Latest / The Everyday Awesome Project / 95: 5 Mindset Shifts to Shed Shame and Build a Healthier Life with Kelly Thrush

Transcript

95: 5 Mindset Shifts to Shed Shame and Build a Healthier Life with Kelly Thrush · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Hey everybody, welcome to the Everyday Awesome Project Podcast.
• 0:30
  Samantha Pruitt: What's up, beautiful humans?
• 0:31
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm here with a good friend of mine, Kelly.
• 0:34
  Samantha Pruitt: We meet again on the podcast.
• 0:36
  Kelly Thrush: We meet again.
• 0:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and you have been on the pod before.
• 0:42
  Samantha Pruitt: So I will put a link to that episode in the uh blurb on this particular pod so you can find out more about Kelly's detailed story and my interview after you did your 300-mile race.
• 0:55
  Samantha Pruitt: But today we're here to talk about something a little bit different.
• 0:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh, before we get into the stew, the meat and potato stew we're about to serve up.
• 1:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, please?
• 1:09
  Kelly Thrush: Sure.
• 1:10
  Kelly Thrush: Uh my name's Kelly, obviously.
• 1:12
  Kelly Thrush: I am a husband father.
• 1:15
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, but more pertinent to this particular podcast, uh, an altar runner.
• 1:22
  Kelly Thrush: I have been sober now for seven and a half years, coming up on eight here, pretty quick.
• 1:27
  Kelly Thrush: Woo! Thank you.
• 1:28
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, and a full liver transplant recipient.
• 1:33
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, also seven and a half years ago.
• 1:36
  Kelly Thrush: Weird how those two dates coincide.
• 1:38
  Kelly Thrush: Isn't it though?
• 1:39
  Kelly Thrush: It is weird how that worked out.
• 1:42
  Samantha Pruitt: That's so crazy, dude.
• 1:43
  Samantha Pruitt: And you're a good friend of mine.
• 1:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Check us out, hanging out.
• 1:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 1:46
  Samantha Pruitt: We've known each other for many moons now, and I'm stoked to be collaborating with you on this project.
• 1:53
  Samantha Pruitt: We're going to tell people a little bit what what we're up to.
• 1:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Basically, um, you and I have a lot of shared things that we're into besides ultra running.
• 2:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 2:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, obviously, that is how we met.
• 2:05
  Samantha Pruitt: We were, well, you were running around in circles like a madman, a gazillion hours at an event that I was helping to produce.
• 2:14
  Kelly Thrush: That's well, you were my Mr.
• 2:17
  Kelly Thrush: Miyagi uh on that particular day, because not that I know much more now, uh, but I really didn't know what I was doing then.
• 2:26
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, and so you were helping me guide me through those wee hours of the morning for sure.
• 2:32
  Samantha Pruitt: I think it was your first uh what was it like?
• 2:36
  Kelly Thrush: First 100k.
• 2:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, okay.
• 2:37
  Samantha Pruitt: That's so freaking awesome.
• 2:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm so stoked that I got to bear witness to your suffering.
• 2:43
  Samantha Pruitt: That's a little bit of suffering.
• 2:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, well, that's what ultra running is.
• 2:48
  Samantha Pruitt: So we love that in common.
• 2:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 2:51
  Samantha Pruitt: We also love humans.
• 2:53
  Samantha Pruitt: And in particular, we love helping humans through our own transformational stories.
• 2:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And we have some continuity there as well.
• 3:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Yours is not exactly like mine, but I do want you to tell yours up front, your your transformation of going from your prior life, your non-sober life, your non-transplant life.
• 3:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, just give us a little blurb about, you know, who are you and what is your transformation story?
• 3:22
  Samantha Pruitt: What's the story here, Ben?
• 3:24
  Kelly Thrush: Sure, absolutely.
• 3:25
  Kelly Thrush: So prior to transplant life, uh, I ran bars and restaurants, bars most specifically.
• 3:32
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, and I was pretty good at it.
• 3:33
  Kelly Thrush: And part of the bar culture uh is partying and booze, in my case, uh, is pretty much embedded in that, you know, environment around bars and restaurants.
• 3:49
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, and I got caught up in it pretty good.
• 3:51
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, and so I'd spent, oh gosh, I don't know, 15, 18 years running restaurants and bars until finally, uh, again, seven and a half, almost eight years ago now.
• 4:03
  Kelly Thrush: So it would have been January of 2018.
• 4:05
  Kelly Thrush: Uh my liver finally had enough because the alcohol had now become no longer fun.
• 4:12
  Kelly Thrush: It was no longer social, it was every day, all day, uh hiding it from everybody.
• 4:21
  Kelly Thrush: Those closest to me knew what was going on, maybe not the extent of it, uh, until finally I was jaundice and my eyes were yellow, my skin was yellow, um, and I had to go to the hospital.
• 4:35
  Kelly Thrush: And by the time I was forced to go to the hospital, because I wasn't going willingly, it was taking and screaming.
• 4:42
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, the doctors broke the news that I was at end stage liver failure, uh, walking around, still drinking at that point.
• 4:50
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, you know, even not the day I went to the hospital, but two days prior to that, I was still drinking.
• 4:54
  Kelly Thrush: And um, yeah, that is a uh, well shoot, that's a sobering moment, I guess, is a good time to use that key phrase.
• 5:03
  Kelly Thrush: Uh and so the the short version of that story is I spent four and a half months in the hospital.
• 5:09
  Kelly Thrush: Um, got to the point of the.
• 5:11
  Samantha Pruitt: You never left the hospital for four and a half months?
• 5:14
  Kelly Thrush: I would leave for hours at a time.
• 5:16
  Kelly Thrush: They would discharge me, and then something would go wrong.
• 5:18
  Kelly Thrush: My blood pressure would bottom out.
• 5:21
  Kelly Thrush: Um part of the problem that I had, or that most liver transplant recipients have is your liver and your kidneys are very intertwined.
• 5:30
  Kelly Thrush: And so when I was in the hospital on all of the IV medicines, not just fluids or antibiotics or anything like that, but medicines, uh, as soon as I came off of those, my kidneys would stop functioning.
• 5:42
  Kelly Thrush: And so my blood pressure would bottom out uh in cases, or I would spike a fever because I had infections, because my immune system, I mean, there was a plethora of problems.
• 5:51
  Kelly Thrush: And so typically there I only spent uh a total of those four and a half months.
• 5:56
  Kelly Thrush: I spent seven days, but not full days, out of the hospital.
• 6:01
  Kelly Thrush: They would send me home and I'd go right back.
• 6:03
  Kelly Thrush: Um, three times by ambulance.
• 6:05
  Kelly Thrush: Uh they had to do that.
• 6:05
  Samantha Pruitt: So you were hanging on by a thread.
• 6:08
  Kelly Thrush: It was by a thread, by by a very thin thread.
• 6:11
  Kelly Thrush: Uh the day on March 22nd, the day that I was told uh they had recovered a liver for me that was going to work, um, they whisked me down to the ICU and prepped for OR.
• 6:26
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, and my body crashed that day.
• 6:28
  Kelly Thrush: I mean, I was, in the words of the nurse, now this is tearsay because I was in and out of consciousness, but but my wife Jamie was there taking care of me in the ICU.
• 6:37
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, the nurse said I had about five or six hours at that point if I didn't get the surgery at that at that moment.
• 6:44
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, because at that particular problem, that particular day, uh, I was bleeding out.
• 6:50
  Kelly Thrush: Um, part of your part of your liver function, it does many, many things, not just filter your food, but it does lots of stuff.
• 6:56
  Kelly Thrush: And part of it is it helps produce platelets uh so your blood can clot.
• 7:01
  Kelly Thrush: Um, mine obviously wasn't functioning, uh, and I was bleeding from anywhere you can bleed from.
• 7:07
  Kelly Thrush: Um, I was puking it up, it was coming out my nose, other places.
• 7:12
  Kelly Thrush: Um, and I was losing more blood than they could transfuse back in.
• 7:17
  Kelly Thrush: Um, I had 27 liters of, or not 27 liters, excuse me, 27 units of blood transferred um prior to surgery, uh, which is uh a unit of blood is about 250 milliliters.
• 7:31
  Kelly Thrush: So whatever that is.
• 7:32
  Kelly Thrush: How many liters?
• 7:33
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, it's a lot.
• 7:34
  Samantha Pruitt: A lot.
• 7:35
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah.
• 7:36
  Kelly Thrush: Uh so when I woke up uh the next day in the ICU with all the tubes hooked up to me and the machines hooked up to me, and and I couldn't breathe, or well, I could breathe, but I couldn't talk because I had the ventilator uh stuck down my throat.
• 7:51
  Kelly Thrush: Um it my my whole life changed.
• 7:54
  Kelly Thrush: Like I once I realized I was on the other side of that, the reality actually set in because even going into the OR, I I still was in denial.
• 8:03
  Kelly Thrush: Were you?
• 8:03
  Kelly Thrush: Uh oh yeah.
• 8:04
  Kelly Thrush: I well knew I was sick, knew I was having surgery.
• 8:08
  Kelly Thrush: Okay, but it was gonna be okay.
• 8:10
  Kelly Thrush: I'm a pretty optimistic person by nature, and I was just not letting it uh the gravity of the situation sink in.
• 8:18
  Samantha Pruitt: And were you blaming alcohol at this point, or were you just like oh no, we no, I knew what the problem was.
• 8:24
  Kelly Thrush: Um, you know, and and there were lots of factors.
• 8:27
  Kelly Thrush: Alcohol was the catalyst for all of it.
• 8:31
  Kelly Thrush: Um, but I knew alcohol was the problem.
• 8:33
  Kelly Thrush: Um, I mean, there was no other there's no other reason for it.
• 8:37
  Kelly Thrush: I mean, it it was.
• 8:38
  Kelly Thrush: Um, that's a good question, actually.
• 8:40
  Kelly Thrush: I've never really talked about that out loud.
• 8:41
  Kelly Thrush: Even after transplant, um, I tried to downplay the role alcohol took, you know.
• 8:51
  Kelly Thrush: Um, it took, it took a couple of, well, I would say probably six months before I would at least admit it to myself how much alcohol was the actual problem.
• 9:00
  Kelly Thrush: Okay.
• 9:00
  Kelly Thrush: You know, people would ask me when they heard I had a transplant, especially if they had any sort of medical background whatsoever.
• 9:05
  Kelly Thrush: They said, Oh, how much of a drinker were you?
• 9:07
  Kelly Thrush: Well, you know, not that much.
• 9:08
  Kelly Thrush: You know, I drank, you know, obviously, but I, you know, I'd I'd lie about it because I was embarrassed and ashamed.
• 9:14
  Kelly Thrush: Um part of, and this is true, part of the problem too was Tylenol and over-the-counter pain medicines, a leave, ibuprofen, so forth.
• 9:23
  Kelly Thrush: Um, I would pop those like candy because I felt like crap every day.
• 9:27
  Kelly Thrush: Every day I woke up, I felt awful.
• 9:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, that stuff is rough on you.
• 9:31
  Kelly Thrush: And you know, at the bottom of those bottles, right, they have a little warning that says if you drink more than three alcoholic beverages a day, do not take Tylenol, so forth, and so on.
• 9:41
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, that's a real warning.
• 9:42
  Kelly Thrush: They're not making that up.
• 9:44
  Kelly Thrush: I mean, that's and so part of my liver problems was that as well, because I would take any types of over-the-counter ibuprofen, leave, or NSADS, I guess, and Tylenol, acetomyofin, um, all day every day because I just felt like crap is the best way to put it.
• 10:03
  Kelly Thrush: Um you were in survival mode.
• 10:04
  Kelly Thrush: How old were you at this point?
• 10:06
  Kelly Thrush: 38 when I got sick, and I spent the birthday in the hospital.
• 10:10
  Kelly Thrush: Um, so it was 39 when I got transplanted.
• 10:12
  Kelly Thrush: Uh when I when I received uh received my liver.
• 10:15
  Kelly Thrush: What a hell of a birthday present.
• 10:17
  Kelly Thrush: Well, it was prior to about a month before.
• 10:20
  Kelly Thrush: So birthdays in February, transplant in March, but I was in there at at that point.
• 10:25
  Kelly Thrush: I mean, we had a little birthday cake for me, uh, and things like that.
• 10:29
  Kelly Thrush: So um coming out the other side of transplant started me on this journey that we're gonna talk about.
• 10:38
  Kelly Thrush: Um, because I knew that I had to give back um in some fashion.
• 10:44
  Kelly Thrush: The way I look at it now is really two parts.
• 10:47
  Kelly Thrush: One, um the only reason, the only logical reason that I made it through was so I can help other people.
• 10:55
  Kelly Thrush: It's that's it's the only thing that makes any sense to me.
• 10:58
  Kelly Thrush: Otherwise, why why bother getting me through this?
• 11:01
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, it's so yeah, and so I think you got a gift, you got an incredible gift.
• 11:07
  Kelly Thrush: Uh-huh.
• 11:07
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah.
• 11:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Not to be squandered.
• 11:10
  Kelly Thrush: Correct.
• 11:10
  Kelly Thrush: And and I need to be able to uh share my time and and experience and uh lifting you know heavy suitcases or whatever it is for other people.
• 11:22
  Kelly Thrush: I need to do those daily.
• 11:23
  Kelly Thrush: I have to do that stuff.
• 11:25
  Kelly Thrush: And the other way that I look at it is uh every uh every moment that I've had uh since I woke up that day, uh until whenever my last moment is in the future, uh, they don't belong to me.
• 11:40
  Kelly Thrush: They belong to my donor, uh they belong to my donor's family, they belong to Jamie, they belong to my family, they belong to the doctors, they belong to all of those people that are still suffering through whatever uh mental health or addiction or substance abuse or whatever it is that they're suffering through, I owe it to them to earn this gift that I have been giving because it it's it comes with a debt that that I feel like I I have to at least attempt to repay.
• 12:12
  Kelly Thrush: I don't know that I ever will fulfill that, but I'm gonna give it a shot day to day.
• 12:18
  Samantha Pruitt: How in the hell do you stay sober?
• 12:21
  Kelly Thrush: Oh man, it's it cliche is cliche, it's one day at a time.
• 12:25
  Kelly Thrush: Uh it really truly is.
• 12:26
  Kelly Thrush: It is just one day.
• 12:28
  Kelly Thrush: Hit the pillow sober.
• 12:29
  Kelly Thrush: That's that's the only goal for today.
• 12:31
  Kelly Thrush: And then we'll we're gonna rinse and repeat tomorrow.
• 12:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and there's a lot of different ways to look at sobriety, you know, um, and have the experience of becoming a sober person, whatever that looks like for you.
• 12:45
  Samantha Pruitt: And we'll talk about that when we talk about the workbook, since that is part of it.
• 12:49
  Samantha Pruitt: But also in your story is a weight loss journey and a discovery of a thing called running and ultra running in particular.
• 12:57
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah.
• 12:58
  Kelly Thrush: Uh at my peak weight, I guess peak's the right word.
• 13:02
  Kelly Thrush: Sure.
• 13:02
  Kelly Thrush: I was tipping the scales.
• 13:04
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, probably I I I know for a fact I was in the 290s at one point, 290 pounds.
• 13:10
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, I am 220 as of this morning.
• 13:12
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, I like to be walking around about 200.
• 13:15
  Kelly Thrush: Um, but uh I think I probably got over 300 pounds, but I'll be honest, I didn't I didn't get on a scale.
• 13:21
  Kelly Thrush: I didn't want to know, you know, and so uh I'm sure I did at some point.
• 13:26
  Kelly Thrush: The pictures I see of myself during that era suggested that I was over 300 pounds.
• 13:32
  Kelly Thrush: Um, and yeah, it about two years after transplant, um, I read a book by our friend, uh Charlie, uh, and decided I was gonna run 100 miles.
• 13:43
  Kelly Thrush: I had never been a runner before in my life.
• 13:45
  Kelly Thrush: I played sports, I played baseball pretty competitively.
• 13:47
  Kelly Thrush: So I had ran okay, the physical motion of it, but endurance sports, absolutely not.
• 13:54
  Kelly Thrush: I I had friends that ran marathons in my 20s, and I couldn't understand why on earth they would do something like that.
• 14:01
  Kelly Thrush: And so something, I I don't know what, but something about it kind of resonated uh with me, and I decided I was gonna run 100 miles.
• 14:11
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, I had had one, well, at that point, two half marathons under my belt.
• 14:15
  Kelly Thrush: That was it.
• 14:15
  Kelly Thrush: Okay.
• 14:15
  Kelly Thrush: That was the only two times I ever put on a bib.
• 14:18
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, 13.1, 100.
• 14:20
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, this seems reasonable.
• 14:23
  Kelly Thrush: For those, for those of us that have my attic skill set, uh, that that is that is pretty much exactly how it goes.
• 14:30
  Kelly Thrush: I went from zero to a half, a half to a 50K, and then a 50k to my first official uh was a hundred mile attempt.
• 14:39
  Kelly Thrush: I DNF'd that race.
• 14:40
  Kelly Thrush: But uh yeah, I skipped all the steps in between because sure, why not?
• 14:43
  Kelly Thrush: And then DNF those two 100s.
• 14:45
  Kelly Thrush: And of course, the next logical step is to do, you know, 300.
• 14:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Which you completed.
• 14:51
  Kelly Thrush: I did finish that one.
• 14:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, dude, you were just getting warmed up.
• 14:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, all those other things, it's for you were just like working out the kinks, you know, just stretching it all out and getting your mind in the right place and all of that stuff.
• 15:05
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, it's so important for us to share our stories.
• 15:08
  Samantha Pruitt: I'll share a little bit of mine about mine, but it's important because we're inviting people to partake in their own journey, right?
• 15:17
  Samantha Pruitt: We we want to help facilitate other people's healings and transformation.
• 15:22
  Samantha Pruitt: So we've created this workbook together that is about all of these things.
• 15:26
  Samantha Pruitt: It is about getting sober if that's one of the challenges in your life, or be a sober, curious person like me.
• 15:32
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm playing in this space now, or losing weight.
• 15:35
  Samantha Pruitt: We both have weight loss stories.
• 15:37
  Samantha Pruitt: We're both ultra runners and ultra humans out doing extraordinary things.
• 15:41
  Samantha Pruitt: But our story is, you know, not uncommon.
• 15:46
  Samantha Pruitt: I know that there are people out there like us who have been just as freaking miserable.
• 15:51
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I lost 50 pounds.
• 15:52
  Samantha Pruitt: I had a mental and physical health crisis in my late 20s, and I didn't have any athletic background or any of those things.
• 15:59
  Samantha Pruitt: But I was living a very unhealthy lifestyle, no physical activity, lots of stress, poor nutrition.
• 16:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Stress was really a big part of it.
• 16:08
  Samantha Pruitt: I developed an autoimmune uh disorder through that, but I didn't know what was wrong with me at the time.
• 16:13
  Samantha Pruitt: I went undiagnosed for over three years.
• 16:16
  Samantha Pruitt: So I got very, very heavy, very toxic.
• 16:19
  Samantha Pruitt: My body wasn't functioning, things were literally not moving through the system.
• 16:23
  Samantha Pruitt: And I got to a point I really couldn't eat anymore.
• 16:26
  Samantha Pruitt: So I was totally malnourished, oddly enough, um, but completely overweight, swollen, puffy, everything was inflamed, toxic, full of toxins.
• 16:36
  Samantha Pruitt: And so my brain stopped working also from all of this compounded issues.
• 16:40
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, the body and your brain are together.
• 16:43
  Samantha Pruitt: They're bullshit to work together, people.
• 16:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, exactly.
• 16:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, and we'll talk about that.
• 16:49
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, that's one of the things we talk about in this workbook is how these things work together.
• 16:52
  Samantha Pruitt: But my story is a little bit different in that I basically thought I was had an undiagnosed disease of some sort.
• 17:00
  Samantha Pruitt: They just couldn't figure it out.
• 17:01
  Samantha Pruitt: I went to all these Western medicine doctors, nobody could really tell me what was going on.
• 17:05
  Samantha Pruitt: And so I thought, figured I was dying.
• 17:07
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I got to the point I couldn't really get out of bed, couldn't function.
• 17:10
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I had a young child at home.
• 17:12
  Samantha Pruitt: I was, you know, my husband and I were running a business.
• 17:15
  Samantha Pruitt: I couldn't partake in any of those things.
• 17:16
  Samantha Pruitt: I just barely was getting through the day, you know, trying to survive.
• 17:21
  Samantha Pruitt: And it was really miserable.
• 17:23
  Samantha Pruitt: And I just had my own come to Jesus moment on the toilet one day, because that was one of the challenges I had is I couldn't go to the bathroom.
• 17:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, and I thought, this is it.
• 17:33
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I've got some kind of terminal disease.
• 17:35
  Samantha Pruitt: I can't figure it out.
• 17:37
  Samantha Pruitt: I need to make peace with this, or or I can take another route and say, fuck y'all.
• 17:46
  Samantha Pruitt: I'll figure it out on my own.
• 17:48
  Samantha Pruitt: I am not going down without a fight.
• 17:52
  Samantha Pruitt: And so I literally quit my job, quit anything that was stressful in my life, eliminated all of the stress, and committed to just take care of my health, make that the primary reason I existed in the world, right?
• 18:05
  Samantha Pruitt: I have to heal this thing.
• 18:06
  Samantha Pruitt: All of this stuff is broken.
• 18:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm the only one that can take responsibility for this.
• 18:11
  Samantha Pruitt: So I actually went back to school, I studied holistic health, became, you know, an expert in all of these things that I really was doing it selfishly just to figure out hey, what about me is broken and how can I fix it?
• 18:24
  Samantha Pruitt: And I discovered crazy things, Kelly, yeah, like nutrition and exercise, sleep, and stress reduction.
• 18:33
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, things that I just wasn't taught growing up, it wasn't part of the lifestyle in my family household.
• 18:39
  Samantha Pruitt: These were these things were new to me.
• 18:41
  Samantha Pruitt: It sounds ludicrous, but I think many people can relate, depending on your family unit and your growing up experience.
• 18:49
  Samantha Pruitt: We don't know these things.
• 18:52
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's ridiculous for us to assume that people should know these things.
• 18:55
  Samantha Pruitt: We're not teaching our children this stuff, and many times we're not role modeling it.
• 18:59
  Samantha Pruitt: So, you know, we can't blame ourselves even for your situation finding alcohol.
• 19:04
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm sure you feel a sense of responsibility in making these choices.
• 19:07
  Samantha Pruitt: But there's reasons that these behaviors, like I was eating freaking ho-hos and ding-dongs, and I don't even know what the hell, you know, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's, and that's how I was raised.
• 19:21
  Samantha Pruitt: This is what we did.
• 19:22
  Samantha Pruitt: So I was doing what I knew to do.
• 19:26
  Samantha Pruitt: And if there were coping mechanisms, whether it was alcohol or food or you know, binge watching TV or whatever, all the things that we all do as human beings, we've all done it.
• 19:37
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, like life is incredibly stressful.
• 19:40
  Samantha Pruitt: It's challenging for humans, and we're all humans.
• 19:43
  Kelly Thrush: I think you hit the nail on the head that when you talk about people can relate.
• 19:48
  Kelly Thrush: I think, Pete, every person out there, every strong word, the majority of people out there can relate to one piece of your story or one piece of my story.
• 19:57
  Kelly Thrush: There are tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people in the world who have a poor relationship with alcohol or a poor relationship with food, or they're stressed to the guild.
• 20:08
  Kelly Thrush: I know that in my 20s, I think Doctor, some of the things I said in my 20s, like, stress is an illusion.
• 20:13
  Kelly Thrush: I was super stressed.
• 20:14
  Kelly Thrush: Like, but I just convinced myself that I wasn't, even though I'm sure that I was, because you know, we were a young married couple with young kids.
• 20:24
  Kelly Thrush: And most of the time when the kids were young, it was just my income, which was by choice.
• 20:28
  Kelly Thrush: We wanted her to stay home because we couldn't afford childcare.
• 20:31
  Kelly Thrush: You know, we didn't have any, you know, we didn't have the money that we wanted or that we that we tried to live up to.
• 20:37
  Kelly Thrush: Um, it was super stressful, you know.
• 20:39
  Kelly Thrush: Uh I had a stressful job.
• 20:41
  Kelly Thrush: I worked 60, 70, 90 hours a week.
• 20:45
  Kelly Thrush: You know, I was at this place.
• 20:46
  Kelly Thrush: It was, I I remember one specific one.
• 20:48
  Kelly Thrush: This is in Colorado or before in Tucson before we moved to Colorado.
• 20:52
  Kelly Thrush: I went home to the morning radio show after working, you know, probably 18-hour day or whatever it was.
• 21:00
  Kelly Thrush: I went home, took a nap, woke up, took or took a shower, came back to the same radio show.
• 21:07
  Kelly Thrush: I caught the end of it before I, you know, the morning show.
• 21:11
  Kelly Thrush: And I think about that, going, that's ridiculous.
• 21:14
  Kelly Thrush: And I would do that because it was normal.
• 21:17
  Kelly Thrush: That was just kids, that's what my job entailed.
• 21:20
  Kelly Thrush: Exactly.
• 21:21
  Kelly Thrush: Just what I had to do.
• 21:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 21:23
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I was taught, and my parents immigrated to this country, and I'm grateful for that.
• 21:27
  Samantha Pruitt: But, you know, I was taught to chase the American dream and like work was everything, money was everything, security with house and things and cars and whatever was everything.
• 21:36
  Samantha Pruitt: So I subscribed to the same methodologies.
• 21:40
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, it seemed like what everybody else was doing, right?
• 21:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, when I was younger, I definitely did abuse drugs and alcohol.
• 21:46
  Samantha Pruitt: That was part of my story for quite a long time.
• 21:49
  Samantha Pruitt: And when I became a young adult and had this health crisis in my 20s, like I said, I wasn't using at that time, but I do believe all of these things exasperated these health conditions, like this perfect storm, this perfect shit storm for my body to say, hell to the no, enough of this.
• 22:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And the reason I think you and I care so deeply about this now as well is we don't really want people to ever get to that point.
• 22:14
  Samantha Pruitt: We don't want people rolling on into a hospital on the brink of death holding on by a shoestring.
• 22:20
  Samantha Pruitt: And I don't want people, you know, at any time to be contemplating, you know, their existence if they're going to be here tomorrow.
• 22:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Stop, right?
• 22:31
  Samantha Pruitt: If you can be honest, and that's step number one of all things, right?
• 22:36
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's and it's and it's tough to do.
• 22:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Wake the hell up and be honest.
• 22:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, exactly.
• 22:41
  Samantha Pruitt: But hey, we'll do it with you.
• 22:42
  Samantha Pruitt: If you can be honest about what you're up to, there are solutions for everything.
• 22:48
  Samantha Pruitt: And we both believe that, a thousand percent believe that.
• 22:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's just about these small incremental steps forward.
• 22:55
  Samantha Pruitt: So, this workbook we decided to uh get busy doing.
• 22:59
  Samantha Pruitt: So I've been spending the last 25 years now, since that moment, um, coaching on a variety of different levels.
• 23:04
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I did became a personal trainer and an endurance coach of trathlon and running and all the things, and ultimately a race director in the industry.
• 23:12
  Samantha Pruitt: That's part of my story, sure.
• 23:14
  Samantha Pruitt: And I am an athlete myself, endurance athlete.
• 23:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Love it, love it, love the lifestyle.
• 23:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, it did become, you know, my drug of choice probably for many, many years to keep myself sane.
• 23:24
  Samantha Pruitt: And I did get healthy and I did get physically fit and, you know, have done a lot of cool, cool things.
• 23:30
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm grateful for that.
• 23:31
  Samantha Pruitt: But really, the most fun has been working with other humans to help them see what is possible for themselves.
• 23:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And so just through experience and through, of course, gaining knowledge and expertise and all that stuff, I've been coaching people for about 25 years now on a variety of different levels.
• 23:48
  Samantha Pruitt: And for you, you're a little bit new to the coaching space, but you're all about to go hard in on this.
• 23:55
  Samantha Pruitt: And obviously, you do public speaking.
• 23:57
  Samantha Pruitt: And your foundation that you started, you've got a lot of cool stuff going on.
• 24:01
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's time that we launch something, right?
• 24:04
  Kelly Thrush: Agreed.
• 24:04
  Kelly Thrush: Yep.
• 24:05
  Samantha Pruitt: So we're starting with this.
• 24:06
  Samantha Pruitt: We're starting with this workbook.
• 24:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And we came together in a collab because we like each other, and we have shared values and a shared mission and shared passion, obviously.
• 24:17
  Samantha Pruitt: So this workbook is free, but obviously, you and I are available for coaching and for speaking and for events and all that stuff.
• 24:24
  Samantha Pruitt: The actual workbook itself is called The Five Truths, The Five Strategies, the Five Mindset Shifts to Shed Shame and Pounds.
• 24:37
  Samantha Pruitt: It can be about addiction or addictive behaviors, it can be about weight loss, it can be about just feeling like shit and being fed up.
• 24:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Anything that you can think of, this all does relate to.
• 24:53
  Samantha Pruitt: We don't get into the weeds about what you should eat and you know how much exercise you can do and all that stuff.
• 24:59
  Samantha Pruitt: First of all, that's all free on the internet.
• 25:00
  Samantha Pruitt: We can coach that if people need that.
• 25:03
  Samantha Pruitt: But what we felt strongly about most is communicating this core set of values, right?
• 25:09
  Samantha Pruitt: The truths, the strategies, the mindset shifts that people really ignore.
• 25:14
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, they ignore.
• 25:16
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you don't do those things, you got nothing.
• 25:19
  Kelly Thrush: Well, because you have to start there, right?
• 25:22
  Kelly Thrush: There has to be a mental shift in your thought process, which I think is the hardest piece, um, because otherwise it's not going to work, right?
• 25:32
  Kelly Thrush: So if you take uh I'll use the word dieting, right?
• 25:37
  Kelly Thrush: Like you can physically do all the right things in your diet.
• 25:40
  Kelly Thrush: You're gonna count your calories, you're gonna watch your macros, you're gonna probably, in most cases, starve yourself in some fashion or another.
• 25:47
  Kelly Thrush: I know, it's horrible.
• 25:48
  Kelly Thrush: But people can can do that physical stuff.
• 25:51
  Kelly Thrush: But if they haven't, if they haven't changed how they think and approach about it, sooner or later it's not going to work.
• 25:58
  Kelly Thrush: We're gonna revert back to old habits, something's gonna derail you, it could be a vacation, it could be a stressful moment, or whatever.
• 26:05
  Kelly Thrush: Who knows?
• 26:06
  Kelly Thrush: But until you address the I the shame part of it, which is which is a very powerful word, until you address that, I don't think anything's gonna change long term.
• 26:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 26:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 26:19
  Samantha Pruitt: And by us telling our stories and being so public about them, like I got nothing to hide, people can ask me anything.
• 26:24
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm in the same boat.
• 26:25
  Kelly Thrush: I tell people all the time.
• 26:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Whatever, bring it the hell on, bring it the hell on.
• 26:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Unless you are able to step out of the darkness and into the light, you're never gonna work your way out of that brown paper bag or that dark room or whatever the thing is, that cloak of shame, right?
• 26:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So let's roll through them and maybe we'll add just a few things.
• 26:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Obviously, the workbook is free and it's available.
• 26:50
  Samantha Pruitt: So you'll find this on links on our Instagram, you'll find it attached to this podcast, you'll find it on our websites, etc.
• 26:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's there, it's available, it's free.
• 27:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Download it.
• 27:00
  Samantha Pruitt: It is quite a robust workbook.
• 27:02
  Samantha Pruitt: So there actually is a lot more than what we're gonna cover in the book.
• 27:05
  Samantha Pruitt: There is homework, there is more relatable things in there for you to think about, to digest, to consider.
• 27:12
  Samantha Pruitt: But today I just want to go through the truths, the strategies, and the mindset, and just pepper them with just a little bit of what they can anticipate.
• 27:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so let's start with truths.
• 27:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Number one, suffering is optional.
• 27:25
  Kelly Thrush: Yep, love it.
• 27:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, right out of the gate.
• 27:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Now, I'm studying Buddhism and they're all about suffering and exploring that as a human condition, and obviously part of the practices are ways to deal with being a human in the world and not experiencing suffering so much or working your way through it.
• 27:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So when we say suffering is optional, what does that mean to you?
• 27:50
  Kelly Thrush: Oh, I think you get to choose how you want to suffer, right?
• 27:54
  Kelly Thrush: So, yeah, suffering is part of the human condition.
• 27:58
  Kelly Thrush: It it defines uh humanity, what it means to be human, right?
• 28:03
  Kelly Thrush: It really truly does.
• 28:04
  Kelly Thrush: But I like that we, I get to pick how I want to do that.
• 28:09
  Kelly Thrush: What I don't do any longer is choose to suffer in the mornings when I wake up and have to have a drink sitting on my nightstand so I can function during the day.
• 28:18
  Kelly Thrush: That's suffering.
• 28:19
  Kelly Thrush: I don't choose to do that anymore.
• 28:21
  Kelly Thrush: My my suffering of choice is you know running uphill for days on end.
• 28:26
  Kelly Thrush: Um, but you get to choose how you want to do it, right?
• 28:29
  Kelly Thrush: You don't have to suffer with the things that you feel like are controlling you anymore.
• 28:33
  Kelly Thrush: I think that's what choosing your suffering means.
• 28:36
  Kelly Thrush: You don't have to, it's a choice.
• 28:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 28:40
  Samantha Pruitt: You're not trapped, right?
• 28:42
  Samantha Pruitt: You have choice, you have agency.
• 28:44
  Samantha Pruitt: It might not feel like it when you're an addict.
• 28:48
  Samantha Pruitt: It might not feel like it when you're stuck in a body that doesn't feel good, that you don't love.
• 28:55
  Samantha Pruitt: It feels like a trap, right?
• 28:57
  Samantha Pruitt: That's the suffering, the being trapped in that.
• 29:01
  Samantha Pruitt: So through these things we're going to talk about, and through coaching and experience, you can break the cycle.
• 29:09
  Samantha Pruitt: It is possible, which means me to number two.
• 29:13
  Samantha Pruitt: This is one of our truths.
• 29:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Go all in on your worthiness.
• 29:18
  Kelly Thrush: Because yes, you are.
• 29:19
  Kelly Thrush: You're worth it.
• 29:20
  Kelly Thrush: The worthiness is a key, it's a key point.
• 29:22
  Kelly Thrush: Is tough for people, dude.
• 29:24
  Kelly Thrush: It is hard.
• 29:25
  Kelly Thrush: It was super hard.
• 29:26
  Kelly Thrush: It took me uh, I'm gonna say three to four years of being sober to kind of finally figure this piece out, truly figure it out.
• 29:35
  Kelly Thrush: I had moments, yeah, right?
• 29:36
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, but the guilt and the shame that came along with my drinking days and the and the the the stress that I put my family through and the pain and the heartache and all of those words, um I wasn't worthy of of the love that people were giving me.
• 29:52
  Kelly Thrush: You know, I wasn't worthy of of all of those things, and it really did.
• 29:56
  Kelly Thrush: It took me a couple of years to figure it out.
• 29:58
  Kelly Thrush: And what I hope we can do is uh maybe fast track that for some people because here's the fact the fact of the matter is uh is if you are overweight uh and in that vicious cycle, uh or if you are in the middle of a uh just a binge uh uh addiction, drinking binge, whatever it is, you are not a bad person, right?
• 30:17
  Kelly Thrush: No, you are a A worthy, lovely human being who's stuck at the moment.
• 30:24
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah.
• 30:24
  Kelly Thrush: And there's some there's some hard choices we're gonna have to make, but but it doesn't make you any less worthy than anybody else.
• 30:30
  Kelly Thrush: No, and that's what people get caught in that is what's gonna stop you.
• 30:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Correct.
• 30:37
  Samantha Pruitt: We have to just bust that thing wide open.
• 30:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Every human, a relevant, and every living creature, of course, is worthy at birth all the way through death.
• 30:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Doesn't matter what they do and how they do it and all these things, believe it or not, even the crazy, horrible people that we see out in the universe, they are a worthy human being of being saved, of being, you know, changed, of having a life that they want and deserve.
• 31:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Everybody is worthy of it.
• 31:09
  Samantha Pruitt: It's just a matter of them discovering that.
• 31:12
  Kelly Thrush: Correct.
• 31:13
  Samantha Pruitt: That's the work, right?
• 31:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh, this is a big one for you.
• 31:16
  Samantha Pruitt: You are a miracle.
• 31:17
  Kelly Thrush: Baboo is my favorite topic.
• 31:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 31:20
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, you know, I'll I'll I'll paraphrase because I can't quote it, but there uh the physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has a has a you know a reel on Instagram that talks about the astronomical odd that you were even born in the first place, right?
• 31:36
  Kelly Thrush: That the the math that goes, and I don't know what it is, hundreds of billions of trillions of whatevers to one.
• 31:42
  Kelly Thrush: Yep, that all the stars aligned and you were actually born.
• 31:49
  Kelly Thrush: It's insane.
• 31:50
  Kelly Thrush: It's insane that I showed up here, right?
• 31:53
  Kelly Thrush: It's just stupendous.
• 31:55
  Kelly Thrush: And so, yeah, everybody is is just a pure miracle, just just in the math in it of itself, right?
• 32:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 32:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 32:03
  Samantha Pruitt: The fact that they were born, period, and stop.
• 32:06
  Samantha Pruitt: If they do nothing else after that, right?
• 32:09
  Samantha Pruitt: But then we do so many freaking miraculous things.
• 32:12
  Samantha Pruitt: We only think about the things that we feel shame about and our dysfunctional behaviors or our physical appearance or the lack.
• 32:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh, you know, we think about all the negatives, we forget about all the positive things that we've done, and you know, part of it is taking inventory and being real about that, right?
• 32:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh, number four, everything is impermanent.
• 32:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Dun dun dun dun.
• 32:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Yep.
• 32:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Including this moment right now.
• 32:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Yep.
• 32:42
  Samantha Pruitt: You, me, including every single moment right now.
• 32:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So, what in the hell are you doing wasting time?
• 32:48
  Samantha Pruitt: And then also, what are you doing fixating on this thing right now?
• 32:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Wait 90 seconds.
• 32:55
  Samantha Pruitt: So, if you don't get into the psychological trap of attaching yourself to a story, which would be a thought, if you don't get into that trap within 90 seconds, it actually will pass.
• 33:07
  Samantha Pruitt: If you don't attach onto it, cling onto it, and start to ruminate it.
• 33:11
  Samantha Pruitt: That's literally the science.
• 33:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Within 90 seconds, that fleeting thought is fleeting out the window, and you'll be moving on with your life now.
• 33:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Everything is impermanent.
• 33:23
  Kelly Thrush: Well, I had there was a moment uh shortly after surgery, I'm gonna say it was in the summer, uh, because I had a rough summer after surgery, mental health-wise.
• 33:33
  Kelly Thrush: I all of the things that we have just talked about, I was uh on the other end of that spectrum with.
• 33:39
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, and I would ruminate off all day.
• 33:44
  Kelly Thrush: I would think about all of the mistakes and all the damage that at the time I thought was uh irreparable damage.
• 33:52
  Kelly Thrush: Like there was no way to fix this stuff.
• 33:54
  Kelly Thrush: Uh and I remember coming home, it was it was dark, but it was just after sunset.
• 33:59
  Kelly Thrush: So I'm gonna say 7:30, 8 o'clock, 8:30, somewhere in that line.
• 34:03
  Kelly Thrush: I was driving home, and I had a good thought.
• 34:06
  Kelly Thrush: I had a happy thought, and I noticed that I had a happy thought.
• 34:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Nice.
• 34:10
  Kelly Thrush: So what did I immediately do?
• 34:11
  Kelly Thrush: Rabbit?
• 34:13
  Kelly Thrush: No, no, I went to the house.
• 34:14
  Kelly Thrush: No, you kept it.
• 34:14
  Kelly Thrush: You can't have that happy thought.
• 34:16
  Kelly Thrush: Go back to the other stuff.
• 34:17
  Kelly Thrush: You don't deserve that happy thought.
• 34:18
  Kelly Thrush: Whoa.
• 34:19
  Kelly Thrush: But it was the first step towards going the other direction.
• 34:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Because you thought it was possible.
• 34:24
  Kelly Thrush: Uh-huh.
• 34:25
  Kelly Thrush: I noticed that I had a good thought.
• 34:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 34:28
  Kelly Thrush: And it it was, and I I can tell you exactly where I was.
• 34:31
  Kelly Thrush: It was about a mile up the road from my house, right here.
• 34:33
  Kelly Thrush: Um, but it just takes the one.
• 34:36
  Kelly Thrush: That was the seed that got planted to land me to this conversation that we're having right now.
• 34:40
  Kelly Thrush: That was that was moment number one that sent me on this trajectory.
• 34:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 34:45
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and things are always going to be changing.
• 34:47
  Samantha Pruitt: We're changing on a cellular level every second.
• 34:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Our thoughts are changing, the environment around us is changing.
• 34:52
  Samantha Pruitt: So it would just be normal that our life would change.
• 34:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Right?
• 34:58
  Samantha Pruitt: We don't have that much control, right?
• 35:01
  Samantha Pruitt: We have control over our thoughts and our actions, and we can do some things.
• 35:04
  Samantha Pruitt: We do have agency, right?
• 35:06
  Samantha Pruitt: But clinging to things doesn't serve us in any way, which leads to number five, which is everything is interconnected.
• 35:15
  Samantha Pruitt: What does that mean for you?
• 35:18
  Kelly Thrush: Oh boy, it's all well.
• 35:19
  Kelly Thrush: Let's start just with the physical.
• 35:21
  Kelly Thrush: You touched on it earlier.
• 35:22
  Kelly Thrush: You know, the the mind and body are one two parts of one unit.
• 35:27
  Kelly Thrush: And uh we'll just we talked about stress.
• 35:31
  Kelly Thrush: We'll talk about that.
• 35:31
  Kelly Thrush: Stress is held into your at the cellular level in your body and inflammation.
• 35:37
  Kelly Thrush: And I know that's a very broad word, and we talked a little bit about that in the book as far as how to break that down a little bit.
• 35:42
  Kelly Thrush: But um it it's all interconnected.
• 35:46
  Kelly Thrush: If you eat better and get good sleep, and notice how I didn't say perfect, I didn't say eat great, I just said eat better.
• 35:53
  Kelly Thrush: Um, get good sleep and move your body in whatever fashion you want to move your body, you're gonna you're gonna have better thoughts.
• 36:03
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, and when you have better thoughts, you're gonna move your body and eat better.
• 36:06
  Kelly Thrush: And I mean, it just it's just it's all connected to each other.
• 36:10
  Kelly Thrush: Exactly.
• 36:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 36:12
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, uh biology and science are a real thing, you know, and it is fascinating.
• 36:20
  Samantha Pruitt: And there's so much science now of people that want to nerd out about this stuff because I want to do it all day long.
• 36:24
  Kelly Thrush: Oh, yeah.
• 36:25
  Samantha Pruitt: It's freaking fascinating how much what you think, and of course, what you put into your body.
• 36:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And when I say put in, I mean through your eyes, your ears, your mouth, of course, your skin, your oxygen, etc.
• 36:37
  Samantha Pruitt: All of these things have an influence over how you feel and how you think and process and see the world, right?
• 36:45
  Samantha Pruitt: It's all interconnected, and then from a human-to-human level, dude, you want to change your life, stop hanging out with the yahoos, like get out of the space that has not worked for you.
• 36:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, stop hanging with the people that go to freaking McDonald's every night or go to the bar or whatever.
• 37:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Like all that interconnectedness, too, the amount of influence that there is upon us, we have control over that too.
• 37:09
  Samantha Pruitt: So, like, in every way you can think of, there's interconnectedness.
• 37:12
  Samantha Pruitt: So use it for the good.
• 37:14
  Kelly Thrush: Sure.
• 37:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Use it for change.
• 37:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, let's get into some strategies.
• 37:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh, let me talk about clear the decks.
• 37:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Number one is clear the decks.
• 37:20
  Samantha Pruitt: What I mean by clear the decks is make some space for this healing journey.
• 37:27
  Samantha Pruitt: If you do not put some time and energy and resources into this healing journey, there's no room for it to actually happen.
• 37:38
  Samantha Pruitt: So people think, let me just add one more thing to my to-do list.
• 37:41
  Samantha Pruitt: No, you've got to clear the freaking decks, meaning that all this stuff you're focused on right now needs to get pushed aside until you are well.
• 37:51
  Samantha Pruitt: It doesn't mean you can't hold down a job and stay married.
• 37:54
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm not saying that.
• 37:55
  Samantha Pruitt: But all of this BS that you waste time on that you think is all that important doesn't mean shit.
• 38:00
  Samantha Pruitt: And it sure the hell won't when you're being wheeled into a hospital bed or when you're like me contemplating your life if it's going to be here tomorrow.
• 38:07
  Samantha Pruitt: It will mean nothing.
• 38:09
  Samantha Pruitt: So make time, make space, redirect some resources, okay, and invest.
• 38:16
  Samantha Pruitt: I call it self-investing.
• 38:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, number two is build your A-team.
• 38:20
  Samantha Pruitt: What does that mean to you?
• 38:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Who's your A-team?
• 38:22
  Kelly Thrush: Well, you just well, my A team specifically, I can name them.
• 38:25
  Kelly Thrush: There's four of them, there's four of them right off the top of my head.
• 38:27
  Samantha Pruitt: What do they do for you?
• 38:29
  Kelly Thrush: Oh, they have they each have a different role specifically for my mental health, right?
• 38:35
  Kelly Thrush: There's Jamie, my partner in crime with all of this stuff.
• 38:38
  Kelly Thrush: I mean, she helps me.
• 38:39
  Kelly Thrush: My wife's name is Jamie.
• 38:40
  Kelly Thrush: She helps me in every which way.
• 38:42
  Kelly Thrush: Um, so she's got the you know, the the number one starting gig.
• 38:46
  Kelly Thrush: Um, but you build people around you that are emotionally invested in you in a good way, right?
• 38:54
  Kelly Thrush: Because you can have you can have negative.
• 38:55
  Kelly Thrush: Codependent.
• 38:56
  Kelly Thrush: Correct.
• 38:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Not codependent.
• 38:57
  Kelly Thrush: But they want like um here's here's the best way to put it.
• 39:02
  Kelly Thrush: Who are the people that when something good in your life happens that you would immediately call to tell them about?
• 39:09
  Kelly Thrush: Because we all have the bad things that happen to us, and and really easy to relate to a stranger about the guy that cut you off on the way to work, right?
• 39:18
  Kelly Thrush: It's easy to to bitch about things with people.
• 39:21
  Kelly Thrush: But very rarely do I think do we call somebody to tell them something good that happened, right?
• 39:27
  Kelly Thrush: It's a it's a small group, and I think those are the people, the cheerleaders that they just want to see you do well in whatever that is.
• 39:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 39:36
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, uh that's how I've always felt what a real coach's job is, is basically I'm gonna believe in you more than you believe in yourself.
• 39:44
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm gonna see more of what's possible for you than you currently see for yourself.
• 39:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Eventually you will see these things, right?
• 39:50
  Samantha Pruitt: But in the beginning, it's rough.
• 39:53
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, how do you think you got into this mess?
• 39:55
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah.
• 39:56
  Samantha Pruitt: So having other people, a core group of people, even one, if you can just get one, right?
• 40:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Who believes in you, your worth, your potential, what is possible for you.
• 40:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And they are gonna show up every damn day until they see that freaking manifest, until they see that happen.
• 40:14
  Samantha Pruitt: They're not going anywhere, right?
• 40:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Unconditional, unconditional.
• 40:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, the other one is number three.
• 40:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Hope is not a strategy.
• 40:22
  Samantha Pruitt: I I always say this.
• 40:23
  Samantha Pruitt: I love this one.
• 40:24
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not a freaking strategy.
• 40:25
  Samantha Pruitt: This is not like, God, I sure hope this thing works out.
• 40:28
  Samantha Pruitt: I wonder if I'm gonna survive this, you know, another DUI, another 50 pounds, another 10 pounds, another bypass surgery.
• 40:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh now, I'm pre-diabetic.
• 40:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, you know, like hoping that these things miraculously solve themselves is not a strategy.
• 40:44
  Samantha Pruitt: You actually have to have a plan and you gotta and work, right?
• 40:49
  Kelly Thrush: And do the work there there there are no shortcuts, there's no magic pills, there's no shortcuts, and some of it's hard, some of it kind of sucks.
• 40:59
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, but it's it's just the way it goes.
• 41:03
  Kelly Thrush: And eventually, if you if you really get into it, the parts that quote unquote suck, they really become the fun parts, right?
• 41:11
  Kelly Thrush: If you really get into it, like looking forward to those workouts at four in the morning, five in the morning, looking forward to, oh, we gotta do hill repeats today.
• 41:20
  Kelly Thrush: Most people go, Oh, we have hill repeats today.
• 41:24
  Kelly Thrush: No, man, that's the hard part.
• 41:26
  Kelly Thrush: That's that's the best part of this, right?
• 41:28
  Kelly Thrush: Is that is that the the trenches of getting to your goal, whatever it is.
• 41:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, you're waking up to yourself, you know, and when you do that a few times and you start to discover, hey, I got some skills in here, I I have some things to offer the world.
• 41:44
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm actually pretty cool, cat.
• 41:46
  Samantha Pruitt: But that's how you build confidence.
• 41:49
  Kelly Thrush: Right?
• 41:49
  Kelly Thrush: That's how you build confidence is by doing hard things.
• 41:51
  Kelly Thrush: You know, confidence isn't a personality trait, it's a red, it's a resume.
• 41:56
  Kelly Thrush: Like, why are you confident that you can get this done?
• 41:59
  Kelly Thrush: Because I've done similar stuff a hundred times.
• 42:02
  Kelly Thrush: Exactly.
• 42:02
  Kelly Thrush: And maybe, and maybe I failed 75 of those, or excuse me, 25 of those hundreds, but I but I accomplished 75, whatever it is, but that's how you build confidence where somebody throws a new challenge your way and you look at it and go, Yeah, I can do that.
• 42:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.
• 42:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, stacking wins.
• 42:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, that's just what you went into next.
• 42:23
  Samantha Pruitt: You just slid right in there, you slid right in.
• 42:26
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Stacked the freaking wins.
• 42:28
  Samantha Pruitt: The first win for you when you got sober and you exited the hospital, because in the hospital you're in a controlled environment.
• 42:35
  Samantha Pruitt: So, you know, bro, you had some guardrails, but you step out into the real world, and what was your first win that you stacked?
• 42:45
  Kelly Thrush: There were two that come to mind.
• 42:47
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, one of them, I'll paint the picture.
• 42:49
  Kelly Thrush: We were taking our youngest for his eighth grade pictures, right?
• 42:52
  Kelly Thrush: He was graduating eighth grade.
• 42:54
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, and there's a little state park 10 minutes from my house, and it's gorgeous.
• 42:58
  Kelly Thrush: It's deserts and whatnot.
• 42:59
  Kelly Thrush: Now, at this point, I am 140 pounds.
• 43:03
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, I can't walk any distance.
• 43:05
  Kelly Thrush: I have to use a wheelchair.
• 43:08
  Kelly Thrush: I can walk in the house, okay, but if we're leaving, I have to take a walker, a wheelchair with me.
• 43:13
  Kelly Thrush: If I fall, somebody has to come get me.
• 43:15
  Kelly Thrush: I can't get up on my own.
• 43:17
  Kelly Thrush: And so I was not healthy yet.
• 43:20
  Kelly Thrush: I was working on it.
• 43:21
  Kelly Thrush: And I started with little, little things a couple weeks afterwards, where the first um, I was staying at my grandmother's house.
• 43:27
  Kelly Thrush: The first one was, I'm gonna walk to the mailbox and back.
• 43:31
  Kelly Thrush: And I did that a few days, and then it was the neighbor's house, and then it was the down the street house.
• 43:35
  Kelly Thrush: The first big win was we were at this state park, and we put the parking lot's kind of up top, and then you have to walk meander down to where this vista and there's a cave there and all sorts of stuff.
• 43:45
  Kelly Thrush: And so we took the the uh wheelchair ramp all the way kind of around this sort of hill into the platform there.
• 43:53
  Kelly Thrush: About an hour goes by.
• 43:55
  Kelly Thrush: I now tell Jamie, like, hey, I'm I'm I'm running out of steam.
• 43:58
  Kelly Thrush: I got we gotta go, I gotta take a nap.
• 44:00
  Kelly Thrush: I gotta get home.
• 44:01
  Kelly Thrush: Okay, so as we're coming back, we come to a fork in the road.
• 44:05
  Kelly Thrush: To the left is the wheelchair ramp, and all the way back around this hill.
• 44:10
  Kelly Thrush: To the right are 17 steps to the parking lot, straight shot.
• 44:14
  Kelly Thrush: And I all I did is I looked at the ramp and I looked at the steps and I looked back at the ramp, and I did that about three times.
• 44:21
  Kelly Thrush: And then behind me, Jamie goes, No, please, please don't.
• 44:24
  Kelly Thrush: And I looked at her, I said, I'm taking the stairs.
• 44:27
  Kelly Thrush: And she goes, No, please just let's take the ramp, you're tired, and so I said, I'm taking the stairs.
• 44:31
  Kelly Thrush: And then, of course, me being me, I looked at her, I said, and if you keep it up, I'm not even gonna use the handrails.
• 44:36
  Kelly Thrush: And so I made the right and took all 17 steps and up we went.
• 44:40
  Kelly Thrush: And I didn't use the handrails.
• 44:42
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, and I got to the parking lot and I yelled, I gave in this very serene and quiet national park this this to quote John Keating, this barbaric yell of a woo.
• 44:54
  Kelly Thrush: And I gave a stranger a high five, and I'm sure they're looking at this gaunt-faced, like baggy clothes, sickly looking human being that's giving him a high five and giving a yell.
• 45:04
  Kelly Thrush: That was win number one.
• 45:06
  Kelly Thrush: Win number two was ah months after.
• 45:11
  Kelly Thrush: I don't know how far, but I'm I'm new to sober.
• 45:13
  Kelly Thrush: I was less than a year sober.
• 45:15
  Kelly Thrush: Um, I was in my car that I used to drive, and I was driving just driving wherever, and I went to go clean it out, and I found a very full shooter underneath the front seat.
• 45:24
  Samantha Pruitt: It was oh damn, buddy.
• 45:27
  Kelly Thrush: It was and it was just me.
• 45:29
  Kelly Thrush: Nobody else is around.
• 45:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Anything could have happened.
• 45:33
  Kelly Thrush: Yep, and I stared at it for only a few seconds, it wasn't long.
• 45:37
  Kelly Thrush: And I went and I threw it away.
• 45:40
  Kelly Thrush: Um, and then I immediately told Jamie what happened.
• 45:43
  Kelly Thrush: And that was a big win because that could have very easily gone the other direction.
• 45:49
  Kelly Thrush: And because nobody nobody would have known until they knew, because now that one has turned into a whole case and I'm passed out in somebody's front lawn.
• 45:58
  Kelly Thrush: But um, that was a big win.
• 46:01
  Kelly Thrush: I I remember very specifically looking at that little shooter going, oh, well that because I didn't know it was there, it was underneath the seat, kind of stuffed in a crevice, you know.
• 46:10
  Kelly Thrush: That was pretty cool.
• 46:12
  Samantha Pruitt: What you're reminding me of, it's freaking amazing, is how built is trust one decision at a time.
• 46:19
  Samantha Pruitt: You only need to make the right next decision.
• 46:23
  Samantha Pruitt: You don't have to think beyond that.
• 46:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And it doesn't matter if it's what are we having for dinner?
• 46:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Am I gonna drive through the freaking in and out burger on my way home, or am I gonna go home and make myself the meal I had planned to have?
• 46:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Because again, nobody would know if I'm doing that instead of this, right?
• 46:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Nobody would know if I'm getting up in the morning and getting my morning exercise in, except for me.
• 46:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Right?
• 46:49
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's all of these elements of building self-trust, and with that comes deep freaking respect.
• 46:55
  Samantha Pruitt: And you cannot, once you start building that back after a long ass dark road, when you start stacking them wins, yeah, you don't give that away.
• 47:06
  Samantha Pruitt: You don't give that away.
• 47:06
  Samantha Pruitt: That's basically your money.
• 47:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Progress, not perfection.
• 47:11
  Kelly Thrush: Oh, yeah, and ain't nobody perfect.
• 47:13
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, we can fuck it up every day, but we're every day, everyone fuck it up every day, like every day.
• 47:19
  Kelly Thrush: Like it's it, but it's not about perfect.
• 47:22
  Kelly Thrush: No, it's perfect, nothing is, you know.
• 47:24
  Kelly Thrush: That's why I said earlier, I said eat better.
• 47:27
  Kelly Thrush: Exactly.
• 47:28
  Kelly Thrush: I didn't even say eat great, I just said eat better.
• 47:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and I don't believe in uh diets or nutritional programs that are, you know, I don't believe in that.
• 47:36
  Samantha Pruitt: I believe that each person is incredibly unique and individual.
• 47:39
  Samantha Pruitt: So what your needs are are definitely not what my needs are, and so on and so forth.
• 47:43
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's across the board, across the spectrum.
• 47:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Everybody's life is so unique, their body, their needs, etc., right?
• 47:49
  Samantha Pruitt: So there is no such thing.
• 47:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Stop looking at Instagram, clicking on the thing, buying the things, whatever, just stop, right?
• 47:59
  Samantha Pruitt: If you need some help with information, which is called real knowledge, and you want to read or listen to things and gain insight through actual factual knowledge and then make decisions for yourself, fantastic.
• 48:14
  Samantha Pruitt: If you need to get a coach or somebody to hold you accountable to help you with the steps, whether it's sobriety steps or nutrition and exercise steps or whatever the thing is, cool.
• 48:24
  Samantha Pruitt: There are people out there to help.
• 48:26
  Kelly Thrush: I have four coaches in my life.
• 48:28
  Kelly Thrush: There you go.
• 48:29
  Kelly Thrush: I have like my I have my running coach, I have an ultra coach, I have my personal trainer coach, and I have sobriety coaches.
• 48:36
  Kelly Thrush: Like this awesome.
• 48:37
  Kelly Thrush: And it's yeah, and it's you know, everybody needs that extra person there, maybe for the information for the accountability piece.
• 48:45
  Kelly Thrush: That's mine.
• 48:45
  Kelly Thrush: I I and I know it firsthand that if those 5 a.m.
• 48:49
  Kelly Thrush: workouts, if it's just me, chances are I'm sleeping in.
• 48:53
  Samantha Pruitt: But if you need the accountability piece, it can't do it.
• 48:55
  Kelly Thrush: But if I'm needing five people to go for a run, okay, I'll be there.
• 49:00
  Samantha Pruitt: They're gonna be like, where's that dude?
• 49:01
  Samantha Pruitt: And there's a lot of info out there, so you might need help deciphering all of this.
• 49:06
  Samantha Pruitt: It's pretty nutty, okay?
• 49:08
  Samantha Pruitt: All right, now we're gonna shift to mindset.
• 49:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh go from I can't to I'm learning how.
• 49:16
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, so I have one of my favorite ones uh is changing our relationship with the word failure, right?
• 49:23
  Kelly Thrush: Like the F word.
• 49:25
  Kelly Thrush: The F word.
• 49:26
  Kelly Thrush: That's that's one of my speeches.
• 49:27
  Kelly Thrush: It's called the F word.
• 49:28
  Kelly Thrush: Uh and I I think most folks have an incorrect relationship with that word.
• 49:36
  Kelly Thrush: Failure is just information.
• 49:37
  Kelly Thrush: That's it.
• 49:38
  Kelly Thrush: That's right.
• 49:38
  Kelly Thrush: It's a feedback.
• 49:39
  Kelly Thrush: Plain and simple.
• 49:40
  Kelly Thrush: So you didn't achieve whatever goal that it is, yeah, right.
• 49:44
  Kelly Thrush: Um, okay, figure out what you missed, when you missed it, how you missed it, what you need to change, and tweak it, and then go back and do it again.
• 49:51
  Kelly Thrush: And eventually you're gonna get there that you don't have a choice.
• 49:55
  Samantha Pruitt: And even when it happens, who do you think you are?
• 49:58
  Samantha Pruitt: You think you have this much control, you know, that we can control all the things that are going.
• 50:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so I've had I've had eight businesses, I lived in so many different places, I've done literally hundreds of races over 200 races, no doubt.
• 50:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Some of them epic failures, just insane level of failure.
• 50:14
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't give a shit.
• 50:16
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm still showing up and doing the friggin' work.
• 50:18
  Samantha Pruitt: And I learned from each of those things, but in most instances, you have to be honest, like, I'm not the ultimate controller of the universe.
• 50:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Sure.
• 50:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, I'm gonna give it all I've got, and that's what I've got today.
• 50:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Tomorrow, maybe I'll have more or something different, but this is what I have now, and you can only ask that of yourself, correct?
• 50:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Yep, yeah, that's all you can do.
• 50:42
  Samantha Pruitt: All right, number two, from punishment to nourishment.
• 50:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Ooh, this is a good one.
• 50:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 50:48
  Kelly Thrush: Well, we kind of touched on it just a little bit ago, specifically about food, right?
• 50:52
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, and and I and I'm still guilty of this stuff where I'll I'll eat something that I wasn't on my plan to eat today.
• 50:59
  Kelly Thrush: Boy, it sounded delicious.
• 51:01
  Kelly Thrush: And I eat it, and as soon as I eat it, here come those thoughts.
• 51:05
  Kelly Thrush: Like, oh, we shouldn't have done that earlier.
• 51:06
  Kelly Thrush: I mean, it was 30 seconds worth of eating something, you know what I mean?
• 51:10
  Kelly Thrush: Um, but it's okay.
• 51:12
  Kelly Thrush: Like it's fine.
• 51:13
  Kelly Thrush: I don't need to punish myself because I had a slice of pizza or or whatever, or two slices of pizza.
• 51:19
  Kelly Thrush: You don't need to punish myself.
• 51:20
  Kelly Thrush: It's fine.
• 51:21
  Kelly Thrush: Now, the next right decision, all right, that's right decision, exactly.
• 51:26
  Kelly Thrush: Make the next make the next one right, and then you'll go from there.
• 51:28
  Kelly Thrush: And that's definitely win then, you know, and just those one one decision at a time.
• 51:33
  Kelly Thrush: And if you nourish yourself with all the things we talked about, eating better, getting some sleep, and moving your body, uh if you if you do those three things as often as you can, you're you're gonna feel better.
• 51:47
  Kelly Thrush: You there's no which way around it, you know, and things will come and things will come up.
• 51:52
  Samantha Pruitt: You won't be able to do it every day.
• 51:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Nourishing, dude, human connection.
• 51:57
  Kelly Thrush: Absolutely.
• 51:58
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, so many of these behaviors that we're talking about, these slippery slopes into the abyss, happen because people are freaking lonely and they feel disconnected from community, sometimes themselves, their own physical bodies, their own realities, their family, their whatever, right?
• 52:18
  Kelly Thrush: Well, and that's when your 18 comes in, you know.
• 52:20
  Kelly Thrush: So if you have that moment or those thoughts or that disconnect, talk about it.
• 52:26
  Kelly Thrush: Exactly.
• 52:27
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah.
• 52:27
  Kelly Thrush: Because the other human sitting across from you has had those thoughts.
• 52:31
  Kelly Thrush: And if they say they haven't, they're lying to you.
• 52:33
  Kelly Thrush: And they shouldn't be on your 18.
• 52:34
  Kelly Thrush: Like it's clear.
• 52:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Or well, you're in recovery, and I've recently been experimenting and going out into the world and like checking it out.
• 52:42
  Samantha Pruitt: So I told you I went to a Dharma recovery meeting, which is a Buddhism-based recovery meeting, was amazing.
• 52:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Here I was.
• 52:48
  Samantha Pruitt: I totally loved it, by the way.
• 52:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Perfect strangers in a room.
• 52:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Didn't seem like anybody really knew each other.
• 52:54
  Samantha Pruitt: A few of them had been to this meeting before, but there was a lot of people that said, Hey, this is the first time I'm here or whatever.
• 52:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And there was community right there, completely free, completely available, with zero judgment.
• 53:06
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I was like, damn, this is freaking beautiful.
• 53:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I find community generally, like at my local coffee shop and in my gym, and you know, with my people or whatever all is going on.
• 53:18
  Samantha Pruitt: And I feel like it's just a normal part of the life I live now.
• 53:22
  Samantha Pruitt: But for many years, I didn't live that life, and I definitely was isolated, feeling horrible, grinding out the day, just trying to get through the emotions, you know, just basically survive.
• 53:32
  Samantha Pruitt: So if you're feeling like crap, before you do one of these other moves, you might consider reaching out to a human being, and that might be enough to satiate that calling, whatever the calling might be.
• 53:46
  Kelly Thrush: And it could just be a random email or phone call to you or I, you know, because especially in the sobriety world, on that realm of this workbook, uh, if somebody reaches out in my day-to-day life about sobriety type questions, one, there is zero judgment because whatever your story you're about to tell me, I got a similar one.
• 54:08
  Kelly Thrush: Exactly.
• 54:09
  Kelly Thrush: And same, yeah, there's there's zero judgment behind any of it.
• 54:15
  Kelly Thrush: And then we're just gonna sit here and talk about whatever it is, you know, and try to rewire some of those thoughts that you're having behind it.
• 54:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And we never want another human to feel like there's nobody out there.
• 54:29
  Samantha Pruitt: We have zero problem talking to strangers all day long.
• 54:32
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, somebody could message or DME, fine by me.
• 54:35
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, let's go.
• 54:36
  Samantha Pruitt: No, again, no judgment, whatever the conversation is.
• 54:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And it might just be as simple as bearing witness to that person's suffering for a moment, right?
• 54:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, we've all freaking been there.
• 54:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so shame, go from shame to empowerment.
• 54:50
  Samantha Pruitt: This is a mindset shift, critical mindset shift.
• 54:54
  Samantha Pruitt: We've talked about shame quite a bit.
• 54:56
  Samantha Pruitt: What the hell is empowering?
• 54:58
  Kelly Thrush: You have oh boy, how do you define that?
• 55:00
  Kelly Thrush: So empowerment, um giving yourself the giving and it is it is giving yourself the right to have these things that are that you want in front of you, whether that's sobriety or eating healthy or whatever it is.
• 55:16
  Kelly Thrush: Um you have to empower yourself to be allowed those, if that makes sense, right?
• 55:24
  Kelly Thrush: Because you are it's all the things we talked about.
• 55:27
  Kelly Thrush: You are worthy of them, right?
• 55:29
  Kelly Thrush: There is no shame behind whatever has already happened yesterday.
• 55:32
  Kelly Thrush: It's yesterday.
• 55:32
  Kelly Thrush: Gone, can't do nothing about it.
• 55:34
  Kelly Thrush: Yep.
• 55:35
  Kelly Thrush: And and you have you can deserve and earn those things in front of you by going through it.
• 55:40
  Kelly Thrush: And that's empower, it's very empowering when you cross that bridge.
• 55:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 55:44
  Samantha Pruitt: And empowerment to me really is yeah, having a sense of agency over my own existence and decisions and giving no power to people outside of me.
• 55:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Never giving up my power.
• 55:57
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't really care if it's my husband, my spouse, my boss, whomever.
• 56:01
  Samantha Pruitt: He ain't the boss of me.
• 56:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Anything that I do with this, and I do a lot of crazy shit, you know.
• 56:07
  Samantha Pruitt: I still continue to, I take full responsibility for the good, the bad, and the ugly.
• 56:11
  Samantha Pruitt: And that makes me feel so empowered, you know, is that I can get myself out of really crazy circumstances, you know, and also create magnificent things.
• 56:25
  Samantha Pruitt: This is what I'm doing in the world.
• 56:29
  Samantha Pruitt: I get to own all of those things, right?
• 56:31
  Samantha Pruitt: So with it comes responsibility and agency over making the next right decision and doing it different moving forward, creating whatever.
• 56:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Dream about anything, let's make it happen, right?
• 56:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, uh, temporary fixes.
• 56:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, hell no, to a lifestyle choice.
• 56:50
  Samantha Pruitt: That is definitely a different way of seeing the world.
• 56:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Sure.
• 56:54
  Kelly Thrush: Well, there is no temporary fixes, right?
• 56:56
  Kelly Thrush: There is no there's no magic bill, like I said earlier.
• 56:59
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not a fix then.
• 57:01
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, you can well, it's it's that diet analogy I gave earlier, right?
• 57:06
  Kelly Thrush: You can band-aid it for a little while, but that's it.
• 57:09
  Kelly Thrush: And then eventually whatever is that you're working on is gonna come back.
• 57:15
  Kelly Thrush: And in the case of for me in sobriety, if I were to decide to like I tell Jamie all the time, like if I were to decide to drink today for whatever reasons, today's today's the day, okay.
• 57:27
  Kelly Thrush: Uh, three weeks from now, maybe two, it will be back with a vengeance and it will be worse than it was seven years ago, eight years ago, right?
• 57:37
  Kelly Thrush: Um, it's just the way it goes.
• 57:39
  Kelly Thrush: There are no temporary fixes.
• 57:41
  Kelly Thrush: This is this is how it is.
• 57:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and that's what happens with unhealthy weight loss as well.
• 57:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 57:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, you see that rebound, right?
• 57:50
  Samantha Pruitt: You hear about it all the time.
• 57:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Absolutely.
• 57:52
  Samantha Pruitt: The body is not stupid, right?
• 57:55
  Samantha Pruitt: It really loves comfort zones.
• 57:57
  Samantha Pruitt: You think you, as the human, love a comfort zone?
• 57:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, the physical body is all about comfort zones.
• 58:03
  Samantha Pruitt: And so doing drastic things, you know, losing 20 pounds to get in your wedding dress or crazy ass diets or exercise regimens or even all of these things that are being sold in the marketplace.
• 58:15
  Samantha Pruitt: What was so wild for me on my journey when I lost the 50 pounds was that I, of course, did it all naturally, but I didn't really know another way.
• 58:26
  Samantha Pruitt: And I guess I didn't have the resources or the money or whatever to do any other crazy radical stuff.
• 58:30
  Samantha Pruitt: But when I was growing up, you know, I definitely did disordered eating and experienced a lot of body dysmorphia and issues with my body as a young female, you know, growing up trying to figure stuff out.
• 58:42
  Samantha Pruitt: But then when I was an adult and I was heavy all of a sudden and I needed to lose weight, I guess it's because I got educated.
• 58:51
  Samantha Pruitt: I guess it's really the only thing that saved me, or else I probably would have gone right back down that slippery slope of a form of self-abuse through either starvation dieting or some other of old tricks, right?
• 59:02
  Samantha Pruitt: But I learned how the body actually works, and I realized that none of that stuff was ever gonna stick.
• 59:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And so if I wanted to really feel good in my body, then I was gonna have to do it the right way, just basically through solid nutrition, you know, exercise, sleep, and all of the lifestyle choices that come with that.
• 59:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Now that's a hell of a lot slower, yeah, but good thing I am patient.
• 59:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, you know, when you're self-investing, you better be patient.
• 59:31
  Kelly Thrush: Sure.
• 59:32
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm uh, you know, we didn't get here overnight, we didn't create these situations overnight.
• 59:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Why should they be transformed overnight, right?
• 59:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, correct.
• 59:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, okay, and then the last one.
• 59:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Ooh, so the last mindset shift is going from I deserve to suffer because of these behaviors, that's again attached to the shame and the guilt, to my team wants me to win and they will help me win.
• 1:00:01
  Kelly Thrush: I think this might be for me probably the hardest one that I had to overcome.
• 1:00:07
  Kelly Thrush: And I don't think I'm perfect at it yet.
• 1:00:09
  Kelly Thrush: There's I have moments still uh where where a a memory will pop in uh of something I did in my past or that I didn't do.
• 1:00:18
  Kelly Thrush: In my past or whatever.
• 1:00:20
  Kelly Thrush: Sure.
• 1:00:21
  Kelly Thrush: I think this is the for me, this was one of the hardest ones to overcome.
• 1:00:25
  Kelly Thrush: Uh because for a long time, even after this beautiful gift that I have been given, the second lease on life, immediately was like, I don't deserve this.
• 1:00:35
  Kelly Thrush: They should have picked somebody else in that hospital.
• 1:00:38
  Kelly Thrush: Because there was somebody else that was in a similar boat that needed a liver that same day as me.
• 1:00:42
  Kelly Thrush: Somewhere in the United States, there was somebody.
• 1:00:44
  Kelly Thrush: For sure.
• 1:00:45
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah.
• 1:00:45
  Kelly Thrush: Why would they give this to me?
• 1:00:47
  Kelly Thrush: Um, and I think it's it's a culmination of all the things that we've talked about.
• 1:00:54
  Kelly Thrush: If you stack enough of those wins and you build a resume of things that you are proud of, and they don't have to be, you know, extravagant.
• 1:01:04
  Kelly Thrush: They're just things that you're proud of that you have either done or not done, or whatever.
• 1:01:09
  Kelly Thrush: Um, you're you're gonna know that you want yourself to win, that a team truly believes in you.
• 1:01:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 1:01:19
  Kelly Thrush: You know, it's they they are people that want it's that coach that you were describing, you know.
• 1:01:25
  Kelly Thrush: They want it and see it probably more than you do.
• 1:01:28
  Kelly Thrush: And once once you build enough of that and you kind of get the doors open to that vision, uh man, it's beautiful.
• 1:01:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and what you'll find is that you'll start being of service to others along the way.
• 1:01:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so you become more and more quote unquote deserving.
• 1:01:45
  Samantha Pruitt: We're saying you're deserving irrelevant of anything.
• 1:01:47
  Samantha Pruitt: You don't have to do jack shit.
• 1:01:49
  Samantha Pruitt: You deserve 100% of this.
• 1:01:51
  Samantha Pruitt: But what you will find on the journey is as you go out into the world and you become of service to others by sharing your story or whatever it is you choose to do to be engaged, you're gonna be impacting other people's lives, right?
• 1:02:04
  Samantha Pruitt: You're gonna be building your own awareness to your value.
• 1:02:08
  Samantha Pruitt: The value is already there.
• 1:02:09
  Samantha Pruitt: You're just gonna be shining a freaking light on how much value you actually bring into the world, how many people's lives you do impact, how many people do love you, the work you've actually done in the world, the things you've accomplished will be showing up.
• 1:02:22
  Samantha Pruitt: They were already there, but all of a sudden, you just fall back, exactly, exactly.
• 1:02:28
  Samantha Pruitt: And you're like, damn, okay, okay.
• 1:02:32
  Samantha Pruitt: So all the crazy shit that you want to forget, you feel guilty and shameful about soon will be run over with tremendous amounts of things that you're doing or have already done.
• 1:02:44
  Samantha Pruitt: It will happen.
• 1:02:46
  Samantha Pruitt: And these people, your A-Team will remind you of this.
• 1:02:48
  Kelly Thrush: Sure.
• 1:02:49
  Kelly Thrush: And that positive, that positive energy is contagious.
• 1:02:53
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah, it it has momentum, all of those things where one little act of kindness or of service will will create another situation for it.
• 1:03:06
  Kelly Thrush: It just will, because it'll you'll you'll start to notice them.
• 1:03:10
  Kelly Thrush: Uh you'll start to notice the opportunities more frequently, right?
• 1:03:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Because you'll be attracting them to you, but also you're freaking awake.
• 1:03:19
  Samantha Pruitt: All of a sudden you're awake.
• 1:03:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 1:03:22
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, you snap out of zombie mode for a day or two and you start to see things.
• 1:03:26
  Samantha Pruitt: We can laugh about it, and you have to laugh about it.
• 1:03:30
  Samantha Pruitt: We should have added that.
• 1:03:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Have a damn good sense of humor.
• 1:03:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Sure.
• 1:03:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, people.
• 1:03:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Don't take life so goddamn seriously.
• 1:03:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Seriously.
• 1:03:37
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, come on, there's no reason.
• 1:03:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Half of the stuff that we've done, if not more, is slightly ludicrous and it's definitely hilarious.
• 1:03:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Hilarious.
• 1:03:46
  Kelly Thrush: Yep.
• 1:03:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Yep.
• 1:03:47
  Samantha Pruitt: All right, my friend, that's a wrap for this.
• 1:03:49
  Samantha Pruitt: What do we want to say to people in our closing argument?
• 1:03:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Why should they go and download the workbook that will be attached to this podcast and in our bios?
• 1:04:00
  Kelly Thrush: Well, I think there's your, not yours, the people who are reading this, your, right, or listen watching this, your.
• 1:04:06
  Kelly Thrush: Um, the most important thing in your life is your health and well-being, right?
• 1:04:14
  Kelly Thrush: Whether sobriety or food or whatever, right?
• 1:04:17
  Kelly Thrush: Um, I say it in sobriety often because I work a lot with people who are brand new.
• 1:04:22
  Kelly Thrush: Like yesterday they were drinking, today they're trying not to.
• 1:04:26
  Kelly Thrush: Okay.
• 1:04:26
  Kelly Thrush: And the hurdle we have to overcome is their sobriety is the most important thing on the planet.
• 1:04:34
  Kelly Thrush: It's more important than their kids, it's more important than their wife, than their jobs, and their so forth and so on.
• 1:04:39
  Kelly Thrush: Because if you don't have that sobriety, you can't have any of the others.
• 1:04:45
  Kelly Thrush: That's right.
• 1:04:46
  Kelly Thrush: They go away.
• 1:04:48
  Kelly Thrush: Yep.
• 1:04:48
  Kelly Thrush: I I know firsthand.
• 1:04:50
  Kelly Thrush: They go away.
• 1:04:51
  Kelly Thrush: Um, so that's the one.
• 1:04:53
  Kelly Thrush: Um, and I think that there's a I wish I remember I thought about them earlier.
• 1:04:57
  Kelly Thrush: There's there was a monk that I follow on Instagram.
• 1:05:00
  Kelly Thrush: You probably know the quote, but it's when you are healthy, you have a thousand problems.
• 1:05:05
  Kelly Thrush: When you are unhealthy, you have one.
• 1:05:11
  Samantha Pruitt: That's right.
• 1:05:12
  Samantha Pruitt: And this might be an AA thing or a recovery drama thing, I'm not sure.
• 1:05:17
  Samantha Pruitt: But basically, I heard you give up one thing for everything, or you lose everything for the one thing.
• 1:05:25
  Kelly Thrush: For the one thing.
• 1:05:26
  Samantha Pruitt: It's your call.
• 1:05:26
  Samantha Pruitt: It's your call.
• 1:05:27
  Kelly Thrush: Those are in the rooms.
• 1:05:28
  Kelly Thrush: Yeah.
• 1:05:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Boom, baby.
• 1:05:30
  Samantha Pruitt: That's so beautiful, really.
• 1:05:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And we really are talking about everything, like everything that is not only feeling good in the physical body when you come to terms and start to do this work, but it's also what is possible for your freaking life.
• 1:05:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Right?
• 1:05:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Everything changes.
• 1:05:49
  Samantha Pruitt: My entire world changed.
• 1:05:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Your entire world changed.
• 1:05:54
  Samantha Pruitt: It continues to change in incredible ways that I would have never freaking imagined.
• 1:05:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm sure it's the same for you.
• 1:06:00
  Kelly Thrush: Absolutely.
• 1:06:01
  Kelly Thrush: Had I not gotten sober, well, first and foremost, had I not gotten sober, I'd be dead.
• 1:06:04
  Kelly Thrush: So that's, I mean, number one, I would not have made it.
• 1:06:07
  Kelly Thrush: Um, if so many different dominoes had to fall at the moment they fell for me to actually exist in this world today.
• 1:06:16
  Kelly Thrush: That's one.
• 1:06:17
  Kelly Thrush: But if I were to continue have been drinking and and and um not been sober, I could I couldn't have been present for this conversation.
• 1:06:27
  Kelly Thrush: I couldn't have been present as we built this book, I couldn't have uh emotionally attached myself to so many wonderful people that are now a part of my life and so many different avenues.
• 1:06:38
  Kelly Thrush: There's no way that any of that stuff would have happened.
• 1:06:42
  Kelly Thrush: And that's the beautiful part is when when the when the floodgates open on the other side on the other side of healthy, whatever healthy is, yeah.
• 1:06:52
  Kelly Thrush: God, it's amazing.
• 1:06:53
  Kelly Thrush: It is just amazing.
• 1:06:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 1:06:57
  Kelly Thrush: I love it, it's more beautiful than I ever would have thought.
• 1:07:00
  Samantha Pruitt: And we're just getting started.
• 1:07:01
  Samantha Pruitt: There will be a lot more to come.
• 1:07:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Obviously, both you and I are uh writing books ever so slowly, but they will get out and posting workshops and having events, and like we're we're we're out in the world making ourselves available for any human, literally any human.
• 1:07:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's rock and roll.
• 1:07:21
  Samantha Pruitt: If you're ready for this work, we're ready for you.
• 1:07:23
  Kelly Thrush: Heck yeah.
• 1:07:24
  Kelly Thrush: Stay tuned.
• 1:07:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Stay tuned.
• 1:07:26
  Samantha Pruitt: All right, beautiful humans.
• 1:07:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Like we say at the end of every show, how your life feels is more important than how it looks.
• 1:07:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And thanks to my beautiful friend Kelly for being a special guest yet again.
• 1:07:35
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm so stoked that we're doing this work together.
• 1:07:37
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm so stoked.
• 1:07:38
  Kelly Thrush: I'm excited.
• 1:07:39
  Samantha Pruitt: I can't wait to see what happens next.
• 1:07:41
  Samantha Pruitt: All right, we'll see you next time.