Latest / Books4Guys / It’s Not Too Late | Wendy Bounds on Reinvention, Resilience, and Doing Hard Things

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It’s Not Too Late | Wendy Bounds on Reinvention, Resilience, and Doing Hard Things · Books4Guys

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just home.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was just home a couple a couple weeks ago.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you still you still consider North Carolina home.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's about split.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I mean, there's there the smells and the sounds, and my my family's all there.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that I mean, like fundamentally, that's home, but this feels pretty close to home now.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've been here all you know over 21 years in the Hudson Valley.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's 25 years, 25 years.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's crazy.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's almost that's a long time.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you feel at home in both places.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's I do.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Wendy, I'm super excited to talk to you.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I came across your book, and like I said, I see it there behind you, not too late.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: The power of pushing limits at any age.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you you have a few books that you've published, but this one in particular caught my eye because I love your story as I started digging in.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I just I was thinking of how it's so easy for us to get stale at life, no matter kind of where we're at in the journey.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: We can get caught in just kind of doing things, just checking off the list every day.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I love seeing someone like you who's bucked the trend and said, I'm gonna go do something crazy, wild, and exciting in life to keep things fresh.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so, Wendy, I'm just I'm super excited to talk about your book and your story today.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you summed up just that just right then what was the the whole drive for me behind getting into this crazy sport of obstacle course racing was.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So very well put.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, tell us a little bit about yourself, Wendy.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I know you've got you've got a few books out, but I would love to know specifically how you got into obstacle course racing and how how you got introduced to it, how did you get addicted to it?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's just kind of the whole story behind that.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, just a quick primer for anybody who doesn't know what obstacle course racing is, they may have heard of something called Spartan racing or tough mutter.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's essentially cross-country running varying from three miles to, you know, to upward of 13 or even at 30 plus miles, depending on what the length of the course is, combined with obstacles, military-style obstacles, scaling walls, climbing ropes, you throw a spear, you carry a 40-pound sandbag if you're a woman.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's around 60 pounds if you're a guy, up and down mountains.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy stuff that as I rattle this off to you, I would have never thought in a million years.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And had you known me as a kid in most of my adult life, you would have never thought I would have done something like that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was a bookworm as a kid.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I was not athletic, that last picked kid for sports teams, you know, the one who sat on the bench and passed out the Gatorade to everybody else.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: That I just gravitated toward books.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was kind of a bookworm.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but writing came naturally.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, Chris, is like most people, we gravitate as kids toward what people praise us for.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So people praised me for my writing.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: They did not praise me for my athletic skills.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where I headed.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I became a journalist and a Tar Heel from North Carolina and graduated from journalism school, went to work right out of school at the Wall Street Journal, where I was a reporter and an editor for probably 20 years, and then went off and ran the media at a publication in a media outlet called Consumer Reports.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then I went to a Tokyo-based tech startup.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: But somewhere in the middle of that journey, you know, and I was around in my mid-40s, like you were saying, I kind of started got caught started getting caught up in this, I think of it like as a cycle of sameness.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know this, right?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the same work routines, the same friends, the same restaurants, the same wake-up prints repeat every day.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not like any of it's, well, at least for me, it wasn't super bad.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't like any of it, but it was just, I felt like there was something more left in the tank.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that led to a Google search after a very boozy dinner party.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is a story that's told in the book, left me feeling very unsettled.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the next morning I searched, what are the hardest things you can do?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And all these sporting things popped up, things I would never think about, marathons and uh long distance swimming.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: But Spartan Race popped up, which is obstacle course racing.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I started reading about it, and I thought, I could never ever do this.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that was what planted the seed of that had to be the thing I was going to do.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what set me off on the journey.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it was just this moment of feeling stuck.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And like so many of us, I turned to the internet and uh that's what began the journey.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you got unstuck.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I got unstuck.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it took a while, right?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, unsticking is uh you've maybe been through something like this in your life in your own life.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: We think we want to get unstuck, but it's hard.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've got fa we've got obligations, we've got families, we have work, uh, we're caught up in inertia, we have limited time.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so for all of our best intentions, it's that figuring out what are the processes, what's the process for getting unstuck?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I think was so powerful for me was the learn learning how to get unstuck.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe that's something we're gonna talk about a little bit.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, you do have to be extremely intentional with it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: And one of my questions for you, because I'm thinking about this, my wife and I, we've actually been talking about this exact thing for like a month now.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And basically it not exactly, but it aligns.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about just like doing hard things and having people challenge us to get out of our comfort zone.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we do the same to other people, but we talk about how good that is just because it helps with growth, personal development, you're accomplishing things.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I also saw someone, I forgot who posted it the other day, but it was a quite simple question.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, are you simply existing or are you living?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so easy to exist.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's so easy.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Get up, go to work, make food, watch a show, go to bed.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you can you can get caught up in it.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And really, again, like you said, it's not, it doesn't feel bad.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're comfortable, you're just kind of going with the flow.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's that something that catches you where you're like, What are you doing with your life?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's gotta be something else for you to to accomplish.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Life is so short, there's so much, so many things to do.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: But but it's again, I just love hearing how you got that.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: But my question for you, all that to say, did you have a group of of friends or people that helped kind of push you in this direction?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or did you just was it simply something clicked and you were like, I gotta do something because I'm I'm I'm bored, I gotta do something with life here.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's both.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was both a personal accountability and eventually people.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I I I want to draw a line under something you just said, Chris, because I think it's so important and getting even more uh critical, which is you know, in the world of AI, doing hard things and pushing ourselves as humans and finding discomfort in some ways is what's going to continue to define us as humans.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: This notion of wake up, rinse, repeat, and what does it mean to be us?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Those questions are only gonna get more profound as things change.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And AI is gonna do a and is doing a lot of great things for us, but it is going to change fundamentally every piece of our lives.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think people are gonna start to ask the question that you and your wife are asking themselves.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we, you know, as as a species, we are rooted in doing hard things.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like we are rooted in the hunt and the gather and the search.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And those things are very natural to us instinctively as humans.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But over time, right, the ease of our life has kind of weeded those challenges out.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, I don't even think I, when I first started thinking about obstacle course race, I didn't consciously realize that.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I consciously realized what it would feel like and the what it would open up for me to do something hard like that until I crossed the finish line of the first race.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and once I did, I mean, not to be dramatic about it, but it was almost like something in my DNA shifted, right?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, not only do I want to do this again, but I want to know what it feels like to get better.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I hadn't felt like that in a long time, right?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I had gotten pretty good at the job that I was in.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'd gotten pretty good at that, like we gravitate toward what we're good at and we stick with that.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So being uncomfortable and learning again, that was the again, that was the unlock.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: But to your question about uh, was there a group of people?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, honestly, I was just alone, like thinking I wanted to train for a race and Googling on the internet like these workouts of the day that Spartan race had and trying to figure out how to do a bear crawl in my frozen backyard in the winter before work while my neighbors drove by and looked at me like I was absolutely insane.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was a lot of just me Googling things and trying to figure it out in the time that I had.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't really have time, so I set the alarm 30 minutes earlier.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't yet figured out how to say no and how to shrink some of what I thought were obligations that I had, but I didn't necessarily have, right?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like I thought I had to do these things, but I realized later I didn't.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, it was just set the alarm 30 minutes earlier and try and do something adjacent to this thing I wanted to do, which was obstacle course racing.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds messy, but I think we often get caught up in thinking if we're going to try and do something new, we need to do it perfectly.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to have the right gear and we've got to watch all the right videos and got to have all the right people around us and, you know, again, the right clothing on.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, sometimes just doing gets you going.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it that is the first piece of the unlock.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So just fumbling around alone by myself was what got me started.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I would feel a little sore at work, or I would have little baby calluses on my hands that I'd feel under a conference room table.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then I had people later on, I did find a community of people.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I found coaches and teachers and the community of Spartan Race itself.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that too was very helpful because they helped hold me accountable.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But again, in the end, you're accountable to yourself, right?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is the key.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think having both, I would encourage anybody to think about having both.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: You said a lot of things there.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm unpacking.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: One towards the end there, it is really cool to find a community of people who are all trying to accomplish something great.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: You may be at different levels, but every you can, you, you've got somebody to chase, you've got someone to cheer on and encourage.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's just nothing, you know.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a former college athlete, and then I did CrossFit for a while.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And thinking of those things, like there was nothing better than accomplishing something hard with other people.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: You get the self-satisfaction, but it's really cool to be around others doing the same thing.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, another thing you were talking about is just action instead of trying to do things perfectly.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I've had a lot of conversations recently about this too, as even just with my platform of Books for Guys, learning how to do a podcast, learning how to edit a website and do all this stuff.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, if I sit here and plan this out, I'm never gonna do it.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: But so I might as well just screw it up and I'll learn on the way.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure, I'm sure I care more about it than anyone else will.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I'm sure people will be more than willing to help me if I have questions.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's usually the case.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you just start doing stuff, it's amazing how much further you'll get when you start actually doing the thing you're trying to do.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: But the other thing I really was thinking about too, isn't it cool?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because you experience both sides of this, there's something about accomplishing something physically versus mentally in a weird way.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, like at work, you know, you accomplish something, it's a good feeling.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: But when you like struggle and you're sweating and your muscles are hurting and you're getting better at something, it's really hard to explain until you do it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then, like in your situation and many others, you get addicted to it.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, okay, I this was my time here.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I know I can do better because here's some things I can fix.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm you're already like thinking of things that way, uh, and you're ready for the next challenge.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it's so hard to explain that to someone until they do it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: But there's just there's a difference there of that physical accomplishment uh versus other things.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I it's a really good point.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And look, it sounds like you've known this, you've been athletic for a long time.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so you've known this.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: This was the first time I tapped into this.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, kind of, it was almost like a drug, to be honest, Chris.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that first race where I was, you know, first of all, I had a belly full of fear just doing it, you know, and then all of a sudden, as you, as anyone who's been an athlete knows, suddenly my heart was beating so fast and my legs ached so much that there was nothing else I could think about except one foot in front of the other.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that sounds like so basic, but I had been living in a sort of this kind of cognitive cerebral world at work where just all the time the problems of the day were churning in my head.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when I crossed that starting line, the biggest gift I got was that for the duration of that race, I thought of nothing else except literally just keep it to keep keep going, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like don't quit.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that in itself, particularly in the world we live in now and where we are glued to our screens and experiencing cognitive chaos of epic proportions, and we think our brains are gonna explode with all of the notifications and things we have to check and the platforms and the like that physical activity that is the antidote.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like you did know it, but I think it's gonna become more and more true for all of us, and that even if we did know it and we stopped doing it because life got in the way, reverting back to that, there is, like I said before, there's something fundamentally human about that.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the in the endorphins, people know about endorphins, that is very real, but it is a true counterset or a counterpoint to the to the cognitive chaos that I think we're all experiencing.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you were talking about AI too.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually just having this conversation, not not the physical accomplishment part, but we were talking about AI and how we're all kind of in this gray area of there's a lot of people that seem like they want to step away from technology and they want to do different things because they they realize how important it is, going to lunch with people, going on walks, exercising.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: But AI and technology is moving so fast too, you feel like you've got to keep up with it.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you're constantly trying to post or learn something new and implement something new.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there was a guy I was talking to, and he was saying how one of the best things we can learn to do is utilize AI to give us the time to do these other things.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you got to be intentional about it or you can kind of go off the deep end.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can use it to take away some of those mundane things you don't need to do, emails, little data stuff, so that you can go on a walk or go on a vacation or go do a Spartan race, you know, do these other things that you need to do as a human and to live.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's really where we're gonna find that that sweet spot with it.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, I think there's so many of us struggling on that balance beam right now of am I doing enough with it to stay relevant versus am I doing am I living life, you know, as a human?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's just an interesting, very interesting time that we're in right now.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's very well put.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think giving ourselves some permission to just know that this is a very messy time for everybody.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And just to sort of say, you know what, I'm gonna be comfortable being uncomfortable right now in the chaotic moment that this is, and I am not alone.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is, I think, one gift you can say, because there's not a single person that I know uh who's not feeling that right now.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody's in the same boat.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think that we will right now, it's we're at this moment where we're trying to learn so much at the same time.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're still trying to do all our other work, and then we're putting the pressure on ourselves to be with people and get out and do things.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like, how is this all gonna happen?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's sort of like you kind of have to just release yourself into that, like you're on a kayak and the seas are very choppy and it's gonna be that way for a little bit.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And okay, I can live with that.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the point, there will be a point at which exactly what you describe happens, I believe, where the AI hopefully will again be able to free up the time.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's how we choose to use that time, right?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: That is what is up to us.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think choose how we choose to spend that time with other humans and doing physical things, I do believe that is going to be an antidote and a very important one.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I am, you know, the more people who are thinking about that, like you do, like you are right now, and the more conversations we can have about that and help people delve into that, I think that will be better for society overall and humanity.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Are you what are you doing now, Wendy?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Are you trying to, as far as your accomplishments in in in this space, are you trying to improve your time kind of within the same sport or are there new challenges that you are embarking on or and trying to discover?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that first race was in 2018, I believe.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I now I just a few weeks ago in Fayetteville, North Carolina, I just finished my 69th race.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, to think that it went from one race to that, and in 2024, I was the age group champion for the US national series for Spartan race, which again, like I mean, if you had if you and I had had this conversation in 2017, I just would have laughed.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like it you would, I would have been like you saying to me, you're gonna win a Grammy.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you ever heard me sing, Chris, you would know I'm not winning a Grammy.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it has been a remarkable, it's just been a remarkable decade of just, but but mostly it's just been a constant state of learning.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so where I am now with the sport is there's a couple things.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm 54 right now.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want to stay, be able to stay fit enough to lead the life I want to live.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean that in racing and beyond that, right?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be able to still do all the things that I love to do for as long as I can physically.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that means continuing to train on my respiratory fitness, my muscle strength, my muscle mass, my cognitive ability, and recovery is a huge piece of this.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I think staying in the sport is good for me in that way because it trains all of those different variants.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm also using it to travel and see the world.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: I went to Sparta, Greece to race in a world championship there.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I went to Abu Dhabi, I'm going to Croatia at the end of this year.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm letting the sport take me to meet new people in different parts of the world.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for any endeavor that people get into that they feel passionate about, using it as a way to connect with others and that you never would have crossed paths with.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is so valuable.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's very different than just meeting them online, like to share an experience, as you said, to sweat with somebody, to learn from them, to help them have them give you tips.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how I'm thinking about it.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it really is like, you know, for all of us, it's like, how do you train for the life you still want to live live?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm thinking about this for.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I love the message that you're sharing.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's very important because for lack of a better term, it comes down to a lifestyle.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of people, my wife's a nutritionist too, so she talks about this.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, everyone wants to diet, everyone wants to diet.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, if they'll just make this their everyday life and just eat right, work out, like how transformative that can be.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same thing with your sport.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you're always thinking, like, hey, how can I get better?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you never feel like you've arrived and you're the best.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, hey, how can I recover a little bit better?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: How can I get a little bit better at this movement?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Then you're going to continue to just keep that kind of that goalpost moving.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I is another thing I heard the other day too.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like, you know, you people see you and they they probably go, Wendy, you're so successful.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: You do this.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what, why do you keep going?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's because maybe five years ago the goalpost was a lot closer.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you hit it, you moved it down a little bit.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then you hit that and you moved it down a little bit.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: You're never going to actually score, for lack of a better term.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get to the point that you had a goal to get to, but then you're gonna think, what else?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: What what what's the next step?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: How can I improve again?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the one that keeps you keeps you living and and not staying stagnant.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that you talk about that as just, hey, how can I get better?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: What what country have I not been to yet?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, who who have I not met?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think that's a really important message for people to hear and to implement no matter what they're doing.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, goals, I mean, I think goals should always be shifting, not because I think you shouldn't be satisfied or take a moment to be happy when you reach something.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: You should.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, that time at the top, like when that happens, that's very short.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like you spend most of your time going up or down or a lot of time on a plateau where you're just maybe not getting better or worse at something.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the plateau is actually the hardest part because it's where you're just kind of doing the work, right?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And figuring out what the next thing is going to be.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, intrinsic motivation gets you a lot further than extrinsic motivation.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: I if I had started this thinking, oh, I want to be get a gold medal one day on a podium, or I want to be the best racer in my age group.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I I think that would have those the the satisfaction would have been so short lived.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'd have wouldn't even still necessarily be on the journey.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it started with, you know, like wanting.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: To, you know, that I had a little kid version of myself that said, you know, you weren't strong and this wasn't something you were good at.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got on a path to learning.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they always say, if you can, you know, get good at something you were made fun of as a kid, then it becomes your superpower.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that's really true because the, you know, I learned to be uh, you know, I'm less risk-averse now, right?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was a pretty conservative in how I thought about work.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I make very different decisions now uh with work take.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have a lot more tolerance for risk and for trying new things.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that just comes from, you know, the security I feel now having gone through what I've done with obstacle course racing.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I think anybody who goes down a path of learning, if you're doing it for intrinsic reasons, right, you know, uh versus like, oh, I just want to make money or I want those are look, we need to make money.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's good to have goals and want to be be good or be the best at something, but that's gonna be very finite.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what I've learned about it.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so to your point, I'm just on this journey now because I want to stay as fit as I can, because something's coming for all of us, and we're gonna have to fight pretty hard, you know, to stay in the game.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, I agree.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: I tell people all the time, hey, it's your responsibility to be fit and strong.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: You never know what's coming.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you can't, you know, for as much as we want to accomplish, it's a lot easier when you're healthy and strong.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot to that.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And a shout out to your wife, too, because she's really right about everybody wants a quick fix or a hack, right?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: When she's saying everybody wants with a quick diet.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I tell you something, I get it.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like I I totally I I totally understand we are all under so much pressure.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if someone says, if you could just eat this or you could just uh try this supplement, then everything's gonna be good.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: But but it it's not because what you started this conversation was the search for something deeper, right?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And doing something hard is a path to that, even though it seems like it might not be.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: It seems very counterintuitive.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've failed so many obstacles.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I have had my back torn with barbed wire, I have been in the very back of the pack.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have had to DNS drop out of a race from hypothermia.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I have, I have just, I s not suffered, but like it's not like it was all great, but that that has made it more meaningful when things have gone well.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the journey I think we've come to miss as a society because we just lean on the easy stuff as a crutch.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I think your wife is really right.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Please tell her I said so, that there are no hacks to this stuff.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, she keeps us in line.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: She we Memorial Day just passed.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: We were out there doing the Memorial Day Murph workout yesterday.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: I said no for the entire week.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, my back's hurting, I'm not gonna do it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then lo and behold, there I was doing it because she was like, I did it.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'm I'm impressed.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm impressed.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I hadn't do it last year, and I did do it this year with my best friend in the we did it in the rain.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell you something, I'd forg forgotten how hard the Murph it was.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: 300 squats, 200 push-ups, and 100 sit-ups and a mile on either side, right?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I I couldn't walk very well yesterday or the day before.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I'm I'm feeling it today.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm feeling it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: But Wendy, just two more questions for you.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: One of it, one of them pertains directly to your book.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: As people read it, if they don't take but one bit of advice or one nugget of information away from it, what do you hope that one piece of info is that they take from reading your book?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would say be content to look a little foolish doing something.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you can't get over, like we're gonna live in a world where we put our best Instagram photos up and everything is polished and filtered to the nth degree.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are not willing to look, especially as you get older, like you don't have your hand on the master control switch, if you don't not ready to let go, you're not gonna be able to learn something new and particularly something hard.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And once you do that, it is so freeing.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is the thing, like as soon as I got over myself uh with obstacle course racing and just kind of gave in to the fact that, yeah, you know what?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: I am not the best in this forum.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I am maybe I'm not even good.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I gotta learn.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Once I gave that up, it was just like my shoulders relaxed and the whole thing opened up for me to again push back what you were just describing.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say, just be okay, get over yourself and be okay looking a little silly.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: I love that, Wendy, because it's not something I've discussed, but I've thought about this a little bit.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: It just seems that people who are high achievers and who have done amazing things, they seem to be able just to not care at all what other people think about.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: And they just realize like it's just not a big deal.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: People are gonna move on from whatever comment they have or for whatever thought they have, and they just focus in on what they're trying to accomplish and do.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that it just seems like the the people who are doing the most just they do exactly that.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: They don't care if they look foolish, they're gonna go get what they're trying to get.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so I love that that's your you what that's what you hope people get from from reading your book.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Last question though, Wendy, and this one may be hard because you said you've been a bookworm your whole life, and I'm sure the answer would change based off when I asked this question to you.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm always curious to know what is a book or two that has meant a lot to you, personally or professionally, and what's a book that you love to recommend to others?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, so many.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll tell you, I'll tell you, can I tell you three?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'll tell you, I'll tell you three.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: The first is a book I just uh I really love by a writer I'm about to interview for the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute named Oliver Berkman.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's the writer.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's written a lot of books, but the one I loved was called 4,000 weeks.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a stark reminder of that's how long the average human lives on this planet if we make it to 80.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it is about how do you reconcile your time and how do you make decisions so that you can focus on the things that really matter to you, some of the things that are underpinning our conversation.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I would recommend pretty much anything he's written, but 4,000 weeks is a is a great place to start.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Another author whose work was really pivotal to me was uh is a guy named uh Michael Easter.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he wrote a book called The Comfort Crisis and runs a great uh, I'm on Substack, I have a newsletter and so does he called 2%.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the comfort crisis is again, there's a lot of detail about where we've come from as humans and how our society and all the ease of it has really made us shy away from being uncomfortable.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he makes a really good case for uh why we should, we should fight back against that.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's quite good.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the other one that I've been thinking a lot about recently, and I got a chance to meet this author too, uh, was is a guy named Rich Divine, who's a former Navy SEAL commander.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote a book called The Attributes and why attributes are a stronger predictor of our success sometimes than skill.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is something I have really, I didn't know I was doing it when I was learning obstacle course racing, but I was tapping in to attributes I had that had made me successful in another part of my life.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: But then once I learned to tap those same things for obstacle course racing, it was very different than tapping skills like, you know, am I physically strong or can I hang?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: They was about high degrees, like I have a high degree of learnability.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm very good at learning things.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that was one of the strategies that helped me get better and better at races.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say pick up Rich's book, uh, the attributes.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all good recommendations.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I love that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, when you said 4,000 weeks is the, that's not a very long time.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, and if you ever map it out like on a grid and look at it, which I've done, and you see where you are in that, it's just like, oh my gosh, right?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is where I'm halfway through or more than halfway through that time.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm closer to the end than the beginning.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you hope you're gonna get to 90 or more than that, but it's a reality check.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that reality check is is one of the things that no matter it's obstacle course racing, isn't gonna be what everybody goes into.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's everyone's got something like that in their life.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: But when it it's a stark reminder of how short the time is.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like you said earlier, like, like look look a little foolish and get get started.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you need a motivation to live, that's probably a good book to to read.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: But also, I hope everyone picks up your book as well, not too late.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Wendy, thank you so much for for coming on the podcast today.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: As I think I I'm I'm probably gonna re-listen to this two, three, four times, and I'm gonna share it with as many people as I know because I I know so many people who would enjoy hearing what you have to say.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so keep putting that message out there, keep doing amazing things, keep crushing your competitions, and and can't wait to, now that I've met you, I can't wait to see all the cool things that you continue to do.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but but keep it up, Wendy, and and I really appreciate you doing this today.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Chris, I love what you're doing with your podcast.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for talking with me.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Wendy.