Latest / The Everyday Awesome Project / 22A: The Day After Ironman 70.3: What Pushing My Limits Changed in Me

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22A: The Day After Ironman 70.3: What Pushing My Limits Changed in Me · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Hey superstars, welcome back.
• 0:23
  Samantha Pruitt: What's up?
• 0:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Beautiful humans?
• 0:27
  Polly Mertens: Hey you guys, we've got something in store for you today, and technically it is.
• 0:31
  Polly Mertens: We're recording this on a Monday, may 20th 2024, even though it's going to drop Thursday of this week.
• 0:38
  Samantha Pruitt: But tell them what we're up to, sitting in your beautiful little home in San Luis Obispo, together in the same room, high vibes room.
• 0:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So good, so good.
• 0:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Today we're talking about big growth moments, and the reason this subject is so poignant is Polly is coming off of her first Iron Woman race.
• 0:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Yesterday Spent the day swimming, biking and running Like all day, all day long day swimming, biking and running Like all day, all day long.
• 1:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And you know we talk a lot about pivot moments, epic lifestyle, you know, living an everyday awesome lifestyle, and so you were sort of putting that into Blood, sweat and Tears yesterday out on that course and it was so fun to be part of that.
• 1:19
  Samantha Pruitt: So we thought today's episode should be about these big growth moments.
• 1:24
  Samantha Pruitt: And they look and smell and taste different for everybody.
• 1:27
  Samantha Pruitt: They're not just, you know, ironman, triathlon or event specific, but we're going to use that to sort of tell your story, because I want you to share your story and then we'll talk about other examples of what that might look like for people.
• 1:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So let's get in.
• 1:43
  Samantha Pruitt: You know what?
• 1:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Can you start off by explaining a big growth moment and use the example we were talking about that happens with a diamond.
• 1:55
  Polly Mertens: So first I'll just so.
• 1:57
  Polly Mertens: Yesterday was a half Ironman which I just want to relate for people.
• 2:01
  Polly Mertens: That's a 70.3 mile, 1.2 mile, because everybody always asks what is that again?
• 2:06
  Samantha Pruitt: So let's just you know, face it, Because it's just so in our blood.
• 2:09
  Polly Mertens: but you're right, 1.2 mile swim, ocean swim, in this case, 56 mile bike ride and a half marathon or 13.1 mile run at the end.
• 2:17
  Polly Mertens: So that's triathlon.
• 2:19
  Samantha Pruitt: is Ironman branded distance, if you will, or half Ironman 70.3 miles, 70.3 miles in one day, yeah.
• 2:30
  Polly Mertens: Of constant movement.
• 2:31
  Polly Mertens: Yes, yes, and that took me almost nine hours to do yesterday.
• 2:32
  Polly Mertens: So a lot, of, lot of going.
• 2:33
  Polly Mertens: So one thing, you know, big growth moments we were trying to define.
• 2:35
  Polly Mertens: You know what do we call this?
• 2:36
  Polly Mertens: Is it growth?
• 2:37
  Polly Mertens: Is it a breakthrough?
• 2:38
  Polly Mertens: What is it?
• 2:39
  Polly Mertens: And one of the words that I've learned over my lifetime of just studying personal development is the word perturbation, and I think it's a word in chemistry.
• 2:47
  Polly Mertens: I'm not totally sure, but it has to do with the process.
• 2:51
  Polly Mertens: Perturbation is the process, the pressure that coal, put under pressure by the earth, you know, underground, goes into to transform into a diamond.
• 3:00
  Polly Mertens: And the beauty of that process is a diamond never goes back to becoming coal, just like a butterfly can't go back to becoming a caterpillar right, so that's perturbation.
• 3:10
  Polly Mertens: We look at it, I think coal is a better one because it literally takes pressure.
• 3:14
  Polly Mertens: You know, a chrysalis maybe has some pressure to it pressure and heat yeah, probably.
• 3:19
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I mean pretty pretty much.
• 3:21
  Polly Mertens: So.
• 3:22
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and there was a lot of pressure and heat actually yesterday.
• 3:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Those are examples of transformation that are like so raw in nature.
• 3:36
  Polly Mertens: And those things exist all over all the time.
• 3:37
  Polly Mertens: It's been happening for millions of eons.
• 3:37
  Polly Mertens: It's called evolution, but there's many other things right In nature.
• 3:40
  Samantha Pruitt: They're happening inside each of us humans as well.
• 3:44
  Samantha Pruitt: I think sometimes people forget that or unintentionally, you know, intentionally or unintentionally, or the outside world is putting it upon us isn't that the truth?
• 3:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Isn't that the truth?
• 3:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and so yesterday you had this epic day like we just described, and there were some moments, girl, yeah, I mean, you trained for this event.
• 4:05
  Samantha Pruitt: You had planned, you consciously chose to put yourself into the iron woman world so it wasn't surprising but there were some surprises.
• 4:14
  Polly Mertens: I knew this day was coming.
• 4:15
  Polly Mertens: I knew this day was coming.
• 4:16
  Polly Mertens: It wasn't a you know smack on the side of the head like whoa you know it wasn't a diagnosis that I didn't expect it was right.
• 4:23
  Polly Mertens: Five months of transformation that I chose to create.
• 4:29
  Polly Mertens: And I knew from 15 years or more of doing personal development work and doing hard things like this, whether a couple years ago, you beautifully challenged me to do the Trans Rockies and doing that.
• 4:40
  Polly Mertens: That was six days, 120 miles Across the Rocky Mountains, across the Rocky Mountains, across the Rocky Mountains, 20,000 feet of alligator yeah, all that craziness.
• 4:48
  Polly Mertens: So I've, you know, in Spartan races and you know, leveling up the challenges if you will.
• 4:53
  Polly Mertens: So I knew when you asked me I think it was December or January, we were talking about this you said you know, do you want to?
• 5:00
  Polly Mertens: You know, do an Ironman?
• 5:01
  Polly Mertens: And I don't think it was because you were going to.
• 5:03
  Polly Mertens: No, maybe it was because you were thinking I was on the fence of recommitting myself for 2024.
• 5:09
  Polly Mertens: So we're at least talking about it.
• 5:11
  Polly Mertens: And then somehow we started because I had volunteered at Morro Bay, which is right near my home, last year, so I knew, okay, I know where it is.
• 5:19
  Polly Mertens: It's not like a big travel commitment or anything like that.
• 5:23
  Polly Mertens: I was like, oh, more Bay and that's may.
• 5:24
  Polly Mertens: Oh, you know, I have enough time.
• 5:25
  Polly Mertens: I don't even remember how we quite had that conversation, but I was like, yeah, I do that.
• 5:31
  Samantha Pruitt: And then also hang out with leveled up people.
• 5:33
  Samantha Pruitt: True, it's part of who we are.
• 5:38
  Polly Mertens: Those are key element.
• 5:39
  Polly Mertens: It is key that you surround yourself.
• 5:42
  Polly Mertens: You become the average of the five.
• 5:43
  Samantha Pruitt: You know if the five people around you are like hey do you want to go out and party this weekend?
• 5:47
  Polly Mertens: hey, do you want to um go spend some money that we don't need to spend, or do you want to whatever?
• 5:52
  Polly Mertens: You know, just spend a day off shopping yeah, get up to you know, fighting political against things that you don't believe in or whatever nonsense, let's just call it things that aren't aligned with you and when you're around people that are at your level or better, you know, I always say you know, soar with the eagles, don't swim with the ducks, right?
• 6:12
  Polly Mertens: it's like, be around those eagles that can give you those opportunities.
• 6:16
  Polly Mertens: Like hey, you just even had a conversation talking about iron man, right, exactly right.
• 6:20
  Polly Mertens: And then next thing I knew, whatever they're up to, I'm like, yeah, I'll do that, and it sounds like a good idea.
• 6:26
  Polly Mertens: And literally I remember when I said that I was like, yeah, I'd do that, and I kind of knew what that was going to look like, because I've, you know, done spartans, I've done a triathlon.
• 6:36
  Samantha Pruitt: It was a much shorter one you know a lot of adventure races others like, yeah, get up to that.
• 6:39
  Polly Mertens: I knew it would be a growth.
• 6:40
  Polly Mertens: But you, you know, there's always what you think you know going in, and then what it looks like what?
• 6:46
  Polly Mertens: it actually looks like.
• 6:47
  Polly Mertens: And I think one of the beauties that people who flip that switch and get into the growth channel, like you get into.
• 6:54
  Polly Mertens: I'm up to growth and we were going to talk about, you know, some of the things that I've done through my life is, you know, in the personal development world.
• 7:01
  Polly Mertens: When I first got into personal growth, this was before Tony Robbins, but it was with a guy named T Harv Ecker and he had these millionaire mind weekends and then that led to me doing a whole series of things and when you pay for a, I think it was like a $10,000 or $15,000 package.
• 7:17
  Polly Mertens: The beauty of that is like, okay, get up to those things, go to those classes, travel all over the place.
• 7:23
  Polly Mertens: I was in Vancouver, I was in Los Angeles, you know, all over the place, new York, regularly like on the quarterly.
• 7:31
  Polly Mertens: And what I saw and what I learned through my years of personal development is you get this stepladder growth, yeah, instead of this like up down, up down, because if you don't continue to keep yourself in a growth pattern, you kind of have a peak moment and then you kind of slide back down, exactly, you know, like people who break their diets or whatever, and then they gain a bunch of weight or you know they're just kind of turned that the trajectory doesn't continue to go up.
• 7:57
  Polly Mertens: It's like a flywheel like momentum, yeah Right.
• 8:09
  Samantha Pruitt: If you're riding the bike 56 miles, like yesterday, right and then you stop at an aid station, you're stopped.
• 8:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Your momentum to get started again is a lot of energy, mentally and physically, to get that thing going again.
• 8:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Life is the same way.
• 8:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, and I'll take it to a moment yesterday in the swim part of this race, that swim Let me just talk about that swim for a hot second, because I've been to a lot of races, I've seen a lot of things.
• 8:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, that was carnage, that was hardcore carnage.
• 8:35
  Samantha Pruitt: It's hard swim.
• 8:36
  Samantha Pruitt: It was cold as hell.
• 8:37
  Samantha Pruitt: So hypothermia everywhere left and right and the current was literally.
• 8:45
  Polly Mertens: You guys were swimming against the current yeah, the first half the current helped us.
• 8:50
  Polly Mertens: In the second half it you had to fight it.
• 8:53
  Polly Mertens: I mean, fight it straight into it.
• 8:55
  Polly Mertens: It felt like fight for your life, like there were moments I was like just breathing was the best that I could do.
• 9:02
  Polly Mertens: Even I I'm like I got to swim on my back just so I can catch my breath and not, you know, go into panic or something you know, because there's people all around you, there's water spray.
• 9:12
  Polly Mertens: I mean, it's just it.
• 9:14
  Polly Mertens: It there's 1600 people in this race.
• 9:16
  Samantha Pruitt: It feels like this K chaotic.
• 9:19
  Polly Mertens: Just everywhere you look, there's arms flying by you, there's hats, there's boats, there's waves.
• 9:25
  Polly Mertens: You know people kick you from.
• 9:27
  Polly Mertens: You know.
• 9:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Everybody's on high alert, like gaming.
• 9:31
  Samantha Pruitt: So the energy inside of that vortex if you will super, you know intense.
• 9:38
  Polly Mertens: What I want to say, though, is about that ladder, so what I think of in growth moments is not only like getting off the bike.
• 9:44
  Polly Mertens: You sort of have to regain momentum, and you you're at the same point.
• 9:48
  Polly Mertens: You're at 50 miles or 20 miles, and then you just start going.
• 9:51
  Polly Mertens: But what I have found in personal growth is there are times when you can actually recede, and so like in the swim, if I stopped moving, I would go backwards like I would start drifting backwards.
• 10:03
  Polly Mertens: The current was so strong and it was actually kind of quick, like you're like surprisingly, holy cow, I just went five feet backwards in like 10 seconds.
• 10:12
  Samantha Pruitt: You know what that speaks to.
• 10:13
  Samantha Pruitt: It speaks to the environment you're in on the daily when you're doing this growth work.
• 10:18
  Samantha Pruitt: So go to some high growth experience let's say it's a workshop or a business opportunity or an event or something like that Um, have this great growth breakthrough experience for yourself and then go back into a really toxic work environment home environment, community or whatever, stepping backwards, yeah.
• 10:38
  Polly Mertens: If you don't consciously so.
• 10:40
  Polly Mertens: One of the things that I liked about when I purchased that large package is and I put those things on my calendars, like you know, and he timed them beautifully.
• 10:48
  Polly Mertens: It was like you know.
• 10:49
  Polly Mertens: Let's say, I did one, a weekend workshop, in January, and then four times a year the other four courses were being, so I was like, oh, I'll just put my, put those on my calendar.
• 11:01
  Samantha Pruitt: So my growth moments you mean make a commitment to yourself, make that commitment.
• 11:05
  Polly Mertens: What girl?
• 11:07
  Polly Mertens: Because I I had seen from prior years and prior experiences of doing a little bit of work, and then you, and then life has a way, man, it does just has a way of sort of normalizing uh-huh growth, and it's not for everybody.
• 11:21
  Polly Mertens: I'm not saying everyone has to do this, but one of the things that I think you and I are about is I'm saying you've got one life, do this what are you talking about?
• 11:31
  Samantha Pruitt: you've got one you can't be living in the comfort zone.
• 11:34
  Samantha Pruitt: That's where dreams go to die and that's honestly where humans go to die.
• 11:39
  Samantha Pruitt: We cannot.
• 11:40
  Samantha Pruitt: We didn't evolve as a species that way.
• 11:42
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, it's just we're not meant to be living that way in our bubbles of comfort.
• 11:49
  Polly Mertens: And I think that the trade-off you know what is it?
• 11:51
  Polly Mertens: They say An ounce of fear weighs more than the pound of regret.
• 11:57
  Polly Mertens: Right, it's like the fear of, you know, saying yes to an Ironman or whatever it is for you, a 5K, or starting your own business, yeah, that's pretty big.
• 12:07
  Polly Mertens: But whatever your step is saying yes, saying no to something.
• 12:10
  Polly Mertens: I think if you weighed it against the weight of the regret.
• 12:16
  Polly Mertens: One other thing I'll just feel like inserting here is I think I shared this with you about two or three weeks ago, so this is late in my training and I'm just swimming.
• 12:26
  Polly Mertens: You know, in the pool I had a moment of a morning swim and it was pretty peaceful, I think.
• 12:32
  Polly Mertens: People were getting out of the water, so I was there a little bit longer.
• 12:35
  Polly Mertens: So I had felt like I had more of the pool to myself and I was just in my kind of a zone, just swimming.
• 12:41
  Polly Mertens: And I tell you, my future self came to me as an awareness, because I knew I only had a certain amount of these swims left.
• 12:49
  Polly Mertens: I knew like this is coming to an end and that's how you know I was, like this is a special moment in your life.
• 12:56
  Polly Mertens: This is a special once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.
• 12:58
  Polly Mertens: Appreciate it differently, look at it differently instead of it's just a swim right.
• 13:03
  Polly Mertens: It differently, look at it differently instead of it's just a swim right.
• 13:07
  Polly Mertens: And that future experience of my future self saying, damn girl, when you're 80, 90, yeah, right you, you will have been able to say you did that.
• 13:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, instead of the regret of god, I wish I'd done that and seeing yourself in that way, in that incredibly compassionate, empowering way, like check me out, you know, because a lot of people don't take that moment to really be in themselves.
• 13:33
  Polly Mertens: You know, and be their own best companion and their own best, you know, warrior love, warrior for the self and I can definitely attribute there was a lot of swims leading up to that, because so much in the beginning for me was growing, learning.
• 13:50
  Polly Mertens: Oh, the bike doesn't fit right, you know so I was equipment.
• 13:53
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I was very in the how do I do this, how do I get a little bit better at?
• 13:58
  Polly Mertens: So there was very much a focus on the tactical, yeah, the the functional.
• 14:03
  Polly Mertens: And then once I was just swimming, you know I get past those, you know we say it's, it's.
• 14:08
  Polly Mertens: You know, hard in the beginning, messy in the middle, and then it gets beautiful in the end.
• 14:13
  Polly Mertens: And so I was near the end of the arrival of you know, hey, I've put it all together right, I've gone through the ugly, the messy, and then I was like like I'm swimming and all of a sudden I'm having spiritual experiences in the freaking pool, like, totally so, push through those things, push through those moments.
• 14:30
  Polly Mertens: Those experiences, these big growth moments, give us that chance to get those beautiful gems that come later.
• 14:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Right, and I call it building a resume of badassery.
• 14:41
  Samantha Pruitt: And you certainly have that.
• 14:42
  Samantha Pruitt: So you're in this swim and the current is coming at you and you and 1600 of your new best friends are swimming like crazy people, like our life, trying to survive this swim.
• 14:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Never mind, the clock is ticking.
• 14:59
  Samantha Pruitt: There's all these other variables.
• 15:00
  Polly Mertens: When you're in something, yeah, you have an hour and 10 minutes to get in and out of the water, let alone the hypothermia that's going to set in at some point.
• 15:06
  Polly Mertens: Exactly so you've got two clocks you're racing against your own body temperature or you're out.
• 15:12
  Samantha Pruitt: What was your mind?
• 15:13
  Polly Mertens: saying All kinds of nasty stuff.
• 15:15
  Polly Mertens: I want to be honest.
• 15:18
  Polly Mertens: I'm like it was jibber-jabber up there.
• 15:21
  Polly Mertens: You know the beginning was what you saw me at the start.
• 15:27
  Polly Mertens: So I entered the water in a very peaceful, grateful, fired up.
• 15:32
  Polly Mertens: You know I was like let's go, it's race day.
• 15:34
  Polly Mertens: I'm so glad to be doing this.
• 15:36
  Polly Mertens: I don't love the swim, but okay, in an hour and 10 minutes hopefully this is you know we'll come to and then I'll keep going, and so the first half of my stride.
• 15:46
  Polly Mertens: So it's an out and back.
• 15:46
  Polly Mertens: So you swim out this distance and you come back.
• 15:49
  Polly Mertens: And I knew from having traveled and this comes.
• 15:51
  Polly Mertens: This is another tip is, having traveled this water before, I trained in that.
• 15:56
  Polly Mertens: An open bay, to be clear, it's ocean water, it's an ocean.
• 15:59
  Polly Mertens: Yep, in the harbor of morro bay, where the ocean water comes into the bay, the tide yeah, the tide comes in a couple times a day, in and out, in and out.
• 16:07
  Polly Mertens: It gets stronger in some places, whatnot.
• 16:10
  Polly Mertens: So I had practiced.
• 16:12
  Polly Mertens: Thank you, my ocean angel, tracy, had come out with me on two different swims.
• 16:15
  Polly Mertens: The first swim and I'm going a little deep into the pre-race, but the first swim she and I did I had the wetsuit that I had from years ago of just going out once or twice surfing, and it was fine.
• 16:27
  Polly Mertens: And I got out of the water after that first practice and I almost froze to death, like I had, like my hands were frozen and it took me an hour to warm up and I was like, oh my God, and thankfully this was close, or not too close, to the race that I could adjust.
• 16:39
  Polly Mertens: And, lesson learned, I got a new wetsuit.
• 16:42
  Polly Mertens: She went out with me again.
• 16:46
  Polly Mertens: I was cold but nothing.
• 16:47
  Polly Mertens: Got boobies but I did yep, got boobies cap, but I did learn that this current was a force to be reckoned with.
• 16:53
  Polly Mertens: So she and I she was even having trouble kayaking against this current.
• 16:58
  Polly Mertens: She's like.
• 16:58
  Polly Mertens: I was like, can I hold on to your kayak for a moment because I just need to catch my breath?
• 17:02
  Polly Mertens: And she was running out of breath trying to kayak us in place.
• 17:06
  Polly Mertens: Little Exactly.
• 17:07
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, so it was.
• 17:08
  Polly Mertens: So.
• 17:10
  Polly Mertens: My strategy was I knew what was ahead Conserve energy you still got to get to that first turnaround but conserve energy and be ready to, you know, kick it into gear.
• 17:19
  Polly Mertens: On the backend I didn't know quite what the experience of all the other people, the waves crashing the current as forceful as it was.
• 17:27
  Polly Mertens: I was kind of hoping it was going to be gentle on us, you know, but it was none of that and the people and all that stuff, so it it felt like a fight for your life, yeah.
• 17:36
  Polly Mertens: And so when you ask what was going through my mind, so when we got to that point and I could just see everybody changed, like if you lifted your head out of the water, everybody's head was kind of up like what's happening all of a sudden.
• 17:50
  Polly Mertens: Like people were shocked, Panicking, Shocked and panic at that point Like whoa, how you know and you could.
• 17:56
  Polly Mertens: Just it was a little bit like Titanic moment, you know, like everybody's going, we're taking on water here.
• 18:02
  Polly Mertens: Some of us might not make it.
• 18:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, you know well many people played that out in their heads and made a different decision than you.
• 18:11
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, Thank you.
• 18:13
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and you and I talked about this we're walking.
• 18:17
  Polly Mertens: That morning there was a spectator who had a sign that said don't give up, and we're both like that's not very encouraging, how rude.
• 18:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Put that on a sign.
• 18:26
  Samantha Pruitt: It's a race.
• 18:27
  Samantha Pruitt: It didn't feel very appropriate.
• 18:28
  Polly Mertens: But I tell you that signaled to me Because in the moment I was like, this is I don't know if I can do this, like I don't know if I can make myself swim as hard as it's going to take to get out of this water, you know, or myself swim as hard as it's going to take to get out of this water, you know, or get out of this channel that we're in.
• 18:45
  Polly Mertens: And if it's all this like all the way, that's because I didn't know like was this just a piece of it and we get around it or whatever.
• 18:52
  Polly Mertens: And I and I remember that sign.
• 18:54
  Polly Mertens: It said don't give up.
• 18:55
  Polly Mertens: And I went, are you kidding me?
• 18:57
  Polly Mertens: That's why that sign was there.
• 18:59
  Polly Mertens: And I said, okay, you know what, what if I can just make it the next little bit and just they'll pull me or I'll get too tired, whatever, I'm just going to keep going on.
• 19:10
  Polly Mertens: And I went to, you know, I swam as hard as I could for the next whatever.
• 19:13
  Polly Mertens: And then they allow you to hang on to a kayak or a boater if you need to take a breath.
• 19:18
  Polly Mertens: And I needed to take a breath and I took a breath.
• 19:21
  Polly Mertens: And then I was, and I just was telling myself one of the things that I've done in part of that work that led up to this we will talk about capacity is I did a workshop called warrior, and it's the inner warrior, one who conquers oneself, and I was like you've got to inner warrior, this girl.
• 19:37
  Polly Mertens: I was like you have got to fight for this if you want this, yeah, you've got to pull it all out and leave it all on the course.
• 19:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Thank God that inner warrior was in you.
• 19:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, you had built that inner warrior through years of work.
• 19:56
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, Right, yeah.
• 19:58
  Polly Mertens: And then my Spartan days.
• 19:59
  Polly Mertens: I was like, girl, you're strong, you know.
• 20:01
  Polly Mertens: I was just telling myself I'm strong enough for this mentally, strong enough physically.
• 20:07
  Polly Mertens: I was just like you know, because when you're training in a pool it's funny, you know, or it's not funny, it's just different.
• 20:12
  Polly Mertens: You're like oh, I'm swimming a lot of at ease.
• 20:15
  Polly Mertens: There's a lot of mellow swimming, alcohol maybe some people your life is definitely not in danger.
• 20:19
  Polly Mertens: It's definitely not in danger.
• 20:20
  Polly Mertens: There's not.
• 20:21
  Polly Mertens: People like throwing the yeah, and you just kind of have your lane to yourself.
• 20:26
  Polly Mertens: You're like la la, la, just getting the miles in.
• 20:28
  Polly Mertens: This is like constant Somebody's bumping into you, kicking in front of you.
• 20:32
  Polly Mertens: You're avoiding something, right.
• 20:34
  Polly Mertens: So very distracting.
• 20:37
  Polly Mertens: Lots of that Unnerving yeah Just kind of gets in and I was just like you're gonna have to swim, you know.
• 20:45
  Polly Mertens: And one of the things that goes to your mind is, I've heard, is people either get too much in the swim or they put too much on the bike and they don't save it for the back end and stuff.
• 20:53
  Polly Mertens: And so I was like, well, should I save it?
• 20:54
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, if you don't give it all you've got right now, there's not gonna be a bike.
• 20:59
  Polly Mertens: That's right.
• 20:59
  Polly Mertens: There's not gonna be a bike that the rest is not going to happen.
• 21:02
  Polly Mertens: It was like, exactly you got to figure that part out when you get to that part and right now you've got to get through this part and it was only going to happen if I did 110, you know it's like hard ass and you did and I did.
• 21:19
  Samantha Pruitt: And 308 of your friends did not.
• 21:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, so get a grip.
• 21:25
  Samantha Pruitt: 308 people either willingly got themselves out of that.
• 21:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Literally, they were exiting stage right and left all over the place, or they just didn't make the cutoff because they just were sort of stuck out there and couldn't muster the mental or physical fortitude to push forward, to get through, and so they were removed from the race.
• 21:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:46
  Polly Mertens: I've never seen anything which is a huge.
• 21:48
  Polly Mertens: What people don't know is that's a lot.
• 21:50
  Samantha Pruitt: It's insane.
• 21:52
  Samantha Pruitt: I've never seen anything like it in a triathlon.
• 21:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 21:55
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, so that was like Paulie's a badass.
• 21:58
  Polly Mertens: There we go, yeah, yeah.
• 21:59
  Polly Mertens: Well, I got to transition.
• 22:03
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, am I okay?
• 22:04
  Polly Mertens: Like, should I keep going?
• 22:05
  Polly Mertens: You know, I was like give me the medal now Like I just earned.
• 22:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and along the way, of these big growth opportunities you need to celebrate.
• 22:18
  Samantha Pruitt: You need to celebrate the small wins along the way to the big win, a hundred percent, especially when we're talking about the magnitude of this kind of big life level up experience.
• 22:31
  Polly Mertens: you best be celebrating along the way, and we did an episode.
• 22:34
  Polly Mertens: The previous episode, if you're listening to this just prior, is called pause and reflect, and it's a lot about that.
• 22:41
  Polly Mertens: We teach you how to take what we're taking right now and we're publishing this for you but how we evaluate and reconsider and just reflect upon what we did and how's it going and what was that like or whatnot.
• 22:54
  Polly Mertens: And I mean peak athletes.
• 22:56
  Polly Mertens: They document all this stuff right and they data.
• 22:59
  Polly Mertens: You know we're not data mining like they are, but that's how they get better, that's how they improve, and so there's benefit in the pause and reflect that we're doing and we invite you to as well.
• 23:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's talk about a little bit of the process of the change.
• 23:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Whether you're in the moment, like you were in the middle of this race, or whatever it looks like for people.
• 23:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Right, you're in it, it is happening, and you proceeded to then go to the bike and have some challenges on the bike and then proceeded to go.
• 23:29
  Polly Mertens: Well, one thing you know, just before we leave the swim that we wanted to talk about is we call it flipping the switch, and I think I've just told the story about it.
• 23:38
  Polly Mertens: But so a warrior switch, yeah.
• 23:39
  Polly Mertens: So at that moment where I'm hanging on to this pole, literally in the current, and everybody's kind of like having a Titanic moment, where I'm hanging onto this pole, literally in the current is, and everybody's kind of like having a Titanic moment I was like I'm going to grab onto this pole and I just need to re.
• 23:50
  Polly Mertens: We call it reassessing, reassess, and that was my hard pivot moment.
• 23:53
  Polly Mertens: And that's where it was like hard pivot.
• 23:55
  Polly Mertens: Got to go even harder into this if you're going to make it.
• 23:59
  Polly Mertens: And so reassess, and then I recommit it, don't give up.
• 24:02
  Polly Mertens: Like I could have just swam off to the side, gotten on a kayak and been like I'm done here.
• 24:06
  Polly Mertens: Thanks very much.
• 24:07
  Samantha Pruitt: You reassessed and then you recommitted.
• 24:09
  Polly Mertens: That's flipping the switch, reassess, recommit and then overcome.
• 24:12
  Polly Mertens: It was like I can overcome this, this current, this challenge, this distance, whatever.
• 24:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Why should people reassess, recommit and overcome?
• 24:22
  Polly Mertens: If you want success, if you want your outcome's a outcome.
• 24:25
  Polly Mertens: If you want your outcome, and sometimes the forces that you're up against don't look like what you thought they were going to be, or the situation.
• 24:31
  Polly Mertens: Newsflash people are people, weather is weather.
• 24:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Life is life, life is life.
• 24:37
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, it's like you have.
• 24:39
  Polly Mertens: You know, one of the things that we were talking about last night is correct and continue.
• 24:43
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, we were talking about last night is correct and continue.
• 24:45
  Polly Mertens: Yeah right, champions make adjustments, not excuses.
• 24:46
  Polly Mertens: Oh, say that again.
• 24:48
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, not my words, but I'll borrow them from some beautiful people champions make adjustments, not excuses.
• 24:54
  Polly Mertens: Exactly, and I trained to that.
• 24:56
  Polly Mertens: I trained to that mantra while I was swimming a lot, just in the practice of this, and that was my moment, a hard, pivot moment of let me reassess.
• 25:05
  Polly Mertens: Okay, I'm recommitting to this, I'm going to do everything I can to get through these.
• 25:09
  Polly Mertens: Next, you know, six tenths of a mile, the halfway.
• 25:12
  Polly Mertens: I'm going to overcome everything I can, mentally, physically, and we'll see how it goes.
• 25:18
  Polly Mertens: And then you and then I was reassessing along the way, you know, I made it a certain distance, had to catch my breath.
• 25:24
  Polly Mertens: What do I need to do from here?
• 25:26
  Polly Mertens: You know, and you get to different moments along the course, I would say.
• 25:29
  Polly Mertens: And so I was like well, should I swim on the outside or should I swim on the inside for this part?
• 25:32
  Polly Mertens: How's the water doing?
• 25:33
  Polly Mertens: Where are all the people?
• 25:34
  Polly Mertens: You know, and, just taking stock, it was never just me head down in the water swim, and I think a lot of people were doing that, you know, and not that mine was the best strategy because I think some people were just better swimmers than me.
• 25:53
  Samantha Pruitt: They were just oh, if I just swim hard, they had it in them.
• 25:53
  Samantha Pruitt: If I watched people coming out, it was carnage, pretty much.
• 25:54
  Samantha Pruitt: All the people I mean people were falling over, they couldn't get up the steps.
• 25:57
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean people were jacked.
• 25:59
  Samantha Pruitt: So it was definitely one of those really epic experiences for you.
• 26:05
  Samantha Pruitt: It was good.
• 26:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Good, in the process of these moments there are growing pains, there's a level of new awareness that comes about, a new perspective, and we talk a lot about this increasing capacity in the self mentally, physically, spiritually each of us as human beings creating a higher level of capacity within ourselves when we actively choose and put ourselves into these mass opportunities for growth.
• 26:36
  Polly Mertens: You know, just as you were saying, that I started.
• 26:38
  Polly Mertens: So I love the, the metaphor of like a container.
• 26:41
  Polly Mertens: You know, like we grow our container, if you will, and what I started to see, as you were, you, you guys can't see samantha, but she was sort of like moving her arms outward, like we expand, like thinking like she opened her arms up bigger and it's like when we grow our capacity.
• 26:55
  Polly Mertens: I started to think about like, when it's little, like you can harness, like a little dust devil, and when it's bigger, you can harness a tornado, because life will throw sometimes tornado people, tornado situations, and having the capacity is it doesn't break the container, it doesn't destroy everything the container has and maybe it's flexibility.
• 27:16
  Polly Mertens: I'm not saying it's glass necessarily, but whatever, but it's even a balloon.
• 27:19
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, it has the fortitude to hold that.
• 27:24
  Polly Mertens: Whether you know, as we're younger, more immature, don't have a lot of life experience, haven't tried hard things haven't done growth work on ourselves, we have a smaller container, you know, things like it's like little sandpaper, like the little scratch on the outside of our skin will be like ow, ow, ow, ow, right.
• 27:39
  Polly Mertens: And if you toughen up or if you grow that container bigger problems, bigger opportunities, harder things it will take and you talked about in your coaching.
• 27:50
  Polly Mertens: Why don't you share about your capacity to hold the coaching clients when they get the situation Business coaching clients or life health fitness coaching clients.
• 28:02
  Samantha Pruitt: If I don't have a large capacity, I can't hold space for the others or the other Sometimes it's a group, sometimes it's an individual when they are really having a struggle.
• 28:13
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, every human comes through life and into our spaces with a different level of capacity and you know part of our work is helping them build their capacity Right.
• 28:24
  Samantha Pruitt: But however they're in the moment, the challenge, the big growth opportunity, if you will, they come with that, maybe possibly a limited capacity.
• 28:35
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you put a bunch of them in a room together with limited capacities, by the way space and have a ton of capacity, because it's not just your own need to be able to moderate, handle, adapt yeah, be wise within these situations and emotionally fit, but you also need to help service their needs or lack thereof of what their capacity is.
• 28:59
  Polly Mertens: So and it, yeah, it's huge, you know.
• 29:01
  Polly Mertens: Reminds me a friend of ours came over last night and we were reliving.
• 29:05
  Samantha Pruitt: That was so beautiful, by the way, our celebration moment.
• 29:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Badass women in this room last night I can't believe.
• 29:12
  Samantha Pruitt: The roof of this house did not just blow off at some point celebrating your victory, but every single one of the females in the space just legend status I mean, it was gorgeous families of humans too.
• 29:26
  Samantha Pruitt: So good, just gold, so much gold.
• 29:28
  Polly Mertens: That's a team stuff and beautiful tracy was sharing how you had introduced to them her and her sister sharon.
• 29:34
  Polly Mertens: Oh yeah, the rim to rim, which is a very challenging.
• 29:39
  Polly Mertens: It can be run, but I'm guessing you guys hyped it, maybe where you go down one marathon you go, yeah, with a little bit of an elevation gain, kind of steep.
• 29:48
  Polly Mertens: The Grand Canyon Marathon is what we basically did and she talked about how.
• 29:53
  Polly Mertens: So rim to rim it's called is one direction and some people do rim to rim to rim Crazy folks like this lady sitting across from me.
• 30:00
  Polly Mertens: But Tracy said that you having taken them on that journey and that experience, and her having completed it and her growth moment, like you know, we talk about expanding that container but she's like nothing could stop me after that Invincible yeah, Invincible.
• 30:19
  Samantha Pruitt: And her sister, when she faced cancer, you know, fell back on that moment for herself around the physical and mental and spiritual strength she had as well Like.
• 30:31
  Polly Mertens: I got this and you know, I think one of the things we definitely want to share in this is how things translate, how these you know people are like why would you do that?
• 30:42
  Polly Mertens: Why, you know, like there's a lot of, let's say, naysaying against whatever the physical challenge looks like and everyone's is different, like I would not do some crazy falling off of some big cliff things that guys in windsuits do.
• 30:56
  Polly Mertens: It's like that looks like I could die, you know, and I'm sure they've trained for it.
• 30:59
  Samantha Pruitt: You know it wasn't their first jump, or something.
• 31:06
  Polly Mertens: So, whatever somebody's epic is, they're getting up to something that challenges and pushes their limits and it's when we, you know my two words this year are expand and elevate, yes, and this first five, six months of the year has been 100% the shoot, you know, like the tunnel for both of those, for mental and physical, to create that moment that happened yesterday, right, and the growth, the bigger container that I've now grown into.
• 31:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 31:34
  Samantha Pruitt: We call it also emotional fitness to build that building of the capacity we just talked about, right?
• 31:39
  Samantha Pruitt: So building your physical body's strength, but also your mental strength, your physical body's flexibility and endurance, but also your mental strength, your physical body's flexibility and endurance, but also your mental and emotional flexibility and endurance.
• 31:52
  Samantha Pruitt: These are just daily tools that allow you to say yes when these opportunities arise.
• 31:57
  Samantha Pruitt: And then you go on about the actual big growth moment and you know what's cool about what we're doing now and we really, really want to make sure people understand.
• 32:07
  Samantha Pruitt: This is part of the process being able to unpack the experience with somebody.
• 32:12
  Samantha Pruitt: So, being seen during the moment I'm bearing, witness to this.
• 32:17
  Samantha Pruitt: That was huge, that experience for the two of us.
• 32:21
  Samantha Pruitt: It transforms the moment right, the many, many moments, and then being able to have conversation about it so you can process what the hell just happened.
• 32:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Because if you keep it in your own head, it can get stuck there and it can maybe feel and look different right, it's true, when I came off the race.
• 32:43
  Samantha Pruitt: There can be different emotions.
• 32:43
  Samantha Pruitt: You want to talk about that moment.
• 32:45
  Polly Mertens: Well, you were helping me a lot, you know, because, you know, as a Spartan athlete, I was always in the top 10 in my age group, crushing it Often in the first three, you know, and in this race I look up my number.
• 32:57
  Polly Mertens: I'm the last female in my age group and that is hard to see.
• 33:02
  Polly Mertens: And there's other little micro moments, you, that is hard to see.
• 33:07
  Polly Mertens: And there's other little moment, micro moments, you know.
• 33:08
  Polly Mertens: So I talked about the win of the swim and that was a big win and my mind is like, oh, you're 22nd out of 22.
• 33:14
  Polly Mertens: But you helped me continue to focus on the win in the end and I'm just raw off of this.
• 33:22
  Polly Mertens: So there's more work to be done.
• 33:23
  Polly Mertens: I'm not feeling the elation yet because I've my mind has the oh, you know, 22 that's the evil twin we talk about.
• 33:32
  Samantha Pruitt: She's hanging out right now yeah, and that's you know.
• 33:35
  Polly Mertens: We talked about my human design and gene keys, my astrology and stuff, and so I have doubt and, let's say, confusion, confusion and and so this is just a representation of how that manifests in my life is doubt going into things or doubting myself or not good enough?
• 33:51
  Polly Mertens: Stuff like that we all get it, even as a coach.
• 33:54
  Polly Mertens: Hell yeah, of course.
• 33:55
  Polly Mertens: Here I am just completed an Ironman and I still go, but I know how to turn this trajectory Exactly, and that's actually part of the work inside of these big growth opportunities.
• 34:08
  Samantha Pruitt: What we're talking about now is the aftermath, if you will, the unpacking in the space, like, okay, so what transpired?
• 34:18
  Samantha Pruitt: What was I thinking?
• 34:21
  Samantha Pruitt: How was I feeling, and being able to reflect back, discuss it, talk through it and really come to terms with what was real, rather than there were moments of the evil twin coming to visit, knocking on the door and I, you know, some things didn't feel good.
• 34:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, we're totally human.
• 34:39
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not all going to feel good, for sure, but the feel good is looking at what is real and sharing it with somebody, I think, is a huge part of that.
• 34:47
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, two things I want to say.
• 34:48
  Polly Mertens: First, I don't want to miss this opportunity to deeply, deeply, deeply Thank you for every moment, for inspiring me to take on this challenge, to step into that, because that's who you are, is you create those radical what if?
• 35:10
  Polly Mertens: What if for people that they don't necessarily think they will do for themselves.
• 35:15
  Polly Mertens: That's who you are in the world and being that beacon for me.
• 35:21
  Polly Mertens: When you know I call you, I'm like, oh shit, the bike's too slow, and this and that and, and we would strategize and having you along the way, and in that moment when I got out of the water I didn't have parents that gave me and for me anyway, enough.
• 35:40
  Polly Mertens: You know, one of my love languages is words of affirmation.
• 35:44
  Polly Mertens: And I got out of that water and you hugged me and said I'm so proud of you and that fueled what was to come 56 miles of hard biking, and I just want to thank you for that, you know you were there for me when I needed that.
• 36:05
  Polly Mertens: That was.
• 36:06
  Polly Mertens: It's so rich that I've never had before, and so keep doing that and if you got and you know we talked about finding those people in the world- that can be that with us and for us, whether it's a hired coach or a dear friend or someone that's you know we.
• 36:25
  Polly Mertens: We watched that REI a hundred, how to run a hundred miles, or whatever, and those two guys were for each other.
• 36:31
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and it's finding your people, it's finding your equal, it's finding somebody who sees you and believes in you and, no matter what the hell goes down, is there for all of it.
• 36:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Not just the fun times, the shit storms, I mean honestly that's when we have the most fun usually.
• 36:53
  Polly Mertens: And that's your capacity and that's where you've built that capacity.
• 36:57
  Polly Mertens: I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
• 36:59
  Polly Mertens: Who you are in the world has capacity for people that are having tornado storms and holding space for people that are just going through tough stuff.
• 37:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Whatever that you know, having bearing witness to someone else's transformation.
• 37:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Are you kidding, Right?
• 37:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Gold, gold, gold.
• 37:15
  Samantha Pruitt: There was one other thing I was going to say.
• 37:19
  Polly Mertens: I got off track.
• 37:20
  Samantha Pruitt: No, it's okay.
• 37:21
  Samantha Pruitt: It's okay.
• 37:21
  Samantha Pruitt: So we're talking about bearing witness to another human Oops.
• 37:24
  Samantha Pruitt: We're talking about absorbing and unpacking what transpired.
• 37:28
  Samantha Pruitt: You're still going to do it.
• 37:29
  Polly Mertens: Yes, it's going to take time, I know what the second thing is Okay.
• 37:31
  Polly Mertens: So one of our I think my favorite lines that we have is how your life feels is more important than how it looks, and so this is a moment where how my life looks is I just did this amazing thing and inside I've got an old story or a weak story that doesn't align with it, but I'm not going to live with that because I know how I feel is important and I want to feel good about this, and so it's inner tweaking, it's inner conversations, it's outer conversations it's journaling, whatever it takes for me to not let that evil twin or the monkey in the mind take out this wind from me, exactly, right.
• 38:12
  Polly Mertens: So where I sit today, one day after and it's a little bit of just, you know, after burn, you know you're totally, you know, raw, yeah, so it's like it's just tired.
• 38:22
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, the mental challenge, as I told you, in the swim you know that I played with, you know, nine hours of moving your body through space, self-propelling your body through space.
• 38:34
  Samantha Pruitt: It's kind of hilarious if we talk about it like that Talk about perturbation.
• 38:36
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, so nine hours of physical and huge mental challenge to do that has left me with a little bit of an empty tank today to work on this last little bit.
• 38:48
  Polly Mertens: But I will set that aside and say I'm not going to let you know A today's empty tank and then take the.
• 38:56
  Polly Mertens: Oh, I'm 26.
• 38:58
  Polly Mertens: That's not going to be the story I'm going to tell, but that's the story that my mind has for me today, not going to be the ending story.
• 39:04
  Polly Mertens: But you have to recognize like, okay, that's just what it is, but you don't have to live with that story and that feeling.
• 39:12
  Samantha Pruitt: And the world doesn't see you in that way, and that goes for all humans listening to this, by the way.
• 39:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Why would we see ourselves in that way?
• 39:23
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's just a really interesting internal dialogue, old pattern, it's old patterns and stories from way back now that we haven't quite let go of yet, right.
• 39:35
  Samantha Pruitt: So this if this opportunity, as an example, this race, is the moment in your trajectory that you fully released that old story, that is the money it will be worth every damn mile, every dollar, every ounce of effort put in gold, so, true, gold.
• 39:56
  Samantha Pruitt: So we talk about finding these opportunities, seeking them out actively, choosing to put your place yourself into these places, into these moments.
• 40:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Because what happens if you don't?
• 40:10
  Samantha Pruitt: What happens if you just, you know, do a couple of things and then you sort of get into cruise control on your life?
• 40:17
  Polly Mertens: What does that look?
• 40:17
  Samantha Pruitt: like I know.
• 40:19
  Polly Mertens: And and you know not good, sometimes our life looks pretty different from, let's say, the normalcy or like the average, if you will.
• 40:25
  Polly Mertens: You did raise a family and, you know, have business and stuff and yeah, no, we're a little bit later in life, so we have more free time, flexibility, whatever.
• 40:33
  Polly Mertens: But I would say even in that, just having having the mindset, whatever the life is looking like, that you deserve and want to feel good, feel healthy, feel vital, feel alive, so like choosing that.
• 40:46
  Polly Mertens: You know there was times in your life where early on in your life, it led to a really critical health moment.
• 40:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Total dysfunction.
• 40:55
  Samantha Pruitt: It was a disaster.
• 40:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, it was pretty messy.
• 40:59
  Polly Mertens: And so you had to change that direct trajectory.
• 41:02
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, so getting up to that now, like I just want people to not have regrets later.
• 41:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I feel like you can build a hunger for it, and like we have a hunger for this now.
• 41:16
  Samantha Pruitt: right, it's a part of our diet, if you will, a part of our nutritional strategy for building the best body condition in lives of our whatever's possible for us, like you know, and so maybe the first couple are hard and you haven't quite built the hunger to continue on the journey, doing challenging things, doing hard things.
• 41:39
  Samantha Pruitt: But at some point there is a shift and that shift will occur faster, easier if you will, if you surround yourself with other people doing the things, if you build a life around that.
• 41:52
  Samantha Pruitt: So if, if athletics are a thing and you want to be doing that, you need to be going to the right places, hanging out with the right people and living a particular lifestyle that this becomes a normal thing for us.
• 42:03
  Samantha Pruitt: When I was doing ultras for all those years right, and I'm still playing in the ultras I would hang out with all those crazy people and I was like I'm one of these guys, this is normal.
• 42:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Prior to that, I was a triathlete.
• 42:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Now I'm coming back into the triathlon world but when I went into ultras I was like, oh, I guess this is just what we do on the weekends.
• 42:21
  Samantha Pruitt: We run all these miles and then we sit around with our feet up and we drink a beer and then we do it again the next day and it became a normal thing, yeah, yeah.
• 42:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And then for our journey now and circling back to triathlon, for me that's my current norm is like where are those playing?
• 42:43
  Samantha Pruitt: People playing, you know, if it's you and art it's you, saying I want to get up to art, I need to be playing with some art.
• 42:48
  Samantha Pruitt: People Like where's my community?
• 42:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Where's that culture?
• 42:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Where are those artists hanging, what are they doing?
• 42:55
  Samantha Pruitt: And and going to be part of that.
• 42:58
  Polly Mertens: And those, you know people, and those people with.
• 42:59
  Polly Mertens: A lot of the coaching we do is with those owners, entrepreneurs, the startup businesses or the solo, whether solopreneuring or the woman man is the head of it.
• 43:09
  Polly Mertens: We're working with them and it's like they need to be hanging out with their hawks.
• 43:13
  Polly Mertens: Yes, they need to find the hawks, because the people most likely in your company aren't the hawks.
• 43:21
  Polly Mertens: No, you're their leader.
• 43:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly, those aren't your, I mean, I'm sure they're lovely, but that's not where you hang out, so go find them.
• 43:27
  Polly Mertens: Got to find the mastermind, create it whatever, join something you know get into those circles and there's lots out there but that's not what we're going to talk too much about with that, but yeah.
• 43:37
  Samantha Pruitt: So we're really talking about increasing your capacity and getting yourself into a lifestyle where big growth moments are part of your path.
• 43:46
  Samantha Pruitt: You have one life, you have one body.
• 43:50
  Samantha Pruitt: We don't know how long this is going to go.
• 43:54
  Samantha Pruitt: We hope for a very long time, right.
• 43:56
  Samantha Pruitt: But why go through the growing pains, the growth spurts?
• 44:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Why have the breakthroughs?
• 44:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Why leave the comfort zone?
• 44:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Why?
• 44:07
  Polly Mertens: You know it's different for everyone.
• 44:09
  Polly Mertens: I think you know one of the things that I recognized when I was in my 30s and my aunt and uncle, who I love dearly, had you know they were very traditional raised five kids.
• 44:20
  Polly Mertens: She was a librarian, you know, he worked at, you know, kind of average job, whatever, saved all their money and raised, you know, love their kids, very family oriented.
• 44:29
  Polly Mertens: They weren't lavish, they were very, you know, post-war era kind of conservative and they get towards the retirement and you know they didn't not take care of themselves so they weren't like broken down.
• 44:43
  Polly Mertens: But you know they have kids actually in various parts of the world now, ones in Israel, ones in Germany, washington DC, you know whatever and they like to travel.
• 44:52
  Polly Mertens: But at 65, they found their bodies, weren't you know?
• 44:57
  Polly Mertens: They didn't like sitting on planes for 10, 12 hours right, or all that travel.
• 45:00
  Polly Mertens: And so their horizon, their willingness to go see their kids, grandkids, shrunk down, and I remember my aunt the horizon to keep living their life shrunk down.
• 45:10
  Polly Mertens: Well, they still were like we're going to live our life, but it's not going to be what we thought it was In this capacity?
• 45:16
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, so you know they had taken, you know I remember they had taken a cruise to Alaska and really enjoyed that in their maybe early 60s or late 50s or something.
• 45:24
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, oh, this is how their life is going to look after retirement, Right, and it didn't.
• 45:31
  Polly Mertens: It got, you know it got smaller At the house and you know they would drive down to see one of the grandkids, you know, like what they felt that they could support or felt comfortable to their bodies, and I was like wake up call, yeah, wake up call.
• 45:49
  Polly Mertens: And at the time I actually think that was about the same time the four hour work week came out and I read that book and it was like many retirements through life.
• 45:53
  Polly Mertens: Right so those became my guideposts.
• 45:55
  Polly Mertens: So the four hour work week retirements for life is like don't save up all this money, work, work, work, you know, to your 65.
• 46:02
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 46:03
  Polly Mertens: And then you have money to do stuff, becauseewind, okay, I have the next, you know, 30 years.
• 46:20
  Polly Mertens: I can do it differently.
• 46:21
  Polly Mertens: So I have personally taken that guidance and everybody gets their own guidance of you know.
• 46:26
  Polly Mertens: Some people it's like, yeah, create a crushing business, sell it, then whatever, whatever their thing is.
• 46:32
  Polly Mertens: But mine was create more mini retirements throughout my life where work some or work and adventure together, nomadic, whatever, and so I've built this.
• 46:41
  Polly Mertens: That's how my guideposts looked.
• 46:44
  Polly Mertens: That's how my map quest looked of what I wanted to get.
• 46:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Mine was similar, but maybe even harsher in that my parents, so they immigrated to America with my brother and sister.
• 46:56
  Samantha Pruitt: I was born in the US and so I constantly watched and grew up in the struggle of chasing the American dream as an immigrant family and to watch what happened and I mean it was a rough go for most of the journey but to continue to see them striving in that way and holding on to those dreams or ideals, if you will, and not adapting sufficiently or course correcting at any point, until my mom got cancer when I was nine.
• 47:31
  Samantha Pruitt: She got cancer again when she was 60.
• 47:33
  Samantha Pruitt: When she was 60, my dad died of a heart attack at 62.
• 47:39
  Samantha Pruitt: My mom died of cancer at 67.
• 47:42
  Samantha Pruitt: So my experience was watching them in health crisis and financial crisis and turmoil and struggle and strife and then eventually to see them both die young.
• 47:57
  Polly Mertens: I was like that is a hell.
• 47:57
  Polly Mertens: No, All of that for that outcome.
• 48:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Right, and there was little awakenings along the way.
• 48:03
  Samantha Pruitt: But the final breaking point if you will was absolutely not.
• 48:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Everything can go to hell, if you will.
• 48:12
  Samantha Pruitt: I am not going to chase those dreams.
• 48:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Those dreams don't belong to me.
• 48:16
  Samantha Pruitt: I won't inherit those dreams.
• 48:26
  Samantha Pruitt: I will have a different life and just building that different life is what works for me, you know, and it isn't about financial success and a lot of security and a lot of things and items and yada, yada.
• 48:33
  Samantha Pruitt: It is about experiencing this one epic life in this one freaking, amazing body that I have and the humans I can be with, the places I can go and the experiences I can have.
• 48:45
  Samantha Pruitt: That is my wealth, and if I die totally poor, I am fine with that, you know.
• 48:51
  Samantha Pruitt: So, rich, oh my gosh.
• 48:54
  Samantha Pruitt: And I get rich every day because of these experiences.
• 48:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Like you and I get to share and we get to share with lots and lots of people.
• 49:02
  Samantha Pruitt: I am becoming richer every moment because of those choices.
• 49:06
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and I'm not saying I don't need to feed myself and pay my bills.
• 49:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, the basics have to be there, but there's so much more available to us, yeah, yeah.
• 49:17
  Samantha Pruitt: So wake-up calls can come in whatever way, shape and form, but the biggest wake-up call usually comes in being aware and seeing something outside of your life that someone else might be experiencing and saying wow.
• 49:33
  Polly Mertens: And choosing.
• 49:34
  Polly Mertens: Am I going to follow that path or is that the Will?
• 49:37
  Samantha Pruitt: that be my story?
• 49:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, do I want that, or will I create my own?
• 49:40
  Polly Mertens: story and creating your own story is key in that right, because a lot of, you know, we don't realize the asleepness and the, you know, hypnosis actually, that we allow ourselves as human souls in the very beginning of our journey and then we, you know, get indoctrinated into some social culture up to, you know, let's say, early 20s or something, and then people get a little adrift, right, and then you pick up on that, let's say the success ladder that society will then gladly hand you into to start, you know, climbing up this, because this is what it's supposed to look like.
• 50:13
  Polly Mertens: And if we don't realize, what is it our soul's calling is?
• 50:17
  Polly Mertens: And that can include growing a business, it can include being amazing at your talent, your art, your career, your family, whatever, your athletics, whatever.
• 50:29
  Polly Mertens: But choose it that we start to coach, because they find themselves at the end of a journey or midstream during a journey and their bodies, their souls, their spirits get broken down because they're not choosing and they're just going through the motions they've got a ladder against a building they never even wanted to go up and they're halfway on the ladder like damn, and they're psychologically or physically or emotionally broken down.
• 50:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 50:57
  Polly Mertens: And it'll break down faster when it's against your values.
• 50:59
  Polly Mertens: Fastest way to you know translate into health problems is going against who you know you should be, or you know what you're up to in the world and settling, settling and we believe everyone at their core kind of knows if this is them or not, because all you have to do is have a little bit of awareness.
• 51:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Have Polly or Sam ask a few questions and next thing you know you're like damn, you're right and the cool thing is you can rebuild at any point.
• 51:28
  Samantha Pruitt: You can make the change, the pivot, that hard pivot, at any point.
• 51:35
  Polly Mertens: Reassess, re-pivot, because we're humans.
• 51:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, we should wrap this thing up.
• 51:39
  Polly Mertens: Well, no, we have two more things I just want to say in race analogy.
• 51:43
  Polly Mertens: So I got this from Oprah years ago, so it is a running analogy or a race analogy.
• 51:50
  Polly Mertens: And she would say and this helped me in yesterday's race is run your race, running your race.
• 51:58
  Polly Mertens: And if you haven't run a race before, think of like, uh, what the story I heard her tell was to her, um, producers.
• 52:05
  Polly Mertens: You know.
• 52:05
  Polly Mertens: So Oprah had these various producers that helped her produce the show, if you will, and they were like oh, this, this, um fellow TV show, they're doing this and these are the ratings they have.
• 52:15
  Polly Mertens: And she's like guys, gals, we need to run our race Right.
• 52:20
  Polly Mertens: And so in a horse race, the horses line up in their own little shoot right, like you have your own little shoot, to start, like do your, this is your shoot, this is your race, whatever.
• 52:27
  Polly Mertens: And they put the little blinders on them and then it's like go right, and the blinders?
• 52:31
  Polly Mertens: So they don't.
• 52:32
  Polly Mertens: Oh, look left, look right.
• 52:34
  Polly Mertens: Like how, how's the race horse next to me doing?
• 52:35
  Polly Mertens: You know, maybe there's a horse out in front of me, I want to catch him or something, but but it's meant to be run your own race.
• 52:40
  Polly Mertens: And in the especially for me, in the biking and the running part, swimming was just chaos, right, but in the biking and the running part it's like oh, I'm being passed like oh shit, you know.
• 53:00
  Polly Mertens: And in the run I'm like okay, I'm kind of like here, you know, and it can make you want to get and get off, whatever all sorts of things, but it's most when the evil twin shows up.
• 53:04
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and it's just running your own race, like that person trained, like they trained.
• 53:06
  Polly Mertens: That person is where they are, that person you know, and this holy moly, can you translate this to social media?
• 53:11
  Polly Mertens: Right, and this translates?
• 53:13
  Polly Mertens: So, run your race, living aligned with your values, like we were just talking.
• 53:17
  Polly Mertens: And then the second part of that is we spread this out into the world.
• 53:21
  Polly Mertens: Is let go of comparison.
• 53:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Let go, let go of comparison and there were times when I'm like oh, look how fast that one's biking.
• 53:29
  Polly Mertens: Why can't you know whatever?
• 53:30
  Polly Mertens: And it's like, yeah, that I'm just not that person.
• 53:33
  Samantha Pruitt: I've coached hundreds and hundreds of athletes, all different levels.
• 53:36
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, virgin newbie can't do anything, all the way up to Ironman ultra, and people also do these really insane comparisons to themselves.
• 53:48
  Samantha Pruitt: They'll be like well, I used to be able to run a 5k in 27 minutes or whatever.
• 53:53
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm like well, how old were you?
• 53:54
  Samantha Pruitt: 19.
• 53:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, now you're 58.
• 53:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Hmm, you know what I mean.
• 53:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Like what they have in there.
• 54:00
  Samantha Pruitt: I used to be a really good athlete.
• 54:02
  Samantha Pruitt: I used to do this.
• 54:03
  Samantha Pruitt: My body used to look like this when I put on a swimsuit.
• 54:08
  Samantha Pruitt: It used to perform like this when I would do a thing.
• 54:11
  Polly Mertens: I would say use that if it inspires you, not if it pulls you back.
• 54:16
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 54:17
  Polly Mertens: So if it inspires you, not if it pulls you back, yeah.
• 54:20
  Polly Mertens: So if it inspires you to say I used to be able to do this and I think I still can, fantastic, that is a story worth stepping into and going.
• 54:25
  Polly Mertens: Let me see if I can still run a 5k in 27 minutes at 58.
• 54:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, you know, I've set a goal for myself.
• 54:31
  Samantha Pruitt: This year I turned 55.
• 54:32
  Samantha Pruitt: I did a full Ironman 13 years ago.
• 54:35
  Samantha Pruitt: I know my time time.
• 54:36
  Samantha Pruitt: I know my splits on the swim, bike run and all the transition shenanigans and I will pr, 13 years later, personal record at the full iron man distance.
• 54:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So I'm not saying you can't get faster because that shit's about to go down, but if you're using that as a tool against yourself, against yourself versus yeah, it's super dysfunctional right?
• 54:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's absolutely correct what you're saying.
• 55:00
  Polly Mertens: If it's going to fuel you and inspire you, then use it If it takes the gas out of your gas tank or if it, you know, has you.
• 55:08
  Samantha Pruitt: You're this unique person.
• 55:10
  Samantha Pruitt: You know you're going through your own life in this one body that you got so many, many things happen along the way to this person called you, in this body, in this life, right, and so being able to adapt, be emotionally fit and being able to adapt to who you are today me, post menopausal, 55 year old female whatever with all my things, girl, female, whatever with all my things like is a deep level of self-knowing and compassion that I have for myself now, but also a deep knowing and what is possible I was just going to say what's possible, because there's so many technologies.
• 55:51
  Polly Mertens: You know, like you know so much more about nutrition.
• 55:54
  Polly Mertens: Everything you know, like all the things that you can actually rewind the clock in some ways, you know you can you know more about nutrition.
• 55:57
  Polly Mertens: Everything you know, like all the things that you can actually rewind the clock in some ways, you know you can.
• 56:01
  Polly Mertens: You know more.
• 56:02
  Polly Mertens: I mean a lot more has come out in 13 years about the coaching of that sport that you can tap into.
• 56:08
  Polly Mertens: Learned about this, learn about VO2 Mac whatever.
• 56:11
  Polly Mertens: You know how to swim, whatever and nutrition wise.
• 56:14
  Polly Mertens: So there is definitely a possibility and utilize that.
• 56:17
  Polly Mertens: And how can I do better 13 years later, standing on the shoulders of all that I learned?
• 56:22
  Polly Mertens: It's when we go, oh, why can't I do what I did back then?
• 56:26
  Polly Mertens: So avoid that.
• 56:27
  Polly Mertens: But, yeah, so the comparison definitely of people around you, all the things.
• 56:32
  Samantha Pruitt: How should we leave our audience today?
• 56:33
  Samantha Pruitt: What would be our call to action, or our one thing?
• 56:40
  Polly Mertens: audience today.
• 56:40
  Polly Mertens: What would be our call to action?
• 56:41
  Polly Mertens: Or our one thing I want to say you know what I, what I thought our one thing should be before we started, and I just, you know, oftentimes we invite people like we'd like to be an invitation to.
• 56:52
  Polly Mertens: You know, like, get up to these big growth things and you know, try hard things, whatever.
• 56:55
  Polly Mertens: And that's one way of going about it.
• 56:56
  Polly Mertens: And I just think I want to flip that and say what will you regret if you don't?
• 57:04
  Polly Mertens: You know, what will your 80 or 90 year old self look like?
• 57:09
  Polly Mertens: Feel like, how will the next years of your life go if you keep on doing what you've always done, or if you keep saying no to the things that you are afraid to or you could get up to, like how can you make those pounds of regret really weigh on you?
• 57:24
  Polly Mertens: So you take this one life that you've been given more seriously, more, more appreciated.
• 57:30
  Polly Mertens: You know like you have the opportunity of holding in your hands to do these things.
• 57:34
  Polly Mertens: Whatever your epic challenge may look like it could be little compared to some of the things that you do, but it's still your epic shift, it's that hard, pivot that you want to make.
• 57:45
  Polly Mertens: But if you don't make it, you're going to be living with those regrets.
• 57:49
  Samantha Pruitt: You know what my one liner to that is yeah, Never give up on your future self.
• 57:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Another way of saying it never give up on who you're becoming.
• 57:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Never give up on who you're becoming Ever.
• 58:04
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, we're still becoming, until the day we die we're becoming and you'll appreciate that you, that you create, you know, like the looking back, you know, so that swim moment that I talked about being in that pool.
• 58:15
  Polly Mertens: She's a badass.
• 58:16
  Polly Mertens: It was like such a gift for my future self to go.
• 58:19
  Polly Mertens: Thank you for doing these labs, because 89 year old self can't be doing that much swimming you know.
• 58:26
  Samantha Pruitt: So congrats on your race.
• 58:27
  Polly Mertens: Thank you.
• 58:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Freaking epic.
• 58:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Thank you, yes.
• 58:30
  Polly Mertens: Yes, yes.
• 58:31
  Polly Mertens: So what do we want to help our dear listener remember right now.
• 58:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I always want to say the same thing.
• 58:39
  Samantha Pruitt: I hope so.
• 58:39
  Samantha Pruitt: How your life feels is more important than how it looks.
• 58:44
  Polly Mertens: And I want to remind you every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.
• 58:48
  Polly Mertens: Get out there, guys.
• 58:50
  Polly Mertens: All right, Iron Woman, let's celebrate Woo.