be part of these people's lives and death stories.
• 22:35
  Samantha Pruitt: And how can I continue to facilitate that with other people, friends and family, people that I love, and including my own.
• 22:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 22:42
  Samantha Pruitt: It's very empowering rather than the opposite of why is this happening?
• 22:47
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm so sad and I can't move through it, and I'm gonna stay stuck there, and you know, none of these, like the the continuing story of um unjust, unfair, unaccepted, and all of that kind of stuff, you know?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:01
  Samantha Pruitt: This is how I'm choosing to do it.
• 23:03
  Samantha Pruitt: It's different for everybody, but I do want to share my personal experience.
• 23:06
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and I think that's what we're inviting people as forced change shows up in your life.
• 23:13
  Polly Mertens: I just started to think of like a little formula.
• 23:15
  Polly Mertens: First is, you know, there's there's a level of acceptance, right?
• 23:19
  Polly Mertens: Like things, you know, there's a level of acceptance, grief.
• 23:22
  Polly Mertens: I wanted to add in there compassion for the process, right?
• 23:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Huge compassion requirement.
• 23:27
  Polly Mertens: And then then beginning to look at possible, like what's possible now, right?
• 23:31
  Polly Mertens: And how do I want to frame this?
• 23:33
  Polly Mertens: How do I want to grow from this?
• 23:35
  Polly Mertens: How do I want to move forward from this?
• 23:37
  Polly Mertens: How do I want to, you know, change the course of my future?
• 23:40
  Polly Mertens: This obviously has happened.
• 23:42
  Polly Mertens: That's what's so.
• 23:43
  Polly Mertens: Okay, so what?
• 23:44
  Polly Mertens: So what do I what am I going to make it mean?
• 23:46
  Polly Mertens: And being with intention, because the question, the questions that you ask in those moments will guide what trajectory you get on.
• 23:56
  unknown: Right.
• 23:57
  Samantha Pruitt: A hundred percent.
• 23:58
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you're not capable of asking these questions to yourself, get with people who will ask you these questions and walk you through it.
• 24:04
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, you and I obviously have the skill set, but like those spaces, whether they're circles or communities or friendships or coaches or whatever, um, can help you do this.
• 24:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So if you're feeling stuck or you just can't seem to see through it, sometimes it just simply means you need a helping hand and the support and the space and time for that to be nurtured so you can move through it.
• 24:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Because we both strongly believe that there's a massive amount of possibility open to you in the next chapter when you are ready.
• 24:38
  Samantha Pruitt: And so priming yourself to be ready.
• 24:41
  Polly Mertens: And I think um one of the things I wanted to just touch upon is whether you do it verbally, like with a coach or a therapist or a loved one, that you have this dialogue.
• 24:51
  Polly Mertens: You know, grief, I think one of the best things, a little bit like when Brene Brown says that um, you know, shame in the petri dish of acceptance and unconditional love, it just dissolves, right?
• 25:02
  Polly Mertens: Like, you know, when you feel seen and heard and whatever.
• 25:05
  Polly Mertens: And the same I think with grief, like processing it verbally.
• 25:09
  Polly Mertens: If you are in that space, you know, there might be like an initial shock, right?
• 25:13
  Polly Mertens: And then, or journaling.
• 25:16
  Polly Mertens: I just wanted to introduce, like, you know, writing things out, right?
• 25:20
  Polly Mertens: And some of this is like putting on the top of a piece of paper a prompting and then writing from there.
• 25:25
  Polly Mertens: You know, the work of Byron Katie, right, comes to mind, right?
• 25:29
  Polly Mertens: Like, you know, is that true?
• 25:31
  Polly Mertens: Do you absolutely know that that's true?
• 25:32
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 25:33
  Polly Mertens: And then like what like possibility thinking, questions on the top of that page when you're ready to elicit what could this mean?
• 25:42
  Polly Mertens: What's the best outcome from this?
• 25:44
  Polly Mertens: What else is possible now?
• 25:45
  Polly Mertens: You know, like who do I want to become in in in the face of this, you know, or right?
• 25:51
  Polly Mertens: So journaling I think can be a really nice way because I find that people that get stuck or are over processing or stuck in the process are either so in their mind that they're not moving it, right?
• 26:04
  Polly Mertens: Like it's just iterations, analysis, if you will.
• 26:08
  Polly Mertens: So journaling, speaking it, you know, moving it, walking something, um, meditations, whatever, but get in action around it.
• 26:16
  Samantha Pruitt: So a part I want to mention about the people that tend to get stuck, what I've seen, and I've experienced this for myself, I'm sure, many times, um, is maybe when this thing happens, they have a couple stories they're telling themselves, perhaps, that are keeping them stuck.
• 26:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, you know, I deserve this.
• 26:37
  Polly Mertens: Or why is this happening to me?
• 26:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Or why is this happening to me?
• 26:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 26:40
  Samantha Pruitt: There are different kinds of loops of stories that people can get sort of sucked into that's a bit of a vortex that will keep them in that stuck place.
• 26:49
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's why breaking that wide open and shining a light on it is the only way to liberate that untruth.
• 26:57
  Samantha Pruitt: And also, how ludicrous that people think they have that much control over their life or over circumstances.
• 27:07
  Samantha Pruitt: We don't have that much control.
• 27:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Like she references in her book about she interviews hundreds of people around their stories of change.
• 27:15
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, she's a neuroscientist, so she's a nerd and she wants to study all this stuff, right?
• 27:18
  Samantha Pruitt: But some of the most remarkable stories around people that um either got a life-threatening diagnosis or uh something major happened to them physically, right?
• 27:28
  Samantha Pruitt: And time after time, they didn't see themselves as a victim of it or that this happened to them, right?
• 27:37
  Samantha Pruitt: If they had taken that identity on, it would have held them back from really experiencing the rest of their life.
• 27:43
  Samantha Pruitt: And so, through other pathways of discovery and just really this deep understanding for knowing that everything is impermanent and we really have very little control, there's a huge liberation and freedom there.
• 27:57
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, we don't control the economy, we don't control the weather, we don't, there's so many things.
• 28:02
  Samantha Pruitt: And so if we just walk around on our daily thinking that we have or we're attempting to hold on to those things, it's really a slippery slope, right?
• 28:12
  Polly Mertens: Well, that's your Buddhist impermanence, right?
• 28:14
  Polly Mertens: The impermanence of this moment, the impermanence of this relationship, this economy, this whatever job, whatever relationship.
• 28:21
  Polly Mertens: It's like if you you and I were talking about how I think our lives have been a patchwork quilt of experiences where we put ourselves in uncertainty.
• 28:33
  Polly Mertens: It's me, a love of travel.
• 28:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Great intention.
• 28:36
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, with the love of travel.
• 28:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Quite a bit of enthusiasm.
• 28:41
  Polly Mertens: And what what it what it what it created, you know.
• 28:45
  Polly Mertens: So like I think about the amount of times I've been on planes and trains and buses and la la la, whatever.
• 28:50
  Polly Mertens: Globe trotting, globe trotting, whatever, and like, oh, whoops, okay, well, now what?
• 28:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Now what?
• 28:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I'm in another country accidentally, yeah.
• 29:00
  unknown: Now what?
• 29:01
  Polly Mertens: And it and when you come back from those experiences, right, with a new capacity to face uncertainty, detours, unexpected, they don't always feel good.
• 29:12
  Polly Mertens: I'm not saying like, oh, a smack in the face feels fantastic.
• 29:15
  Polly Mertens: And you know what?
• 29:16
  Polly Mertens: Now what?
• 29:17
  Polly Mertens: Okay, now what?
• 29:18
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 29:19
  Polly Mertens: And you know, the the meaning that we make in that moment, it's um, I think what we have to, there's a phrase of something like, um gosh, I wish I could remember.
• 29:31
  Polly Mertens: But it's basically is like like you said, there's so much change, right?
• 29:35
  Polly Mertens: And that which doesn't change is like the essence of life, right?
• 29:38
  Polly Mertens: And like who we are, the essence of who we are is the essence of who we are.
• 29:43
  Polly Mertens: How our outer circumstances, how all this, whatever, it's like just remember in your essence, you're not that thing, that that that dream, that role.
• 29:54
  Samantha Pruitt: You're not that role, you're a soul.
• 29:57
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:59
  Polly Mertens: Like that, that's the core, and that is not changing, right?
• 30:03
  Polly Mertens: That will be here after life, after you make your own transition, right?
• 30:07
  Polly Mertens: Like you will still be that essential self, if you will.
• 30:10
  Polly Mertens: And that's like always a coming home to that and remembering that because this outer game of life, of you know, this virtual reality of how we see ourselves in this role, and I'm supposed to get up to that, and oh, I'm not doing that now.
• 30:23
  Polly Mertens: Um let it all go, right?
• 30:26
  Polly Mertens: Like, I mean, that's the Buddhist way of like the impermanence of it, doesn't that?
• 30:30
  Polly Mertens: You know?
• 30:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And so there are ways, this is where we're getting, and we'll close out the episode with these kind of things, like to build that muscle.
• 30:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, there are ways you're you know, you're alluding to it now.
• 30:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Like we by choice, um, sometimes by life circumstance developed our personalities that are still evolving.
• 30:48
  Samantha Pruitt: I hope to be evolving till the day I die.
• 30:50
  Samantha Pruitt: I really hope I'm still learning and evolving, literally, until that moment, and even beyond that moment.
• 30:55
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't know, maybe.
• 30:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, that's cool.
• 30:58
  Samantha Pruitt: But like we make it our lifestyle to choose things that look pretty.
• 31:07
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't know, don't know how it's gonna go.
• 31:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Looks like a grand advent.
• 31:11
  Samantha Pruitt: We call them adventures, but right, they are business choices, they're professional choices, they're new relationship choices, they're going to new places, they're meeting new people, they're trying to do things that are really physically hard, that have so there's so much unknown in all of those things that we kind of seek out because we understand that the that muscle strength, the flexibility and the tone of that muscle, that adaptable, nimble muscle, will get us through the hardships of life.
• 31:41
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 31:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Right?
• 31:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Emotional resiliency, people.
• 31:45
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:46
  Polly Mertens: I think our I call it a high need for variety, you know.
• 31:49
  Polly Mertens: Um, so the greater amount of uncertainty and variety you can tolerate, I think life doesn't occur like a what's woe is me, right?
• 32:01
  Polly Mertens: Like the victim mentality doesn't live inside of a mind where uncertainty is a cust, not a custom, you know, like you don't want everything, but you're like, okay, so what?
• 32:11
  Polly Mertens: Now what?
• 32:12
  Polly Mertens: Okay, got it, got it, right?
• 32:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, people work very, very hard to constrain their environments to be highly predictable.
• 32:19
  Samantha Pruitt: And unfortunately, they do it for their children also.
• 32:22
  Samantha Pruitt: So I will give my parents credit.
• 32:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, they didn't know they were doing this, creating a game called My Life, but hey, you turned out a pretty remarkable person because I can do it's like chaos can be raining, and I'm like a freaking ninja, right?
• 32:36
  Polly Mertens: Adaptable, yeah.
• 32:37
  Samantha Pruitt: But for uh all other people listening, our audience, you know, by choice, you andor for your children or people that you do have influence over, um, maybe should examine how you're living the daily and the choices and the surroundings and whatever, and and intentionally bring in some unpredictability in order to build more emotional resiliency and flexibility and strength in that muscle, the adaptable muscle.
• 33:05
  Samantha Pruitt: So when the real shit happens, and I mean real shit is coming, people, when that happens, you're like, we got this.
• 33:13
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's even better if we got it together.
• 33:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, if I can count on you, right?
• 33:18
  Samantha Pruitt: We can go anywhere in the freaking world right now, in any circumstance, be dropped there and out of a helicopter with our freaking parachutes.
• 33:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And we love it.
• 33:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, let's yeah, we're up for that.
• 33:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Like we'd be able to survive and figure it out and like we're you know, like we should be on these game shows and these things where crazy stuff like that's happening.
• 33:37
  Samantha Pruitt: But our audience too can put themselves with intention into these things on a regular basis for new environments, change of scenery, make things challenging for yourself and for your loved ones so they can build this muscle.
• 33:52
  Polly Mertens: I love it, I love it.
• 33:53
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, you know, like what if you didn't have an agenda for a day or a week or you went on vacation and you had no plan?
• 33:59
  Polly Mertens: You just had a week and you just you know, like I can remember when I there was time, um, because I'm very much a planner and I like my schedules and know what's going on, and I'll have like these days where I'm like, I'm just gonna like I've had that as a like a meditative um listening to my inner compass where I have like a whole day and there's no plan, and I literally will just follow the impulse.
• 34:25
  Polly Mertens: It's kind of like where the wind blows me.
• 34:26
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, oh, I feel like going in the garden.
• 34:28
  Polly Mertens: I'm gonna go out and garden for however long I'm gonna garden, you know, until the next impulse is like, I'm gonna go shower now, and I'm gonna go this now, and oh, I'm hungry, you know, and like the last thing I just want to say that um I often hear myself either say this to people or think this to myself when they're they've faced or encountered an abrupt detour is um the serenity prayer, you know, it's just still is as valid to me, you know, accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things that I can't.
• 35:02
  Polly Mertens: You know, we talk a lot about that, but like accept the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference, right?
• 35:08
  Polly Mertens: Because when we don't have the wisdom and we resist the change or this shouldn't happen or whatever, that's when um just all this upset happens, right?
• 35:18
  Polly Mertens: Like that's where that's what's so so what to me is like the the embodiment of that.
• 35:24
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, okay, I accept this change.
• 35:26
  Polly Mertens: Okay, so what?
• 35:27
  Polly Mertens: All right.
• 35:28
  Polly Mertens: I'm still me, I'm still a soul, a beautiful soul here to express, I'm the purpose of love, you know, la la la, those things are impermanent, right?
• 35:38
  Polly Mertens: They will still be who I am afterward.
• 35:41
  Polly Mertens: So it's like, okay, this is what's happened.
• 35:44
  Polly Mertens: This is what's happening right now.
• 35:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, got this.
• 35:46
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you if you've tuned your intuition, like you were referencing to earlier, having days where you just listen to your intuition, you know, if you've tuned that and then you get into different circumstances, like you have direct communication to that.
• 35:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh my God, my intuition tells me that I'm gonna listen to it, trust it, respect it, and move forward.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 36:05
  Samantha Pruitt: You feel it's very empowering to be in those circumstances and not be just waiting for the next brick to fall, for the next thing, or someone else outside of you to make a decision in order for you to be able to move forward in whatever way you know needs to happen.
• 36:22
  Polly Mertens: I love it.
• 36:23
  Polly Mertens: I love it.
• 36:24
  Polly Mertens: Good stuff, good stuff.
• 36:25
  Polly Mertens: What's your one point?
• 36:26
  Polly Mertens: Like, what do you want to remind?
• 36:28
  Polly Mertens: Um, I mine is about the direction that questions can guide your mind, right?
• 36:34
  Polly Mertens: So the stuckness is either ruminating questions that don't move your life forward, right?
• 36:40
  Polly Mertens: Or keep you in helpless, hopeless, you know, doomsday.
• 36:43
  Polly Mertens: So having questions that guide the meaning of possibility that take you into the world of possibility in like a potentiality way, not a what's the worst that could happen, but like what's the best that could happen.
• 36:55
  Polly Mertens: That's what I really want to leave people with is asking better questions in these moments.
• 37:03
  Samantha Pruitt: And I just want to double click with a lot of people have asked me in this last very challenging year, like, how in the hell are you doing this?
• 37:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, they're pretty confused that somehow, like, you know, every 10 minutes, something.
• 37:20
  Samantha Pruitt: And and how am I doing it?
• 37:21
  Samantha Pruitt: And how am I doing it?
• 37:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Pretty gracefully, not all days.
• 37:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, I have my days and moments where I'm like, fuck this.
• 37:29
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm just gonna be laying down now out in the woods on the middle of the whatever, but in general, so they have asked me that, which makes me want to just reiterate then I have trained these muscles, right?
• 37:42
  Samantha Pruitt: So I have chosen a life.
• 37:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, first part of my life wasn't chosen for me, right?
• 37:48
  Samantha Pruitt: I was young and growing up, and so my parents, uh to their, you know, probably had no intentional idea that yeah, um, create a lifestyle for me that led me down a certain path.
• 38:01
  Samantha Pruitt: But then once I was a young adult and really a preteen, I owned, started owning my life myself quite young because of circumstances, and became this very independent person.
• 38:11
  Samantha Pruitt: So I have continued over that long journey of building this muscle, putting myself in places that are challenging, trying new things, new businesses, living in new places, whatever, and and really exercising that muscle.
• 38:25
  Samantha Pruitt: So I really want people to know that like I'm relatively gracefully handling this very difficult year because of all of that.
• 38:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 38:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Not because I'm special or not because I have some magic wand or not because I'm invincible, or not because I don't give a shit.
• 38:44
  Samantha Pruitt: It's because of all of that, every single one of those things.
• 38:48
  unknown: Yeah.
• 38:48
  Samantha Pruitt: So when it gets really serious, I'm still able to stand tall and weather the storm, you know?
• 38:56
  Samantha Pruitt: And I want people to do that for themselves.
• 38:58
  Polly Mertens: Well, you know, and that reminds it the parallel I started to see in your life is this life, let's say unintentional conditioning, meaning the circumstances of your young adult childhood and whatnot, you know, uncertainty and move being flexible and nimble and like adaptable.
• 39:16
  Polly Mertens: You had to adapt that way.
• 39:17
  Polly Mertens: You you were were forced because of the environment, if you will.
• 39:21
  Polly Mertens: It's like, okay, that conditioned that.
• 39:22
  Polly Mertens: And then through your life, you've strengthened these muscles and you know, you you didn't make it, you weren't so tightly wound, if you will, like, oh, can't have any change, like whatever.
• 39:33
  Polly Mertens: It's like, no, I embraced, I I got this, like I've been through this enough, right?
• 39:37
  Polly Mertens: And you strengthen that.
• 39:38
  Polly Mertens: It's like when you train for your races and stuff, right?
• 39:42
  Polly Mertens: So you're you you you put yourself in, let's say, a 240 race or a hundred mile or something like that.
• 39:48
  Polly Mertens: You have this conditioning that you do beforehand so that when like a hit, boom, go.
• 39:53
  Polly Mertens: You're like, all right, I'm on the race, you know, and like so you've done this life of conditioning, and it's like, boom, your brother's got a cancer diagnosis.
• 40:01
  Polly Mertens: Whew, okay, gonna navigate this, right?
• 40:04
  Polly Mertens: And so that period that you're in that race or whatnot, you've got this life experience that prepared you for that race that you enter of a change moment.
• 40:13
  Polly Mertens: You're like, Whoo, okay, well, here we are.
• 40:17
  Samantha Pruitt: So exactly many, many.
• 40:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Many, many starting lines.
• 40:20
  Samantha Pruitt: The other night I was watching a YouTube video about somebody I can't even remember, and they were at the starting line of the Western States 100.
• 40:28
  Samantha Pruitt: And so they're like filming it from this angle.
• 40:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm like, I stood right there.
• 40:32
  Samantha Pruitt: I think that's actually me.
• 40:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Holy shit.
• 40:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 40:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Like I immediately went back to that moment in my life at that time, standing at the starting line and going, game on, motherfucker.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, you know, like just to the insanity of like all the things I had to do to get there, and then being there at that moment and how precious like that experience was.
• 40:51
  Samantha Pruitt: But like stepping into the arena.
• 40:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 40:56
  Samantha Pruitt: So this is very much man or woman in the arena, quote.
• 41:00
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you don't know that by Teddy Roosevelt, look up Man in the Arena by Teddy Roosevelt.
• 41:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 41:04
  Samantha Pruitt: And Brene Brown did a female version of it.
• 41:07
  Samantha Pruitt: It's so beautiful and so eloquent.
• 41:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And for a long time I had that hanging on my wall.
• 41:12
  Samantha Pruitt: But that place is, and it can be a disaster, by the way.
• 41:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Western States was a disaster.
• 41:18
  Samantha Pruitt: I ended up in the med tent.
• 41:19
  Samantha Pruitt: I almost died.
• 41:20
  Samantha Pruitt: I got a stroke.
• 41:21
  Samantha Pruitt: I was a complete insane what happened that day.
• 41:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, but I didn't die.
• 41:27
  Samantha Pruitt: They carried my body off the mountain into the med tent, and I lived to fight another day.
• 41:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, people.
• 41:32
  Samantha Pruitt: So the story wasn't all tragic.
• 41:34
  unknown: Yeah.
• 41:34
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and so it's not about like them being me getting, you know, warrying through and getting doing it.
• 41:42
  Samantha Pruitt: And you know, no, sometimes disaster.
• 41:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Somebody you love dying is a disaster.
• 41:48
  Samantha Pruitt: So we're not saying there's always a happy ending, but the point is you can handle it.
• 41:53
  Samantha Pruitt: This is life.
• 41:55
  Polly Mertens: Preparing you for that race, preparing you for those moments.
• 41:58
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 41:58
  Samantha Pruitt: And what an incredible, rich, epic life you can have if you choose that consciously and you step out of those comfort circles that you referenced earlier.
• 42:08
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, there is so much life waiting.
• 42:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Sometimes it's a shit show.
• 42:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, granted.
• 42:15
  Samantha Pruitt: But it's also extraordinary.
• 42:18
  Polly Mertens: Adventure.
• 42:19
  Polly Mertens: Extraordinary adventure.
• 42:20
  Polly Mertens: I just have I think this morning in the shower, I was thinking about this moment, like you talked about standing at Western States.
• 42:26
  Polly Mertens: I can remember the gratitude I had when you I was in the wetsuit going to do my Iron Man, and you and I you were standing there with me at six o'clock or whatever the hell.
• 42:35
  Polly Mertens: And I was just, I was moved to tears because I was like, oh my God, I'm so grateful for this moment.
• 42:40
  Polly Mertens: And I literally started thinking back behind that.
• 42:42
  Polly Mertens: I was like, wow.
• 42:43
  Polly Mertens: And that swim, like you talked about Western States, was a fucking shit show, like a survival of the fittest moment.
• 42:50
  Polly Mertens: Like, oh my God.
• 42:52
  Polly Mertens: So here's what's funny, dude.
• 42:53
  Polly Mertens: I think you know, I was remembering, so you know, I hadn't swam for training for that damn thing.
• 42:59
  Polly Mertens: You know, I was like swimming in the pool or whatever.
• 43:01
  Polly Mertens: I remember a month before you I had asked you, there was um the the um it was like so I did the iron half Iron Man, and there was like a short a sprint.
• 43:11
  Polly Mertens: There was like a sprint triathlon at um San Antonio, and you're like, yeah, you should do that, right?
• 43:16
  Polly Mertens: So I entered that.
• 43:18
  Polly Mertens: I, you know what?
• 43:19
  Polly Mertens: That was a month before.
• 43:20
  Polly Mertens: Samantha, I didn't make it to the first buoy, and I was having chali horses.
• 43:25
  Polly Mertens: I swam on my back doing the back stroke through the whole thing.
• 43:29
  Polly Mertens: I was like the second to the last one getting out of the water.
• 43:31
  Polly Mertens: Yep.
• 43:32
  Polly Mertens: And I got out of that and I went, holy fuck, I got and then for a and then I can remember you remember me and that training for the Iron Man getting in the water, and it took me an hour to warm up.
• 43:42
  Polly Mertens: Like I was shivering so bad.
• 43:43
  Samantha Pruitt: I was like, like so many degree waters, people.
• 43:46
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, Arctic bullshit.
• 43:48
  Polly Mertens: So many breakdowns.
• 43:50
  Polly Mertens: I was like, the swimming, I don't like if you had looked at like this girl's not like if you had said, Hey, this is gonna be the swim of your life, like I didn't know it, right?
• 43:58
  Polly Mertens: And they said, How's your swimming going?
• 44:00
  Polly Mertens: I'm being, that was not my strongest moment.
• 44:03
  Polly Mertens: So I was like, couldn't did a backstroke over here, got you know, like practically last place in that swim, and oh my god, almost died, you know, doing the practice swims and all this stuff, whatever.
• 44:14
  Polly Mertens: And I show up to the swim and I'm like glowing in gratitude.
• 44:17
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, oh, I can't wait to do this.
• 44:18
  Polly Mertens: And then I jump and didn't know what was I was about to do.
• 44:22
  Polly Mertens: Swim for your life moment, but like this is life.
• 44:26
  Samantha Pruitt: The tide turns and tried turned and tried to suck you all out, and that's why half the people ENF'd and got yanked out of the water or didn't make it out of the water, you know.
• 44:35
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, that was really literally a life and death situation, and you were able to not only complete that and in the time cap and keep moving and finish the whole damn race, by the way.
• 44:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Hell yes, but seriously, to get to the starting line, knowing what you were about to enter into with gratitude, with grace, with joy, that's freaking remarkable.
• 45:02
  Samantha Pruitt: That is the freaking money, that is the money called your life, and that's what we're telling people to get up to.
• 45:09
  Polly Mertens: Like, what is their story?
• 45:11
  Polly Mertens: And you know, in what it what just came present to me is fear, you can either be in fear or gratitude, right?
• 45:20
  Polly Mertens: So I could have been standing and I I don't even know how, whatever.
• 45:23
  Polly Mertens: Maybe it's because you were there because I was so grateful for you being there that whole day.
• 45:26
  Polly Mertens: I'm still so moved by that.
• 45:28
  Polly Mertens: But like I could have stood at that starting line and been fucking scared to death.
• 45:32
  Polly Mertens: Like, this water has frozen the shit out of me every time I've gotten in it.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 45:36
  Polly Mertens: I don't, you know, like my last swim went horribly wrong, and this is way more tide, way harder, way more people in the water, like so many, like whatever.
• 45:46
  Polly Mertens: But I was so in a state of gratitude going into that water, and it was like it wasn't easy, but right, and so like the state we're in can shift so much, and that's what gets you through it.
• 46:02
  Samantha Pruitt: That's what not only allows you to show up and do the hardest things of your life, grace, grace, holding your brother's hand while he's dying, starting a race that you know you could literally die in.
• 46:17
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, come on, people, but you don't get to the starting line of those experiences without doing this work.
• 46:24
  Samantha Pruitt: And this is the call to act call to action.
• 46:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Get busy doing it now, on whatever level you can.
• 46:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And when the shit happens, and it will embrace it, learn from it, ground in your values, move forward.
• 46:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, because at some point it's gonna be these epic things like you and I are talking about, where really everything is on the line.
• 46:45
  Polly Mertens: And guess what?
• 46:46
  Polly Mertens: You have survived a hundred percent of the changes you've already experienced.
• 46:50
  Polly Mertens: You've survived you're pretty damn good.
• 46:52
  Polly Mertens: Hey, guess what?
• 46:53
  Polly Mertens: You know, however this looks you have survived them.
• 46:56
  Polly Mertens: So just be like, check, I got change.
• 46:58
  Polly Mertens: Okay, I got it, I got it, I got it.
• 46:59
  Polly Mertens: Don't always love it.
• 47:00
  Polly Mertens: Okay, I got it, I got it.
• 47:01
  Polly Mertens: And it's the dip.
• 47:02
  Polly Mertens: Like how quick, how re how short can that dip be?
• 47:06
  Polly Mertens: Get it, you know, it's okay, and off we go, right?
• 47:11
  Polly Mertens: The ones that rebound most readily make that dip as sm short and narrow as possible.
• 47:19
  Polly Mertens: They don't make it deep and take forever, you know.
• 47:21
  Polly Mertens: So there's gonna be a dip, but you can come back.
• 47:24
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, love it.
• 47:26
  Polly Mertens: All right, what do you want to tell our beautiful humans as we sign off today?
• 47:29
  Polly Mertens: What do we want to share?
• 47:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, how your life feels sucks.
• 47:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Just kidding.
• 47:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Change.
• 47:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Motto change.
• 47:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh God, how your life feels is the most important thing, not how it looks.
• 47:48
  Polly Mertens: And every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.
• 47:51
  Samantha Pruitt: So go find it.
• 47:53
  Samantha Pruitt: See you next time.