Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / 235. Lauren Fleshman, Runner, Entrepreneur & Author of 'Good for a Girl'

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235. Lauren Fleshman, Runner, Entrepreneur & Author of 'Good for a Girl' · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So much of your pain in life has come from
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: thinking you needed to change who you are to get
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: what you want, when really you need to be more you.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: You need to spend the time figuring out who you are,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: what makes you tick, what your offerings are, and turn
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: the light up on those things. Be more of those things.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, Emily and Badi here you are listening to Hurdle,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: a wellness focused podcast. Reconnect with everyone from your favorite
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: athletes to top experts and industry CEOs about their highest hies,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: toughest moments, and everything in between. We all go through
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: hurdles in life, and my goal through these discussions is
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: to empower you to better navigate your and move with
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: intention so that you can stride towards your own big
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: potential and of course have some fun along the way.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: What a week it.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Was Unhurdle to kick things off this year with our
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: annual Turning the Page series. Now we are getting back
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: into the regular swing of things today with Lauren Fleshman.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: She's one of the most decorated American distance runners of
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: all time, an author of the book Good for a Girl,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: which comes out tomorrow January tenth. Now, of course I'll
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: make sure to link it in the show notes. I
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: really really, really appreciate Lauren's way with words in our
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: discussion today, from sharing her experience with depression to talking
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: about the height of her running career, the descriptions they
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: instantly bring you back with her to these life moments
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: in such a really special way. She talks with me
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: about her experience as a sponsored athlete and also how
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: it felt to write her book during such an iceol
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: time for the world in a pandemic, plus her hopes
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: for women in sport in the future. A little insight
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: into my process here now. I usually listen to an
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: episode about three times before it goes live, and to
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: be candid, I have already listened to parts of this
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: episode multiple times small clips from Lauren because honestly, it
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: really just I find her insights truly thought provoking.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: And genuinely beautiful. So I know you're going to love
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: this one.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Make sure you're following along with Hurdle over on social
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: it is at Hurdle Podcast. I myself am over at
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Emily a Body and if you have yet to do so,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: the beginning of a new year is the perfect time
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: to add some.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: More motivation to your inbox.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Make sure you are subscribed to the weekly Hurdle newsletter
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: by cooking on over to the show notes. By doing that,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: you will get me in your inbox every single Friday,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: bring you so much of the same motivation inspiration. Gear
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: picks things that you love about the show directly into
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: your inbox. Last, but not least, I'm putting a call
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: out I would love your listener questions for an upcoming
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: listener questions episode. So whatever you got, it can be
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: about sport, it can be about life, health, work, career, whatever.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: The link to leave me.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: One is in the show notes. And with that, let's
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: get to it. Let's get to Hurdling. Today, I am
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: sitting down with Lauren Fleshman. She is a runner, she's
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: a co founder of Picky Bars, and she is the
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: author of the upcoming title Good for a Girl, A
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Woman Running in a Man's World.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: How are you doing today, Lauren.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I'm doing well. I've been looking forward to this.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: I have been looking forward to it too. I've been looking.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Forward to it for a multitude of reasons which we
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: will get into. But first and foremost, I've got to
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: ask you. This episode coming out the week of your
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: book release. How does that feel?
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: It feels so good. The process of writing this books
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: about three years in the making as far as book
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: proposal to publication, but really like a lifetime in the
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: making before that. But the last three years have been
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: pretty tough for just about everybody. And adding a book
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: on top of that, my first long form so that's
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a challenge in itself, was very tough. So I feel
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: like a great sense of accomplishment on the horizon and
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to really like releasing all the stress
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and anxiety of the build up and just being out
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: there in the world with the book done.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: With the book done.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: The last couple of years, as you put it, definitely
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: a challenging time for so many and I know for you,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: as you've open up a little bit on social media, difficult,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: not just because you're putting pen to paper, but also
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: you were dealing with a fair amount of stuff emotionally.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Talk to us about what the last few years have
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: been like for you personally.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I've always been a person with highs and lows.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe it felt like above average heighs and lows compared
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to my friends, but it also felt like just a
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: part of my sensitive nature. So I didn't see the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: signs at first that I was entering into a real
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: mental health crisis in the first year of the pandemic.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And it's hard to tease out what actually caused it,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: but it could have just been that the state of
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the world being what it was, and kind of having
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: that sensitivity that I always have to the people around me,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: the feelings around me, the state of the world around me,
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  Speaker 1: it just became too much and I found that I
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: was in a state of overwhelm and like people say
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: fight or flight, but there's also freeze, and I tend
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: to free So I started to kind of withdraw and
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: gradually got to the point where I couldn't I couldn't write,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I couldn't really engage with my kids, and got to
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: the very scary place of having the thought that my
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: kids would be better off without me, and not really
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: feeling like there was a point to being in this world.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: And luckily, due to a lot of advocacy work by
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: other people in suicide prevention, there was a part of
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: me that was like, Oh, this is actually a this
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: is a thing, this may not be real, this is
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a thing that people experience related to depression and I
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: should just all I had the energy for was to
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: just tell somebody. So I told Jesse that I was
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: having those thoughts, and then that was the important first
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: step to figuring out how to get well again. So
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I was managing that for about a year, and then
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I had a lot of resistance to taking medication at first,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: just due to stigma and also kind of my athletic
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: upbringing of like being anti substance in general and strapping up,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: you know, getting things done on your own volition and
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: your own power. And I have all the tools inside me,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff that I like to lean
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: into that in most cases, but it did become an
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: obstacle to getting the help that I needed for a while.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: And then once I got over that, I really started
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: to see improvement.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, wow.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And then I got to kind of write the book
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: through all that, which was like WHOA, don't recommend it,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: But in some ways I'm curious, Like it's impossible to
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: be objective about your own work, But I wonder how
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: the book is seasoned by that depression in its final product.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: And but for me, it really just became like, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: the book's not going to be perfect. It won't be
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the same book I would will have written in a
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  Speaker 1: very I don't know, normal state of mind. I guess
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: typical state of mind. But I do feel really proud
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: of the way it turned out, and I feel a
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: huge sense of accomplishment that I made it through.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, wow.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you first and foremost for for sharing that.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: I read your tweet back in October and you shared
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: it on your Instagram as well, talking about, you know,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: going through this difficult time and during that time as well,
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: reading the book The Tea Party in the Woods to
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: your child and realizing that you didn't remember what happened
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: in the book, despite the fact that you had been
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: reading it so often during that difficult moment, and that
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: so I hate to use the word perfectly depicts, but
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: as someone who also has gone through her own journey
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: of navigating depression, that blacking out of sorts of these
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: moments is so relatable. And it was just so really
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: beautiful to see how others saw your words and really
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: latched on and were excited at the opportunity to say
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not alone in this and I felt that way too,
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: And what a really, really great thing. So I guess
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: what I'm, you know, kind of circling around here. To
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: say to you is thank you for sharing that and
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: knowing that you have the opportunity now to help others
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: through your experience. Would you say it took some time
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: for you to get to a place where you knew
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that you, Lauren would be good talking about what you'd
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: been through.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, definitely. I had. I have this overarching general
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: confidence that our lives, not just me, but our lives
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: are a story unfolding, and that running in sports helped
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: me tap into that as a survival mechanism during the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: hardest times, like, oh, this is not the end, this
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  Speaker 1: is just a moment in a story. And the most
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: interesting stories have ups and downs, right, you don't want
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: no one wants to read a story and where nothing
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: interesting happens, no challenges occur. So I think that there
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: were there was a part of me that always remembered, well, yeah,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: that always remembered basically that this was just going to
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  Speaker 1: be a chapter and a larger thing of my life.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: And what I was thinking when you were talking about
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: that tweet. One of the gifts that writers can give
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  Speaker 1: the world is finding the right like a very tangible
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: moment in time that brings to life like a nebulous,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: emotion filled concept like depression or joy or love or anything.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: It's like if you can describe the tea party in
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  Speaker 1: the woods, or the feel of a person's touch, or
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: the way the light fell like it's you take abstract
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: things and you pull them into a scene and it
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: helps people recognize things that they've had trouble putting words to.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: And writers do that for me all the time. That's
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: part of what drew me to want to be a writer.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: It was like, Wow, what a powerful thing to help
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: do that, and to be able to give that gift
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: to other people since I receive it from other people
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: so often. And I loved it too. I loved seeing
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: the responses where people were like, oh, yes, that is
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: what it feels like. It is that blacking out of
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: like your numb You're just going through life. And one
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: of the ways you know you're better is when something
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: you've done a thousand times has a different feeling all
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: of a sudden. And I'll never forget when I connected
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: with my daughter's laugh for the first time in months,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: probably in like ten months. She was on this log
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: out into the creek and I was out on a hike,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: just going through the motions because you know, you're supposed
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: to take your kids outside. There was no actual genuine
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: joy for me in doing it, just like there hadn't
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: been in many months. But then she came out onto
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: this log and she turned around and faced me, and
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: I had been on my medication for a few months
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: at that point, and she was just beaming in nature,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and I felt it in my own sternum, that transfer
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: of her joy into my body, and it was like wow,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: water in the desert, like I really have been far
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: gone for a while. It's just it's so sad. It's
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: such a difficult thing. Depression and so common.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so common.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Your word again that you used before, freeze also so
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: accurately sums it up. I'll never forget sitting in a
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: small doctor's office over in Boorham Hill and Brooklyn, and
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: when I sat down with the nurse practitioner who ultimately
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: finally prescribed me medication after.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: Many hurdles no pun intended to get to it.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: She looked at me and she said that some of
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: the things that have brought you joy in the past
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: may not feel the same. And it wasn't until she
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: said that to me that I realized, as someone else
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: who really does enjoy running, that my running for so
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: many months had just felt like literally something that I did,
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: because that's how I identified running is something that I do. Right,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: But when she said that to me, and I thought
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: about the act and the activity that I had been
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: going through the motions of doing day in and day
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: out for months during that struggle, it was like, do
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: I even enjoy.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: This right now?
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Is this even making my inside stingle and giving me
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: the same satisfaction that it did when I felt like
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I could truly feel each stride and the effort that
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: output that you know, every single day in and day
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: out gusto that I once had.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: And the answer was no.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: So to like that when you zoom out and you
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: realize like, holy wow, I at like this thing like
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: your children. You love your children, and to go through
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: that time when you were like, am I even making
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: them happy?
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: My god?
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: Matter at my heart?
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, and the running really resonates too. And when
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: you were saying that story about realizing that the running
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't embodied, it wasn't connecting, it wasn't lighting you up
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: like running is a place that can bring us back
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: to ourselves. And if running isn't bringing you back to
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: yourself and it's just a monotonous motion for months on end,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: that is a big warning sign. But I was thinking
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: about the gift of creating a practice, because if you
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: have a practice in your life that you do regularly
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that does bring you joy, then you have something like
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: even when there's a time where you're down or you're disconnected,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: you can remain in the practice, like the practice carries
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you through a certain amount of time. And if you
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: don't pop out of it, because we do have natural
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: highs and lows in life, if you don't pop out
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: of it as just a standard low, it can be
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: your canary in the coal mine of like, hey, this
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: is a thing that has always consistently brought me joy,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and it's been longer than a few weeks or a
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: month or a couple months that hasn't been doing that,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: there's probably something holistically off in me. And then there's
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: just the hurdle of do I feel safe in community
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and in culture asking for help and feel safe as
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: a person is my identity around solving my own problems?
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Hyper individualism or am I comfortable being in community and
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: asking for help. And it was a disability activist on
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Twitter that made a huge difference for me during that
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: depression as well. Where she was talking I don't remember
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: her name right now, but she was talking about how
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: in our culture we value doing things by yourself so
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: much and we teach you I've used the language on
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: my kids like, oh, you can tie your shoes all
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: by yourself, you can do this, you can solve that
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: lego all by yourself. Right, And she said, like that
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: is depicted as the definition of strength and accomplishment, and
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: my entire life strength looks different. Strength to me is
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: being able to rely on people, being able to ask
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: for help and rely on people, and that that is
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: just going to be my daily reality. And the fact
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: is that's able bodied people's daily reality too. But we
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: can we can like fool ourselves into thinking it shouldn't
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: be or create this toxic culture that it shouldn't be,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and it really harms us too. So we have a
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: lot we can learn from the disability community in that way,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: or at least I have.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love that line. Strength for me is
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: being able to ask others for help. I also would
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: be remiss if I didn't say that. It is so
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: clear that you have been writing for quite some time now,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: beyond just obviously the crafting of this book, just the
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: way that you speak is truly beautiful. So I just
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: wanted to make sure that I acknowledge that. But for you,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: this this concept of strength being able to rely on people.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Do you recall maybe the first time that you truly
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: understood those words, that you truly understood that there was
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: benefit in reaching out to others to move forward and
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: get to perhaps where you wanted to be.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, it took me way longer than I would have
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: liked it too. And if you read my book, you
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: get to see you read two stories. You read my
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: personal sports story, and then you also, through that story
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: see the greater, like a greater narrative of female bodied
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: people in the sports system built around a male body.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: But there's this moment when I have my first big crash.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, engaged in disordered eating. I lost
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: too much weight. I ended up breaking a bone in
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: my foot, and it shattered my idea of hyper individualism
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: where I felt deeply alone. I felt like I had
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: banked all my happiness and in accomplishment and really believed
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: that bad things only happen to people that screwed up,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: that you created your own bad luck, and that's just
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: such a toxic way to think as well. I mean,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: I love the idea of manifesting. That's great, but also
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: you don't. You're not responsible for all the good things
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: or all the bad things that happened to you, and
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: to think otherwise it's really harmful. I think you have
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to leave room for bad luck, and you also have
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: to leave room for not understanding the larger story of
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: what's happening to you at any given time. But all
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: that came in a very humbling moment of being a
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: favorite to make the Olympic team right out of college
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and then finding myself with the worst timing, broken foot
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and kind of all my belief systems crumbling around me
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: right in the lead up to that big moment, and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: struggling with maybe I need to find room for love
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: in my life, for friends in my life, maybe this
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: romanticized Rocky movie idea of like going out into the
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: woods and eating egg shakes and like seeing nobody and
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: just like you know, I had the tigering for however
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: many months and coming out and winning is not actually
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: holistically healthy or the best way to succeed. But maybe
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: we need more than checking all the right boxes and
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: doing all the right training and sleeping all the right hours.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: And of course, now looking back, that seems silly I
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: ever thought that way, because I'm so much more aware
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: of how humans are social beings and we're wired for
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: connection and all the things that like Brene Brown talks
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: about constantly on her podcast, that I have now accepted
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: as like fully real and true and have certainly resonated
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: as I've become a parent and a community member and
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: all those things. But yeah, I was I took learning
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: that the tough way. So I'd say, about twenty one
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: years old, sitting on the side of a swimming pool, Yeah,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: unable to get in.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean at that time you had won
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: five and see championships at Stanford, prepping for this huge
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: moment and as you said, this bone breaking in your foot.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: How do you pick yourself up after a hurdle like that?
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Oh well, A lot of a mixture of figuring out
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: where I had gone wrong and then also not figuring
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: it all out. So I guess how did I pick
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: myself up. I think giving myself a break healing, but
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I just I guess it's funny how thinking about hurdles
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: and picking yourself back up. You can pick yourself back
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: up and keep moving forward, but if you haven't actually
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: learned the lesson you need to learn, you're going to
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: hit the same hurdle over and over again until you do.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: And that's really what happened to me. So it's like,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: picking yourself up and keeping going is step one. Picking
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: yourself up and having the wisdom and tools to not
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: hit the same hurdle again is like another level. But
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: at first it was just drive, medical help and coaches
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: and a few people in my life that believed in
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: me that got me to run into the next hurdle.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: What was the hurdle that kept tripping you up?
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: So the hurdle that kept tripping me up was fundamentally
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: thinking my body was wrong, that deep down I didn't
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: believe that the way I was built, the way I
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: was in the world, was enough, and that in order
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: to succeed, to achieve the definition of success someone else
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: created in my sport, that I needed to change myself
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to match the people who were doing that at the
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: highest level. And so it was really like a losing
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: myself over and over again, and so much of running
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: for me has been I fell in love with it
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: because it helped me find myself. It helped me be
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: like embodied in a way nothing else did. I was
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: using my body to travel across space and see things,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: experience the world, have relationships like it was. It made
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: me feel incredibly powerful to be able to do that.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: And then being able to race and like execute a
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: plan and go over hill and dale or around a
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: check whatever those things were, they were so amazing. But yeah,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: they like, once you kind of are in a system
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: that tells you what winning looks like, what success looks like,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: those things start to those forces start to pull you
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: away from yourself, and then there's a wrestling match. And
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: this isn't just in sports, obviously, this is in any
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: kind of career. Really, Like, you have a gift, you
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: find the place to apply it, and now you're in
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: this world that has its own forces that's pulling on you.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And what are you going to do if there's going
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: to be times where it succeeds at pulling you away
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: from yourself and then eventually you face some sort of
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: obstacle or pain as a result of letting yourself be
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: lost to that force, and then you kind of keel
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: by pulling it back towards yourself. No, this is mine.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: How do I want to do it? How am I
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: going to do this differently?
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Like?
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: How do I stay connected to me through this? And
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the book is this wrestling match over and over again
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: of doing that, And it was. There were several forces
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: doing it, but the one that I focus on in
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the book the most has to do with women's bodies
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: and how we're taught that our bodies are wrong, That
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: we're taught that there is a right way for it
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: to look, and that it's culturally expected that we should
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: be resisting the body we have at all times through nutrition,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: through exercise, you know, exercises punishment and food is reward,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: and all these sick things we come up with, and
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: all the energy we spend in the mirror looking at
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: our beautiful selves and picking ourselves apart, and what the
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: amount of space occupied in the pie chart of our
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: mind with what we look like or how we're seen,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: instead of just using all of that power to emit
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: our what only we can offer into the world. Right,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I think of it as like I feel, I think
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: of body self consciousness and body shame as like a
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: muffler on our incredible power of the sound we can
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: put into the world. And so that doing the work
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: of removing that muffle a disabling that muffler is like
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: incredibly noble work, not just for yourself and your joy
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: and things like that, but for our collective contribution to society.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: When you have half of society fed messages that stick
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: a muffler on them, like all of us are losing men,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: women on binary people, We're all losing from that, right,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: So I just try to tell that story through running,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: But it applies, obviously.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: It applies.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: It brings me to that thought that we are the
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: person that we hear the most during any given day, right,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Like the thoughts that we have when we speak to ourselves,
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: we can, you know, do the best that we can
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: to consciously choose good thoughts. But when those aren't the
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: thoughts that are the most prominent, we can then try
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: our best to respond to them in a way that
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: you know serves us. Right, and again, as we spoke
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: about both of our experiences navigating depression, there are times
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: in life where maybe that response feels easier than others,
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: or even just simply capable. You are capable to respond
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: in a certain way, whereas you may not be at
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: another at another time, and for us to move forward
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: and recognize that, yes, this is a part of the journey,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: and that we get to, as you so greatly put it,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: get rid of that muffler.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of power in that.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's not like it's going to be a
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: removal of negative thoughts, like you said, It's really like
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: there's a race that I think about that I write
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: about in the book where I have this season where
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I have all these negative thoughts about myself as a racer,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: about my body, about my competitiveness, whether or not I
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: belong in these races, and that voice gets stronger and
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: stronger and stronger through the course of the season to
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: where I drop out of races or I don't enter
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: them at all. The anxiety becomes crippling, and what used
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to be seen as an opportunity, which was a race,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: an opportunity to express myself, became this like feeling like
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: a cow being led to slaughter, like there was bad
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: things waiting on the other side of this only opportunities
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: to fail to disappoint myself, to disappoint other people. And
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: most of my shame came from having those thoughts at all.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I thought that a professional athlete wouldn't have these thoughts.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: That just further proves that I'm not built for this,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: that I'm not meant to do this, that I don't
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: have what it takes. When what I end up learning
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: is that it's it's actually like everyone has those thoughts.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: You can never eliminate the thoughts. What you can change
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: is how you relate to those thoughts, Like what you
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: were saying earlier, You know, you can change what tools
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: you have to receive them, how long you let them
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: stay rent free in your brain, how the tools you
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: learn to like open a window and let them out.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Like however it works for you, But if you're still
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: stuck on I shouldn't even be thinking this, You're going
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: to go to a much darker place. And that was
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the same theme that came up with depression for me,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: was shame about even being depressed, Shame about letting myself
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: get to that place somehow, which is not productive to
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: helping you move through it.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, certainly not pretty active to helping you move
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: through it. And that word that we hate to reference
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: so often, that word should right if you're just busy
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: shouting on yourself then then that you know that doesn't
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: do anybody any favors.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: I'd love it if we could.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: We've like had such a great conversation already and we're
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: only twenty four minutes in, but I'm just to give
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: the listeners a little bit more context into I know
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: we greased them with the beauty that is the multi
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: hyphen it of you being the co founder of Picky
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Bars and an author and an athlete. But before we
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: get into the chapters kind of for us now, why
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: don't you talk to me a little bit about the
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: let's call it like the prime of your career, right
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: as an athlete, because we're still in the prime of
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: our career, we're just in a different phase. So as
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: an athlete, you know, competing at World two thousand and three,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: two thousand and five, twenty eleven, you know the five k,
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: you're just such a strong athlete, talk to me about
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: where your head was at at that time. Did you
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: think that this was going to be something that you
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: kind of like ran until you couldn't do it anymore.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I really believed. I had this belief deep down
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: that I could be, if not the best in the world,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: one of the best in the world. And I wanted that.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: I wanted to crack at it. I wanted to have
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: a chance to be on the stages, to take a
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: shot at that. I didn't need it, you know, to like,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: I didn't need to be the best in the world
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: win a gold medal for my career to have been
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: worth it. But I just loved the idea of competing
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: at that level, of working hard enough and getting enough
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: lucky breaks to do it. So, but the prime of
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: my career, how others might view it is different from
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: how I would view it, maybe like two thousand and three,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: two thousand and five, throughout my end my college career,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: which was a lovely time of life. But the couple
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of years after that, I was making world teams and
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I was running really fast, but I was I wasn't
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: able to enjoy the highs. I wasn't able to enjoy
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: those moments because I was never satisfied. Always felt like
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: there was more. I always needed more, and I did.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: I wasn't at the top of the world yet, and
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: So what I mistakenly thought at that time of my
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: life was that you'll never get to the top if
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: you let yourself be satisfied. You have to constantly be unsatisfied.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: You have to constantly be grabbing for more. I never,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: at that stage of my life would have sat there
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: and reveled in my first sub fifteen minute five k.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: It would have just served as a quick evidence point
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: that this higher goal could be achieved. But the problem is,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: you'll just always raise the bar. You will always raise
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: the bar for yourself, and you will never feel satisfied.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And what is the point if you don't If you
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: don't know how to feel satisfied along the way, you
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: will not feel satisfied when you get to the goal
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: gold either. You see it all the time when you
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: watch the Olympics. There's athletes who win a gold medal
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and you see them on the stand and they look numb,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and I know that face. I've never won a gold medal,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: but I know I've been on the top of other podiums,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: and I know that face. That is a face that
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: has made that goal so important to them that they
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: have blown through all the other things in life to
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: get there and I don't know how to connect to joy.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: They don't know how to connect to satisfaction and gratitude
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: because I haven't practiced it. So later in my career,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: like twenty ten, eleven, and twelve, only one of those
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: years I made a World team, but I knew how
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: to feel joy, and I knew that I had debunked
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the myth that feeling satisfied before getting to my quote
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: final destination was somehow going to make it less likely
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I reached that destination, And so I was even able
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: to enjoy races where I ran far off my personal best,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: but they had they were the best I'd done that season,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: or they are best I'd done since coming back from
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: an injury, and that joy fed on itself, and I
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: felt like I was practicing joy so that when I did,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: if I did get lucky enough to have a big moment,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I certainly would have been able to enjoy it. And
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: if you can't enjoy it, what is the point? Like, honestly,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: what is the point, Especially in something like sport. You're
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: going to retire at forty. If you're lucky, you'll get
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: to be in it that long. Between thirty and forty,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to start your life over in
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: some other career and within five or six years it'll
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: all be a distant memory. No one will remember who
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: you are. So what are you going to do? Sit
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: there and stare at your metal collection like it's probably
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: gonna bring you more sorrow than joy.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: M hm.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: And for someone who's listening to this and you know,
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: is nodding their head and thinking, well, that all sounds great,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: but I can't get there.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: How do they get to joy?
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: How does one get to the place where they can
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: feel the joy and celebrate their own actions?
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: That's a good question. So I might mess the specifics
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: of this up a little bit. But because I haven't
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: taught her a wilder retreat in a while, I teach
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: these running and writing retreats in the outdoors. But Jennifer
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Louden is my writing coach, and she has this practice
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: that she calls conditions of satisfaction, and it's an entire
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: practice based around this exact thing, and she is it.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Writing is her medium, right because we're all chronically writers
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: are chronically unsatisfied with their writing, and it's a lot
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: like sport. You're working towards this very distant goal that
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: very few people actually accomplish of just having a book
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: published and promoted in the media and all that stuff.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: But a lot of people will want that way more
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: than we'll get it. And so you have to find
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: the motivation to write as a practice almost every day
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: or every day, and you have to find a way
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: to enjoy it along the way, or you'll just be
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: wasting your life. So what she does is she says
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: it has to be for your satisfaction. You have to
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: set conditions. One of them is it has to be measurable. Right,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: so you can't just be like when I feel like
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I've won, Like, that's not measurable, so whatever, or when
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: my book is successful, and that's also not measurable. But
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: what is measurable is a certain number of words that
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: you have written in that day or that you have
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: completed a manuscript. Right, these are measurable things. And let's
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: see what are the other ones. It has to be measurable.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I'm gonna need to think about this later
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: because it's been a while. But if the thing can, oh,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: it has to be realistic. That's another one that's really big.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: Are you giving me a smart acronym?
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Here?
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Specific measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty much like that. Yeah, pretty much like yeah,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: And if you can do those things. But then the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: trick to the conditions of satisfaction is that you set
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: those goals that meet that criteria and then once you've
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: done them, you must declare yourself satisfied. You have to
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: stop and declare yourself satisfied. You can't be like, well,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I wrote the fifteen hundred words and I have finished
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: it in the amount of done the amount of time,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: but I could probably do five hundred more words right now, right.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: You just you have to you have to lay that
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: down and you have to practice for a while. Let's
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: say you practice it for a month where you don't
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: raise the bar on yourself mid project. You just accomplish
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the things and you stop at the end and you
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: feel satisfied. You give yourself gratitude for doing it, put
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: yourself on the back, whatever it is, move on next day,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: do it again. Then you're practicing engaging with satisfaction. And
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: that feels so good, right, because then you're like you
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: can always control that. You can't control if you'll have
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: extra inspiration that day, if you'll really feel on a
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: roll if you'll tap into flow like none.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Of that, none of that, none of that.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting that because the next step from satisfaction,
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: it's like, Okay, that's satisfaction. But then how does one
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: change satisfaction or kind of level up on satisfaction to
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: ensure joy.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: I believe that they end up merging.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: Okay, one of the same intertwined.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they become you know, you can't like joy is
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: an emotion that I think you can invite in, but
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: you can't guarantee shows up. But you're not going to
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: invite in joy if you can't accomplish satisfaction.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Taking a break from today's episode to give some love
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: to my sponsors.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: First up.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Open Open is a digital mindfulness platform combining breathwork, meditation,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: and movement. I am in the middle of a thirty
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: day challenge to kick off the year, and personally, I
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: am loving it. It is crazy for me, someone who
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: used to struggle so much to feel as though they
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: were doing quote unquote things right when it came to
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: breathwork and meditation, that I genuinely look forward to it
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: each and every single morning. I start my days with
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: about five to ten minutes of breathwork class and I
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: love doing them sat on the couch in my living room.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: It's still dark outside and it is my time for
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: calm and coming back into my body before the day
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: starts to get a little bit crazy. And truly it
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: really does fuel in these classes. The teacher is in
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: the room with you. I love how easy it is
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: to follow along and the opportunity for me to give
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: back a little bit to myself. First thing. Open offers
• 35:11
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  Speaker 3: Trust me, it's pretty cool. Let's take a class together.
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  Speaker 2: Open is giving Hurdle listeners thirty days absolutely free when
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  Speaker 3: Oh I love that.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, wow, So we're we're making some big moves here
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: to get to a place where we're not only satisfied,
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: but we also have the opportunity to experience joy. So
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: for you, where would you say, within your running you
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: were at peak joy?
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, peak joy was once I started working with
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: my coach, Mark Roland in Eugene. So as in my
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: late twenties, thirty years old, i'd had enough roller coaster ride.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: So I can give some of the credit to me
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: and Mark, but a lot of it was just the
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: setup from the years before that that were tough, the
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: hard earned lessons and whatnot.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: But I was.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: A proper grown up. My coach treated me like a
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: preper grown up. I had agency over my career. He
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: certainly provided the scaffolding and structure, but he made it
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: clear that I was responsible for bringing the magic. I
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: was responsible for getting it done, and he wasn't going
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: to chase me around and make sure I did it.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: He wasn't going to treat me like a child. And
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: I responded really really well to that I wanted to.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: It helped me stay connected to the fact that I
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: was doing it for myself right in the end, and
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: it helped me stay grounded. So once I was doing
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: that and I had my practice of my conditions of
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: satisfaction where I would stay, I would set a goal
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: and I put it in the distance, I went through
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: the effort of really being mindful of what that goal
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: should look like like kind of like a like a
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: good better best, like it was more of like a target,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: so that there were there was there were more than
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: there was more than one way to succeed. Right, So
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: if my goal was just like make the Olympics, that's
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: the bulls eye. There's things out of my control that
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: can't guarantee that. So the next ring out could be
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: run about in this like this time zone is what
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I would consider acceptable, Like if I do all these
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: things well and I do them the best I can,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: this would be an acceptable year. And so I set
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: the goals like that. But then once I had confidence
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: that I'd put in the time and I was mindful
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: about setting the goal, I left it over there on
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: the shelf, and then I focused ninety nine percent of
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: my energy on the day to day tasks that I
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: had identified as being necessary to get there. And it
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: was a lot like writing a book, where you just know,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: like to write a book, you have to, as Ann
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Lama says, write it bird by bird, Like if you're
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: writing a book on birds, you write it bird by bird,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: and that chapter has a certain number of words, and
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: you get those words done, and you declare yourself satisfied,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: and you wake up the next day and you do
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: it again. And I started building my life in a
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: way that was built around that structure, and I like
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: listened to the same music in the morning before hard
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: workout days, and I tried to just drop myself into
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: the present moment a lot, and I went on runs
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: on my easy days, and I paid attention. I made
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: sure I was like paying attention to the trails around me,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: to the nature around me, the people around me, like
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: not just zoning out and numbing my way through life.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: And that was that just felt good, Like the day
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: to day. There were so many days that felt good,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: that felt that there was beauty in them, that my
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: running and my goal setting was like was an avenue,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: like a way to live life. It wasn't life. It
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: was a way to engage with life. And that there's
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: so many of those paths that different people pick, and
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: I was just picking running at that stage. And I
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: was aware of that, of its actual place in my
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: life and the purpose it was supposed to bring me,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: and doing my role that I could every day to
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: help it bring me that, and then acknowledging that the
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: rest is kind of up to luck and chance and
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: that God. That was fun. I won a national title
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: that year. I didn't run my fastest time of my life,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: but I did win a title and I was seventh
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: in the world. And the coolest thing I think was
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: that before the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, I
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: had this little tingling that I could maybe win a medal.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: And nobody has ever finish higher than seventh in the
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: in the world in the five k So it wasn't
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: like I had a long line of champions that I
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: could look up to, and it didn't. The Ethiopians and
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Kenyons really dominate the events, so it's not super realistic
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: to win a medal, but I did have this inkling
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: that maybe I could do it, and I let myself
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: lean into that without needing it to happen. I was like,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: how fun to get to a stage in your life
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: where like, you genuinely believe you have a chance, right, Like,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: why ruin that by putting a bunch of realism on
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: top of it? And no one's ever done it. I'm like, well, yeah,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: you probably won't do it, but you might as well
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: ride this wave and be and let this light you up.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: The race will be more fun. And it was. It
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: was so fun. I ended up seventh, but it was
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: like it was just great. It was great. And when
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I became a coach I wanted to try to create
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: an environment where my athletes could feel that for themselves,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: that thrill of potential, like of a chance, without the
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: stress of what if the chance doesn't happen?
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sitting here with this like big goofy grin
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: on my face because I just love that concept of
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: knowing the possibility exists and just going based on feel
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: I love, Like, why are you going to let realism,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: come in and be the thing that totally damp bruends
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: this moment, right like, live the moment, have your joy,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: feel the fuels, and keep going toward whatever it is
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: that big potential might exist. I mean, you're talking about
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: the twenty eleven World Champs. This is the same year
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: that you also debuted in the marathon, finishing twelve in
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: New York City. Such a complete polar opposite high like
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: okay versus marathon. What do you decide that you wanted
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: to do this one New York City marathon?
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Well, it was It was a mixture of things. I
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: think that I was like addicted at this point to
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: the joy of running. I was so connected to myself.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I felt like, why not do a challenge that make
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: like kind of makes absolutely no sense to anybody else
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: to go from the five k to a marathon right
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: before an Olympic year, while I'll be before I'll be
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: training for the five k. But there was also really
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: good money in it, Like there's not really good money
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: in track at all and the roads. If you're good
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: at the marathon, you are getting paid, like you're getting
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: paid for five six figures to show up. I was
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: not getting paid six figures, but I got a pretty
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: good offer to show up and raise New York, and
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: there was something. I mean, you know, people can say
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: it's distasteful to talk about money or it makes it
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: less pure if money was part of it, but it
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: was like it really felt like I had I had
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: reached a level in sport that I wanted to celebrate
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: where somebody wanted to invite me and pay me to
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: come and bring not just my athleticism, but my spirit,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: my energy, my enthusiasm, my honesty, my rawness to the experience.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: And so I wanted to do that. I wanted that
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: whole experience, and I brought Jesse with me, and yeah,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: we had a really we had a really good time.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: We had a really good time. You know, I'm one
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: to cheer for New York all the time. I've run
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: it five times. It's have you lived here? Yes, I
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: live here. I'm coming to you from Brooklyn right now. Like,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: I just think, there's like truly nothing better. So for
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: me selfishly, I guess I'm happy that that was the
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: experience that you got to have because there's just, in
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: my opinion, absolutely nothing like it. This is also two
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: thousand and and the year before you join Wazelle. Talk
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: to us a little bit about making that decision. You
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: did kind of just you know, hint at the fact
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: that it's not about money, But was that a part
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: of making the decision to walk away from Nike and
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: go that route.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I've definitely felt undervalued at Nike when I went
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: back into contract negotiations heading into twenty twelve. So I
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: had just finished seventh in the world, and I'd done
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: this New York Marathon, and I felt in some ways
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: like I was in my prime, like really in my
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: prime of knowing myself, engaging with my sport, engaging with
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: my community, and feeling a lot of joy. But I
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: also wanted to have a baby, and that was something
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: that was kind of like an unforgivable desire at that
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: time in my sport and in sports in general, Like
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: it was a death sentence on your career basically, and
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: so it was very common practice at that time before
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: like Simontano and Kara Goucher and Alison Felix helped through
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: this New York Times documentary explode the idea or explode
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: the sporting world's way of treating pregnancy and contracts have
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: shifted since then to create some pregnancy protection, but before
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: that there wasn't. And so when you came to negotiate,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: if you were near thirty years old, unless you explicitly
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: said I never want to have a child, you were
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: going to experience discrimination. You were going to be paid
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: less because they were going to assume that you were
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: going to have a baby and that your best years
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: were behind you, that you were essentially one foot out
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the door. And so when I went back in, I
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: was honest that I wanted to have a baby, but
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I was also honest that I felt like I was
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: in my prime and that I wanted to come back
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: and race, But I also wanted to story continue storytelling
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: that having a child could be part of the larger story,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Like why wouldn't it be, like, obviously, not all women
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: have babies, but it's a thing that happens fairly regularly,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: and the fact that it's considered like incompatible with sport
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: didn't make sense to me. But Nike didn't value that
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: at all, and they just didn't have any women in
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: the room. Really, I was like, it was like trying
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: to translate your lived experience to a different species at
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: that time, and it was very frustrating, and so I
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: got this contract offer that was very, very very low,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: and I was also going to be suspended the year
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: I was pregnant because that was the standard practice at
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: the time, so not getting paid anything and not allowed
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: to seek money from a competitive sponsor during that time,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: just required to work for free. So I just was like,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: screw this. And I had been developing sort of this
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: online crush for the company was all because they were
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: women owned, women led their CEO, ran their Twitter account,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: and I was running Picky Bars, and we were sort
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: of learning from each other online how to leverage social
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: media tools when you don't have a big advertising budget
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: to connect and build community and build a customer base.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: And so we'd had this little relationship that was more
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: like work peers. But then I want I was like,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: I need to talk to this person. I need to
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: talk to Sally Bergerson. I want to find out how
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: if it's possible for us to work together, because how
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: cool would that be to do something totally different and
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: do it with a woman's centered approach. And it was
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: just like night and day. I mean, the pay wasn't
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: honestly very different, but I wasn't going to get suspended
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: for being pregnant. And I did become a partner, so
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: I got stock so I would be able to be
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: like a part owner in the company and if the
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: company succeeded, I would win too, And that was unheard
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: of at the time. And I just remember the conversation
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: where I told Sally, well, I just want you to
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: know I do want to have a child this year,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: and she was like, great, we'll throw you a baby shower.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: And I was like what. And I was like, well,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: will I get suspended? What about the suspension? She's like,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: why would you get suspended? Like sometimes women have babies,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: that's just a fact, like, and I was like, oh
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: my god, I don't have to translate myself here. And
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: I got so excited about the potential of what that
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: could mean overall, if you don't need to translate yourself.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: And that's not just in the running world or specific
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: to us. Oh, I think that's like we're at an
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: exciting time in history as women right now, where we
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: have reached critical mass and enough industries, whereas fifty years
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: ago we were like the odd ball or whatever was
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: the one female attorney in a farm or whatever, And
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: we have made a lot of progress, but we're only
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: just now getting to critical enough numbers in those spaces
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: where we're like, hey, we don't actually have to just
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: adapt to the existing culture. We can shape the culture.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: We can design this place around us. And it doesn't
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: actually matter if men have uteruses, because if you like,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: we can create a parental leave policy even though this
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: doesn't apply to their direct lived experience with a uterus,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: we can create a policy that then everyone can benefit from. Right. So,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: I think that that's an exciting thing about the story
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: in my book of a woman led company and making
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: that move. I wanted to help shift people's thinking in
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: the sports world at that time of what could be.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Possible when do you think your past and for storytelling
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: was born? And what have you gotten out of taking
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: hold of the reins and telling your story maybe in
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: a way that other athletes have not.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Gosh, well, I was just reading to my kids this
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: morning a story that I want a writing contest in
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: fourth grade for a little story called Amy's Adventures, and
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: I would enter the writing contest every year. Love. I've
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: always loved storytelling, but I've always loved reading. So I
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: think that probably my love, my passion for storytelling came
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: from being changed by other people's stories, from having my
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: view of the world expanded beyond beyond my cul de
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: sac in like working class, canning country, and seeing this
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: portal to other experiences, to other ways of being and
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: thinking and doing. And then once I got older and
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: was reading stories that were very raw about like, it's
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: easy to judge experiences that you have never had yourself, right,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: and I think that like we can. You know, people
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: have a difficult time with concepts of like white privilege
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: or racism or sexism or all these things. If you
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: haven't if you don't feel you've experienced it yourself, you
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: can kind of like abstract it or be like, oh,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: that's just in people's imaginations. But the power of story
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: works way better than statistics research papers. In sticking you
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: in someone's shoes, feeling their heartbeat, feeling their adrenaline, then
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: you can develop empathy and compassion. And so storytelling is
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: absolutely critical to like a functioning society and to growth,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: so that you don't have to have hit every hurdle
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: yourself to learn the lessons from other people's hurdles. And
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: so once I experienced that, I wanted to. I wanted
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: to provide that in the sport world specifically, and I
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: also felt like it was being rewarded. So once I
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: started storytelling, brands were interested in sponsoring me. People could
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: see that I I was adding a value that was
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: different than just podiums and newspaper clippings. And I loved
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: this power that it gave me, and that the opportunity opened,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: especially for female athletes, to only get four percent of
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the media coverage or whatever and one percent of endorsement dollars.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: We don't have to wait for the New York Times
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: or the Wall Street Journal. There's San Francisco Chronicle or whatever.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: To decide our sports moment is worth writing about. We
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: can just write about it. We decide what stories we tell.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: We can decide that the story of hitting the hurdle
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: is the most important story to tell in great emotional detail,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: and our audiences will find us. And I think I
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: know that it impacted a lot of the athletes of
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: my era to step out and do more storytelling, and
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: it's very common now. I think it's like it's actually
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: a job expectation now that you do it. And that's
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: a whole other thing, is like should athletes be required
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: to tell their personal lives on the internet or should
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: it be enough that they're winning races and breaking records? Right,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: and so like, I'm not here to answer that question,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: but it's just something that I that I've watched evolve
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: over my time. But I know that it brought me
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: great value to be the teller of my own story,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: and I highly recommend that to people around me. Otherwise
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: you're just at the mercy of other people's definition of success.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: And even if the only person you're telling the story
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: too is your journal, Like, that's it's a way to
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: like mark down what you feel is important and stay
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: connected to that.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a few things a double click on here.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: The first being that storytelling has evolved in such a
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: way since you first started, right, because when you started,
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: you were mostly blogging, is that right? Yeah, So now
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: like the blog has transferred over to what is social
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: media and different medians of storytelling as well, whether that
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: be actual writing or video. So that's like such an
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: interesting evolution as well.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, And like the different ways, Like some people use
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: it purely for entertainment, right, to show a completely different
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: side of themselves than their profession, which is really cool.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of ways to do it.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I got like, I'm I was really well suited to blogging,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: and I loved Instagram and I loved Twitter, but I
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: never got into like video. Really it was not my notice.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: There's still time for you, Lauren. You're right, we're not
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: done just yet. We're not done those dead.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: And then the other thing really to touch on here
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: is just this this concept of that everyone has a
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: story to tell and the opportunity to tell it yourself
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: instead of letting someone else tell it for you. I
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: find that and i'd be I'm curious to know your
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: experience with this. That oftentimes those that are hesitant to
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: tell their story have this mindset that well, what's the point,
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: like what makes me so unique? Like who's gonna read?
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Who's going to read this? And I love what you said,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: which was like, even if you're just telling it to
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: your journal, you have the opportunity to tell your own story.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: So for someone that may feel hesitant to put pen
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: to paper to tell their own story, to take ownership
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: of that narrative, what advice do you have for them?
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I would just say that I really don't believe
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: people are most inspired by the successes and victories that
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: we see. I think that we see those in a
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: part of our brain recognizes them as success and we
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: may feel jealousy or envy or some other moment of
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: attachment and engagement with them. But the things that really
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: affect our hearts and minds are people's every day struggles
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: and their own insights and realizations. I mean, we started
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: off this podcast talking about me reading a children's story
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: multiple times and not knowing I was reading a book
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: at all. Right, Like, that's just a little, very ordinary
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: slice of life that has nothing to do with being
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: a national champion athlete or an author or anything. And
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: that was passed around to thousands of people that don't
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: even know that I was an athlete or author. They
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: connected with that moment of of like realization, right, And
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: I think everybody has a rich life that is delivering
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: them realizations at all times, and we don't want to
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: lose those for ourselves, So I think it's important to
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: mark them, whether it's in the journal or whatever. But
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: also don't, like, don't underestimate the value it could bring
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: to somebody else's life, Like you think about the most
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: important people in your life or ordinary people living ordinary
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: lives that are full of complete like richness and thickness
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: and depth. And you are that too. You are changing
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: people's lives the way they are shaping your life every day.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: So even if the stories we tell are just to
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: our friends, like over a wine or cocktails or water,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: you know, just valuing ourselves. I think there's like that's
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: like the thing that if you start reading more memoir
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: from don't read the memoirs of Olympic champions, you know,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: read the memoirs of ordinary folks, like read Marry Carr
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: and like, I don't know, there's a lot, but just
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: read ones where people are talking about life and what
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: regular life teaches us and soak in their words and
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: it helps see that our everyday life is valuable, whether
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: we write about it or not.
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it's funny that that sentiment that you share,
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: that like, we can be changed by this ordinary person. Right,
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: And in your Instagram bio you literally have the words
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: let's change shit.
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: What does let's change shit mean to you? What should
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: we be changing?
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Well? I think when I wrote that, I really believe
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: in just questioning the way things have been done and
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: doing the work in your life of anything you're doing
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: on autopilot, like not assuming that that is the best
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: way for you to do it, or even the best
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: way for society to do it. Like we're doing the
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: things the way we're doing them because of the decisions
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: of people thousands of years, hundreds of years ago, fifty
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: years ago, and those are the norms, and this is
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the place we have been born and grown up in
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: and we're doing it right. But everything from like the
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: way we think about love, relationships, capitalism, money, rest Like
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: I love the idea of stopping to think about the
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: choices we make every day and saying, do I make
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: this choice with my own agency? Do I think about this?
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Have I actually really thought about this? Do I value
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: this myself? Or have I inherited this? And I'm just
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: taking it for granted. And that's a process. You don't
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: have to rush and go through everything in one year.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: It takes a lifetime, right, So let's change shit is
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: partially about that, like connecting with yourself what is actually
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: meaningful and valuable to you, opening your mind, opening your heart,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: And if you do that, you're probably going to find
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: things you're passionate about fundamentally changing in the world or
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: in your community, and you're going to have enough fire
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: to go do it. It won't be an abstract thing,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: right somebody's political campaign that you've heard the message of
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: one hundred times has no meaning until you've stopped and
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: sat down and thought about it. But you may be
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: knocking on doors before you know it.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, before you know it.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: And on that line of Instagram, you know, someone comes
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: to your page, they see an athlete, a writer, wazel
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: brand strategy advisor. You've got seventy thousand followers. But when
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: you look in the mirror, Lauren, what is it that
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: you see looking back at you.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's such a great question. I see somebody I'm
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: really proud of right now. I see I see my
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: aging lines, I see my I see my freckles, the
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: same freckles from when I was a kid. I see
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: I see tiredness from my kids, from raising my kids,
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: and from all the things. I see the wear of
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: the world that I've lived in and that I'm in
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: the life. I'm trying to live the evidence of my existence.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: And I'm really proud of myself for growing and remaining
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: open hearted and open minded. I feel like I feel
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: like I'm at the beginning of my best years.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: When you think about what excites you right now, aside
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: from the book, what.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: Comes to mind, I think just my loved ones, building
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: closer relationships with people. Relationships have been on the back
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: burner in the name of career for a long time
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: in my life, most of my life, and I let
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: select ones in. But I think that I've still been
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: afraid to be truly open hearted and really put roots
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: down in a community. So I'm excited to do that more. Yeah,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: I think engaging with youth on the topics of my
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: book wherever, whatever happens after that, I want to stay
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: open to the change makers who want to do something
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: about the issues in the book and see what comes
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: from it. So I think there's a lot I have
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: a lot more questions and answers about what I'll be
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: doing next. But that's a good place to be too.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: I love that perspective because so often, you know, when
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: you think of a situation and you realize that you
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: do have so many questions about what's to come, that
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: can be a truly overwhelming.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: Place to be in.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: But for you to really embrace and kind of relish
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: in this way is it's a little outside the box.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that the midlife crisis exists for a reason, right.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I think it's like it's more of a midlife opportunity. Really,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: But you've lived long enough on this planet to realize
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: you haven't got everything right. You've gone far enough down
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: certain roads you chose a long time ago to now
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: wonder if they still fit, if there's still the right
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: road for you. And I am firmly in the middle
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: of that. I'm firmly in the middle of Like, Okay,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: my whole life has been related to running in some
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: way up until this point, and I've enjoyed it. But
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: I also have hopefully many more years to come. And
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: what lights me up. I love creating a community. I
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: want to I think I want to spend less of
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: my life trying to reach as many people as possible
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: and try to go narrower and deeper in my relationships.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: I'm less enthusiastic about social media, so I'm trying to
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: figure out how I'm going to relate to the larger
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: world issues that I do care about, but firmly from
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: this new place that feels right to me, which is
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: I don't want to chase anyone's approval I don't want
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: to dance to other people's drums. I really want to
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: make sure that I'm mindful about the choices I'm making
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: in this world, and that the work that I need
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: to do bringing myself to it, my real self to it.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: I don't want to dance to anybody else's drums. Okay,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: final two questions for you here, Lauren. First question, you
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: are a woman of many words again, new author, new book.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: But if you had to choose one word at the
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: top of a new year here twenty twenty three, a
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: word that you're carrying with you into this year.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say, love?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: Do you have a why?
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I think that loving the people in my life,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: being led by love will really help me with a
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: lot of these transitions and choices.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: Right now, you have an opportunity to offer yourself a
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: piece of advice. I'm going to bring us back to
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: where we started at the top of this episode. You're
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: going through a time that it feels like you're in
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: a room and you cannot open the blinds. You're sitting
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: in the darkness, and we're feeling, as we said earlier, frozen.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: You have an opportunity to offer that version of yourself
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: a piece of advice. Knowing what you know now during
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: that hurdle moment, what do you tell her?
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: So much of your pain in life has come from
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: thinking you needed to change who you are to get
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: what you want, when really you need to be more you.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: You need to spend the time figuring out who you are,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: what makes you tick, what your offerings are, and turn
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: the light up on those things. Be more of those
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: things and that is going to give you. That give
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: you the runway to a uniquely yours path. Get rid
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: of all that friction of trying to get on somebody
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: else's path or be somebody else, a.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: Uniquely yours path.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: Lauren Fleshman so excited that we were able to sit down,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: and I'm so excited for you in this beautiful new chapter,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: no pun intended filled with love.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: How do the hurdlers follow along with you? How do
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: they keep up with you?
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: Give us all of your details Well Fleshman Flyer on Instagram,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: Lauren Fleshman on Twitter, and then Lauren Fleshman dot com
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: is my website which is currently a landing page for.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: My book for pre ordering my book. But yeah, you could,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: I'd say the best way to get to know me
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: is to buy Good for a Girl and read from
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: start to finish, and it'll probably take you five hours.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty quick read if you have
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: If you have the time, I am over at Emily
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Body and at Hurdle Podcast. I'll link the book in
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: the show notes. Another Hurdle conquered. Catch you guys next time.