297. The Confidence Lessons I Learned From 20 Years of Triathlon

Twenty feet from the nearest buoy, chop so bad she couldn't see the kayak, panic creeping in fast. That's where Anna found herself mid-swim at a national championship race, the one time in her life she got genuinely scared out there. She got on her back, caught her breath, and kept going. It's not the kind of moment that shows up on a podium.

Join Anna and Tim as they trace 20+ years of racing back to what it actually built in them: not medals, not finish times, but the ability to keep moving when the plan falls apart. They get into why feelings are terrible predictors of performance, the real difference between discomfort and danger, and the voice that shows up in your head telling you to slow down right when it matters most.

This Episode Covers:

• Why Anna wasn't born disciplined, and how it took her until 27 to find it.
• The moment in Lake Erie when the chop got so bad she couldn't see the kayak, and what she did to keep from panicking.
• Why feelings are terrible predictors of whether a workout or a race is actually going to go well.
• The real difference between being uncomfortable and being in danger, and why most of us confuse the two.
• What it sounds like when your brain starts negotiating halfway through something hard.
• Why even elite athletes deal with self-doubt, and what actually separates them from everyone else.
• What outlasted every medal Anna ever won.

Until next time, here's to deeper connections and personal growth.
Mad love!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Today, Tim and I are going to talk about what 20 plus years of triathlon has taught us about confidence. And I should say it's 20 plus years of of triathlon for me. It's probably been 30 for you. And we're not including running races, just 10Ks and marathons.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

So there's been a lot of years of training for and competing in racing.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Late 80s, I think, is when it started. Yeah. 80s seven, let's say 88.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

When no one even really knew what a triathlon was.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

When Bud Light was the sponsor. Bud Light was the sponsor of Chicago Trath. I wish I had that shirt.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

And pierogies, Mrs. T's pierogies.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Uh the Trath Law. Chicago, for those of you who don't know, is a heavily Polish city. A lot of huge Polish community here. And they were a sponsor.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

So eat those pierogies, carbo load, and then go do the race the next day.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

That that's back when the swim for that race, you swam out around the peninsula, the oceanarium, which is so dangerous.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Or the aquarium.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Or the aquarium, sorry, oceanarium. Where am I at? Orlando. Yeah, the aquarium. You swim out around that.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

That's pretty scary. Super scary. I that intimidates me to think about doing that because you that's pretty far out.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

It's far out, and the waves are hitting that that cement wall and bouncing right back. It's like you were swimming in a washing machine. Washing machine. Crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

You know, Lake Michigan, people don't realize these great lakes. Lake Michigan has some of the worst riptides in the country, worse than the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans on the coast. Every year, unfortunately, somebody drowns in Lake Michigan because of the riptides pulling people in.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Multiple times. It's pretty bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yeah. So that scares me thinking about swimming out there.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Now it's along the the break wall.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

It's a little more protected. Yeah. You're in the harbor. It's a little bit better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Okay. So I'm bringing this back because I don't well, not bringing it back. I'm bringing it up. And we're talking about it specifically on the podcast today because I don't know how much people realize. Some of my clients do, but I don't think people realize how much sport has informed me and about how I have grown what I've learned and the knowledge I've gained from being an athlete and how that has absolutely directed me as, of course, a personal development coach and now a high performance coach, but also as a therapist. It's it's just a part of who I am.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

And it informs everything that I do really. But I don't talk about it enough. So I think that we're gonna we're gonna do that today.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

I think it's gonna be interesting because you're gonna come from the perspective of receiving coaching in this case. Very different than how you normally talk, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yeah, how I've been coached.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yeah. And we'll talk about my Twon coaches. I'm not gonna talk as much. I won't talk about my business coaches, my life coaches, and I won't talk about my therapy, the therapy I've been in. So if you all want me to speak about that, I'm I'm in a book. I'm happy to speak about that in another episode and how that has changed me and and what it's done for me. The ups and the downs of it. You know, there's great parts of it, and there's not so great parts of it. Okay, so the first question I I wanted to start with is I got this all the time. I don't think you did. I got this all the time. So for 10 of those 20 years, I was dialed in, meaning I had I was being coached because I'd say the first seven to ten years I was self-coaching, but doing it on my own, reading plans out of Trathy Magazine or reading, getting renting books or buying books and just doing, and you were way ahead of me in Trathlon. So I would just go along with what you were doing. I would swim your swims. I would run bike with you. I didn't really know what to do on the bike at that time on the trainer. I didn't know what to do with power and watts. I didn't we don't even think in the very beginning I had a power meter. I would just self-coach and then I would run with you and we would do intervals. You know, I wouldn't really, it was just kind of half hazard, you know, and like just get out there and but 10 years of doing that and having five kids together and working a full-time job. I look back and I don't know how I did it. I think no wonder I decided, you know, I gotta dial this in. If I'm gonna stay in this and I want to get better, I need to pay somebody to help me because what happened was I got tired of always coming in fourth, fifth, and sixth in my age group and thought I could do better. But but let's go back to what got me thinking about this episode today. For so many years, people would say to me in year 10 to 20, why do you do triathlons? You're not a professional. I mean, why are you doing this? You spent so much time on this, you're not a professional, you're not being paid for this. Friends asked me that, acquaintances asked me that, neighbors asked me that, family members asked me that, complete strangers that I would meet at a party, a cocktail party, would ask me, you know, why do you do that? You know, and and it would take me aback. I mean, I'd be a little, a little defensive, but mostly, oh, you're not, you're not an athlete, you have no idea. You can't, you're not so you, you know, you don't know. Because I think for those of us who were athletic and and competing in some form of race or some sort of competition, those of us, we get it. We understand. They they're not the ones who asked me that question. It's people, it's funny that I think about it now. Yeah, none of these people were triathletes. And then when I started this podcast, what did I get all the time? The badass confidence coach. Remember in the very beginning, back in 19 2019 and 2020, this was the real therapist. Remember that? It was it was a real therapist. I have we have I still have the photo up that was the original photo from the podcast. And then I got coaching around it. I hired a business coach to help me with my brand. COVID hit and I had more time and I could finally focus on the brand. And we had this conversation one day about being a badass. And I said to her, you know, my clients are badasses. You know, they these are these people who don't realize how I look at them, how I see them, that, and they're coming to me, whether it be a therapy client or a coaching client, many of them are coming to me frustrated, some sort of pain, maybe psychic pain, not physical pain, but you know, emotional pain, sort of mentally struggling with their businesses, or they just got fired or laid off and they don't know what to do next, or they're looking at retirement and or they're dealing with a clinical depression, they're dealing with anxiety or trauma. And as I got to know them and and I started to understand more about them and their lives, I would think to myself, Well, you're a total badass. Look at what you've done. You know, they would see the glass half empty, and I'd be talking about the glass half full. And a mother of eight kids who is, you know, dealing with a wayward husband, somebody who had horrible, horrible abuse as a child that they had never spoken of before. And looking at them today, married and parenting three kids, trauma's coming up now, and they're dealing with it with me. Yeah, doing I'm a I'm a trauma therapist, did a lot of that work and thinking you're a badass. And I would tell them, and they're like, What do you, what do you, what are you talking about? What do you mean you're I'm a badass? Look at what you've been through. But they would say to me, Who do you think you are? Because what happened was some of my my one of my business coaches said, Why, why we're having these conversations that I'm having with you and all of you on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Wait, who would say who do you think you are?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

My business coach.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Oh, my a client would say that?

SPEAKER_00 7:57

People about the badass piece.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Well, you just said they would say, Who do you think you are?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Who said when it came to being badass, badass confidence coach. When I jumped ahead when I changed the name. So my business coach said to me, Oh, okay, why are you calling yourself the real therapist? And I you mean half of your practice is coaching.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

And here you, we just had a conversation about all your clients, and you're telling me what a badass they are. I did not know about Jen Sincero's Jen Sincero Sincero's book, You're a Badass. I didn't know about that book. I had a client back in 2017 or 18 brought the book into my office and said to me, I love this book. I'm just starting reading it. I'm like, Oh, that's oh, that's that's cool. You know, neat. That's a great that's a great book. And I and it was kind of in the back of my mind, I'm like, oh, that's so interesting because I tell my clients all the time, or I think to myself, You're a badass. And I'm just in that client in particular, I'm like, you're a total badass. She's like, I bring you that book. I'm like, oh, I never heard of it. Yeah. So fast forward to 2019, I'm talking to my business coach and she's like, You just were telling me this, all these people. And half of your practice is coaching. You're not just a real therapist. Okay, you're real, you're down to earth, and you're gonna talk about things on the podcast, which was planned for late 2019. You're gonna talk about things that maybe other therapists don't talk about and you want to pay it forward. Great. But you're a badass. And I'm like, okay, well, she's like, no, you're a badass. You need to change, you're also a coach, so why are you not saying that? Because I was like, keep stay small, stay small. Don't really talk about all that. Don't don't be cocky, don't say you're a badass. She was like, You're a badass, and start to start to embrace it. So I changed it. Remember this? I changed it in in early 2020, yeah, with this business coach. I changed everything. And after that, people would say to me, and the interesting thing when I was really getting into this yesterday when I was doing the work on this, the people who asked me, Who do you think you are? So do you think you're a badass? were men. It was always men. No woman, no female friend, family member, no one ever said to me as a woman, like, why you why do you call it that? It was sorry guys, but it was all men. But if a man called himself a badass, other men wouldn't say to him, bruh, who do you think you're not badass? Why do you think you're a badass? Like, oh, you call yourself a badass. No dude would say to another dude or call him out on the name of his podcast or or ask him about his the name of his business as an entrepreneur. But I got asked that question. Do you remember? I remember it. Yeah. Like, why are these men like who who do you think who do you think you are calling yourself a so do you think you're a badass? I'm like, yeah, I think I'm a badass. But this is really in a sort of a love letter to my client, my former clients who I told them they were badass.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Right. Well, I think you can also interpret the name of the business the opposite way, right? You're you're coaching badass confidence. Like it doesn't necessarily have to mean that you're badass, right? It doesn't have to mean that at all as the coach. That's the way I always have taken it. You're coaching somebody to have badass confidence.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

That's that really is the message.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Because the original message was you come to me to my office back then. It was all in my office, right? There's no Zoom. You come to me in my office, and you're telling me all that I'm listening to about your life and how difficult it is and dealing with your depression, your anxiety, your trauma, and your past eating disorder, and all these failed relationships and not being able to find love. Look at what you've done.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Look at what you have done. That's I'm like in awe of that. I am in awe of you and you're a badass. And don't forget it.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Yeah. So let me ask you a question alive in front of everybody. Which was it when you when you picked a name? Badass confidence coach. Were you was it influenced mostly by your clients, or was it influenced mostly by what you thought?

SPEAKER_00 11:45

I would say it's 50-50 because my business coach was like, You're a badass.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

And you look at, oh, because I had I had a I was wearing, I never forget this. I was it was on Zoom and I was wearing because she's in another part of the country. I had a t-shirt. I think it was on black, I had a black t-shirt on. I think it had blondie, the right, you know, Blondie, the band.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Had a picture of Blondie on it or something with badass. And she was like, look at you. She's like, you're a triathlete. You're wearing a black t-shirt that says blondie. She's like, You're a badass. And you've been doing therapy and coaching people for, you know, at that point, it was like 20 years you've been doing this. You're a badass. Anna, it's not just your clients, you are. Time to start accepting that and take it in. I'm like, oh yeah. You know, because I I was like, stay small, stay small. Okay. So, so that's that's but here's the thing is that the question, those questions when people say that to me, why are you so serious about your rathlon? You're not getting paid, you're not a professional. You know, why do you, why do you call your podcast a badass confidence coach? Like, who do you think you are? I was a little taken aback by it, but it didn't really, it didn't really bother me. I'd make comments to you, like, you know, someone so just asked me that question. Like, I can't kind of surprise at that, right? I think it's because, and I thought about this last night, if you're living in a culture where you don't make money from something, then it's not really worth it. You know, if you're not like the absolute best at something, you're not the best, Anna. You didn't become a pro triathlete. You're not that talented, you're not that fast, you're not that great like my former coaches have been former professional triathletes. No, I was never like them. So why are you putting all your why bother? Why are you putting all this time and energy into it? And I just couldn't find the words because I remember not knowing how to answer. First of all, I was surprised at people's hubris at asking me that question. And I didn't know how to answer because I thought, you don't get me. You don't get this. I never looked at life sort of that way, right? I mean, Trathlon was the best classroom I think I could have ever been in. And I don't know what you would say about that, but that was the best classroom for me. You know, not because it made me a tougher person, not because it made me faster, because it taught me something about confidence. It taught me about discipline. Really taught me a lot about discipline. And it taught me a lot about emotional intelligence that I use every single day today, yeah, with my therapy and coaching clients, with both of them. Just yesterday, I was talking with a therapy client who deals who has an anxiety disorder. It's gotten a lot better. And she had something happen. I don't see her every week now. I see her twice a month. And she had something happen with an employer, a boss. And she's back to the old stuff of getting triggered. And she's like, I, you know, I'm like, all right, let's go back to it. We, you know, she we're doing a tune-up and we're going back to remember, remember who you are. So I'm I teach her the skills that I that I teach my clients and coaching clients too. I teach them both the exact same skills when it comes to anxiety. We went over the skills again. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. I remember okay. Like you could now you got them back on, you've reloaded, you've got them back on board. Remember that toolbox, go back into the toolbox, pull those out when you can't sleep at 2 a.m. Pull them out and remember who you are. You've come so far. This is this is don't let this person who's a little sadistic, yeah, boss of yours, don't let it get to you. Don't let it get. And I said a lot more than that. I'm just generalizing for for the episode today. You're a badass, but that comes from years of what Tirathlon taught me about confidence and emotional intelligence, discipline.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

You know, because you know, and I want to, we're gonna talk about this. What two plus decades for both of us has taught us and how it has affected us when it comes to work.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Yeah, I mean, I I would be interested to hear you drill down a little deeper than that.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

I'm going to.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

You know, I mean, it it get into, I mean, there's a lot of different types of or moments of confidence that you could take away from all those years, right? Just in your personal life and things that you do on a daily basis, you know, maybe relationship building, maybe, you know, a business decision. But there's also things that you take away as a coach, right? Thing that things that you've learned from being coached, right? Which your perspective is gonna be way different than mine on that.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

And I'm just talking about triathlon because before triathlon, I was serious into equestrian the equestrian world. I was hunter, jumper, dressage, and then I went to hunter jumper riding, but it got way too expensive.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

So I had that's my, you know, to be honest with you, I I mean that's my true love. I love triathlon, but I love horses, all things horses. And if I could be on a 10-acre farm and just be riding, I'd be doing that every day, all day. That's my love. So I had coaches, I was coached there. That was that was different. That was hard. Those are the toughest coaches, and those are the meanest coaches. Those are the meanest freaking coaches.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Who had a whole different psychology about how to coach people and and instruct people, really kind of by putting you down, making you feel like shit.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Anyways, okay. That's that is an episode also unto itself of what I how I don't coach and how I oh, I don't work with clients, but I want to tell everybody out there that's coaching. That doesn't work. And especially in the question world, that doesn't work. And I think it's changed a lot, but you don't you don't use sarcasm and yelling at people, like what's wrong with you? Did your brain not work? I told you to get your heels down further. Okay, okay, okay. You know, kind of like shaming you into submission, shaming you into changing the way you ride or the way you, you know, sit in the seat, you know, way you, you know, the sh position your legs are in, your heels are down, your or your hands are, and what you're communicating to the horse. You don't shame people into that. But that was a lot of the mo 25 years ago plus.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Well, it's a lot of it in other sports today.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Yeah, and maybe not United States, but other parts of the country. That is still how people coach across all sports.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

And it's accepted. Okay. So one thing I want to start with, you know, those who those of you who know me and you see you hear me on the podcast, you're watching me on YouTube, or you've worked with me. You I had a discovery call a few weeks ago with a woman. She goes, you're like a she was like, You're like a super badass. She's like, I discovered your podcast, and you know, you're just like, you know, this, you know, you're super badass. And I thought, you know, and I do hear that, and it's a great compliment. And I thought to myself, that wasn't always this way. I was not always this way. I I wasn't always thank God, literally, thank God. I think I was blessed with self-esteem. At least I have pretty good self-esteem. Not cocky, because you always got a balance by that Catholic upbringing of don't get a big head and humility is everything.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

But I always felt pretty good about who I was as a person, but I wasn't disciplined. And I was I was not a disciplined kid, and I wasn't a disciplined adolescent. And, you know, I wasn't a standout athlete. You know, I played softball and basketball in grade school, middle school. I played basketball in high school, and I was disciplined until I was always on the bench, and then I quit. I quit basketball myself more years.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

No confidence.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

I didn't have confidence, and I also knew I didn't have talent. And I and I wasn't I was going to camps in the summer.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

We can talk more about that.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

I was going to basketball camps, I was doing the things in the summer. I was, I just wasn't as good as the girls on my team. I went to high school where the basketball team was the best in the area. And I, there's no way. I mean, there's just no way. I wasn't tall. I was a forward. I would wasn't, I just wasn't good enough. And so I gave it up. But I was good at softball. It was okay, good at basketball. I mean, I made the JV basketball team, but I wasn't disciplined. And because I wasn't, I was just very much an average athlete and didn't seem to have a huge interest in huge interest in sports at that time in my life. I mean, I'm one of eight kids, and I had four brothers who were playing sports, who might were, and a couple of my siblings who are really good athletes, and my dad poured time and energy into them because, you know, they're my dad worked full-time. My mom was a full-time stay-at-home mom with a big house and eight kids and two dogs, and and it was a lot, you know, and all that goes, gosh, all that went into taking care of that home. And I think if you didn't show talent, my mom and dad just didn't have the time to put into you. You know, they did take me to the camps. I got into carpools, the basketball camps, but you know, there was they saw talent in other people, and that energy went towards them. It wasn't going to be towards me. You know, and you got that message. You got that message of you just eh, uh-huh, you're average, you're middle of the road. So you got that message. So, you know, it was like, well, why should I put time and energy into me? You know, you you're one of two kids, and you're an only boy, and you like sports and you love basketball. And I think your dad loved your mom and dad love that you love sports. Sports was a wonderful divergence from the rest of everything that could be distracting you in life.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

So, you know, they could put that time and energy into you.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

And they loved sports and valued it, and so did you.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

So you had a lot of energy and effort put into you playing basketball. And so you go to camps in the summer, did you do all that after study?

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Every summer. Yeah. Yeah. All the way through high school. That's how it was. But I think so. There's going to be some family of origin for you in particular influence in this conversation, right? Because discipline. Your your push from a confidence point of view, which is what we're talking about early on, was not a push. It was a pull. Right. You were not being built up or encouraged, or you were you were looked at quickly. It's kind of like going to a mini camp, you know, in in whatever sport, and like there's a hundred athletes. Athletes there and they show up, and it's going to be quick assessment. It sounds like that's what it was with you. Quick assessment. Nope, you're going to the left. Everybody else is going to the right, right? It sounds like that.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

If you were talented and they they thought you had potential, you'd go to the left.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Everybody else went to the right. Well, probably didn't help when in seventh grade I scored a basketball. I scored a point for the opposing team because I shot the wrong net. And my dad was laughing. I heard the story. The one time my dad came, he was busy. He was going all he they did their best. I didn't I don't fault him for that. They would come to some of my games. My dad was laughing so hard at me scoring a point for the opposing team. I looked over, I saw him laughing. I saw him laughing. He was crying, laughing. And then I look over and he is like, now he's like lying down with his face on the bleachers. He's like lying on the bleachers, still laughing. It's more than five minutes later. The game continued on. And I'm like, stop, dad. Like now he's making a scene. He can't get over that. I just did that. He thought it was the funniest thing. And I get, you know, you know, or they call timeout and I go over to the bleachers. And my this is like all my this is like seventh or eighth grade, all my like best friends. My basketball team is like all my best friends. Like, Anna, your dad, your dad. He's crying laughing. And all my like, your dad, like, look at him. He almost fell off the because they're sitting on the bench. Like, we're watching your dad. He almost fell off the bleachers. I'm like, That's good. Okay. And like, oh my gosh, your dad. I'm like, Dad, stop. He thought that was a fun, he thought it was comedy hour. Anyway, so that was that. So it did. I mean, I thought it was funny too, but it certainly didn't build me up. It's like it was one fatal, my fatal flaw.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Do you have memories of that play?

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah, I do. I was so I thought I was badass because I stole the ball.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

So you stole it.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

It went running down the court. Yeah, and scored the basket.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Wait, you stole the ball for the opposing team. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yeah, I went the opposite direction.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

But if you okay, I we'd have to draw it up. I mean, it seems to me if you stole the ball. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

And did a layup. Yeah. And the other teams like, yay! It was terrible. But anyway, whatever. I mean, but what it taught I wasn't disciplined. And when I got to high school, you know, I quit basketball my sophomore year. It was exhausting. It was driving 45 minutes from my home to Washington, D.C., Georgetown, or went to high school next to visitation next to Georgetown University. It was 45 minutes in traffic one way. And then 45 minutes at night coming out in that DC traffic. Then I had all these hours of studying. Went to a really hard high school, hours and hours of studying. I was exhausted all the time. I lost a crap ton of weight because I never ate. It was just working out and practicing. It just, it was, it was a hard time in my life as a sophomore. I was going to be 15, turning 16. I quit basketball. In some ways, that really wasn't the best thing for me. Well, in a lot of ways, it wasn't the best thing for me because once I quit basketball, and the the the coach was really mad at me. I remember that. And she called me and wanted me to meet her. It was like over like Christmas vacation. And I was supposed to go down with the team, with my the team I was carpooling with to go and meet her. And I'm like, I quit. I'm not, I'm not trying, I'm not practicing today. I'm I'm not getting, I'm just wearing sweats. I'm not wearing shorts. I'm not wearing whatever, you know, I'm not wearing workout clothes or to to practice with the team. And I didn't go. And the whole team's like, she is so mad at you. She's so mad at you. Never saw her again, except where I went to games and I'd like to hang back because I didn't want her to see me. I would go and watch the games. She's so mad at me. She wanted me to follow through, and she was right. She was right.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

But I wasn't, I started to lose my dis. I started to lose my commitment and my care and my discipline. I didn't care anymore. So what happened though is that it's January. I get my license. I'm 16. I have a car to drive because my parents want me to start driving. My sister and I, whatever, for whatever reasons, we finally got a car. And that's what I really got into. My social life, my friends, underage drinking. We were people were drinking in high school. 16. And we are underage drinking. There are a lot of, you know, a lot of houses. Parents are gone the weekends, you know, had second homes, and we were partying. And that's what I got into. So I completely left the world of sport. And I think I partied more in high school than I did almost in college. By the time I got to my freshman year of college, I was wiped, I was tired. I was tired because it was some hard partying in high school. I mean, I had a great time. I had a lot of fun. And I love to laugh and I love to play pranks on people and jokes. And I have some great memories of my friends and all my guy friends. I had a ton of guy friends. And those were great memories. I would just wish there was more in there, but I completely let go of sport, almost like an uh effort to myself and an effort to sport because it was so, so hard for me for so many years because I was around people who were really, really good. So all this to say, I wasn't, I didn't have discipline. I just, I just completely it and I wasn't, I wasn't lazy. It was quite the opposite. But discipline was just something I decided to let go of. It wasn't part of my identity, you know. And I think that for me and for many of you, I was a lay bloomer. I bloomed late and I was also in many ways immature, but I think it was my attention deficit with us undiagnosed. So I had ADHD and I became more mature and serious later. Probably when I was 18, my senior year, I started to like calm down a little bit. I knew that I had a bad reputation with the teachers and the nuns. I went to all girl Catholic high school. A lot of the nuns love me, but and they were the best. That's the thing. People talk about like these nuns that they grew up with. That's never been my experience. I mean, I've had nuns since I was a first grade. My first grade teacher was a nun, Sister Noelle. My sixth grade teacher was Sister Teresa, the principal, sister Lucy. I mean, I nuns have been a wonderful, wonderful part of my life growing up. Appreciated who I was as an individual, my my personality, saw me for who I was, saw my uniqueness, and would talk about it. And we talked to me about like calming down because I was so hyper and always getting in trouble. But they really treated me well. The it was the it was the lay teachers in high school that really hated me because I had a bad reputation because I was always I was a prankster. I was using the elevator, the 200-year-old elevator that only the nuns could use, I would use it and put all my friends in it. I was always doing crazy stuff. I was always doing crazy stuff and getting into trouble. So I had a bad reputation. By my senior year, my second semester. So I wasn't disciplined. All that to say, by my second semester senior year, I started to kind of grow up and I started to realize that oh, these teachers don't like me. And they're all talking in the teachers, the teacher's lunchroom about what a pain in the ass Anna Marc-Aleen was. What a brat she was. She's a she's a I was a probably a paid for those teachers, right? Yeah. And then like the high school college years, I continued to party, wasn't working out, had no nothing resport, nothing, not even doing any fitness until probably my junior year. I had gained what gained a ton of weight my freshman sophomore year, the freshman 15, partying a lot, smoking a lot of weed, and then ordering pizza, Domino's at midnight, ordering from Milano's, my our yum malicious place at UD, University of Dayton, where we would order late-night potato skins, loaded potato skins, yum. And you know, you're coming from late at night when the bars are partying and eating a load of potato skins. How much longer can you do that? We came home, but so Maria, my sister, was a year behind me, sophomore year. She's a freshman. My dad came home and he goes, You girls, you girls are what do you say? Because you girls have the biggest butts or something like be quiet, dad.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Wasn't that a song?

SPEAKER_00 29:55

I don't know. The big butts.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

That was big butts was a uh sketch on SNL. And they do not deny or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Forget the big butts was a sketch in SNL. Yeah, yeah, they should bring that back. So, and I remember my mom's like, you girls have to go to diet because we'd gain so much weight. And then my junior year, I had I started I I just lost weight when I go home and have my mother's amazing Mediterranean Italian cooking that I just naturally lost weight. Wasn't working out though, still not doing any exercise. Yeah, and then I lost weight my junior year when I studied abroad in Italy and started to get into that lifestyle of all the walking and amazing food we ate, and then got on a rickety old tread, not treadmill, bike my junior year. I lived in an apartment with three of my sorority sisters and got on one of their one of their rickety old bikes and told myself I had to be on this five days a week for 30 minutes. And then I started to lose weight, but that was just to lose weight and to get fitter. In my senior year, I started taking step aerobics because that was all the rage. Step aerobics. My roommate, housemate, senior year, Lynette, was a aerobics instructor, and she'd make me go with her. I'd be lying in bed sleeping. I mean, I studied, studied, studied. I was doing an internship. I worked in a 60-bed neonatal unit. That was a tough internship. My gosh. I worked a 60-bed neonatal unit. I was, I was good at what I did. I was really good. My boss, my supervisor, was like, Oh, you're gonna be working. She's like, I'm gonna take the day off. You got it, Anna. I was a I was 21 at 22 years old, and I was the social worker counselor in that 60 bed neonatal unit. We had a there was a helipad above the NICU. And I was so when I wasn't working, I was like usually lying in bed or studying. And she's like, get up, you're coming, you're coming, get up. And I've tell you, there's a lot to that. There's a lesson in that. And I often think about that. Someone's saying, get up, let's go, go, let's go. And I she got me going, and then I was hooked because I loved the class and and I loved that I was feeling better and I lost a little bit more weight, and I loved how I looked, and so I continued to go. And then I continued into it in my grad school years, but not not athlete, not sport, just taking step aerobics classes, didn't lift weights, didn't run. And it wasn't until after I had my first kid that my sisters are running a 10K together. My older sister had always been a runner, and they're running a 10K. And I was like, What do you mean you're running a 10K? Like, what is what's what's a what's a 10K? They're like 6.2 miles. I'm like, wait, you guys can run 6.2, you could run six miles, and Maria, who's a year younger than me, I'm like, wait, Maria could run six miles. I knew Carla could because she'd been running you know most of my life, but Maria can run six miles. And I was like, oh, well, if they could do it, I was a little envious because they were doing it together, they were training together, running this race together. I thought, well, they can do it, I can do it. So I was 27. I had no, I was after Marissa was born. I started running. And I tell people this. That's the first time really I got dialed in and had goals, and I was disciplined. I I started to develop a little bit myself my senior year when Lynette would make me get up and go with her to step aerobics. So I was just, I was disciplined. I was disciplined in going to step aerobics like three times a week. And then when I was in grad school and moved to Chicago, it was five times a week.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

Yeah, I would go.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

And that was I was disciplined about that-ish. Because if I didn't go, I didn't go. If I went, I went. I would try to go, but I wasn't crazy, you know, wasn't disciplined. I didn't think I was disciplined about it. It wasn't until my sisters were running together, I got a little envious, and I thought, I can't believe they can run six miles. That's when I started and I started doing the walk jog. I walked and jogged. I'd like, okay, and I just jog, jog to that next telephone pole, jog to that, now jog to that, now walk, now jog to that stop sign. That's how I started. Yeah. I was 27 years old, everybody. 27. You know, and I it just that's it. And all that to say, so what you see now, I mean, I'm 57. When I was 27, this started, so it was 30 years ago, but that's when I really started, and it started with running.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Trathlon didn't come for probably another six or seven years after that.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Oh, more than that, probably.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

No, I started 33, 31, 32. I started swimming.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

31, I started swimming, but not biking. So running and then swimming.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

And then biking came after that. So, so that's important, you know. I mean, and then at first you just I just wanted to, and then I would start up for 10Ks. I didn't do 5K's for some reason. We're at 10Ks because I wanted to run to 10K, like my sister's.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

And then I started running, and that was when you had to do, you had to like fill the form out, you had to print out the form. Remember, you I don't think you could do it online. This is 1997.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

There's no such thing back then.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah, you would print the form out and you take it with you, you'd find out the location of the race. And I was driving around Chicagoland by myself on Saturday and Sunday mornings and participating in 10Ks by myself. And would bring the form and there was no chip. There was no chip around your ankle then. It would just go do the race. It was like kind of some fun run, some were more competitive, but there was really no chip back then. And that's what really started it. And it became something I just wanted to finish. And then it became, and then it's like, oh, I want to get better. I want to get better at this. And then something changed inside of me. I mean, I wanted to get better as a runner. And I got tired. I wanted to start placing in my age group in running. And then I thought of all, and I would read in like in Runner's World, I'd read in like maybe women's fitness or what was it that women's magazines. There were women's fashion magazines. Oh, it was what was the fitness one that we would all read. Anyways, and I would that was about wanting to do a triathlon. I'd hear about I knew what it was. I I would like to do that. I'm interested in that. I think that that was something that's something I could do. I can bike. I grew up swimming when I was a little kid. I was swam on swim team. Yeah, I can do that. And then you and I met, and you really got into you were you were doing triathlons, and I didn't understand how you what was half Iron Man. Well, it's a half Iron Man. It wasn't an Olympic distance race. And then you helped me get into it.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

But that point I already had discipline. But it, but all that to say, you know, it it took years for me to get to the point of being disciplined. Years and years. And then, you know, you you just it's like slow, slow, slow, slow. And then I was running. And I'm like, I'd like to get better as a runner. I'd like to come into my age group. Then I started to do triathlons with you. Now I'm on my 30s. And for years I was fourth, fifth, sixth of my age group. For years I knew I was in the top 10%. But in larger groups, top 10% could be you came in 20th in your age group. I'm like, I want to see. And then I got curious, like, how good can I get? There's more in me here. There's more in me here. Okay, so I'll self-coach. Because money was an issue because I couldn't afford the coaches back then, right? You know, how fast could I go? How hard can I go? I don't think I was going hard enough. How hard could I go? Could I could I one day be on one of these podiums in a running race and then in a triathlon? Could I do it? Could I, could I qualify for bigger races? I wanted to find that out. So I kind of like caught the bug. And I think what's important is that when I was putting this all together, I am competitive. I'm a competitive person. I'm competitive at sport. I'm not really competitive in my profession. I'm not competitive as a therapist. I'm not competitive as a coach. I'm just not. I've always been competent at myself as a therapist and a coach. I've always been told I was good at it. Yeah. I've always called it known it. I mean, I have, and I'll chew my own horn. I think it's a God-given gift. I think I've been given this gift of understanding and asking the right questions. I think that, you know, and I know because my clients tell me, and my bosses, my supervisors, my colleagues who've seen me in action have said, you're really good at this. I know it. And so I never felt, and that's a good thing. I've never felt competitive. But when it comes to sport, yeah, I am competitive. I mean, I love training with people, but on race day, watch out. You know, I yeah, I'm the I we are competitors.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

You know, and and I think that, and I don't think that for any of us, that's anything to apologize for. Be a good, good competitor, be an excellent competitor. You know, it's nothing to apologize for. I mean, competition for me really at the end of the day was never about beating other people. It was about discovering my true calling. It was about discovering what else is in me. What else can I do? You know, what happens if I actually commit to this? If I actually commit, if I do it the right way.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

You know, and that's why I I I say this to to all the time on the podcast here. You know, what happens? What could you actually do if you commit? If you actually pay for coaching, so many people, and I get it, I do get it. For there's a certain subsect of the population that truly can't pay for coaching. And you can't pay for coaching with me because money is, you're in a season right now, money is tight. But most people are in a season where they can pay for coaching. They're just not, they're just not doing it. They don't want to give up their Starbucks, they don't want to give up their coffee runs, they don't want to give up their, you know, ordering Uber, not Uber, Grubhub and DoorDash. They don't want to give that up. They don't want to give up the shopping, they don't want to give up, they do, they don't. And and that I see this over and over and over.

SPEAKER_03 39:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Because, you know, most people could benefit from coaching and they're not paying for it. And that was that was me many, many years ago. And now it's it's the best investment in me when it came to sport, me being coached for my business, me getting life coaching. It has been the best investment, everybody. And that's why I'm sitting here today and why I am where I am because of the coaches in my life. So I finally decided I'm gonna pay for this. I have to pay for it because I had been so fast forward 10 years of self-coaching, and then I paid for it and I got better.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

And then I got really better. Yeah. Because I finally found the coach who was right for me, who was she's a badass, and she didn't put up with shit for me. And that's when I got really good.

SPEAKER_02 40:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

You know, so what happens if I keep showing up for years instead of just months? And that question changed everything for me. I know you're boy, you have lots to say because there's so much you can contribute to.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

Can we go backwards a little bit? Can we go back? So let's let's start right after the last day after you quit basketball. That's what I want to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Okay, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Because we, I mean, the topic of this conversation basketball is your sport in high school and college. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Before triathlon. So that was so that was tip. That was you, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:45

You were a basketball player, yeah. But I want to talk about you.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

So we can talk about you too. Well, there's there's because you have a lot to say here, too.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

I think there's discipline and there's confidence, and I think that those things can interweave together, but they're very different things, right? They they are cousins, let's say, yeah, right. So you quit basketball, but I'm I and and you you pinned a lot of it on the discipline, and you just didn't want to do it, and you had other interests and all the because I was not that great, I was middle of the pack, I was on the bench, I was a bench warmer, yeah, and I got tired of it. So, what I want to hear is it is there a little bit of confidence in other parts of your life back in the uh we're talking about what late 70s, early 80s? Like, was there other things that you I'm not that old? That was 70s, it was 10, whatever, whatever the decade was. Like, I'm just trying to figure out like, is there something back then that you embraced or leaned into that you were very confident at that you you kind of like took with you along the way through the other decades that eventually surfaced itself when you were 35? Like, like the confidence, not the discipline, the confidence.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

Um I like I said, I think no, but I was willing, I I was aware, I've always been a risk taker and I was curious and willing to try. I was always willing to try. I mean, I grew up, I've been swimming swim team since I was six.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

I remember it doesn't even have to be athletics.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Yeah, I mean, I but but I that had that has helped, yeah, because I got basically thrown into swim team at six years old because I think my mom wanted me to be in swim team because and Maria, yeah, I think Paula was home with her because Paula was the littlest. I think she probably wanted the kids in swim team from 3:30 to 5 30 every day in the summer because you know, she needed someone to be with us kids. So we were thrown in literally thrown in the pool. Yeah, and we were at the end, I couldn't swim 25 yards.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Well, it's also a good life skill. Well, and I was I'd swim, swim, swim.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

I took like swimming lessons and then I'd swim and I have to holding on. I remember holding on to the side of the pool, catching my breath and like going again. I probably did that six or seven times before I got 25 yards.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

At six years old. I mean, I remember that. I remember hating it. Yeah, hating it as a six-year-old little girl. But guess what? I learned how to swim 25 yards. It didn't have to hold on the side of the pool anymore.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

I think that's what I want to hear.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Is it moments of confidence that the kind of shape and the six and seven-year-old, and then my mom signed us up for the swim clinics at 6 a.m. Yeah, but the coach was really cute. Our swim coach was teaching these clinics, Eric. He was so cute. And I think he drove, is he the one who drove? Somebody drove a yellow convertible Corvette, which was the coolest thing ever because I had Barbie's Maria had Barbie's pink Corvette. I thought it was the coolest thing. And then the other coach, Connie, somebody had like a Rubicon, a Jeep Rubicon. They were like the coolest coaches with their Jeep Rubicon and their yellow convertible Corvette in the parking lot. And I was, we were just, we had crushes on them as well as crushes on all the lifeguards. This is the 70s. Remember the 70s with the hair, the guy, the boys were all so cute. I'm a little girl. I'm like, oh my gosh, they're heels. And the cool music they'd be playing, the Eagles, they play the Eagle, I mean, it was the like the best memories of summer in the 70s. But I learned how to swim, and that so that's why fast forward to what my early 30s, I knew I could swim. So what's your question again? But that that doesn't play a part of the city.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

I'm just trying to have you go there with like, did you have other things in your life that you were confident in? I was confident in in like, were you a great drinker of perhaps blue ribbon back in the day? Were you I was confident of high school? I was confident in my ability to something.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Yeah, I was confident in my ability to party. I was confident in my ability to have a ton of I always had a ton of friends. Yeah. Girlfriends and guy friends. I always had a ton of friends. So you were confident. My best friends were guys. Yeah. Yeah. I was very confident in my personality. Yeah. So I have I have a outgoing, fun, funny personality. Yeah. And I like people like to be around me, and I like to be around people.

SPEAKER_02 44:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

And I can talk paint off the wall. I can talk to a doorknob. I can talk to anyone. Okay. I'm good at that. Okay. And I had confidence in that personality. I let go of all sport because the difference I wasn't disciplined.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Okay. And that's a different podcast. When we're talking about confidence today. So that's why I'm trying to get you to go there with the confidence. Like, like, okay, there were moments of being confident in your early teens, mid-teens, early twenties, like in different things other than sports. Yeah. Right. And that stuff stayed inside of you. Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

I was confident in my personality. I wasn't really, I was confident. I wasn't real confident in me academically. I was an average student.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

I didn't care. I got to the point where I didn't care about it.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

I was really just confident in having fun.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

Yeah. Really. And and maybe, maybe what we're we're hearing from you is that there wasn't a lot of confidence back then, right? Maybe maybe that didn't show itself until later in life.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

And grade school sport was pretty fun. It was just about camaraderie and friendship and laughter. Yeah. And learning how to be a part of a team. Yeah. That that's what sixth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade taught me. I love softball. I love basketball. It it you learned how to be a part of a team. It's very different than individual sports, swimming, triathlon, running is very me, me, me, I, I, I. Yeah. You all know this. You know, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, that's a you are part of a team. You know, there's no I in the word team. It's all about team, football.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

You you all know this, right?

SPEAKER_01 46:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Can I learn that?

SPEAKER_01 46:31

Yeah. Let me give you an example of what I'm trying to get you to say. So I know you're my background is basketball, right? Okay. But and I was confident in myself and all of this stuff. But if I take myself out of basketball, you know, as a third grader, fifth grader, seventh grader, like there were so many other things that I experienced that I started to understand what it meant to be confident in myself, right? Learning how to water ski as a little kid, like when you fall and fall and fall, like that. I think the confidence that I was like learning to learn was like keep trying. Yes, right, try again, get thrown on the horse, literally get back to the point like that. Where it's like, all right, now you got it. Now you can do it. You can get you can get yourself pulled out of the water, right? So that's that's becoming confident in yourself, learning how to, as a as a like, I mean, barely in middle school, how to drive a boat, like how to drive, like you're right, like like no idea. Like, and you were like scared, and like I was like, oh my gosh, like and my parents are like, take the boat out into the river, which that would never happen in this. But learning how to like, how do you drive an outboard motor? Like, how do you turn it on? How do you start it? How do you like steer with that? Because it's backwards, right? Right. Like just being able to be confident, like, all right, I'm gonna like really work at like understanding this and like how to do it, and then eventually, like, okay, I'm really confident. Like, I could take, let's go, I put my dogs in the boat.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

Well, I was I was good at gymnastics. I didn't mean there's a lot of I was really good at gymnastics when I was seven, eight, nine, ten. I love gymnastics. That's probably I mean, there's a lot of things I wanted to pursue. Yeah, I think truly my parents are just too busy with all of us kids, and they just couldn't, they couldn't put into this is large family dynamics. Yeah, they couldn't really put the energy into one kid in one kid's sport and one kid's habit or the or that they wanted to get into a hobby that they wanted to get into unless you probably showed some true talent. They just didn't have the time or the energy to do it. And I don't blame them. I get it, you know. I mean, yeah, I was confident as a gymnast. You know, I I became confident as a swimmer, I was confident. So that did help. I knew I was coordinated. I must have heard that. I knew I was coordinated, I knew I had sport in me, and I knew I was athletic. I'd been told that. I've been told I was coordinated. Yeah, but I let it go because I just wasn't that I was average.

SPEAKER_02 48:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Okay, so I want to get into a little bit of research because we got a lot more to talk about. So, number one, I think it's important for you all to know I wasn't born disciplined. I mean, I wasn't. You just heard all the things I was good at. It's I wasn't disciplined.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

I don't think a lot of people are.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

I don't think a lot of people are, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

So psychologist Angela Duckworth, who wrote the book Grit, which I have here, it's a great book. You all should read it. Her research, she's done, she's a researcher, she's a psychologist, and she did a bunch of research on grit. Her research on grit has shown that long-term compass compassion, Sonia, I just said that. Long-term passion combined with sustained effort predicts success and demanding pursuits better than talent alone. So basically, she's saying that what is grid? Grit is your long-term passion that you have for something with sustained effort that predicts how successful you'll be in a demanding pursuit, rather than just talent. So it's not just talent that's going to get you far. And thank God because I didn't have it.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:48

Talent does matter for many, many people, right? But consistency matters more.

SPEAKER_02 49:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:53

And this is why this book, I love it, and it's been so important for me to know because I did not have the big T talent, like many people that I ended up surrounding myself with in the running world and in the in the triathlon world had. I didn't have that. I had hard work, and I had developed discipline and consistency.

SPEAKER_03 50:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:11

So looking back, you know, trathlon wasn't revealing discipline, it was it was building it for me. So I didn't have it. Trathlon built it for me. Okay, so next that the first one was a discipline. Second lesson in this episode today is your feelings are not reliable. And I had to learn this a hard way. And it took me a lot of my life to learn this. One of the first things that endurance sport teaches you is this, and you know this, Tim. Your feelings are terrible predictors of performance. It's don't don't rely on your feelings, right? Some mornings I used to wake up, you know, excited to train. So many mornings I wanted to stay in bed. So many mornings I did not want to get up and go to the pool or go for a run. You know, so and so many of us feel this way, are listening to this right now, going, yep, that's me. You know, you get your wetsuit on, you're like, you know, dilly dal, you're dithering, like, you know, like looking at the beach, looking at the waves, or you're looking at the lake, or you're like in the indoor pool and you're like fixing your goggles for the tenth time, and you dip your toe in the water because we're not excited to be there. It's we it's hard. We don't really want to do it.

SPEAKER_02 51:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 51:26

And guess what? Neither feeling feelings predicted whether I'd have a good workout or a good race that day. How I felt did not predict it.

SPEAKER_02 51:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

Some of the best rides that I have had have started with zero motivation, whether they be alone or with a group. Some of the best rides started out in the rain, freezing cold, in the back of the pack, you with all the guys, and me back there, like hating life. Like hating life. Like I specifically remember that one ride we went on. Sometimes we we take our bikes, we start summer out more rural in the suburbs here in Chicago. So we could be out on the farm on the country roads. This one started here at our house, and it was pouring down rain, it was freezing cold. I had a jacket on, it was still cold, and you're like talking away. You're probably in a Jay. Jay was such a strong biker, and I'm like behind you guys, and I'm like swearing under my breath, hating life, and everything in me wanted to turn around. And I just I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be with you guys. You're faster than me. I knew you would drop me, although I've been dropped many times on rides with with men, with my team, with Zoot. I'd get dropped. You know how many times I can't tell you everyone, more times I didn't want to be there than I did. But then those ended up being great rides because if some would come out, stop raining, some would come out and it'd be a two or three hour ride. And I would find my mojo and I'd get into it and it would be fine.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:51

You know, but it didn't start out that way.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

We don't we listen a little too much, or maybe we get too much credit to our feelings.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:59

Right?

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Like our feelings, like but it's because feelings are strong though. Well, they are feelings are strong. I mean, but some of the worst days started with I'm not motivated, I don't feel like doing this.

SPEAKER_01 53:09

I don't want to feel cold, I feel tired.

SPEAKER_00 53:12

I feel like I'm in a bad mood. I feel like I'm in a bad mood and I want to turn around and go home and get back in bed, have a nice cup of coffee, and I'll go to the gym later. Yeah. And I, but part of me is like, Anna, you are not doing that. Yeah, part of it maybe was ego. There's no way it was ego. That's the healthy side of ego, really. Real. I'm like, I'm not gonna let them say Anna left. Hell no, I'm not doing that. You know, so I was, you know, I I am stubborn in that way, right? You know, but that's also just true in life, right? I mean, people tell me all the time, I don't feel ready, you know, I don't feel confident, I'm not motivated. Yeah, I'm not motivated, you know. But here's the problem if you only act when you feel like it, your emotions become your boss, right? And you know this as well as I do.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Well, yeah, and also the opposite, if you act on the feelings that are negative, right? Right? If I feel cold, my as I'm sitting on the edge of the pool and I'm telling you this and I think it and right, and I'm sharing and I'm saying it out loud, like that's a negative feeling, it's a negative energy. And then you allow that to drive your decision, your next move, right? It's okay to feel cold. It's okay to be like even say it out loud. Like, I'm cold, this water's freezing.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

But but confidence, you know, from your athletes, move forward, you know from your swim athletes. Confidence doesn't grow when they feel ready. Their confidence grows because they did something scary that's hard for them, they didn't really feel ready, and they did it anyway.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

And there you see their confidence just shoots up.

SPEAKER_01 54:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

Think about all the little kids you're teaching how to swim right now. Well, and their confidence, it's the coolest thing for me to hear the stories and to see.

SPEAKER_01 54:52

Yeah, but it but so you and I see it from opposite sides. You see it from the one being coached, I see it from the one coaching, right? And so everything that I think about, everything that I do is is all based off of helping people with their confidence, right? You don't have to be confident, the less You don't have to start off with confidence, you don't have to start off with confidence, but like you might never be fast at something, right? But I'm more interested in you being confident in attempting to do it, and then eventually being able to do it because you're confident you can do it. Yeah, right. Yeah, I think that's a whole different conversation than then becoming than so being so interested in performance and podiums and all of that stuff. That's all wonderful, and that's all it all happens all the time. And I think there's also a whole underworld, but it's probably bigger. It's like the base of the the pyramid where it's like trying to understand conf how to become confident in something by trusting yourself. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, and that's all mental stuff. That's and you know this, it's all mental. You're just building yourself, you're talking yourself into it, right? There's probably a lot of failure, right? There's a lot more failure than success because you're not really confident until you succeed, until you and your version of success is a different version than winning a race.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

It's so let's get into the research a little bit on that. A 2023 study, American Psychological, the APA, American Psychological Association did this summary of behavioral research, which reinforced a core principle that we use in therapy all the time. And I use in coaching, and every coach I know uses this. Action precedes motivation, right? Sure. That's why we don't care about your motivation. I'm not interested in your motivation if you're how motivated you are. Don't really care. Yeah, I do, but I don't. You know, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I care that you take action, right? Changing behavior can change emotion. Say it again. Changing behavior can change emotion, it's not the other way around. That's cognitive behavioral therapy in real life. That's why I use it with my therapy clients as well as my coaching clients. And a lot of people do. They're just not saying it. I'm calling out what it is. Many people, many coaches are using cognitive behavioral therapy. That's what it is. It's the gold standard in therapy, and it works in coaching because it's true. It's true. Yeah, change your behavior. I say this all the time, everybody. You know this. If you've been listening to me, change your behavior, drag the feelings like your baby blanket. Change your behavior, drag the feelings behind you. You'll they'll come at some point, you'll feel good, but you gotta change that behavior first.

SPEAKER_01 57:30

Yeah. And I I don't think that I'd love to hear your take on this one. Like, I don't think I can coach somebody to become confident, right?

SPEAKER_00 57:40

They they have to start taking action, right? And they will get it on their own.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 57:45

That's the gift of a coach, is you coach them up to change behavior and to take action.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Okay. So we have been talking for an hour and we got more to talk about because this is a big episode. Next lesson I'm gonna share with all of you. But before we get into that, if you are interested in being coached by me, reach out to me. Hello at Anamarcalini.com. Get on my calendar for Discovery Call. Let's talk, let's meet and see if I'm a fit for you, if this would work. Okay. But this is uh a lot of people reaching out for coaching, and it's been really wonderful, really, really wonderful to meet all of you, you listeners and you watchers on YouTube from around the world. It's it's it's really been quite wonderful. And thank you to all of you who are rating and reviewing the podcast. It really, really does make a difference. If there's anything that you could do as a give back, if you've appreciated anything we've talked about today or any of the episodes that we've been dropping weekly since 2020, really, please, please, please rate, you know, take a minute and press that five-star button on whatever platform you're on. We do need more reviews on Spotify. So if you're on Spotify, especially to you all, we don't have many reviews on Spotify. So that will be a wonderful give back and I would so appreciate it. Okay. And reach out to me. I would love to know who you all are, even more. It's I read all these emails. I mean, we I read every single one of them. They get forwarded to me, I read them. Okay. So I I really love getting to know all of you and where you're at in your heads and in your hearts and what you're dealing with. Okay. And as always, take a minute. I will do an episode. You know, if you have something, you know, that you want me to talk about, I'll do an episode on it. If it's something I think that, you know, you you've got to think to yourself, like, I cannot be the only one who's going through this. We'll talk about it. Okay. All right. So, and you know, once again, you know where to find me. Anna Mark Aline is my website, and you there's lots and lots of ways you can reach me. So let's get on discovery call together. And if you're in Illinois, I can be your therapist. All right. So the next lesson, the third lesson, nothing ever goes according to plan. Plan on that. Plan on that. Nothing ever goes according to plan. I've never had a perfect race. I've maybe had a near-perfect race, but I've never had a perfect race. Not one race has been perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:02

You know, I've had swims where my goggles have leaked. I've had swims in races where my goggles got kicked off my face. Thank God I didn't get my face smashed in. Yeah. I've, you know, had bike rides where the winds, well, the winds, Tim, here in Chicago. So we don't have hills here in flat Illinois, but we got wind. And, you know, our the wind here makes up for our lack of being in the mountains or on hills. You know, with I've had rides where that wind felt relentless, and we were, I was like seriously paddling eight or 10 miles an hour, like hating life. You know, runs where I questioned, like, why did I sign up for this freaking 5k? Why?

unknown 1:00:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

You know, you know, you've I've had days like that. Sure. You know, I was I'm more of a complainer than you are. You don't really I don't think I've ever heard you complain out loud. You just kind of suck it up. I'm the whiner and I whine to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

You do. You have a lot to say about the conditions of a day, of a morning, a lot, a lot of assessment.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

A lot of assessment, that's my anxiety, that's my performance anxiety coming in.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:07

I mean, that's why there's lots of people in the world. Well, we have to all offset each other.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:11

Well, you notice that in the latter years I've done it less and less because I I've learned and I've really learned how to manage my mind around sport because I truly have anxiety around performance.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:21

Sure. Can I give you a real life coaching moment from yesterday? Sure. To help to to assist somebody to becoming confident. I didn't do it to make them confident. I'm I'm trying to assist them to become confident. So I had all my swimmers and we're doing hundred a yard repeats of freestyle. Yeah. And we're in a pool that's 12 feet deep, just decently deep, right? And so, and we were doing jump in starts. So it's not like we were in the wall water.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

Probably doing jump, are they swimmers or triathletes?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:52

Triathles, they're all triathlete.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

So tri athletes, they jump in when Tim is coaching swimmers, like people who are try to make swim team or developing their stroke, or people who are like swimmers, they dive in because they dive off the boards. Whatever you call them.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

The diving platforms.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

The platforms. Yeah, they dive. Triathles don't need to dive because that's not how we do it in real life. They'll just jump in.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:15

They'll jump in, or half the time you're running in, right? Like easier just are anyway. So the the drill on this one was you need to jump in, not have your goggles fall off. So jump in properly, not have your goggles fall off. You can't push off the wall, swim your hundred, get done, come back to the walls, get up out of the pool again and be ready for the next one.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:32

Well, that's a cardio.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:33

It's a good cardio workout. So that that was like part of it. And then the curveball, though, is like on the third one, they all came out onto the deck, and then we're getting ready to go. And they're all like, I need to join this group.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:46

I need to cover some of them. I want some of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:48

They're all fidgeting with their swim caps and their goggles. And I'm like, all right, I go, Hey, give me your goggles. So take the goggles and I threw them out into the water like six, seven, eight feet out. So now they're goggle less. So now the exercise is you gotta jump in, you're treading water in 12 feet of water, you gotta find your goggles and you gotta put them on, and then you gotta swim. Yep. And that's real.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

Yeah, that's real. Not some of throwing your goggles, but them coming off right and getting water just that's real.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:15

The skill of being able to understand that it's possible to do right and you're good with that it that it could happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

You can do this, yeah. You can do this, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:23

And so for all like three out of the four swimmers, they had goggles that floated. Did someone sink somebody? My poor little high school swimmer, her goggles went straight down to the bottom, 12 feet of water. Everybody else like grabs their goggles, they're putting them on, she's like looking around. I'm like, hey, I think they're down there by the drain. You got to go down there and get them. She's like, down to the bottom.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:44

You know, it's funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:45

I remind she eventually she ended up getting a little assistance, but she did try and go and get them.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

There have been times in trathlons that both of us have been in, where it has been a mosh pit, and it was back probably back in the earlier years when the waves were mixed, or they'd have the women go, and then I'd have like the next wave of men 30 to 34, 35 to 39. There's they are beasts, beasts, and the next wave behind you. And you knew that they were gonna, they will swim over top of you. Yeah, they don't wait, they're racing. So you're like, you're going, you're going, you're going hard. But there are times when I've gotten pushed under the water. I remember being in that lake up in Wisconsin and looking up and seeing all the bodies above me. Like, thank God I taking a breath. I mean, and I never was worried I was gonna catch run out of breath, but I remember seeing bodies above me. But those guys will literally swim over top of you. Yeah, so all those that you teach these triathletes and these groups of people in Lake Michigan or you know, in pools is really important if they're gonna do triathlons because they gotta learn how to be gritty. There you go. Well, that's where you're teaching them grit. And we talk about being gritty all the time in sport. You've got to be gritty.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:59

And not to panic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:00

Yep. Yeah. Yep. You know, there was a race when I was doing, I was thinking about this too when I was doing the national championship in Cleveland a few years back. And it's the only time I've never been a decent swimmer. I'm not a great swimmer, I'm not a bad, I'm a decent swimmer. I'm I'm pretty decent. I'm never, you know, I'm middle of the pack with swimming. And that's how I've always race. I just come in middle of the pack or towards the front. Uh, you don't need to, you don't need to win the win the swim. You need to do well at the bike, and you really gotta do well on the run. But you you can be an okay swimmer, and that's me. I remember in Cleveland, we were swimming, but and that's Lake Ontario. No, Lake Erie, Lake Erie. I think it's amazing. And the chop was so bad that day.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:42

And there's so much we could talk about triathlon. It was a the two to three hour wait for your wave to grow because it's a national championship, and my wave is like way, way, way back. Your adrenaline is like kind of low key surging, down, up, down, up. It's it's really hard to to raise these races. Is where you have a two or three hour wait before your wave goes off. A wave is a group of people in your age group. You all go together. And then I was saying how 20 years ago it was, you know, you'd have men and women, and the men would plow over the women. Now they've done it, it's very separate where the men usually go first. All the men's age groups go, and then all the women's age groups will go. So you don't have to deal with that, which is a good thing because it's a safety issue.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:22

Smart.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:23

But I was in Cleveland going out in Lake Erie, and that chop was so bad that day. And that was the only time in my life where I was scared.

unknown 1:06:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:36

Because the chop was so high I couldn't see over the waves. I couldn't see. I couldn't see the lifeguard in the kayak. I couldn't see anybody. I was completely alone out there. And it was, I started to panic. And I told myself, stop it. And this is the good. I'm like, stop it, stop it, don't panic. And I got on my back. I had a wetsuit on. And I've never in since then or it's after that, ever done this. I and I know to do this though. I got on my back and just started to like to tread tread water on my back and try to keep my catch my breath.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:11

And went and turned around and slowly started swimming, waiting for the wave to come down, the the the undulations of the of the waves. And then the when it came down, look for the kayak. When it came down, look for the buoy. The the big freaking the triangle buoys and triathlon. Look, they come down, look for the buoy, swim towards that. And I and I when I get nervous, I get on my back again. And I didn't do well in that in that national race because of my swim was so so slow. I it was one time I'm like, yeah, I just want to live. I just I don't want to drown here. Or didn't someone because I don't I don't, yeah, I was gonna say it, but you're gonna I was gonna say it, but you said it. Yeah. Sorry. Someone, a woman did drown in that race. Yeah, it scared me. It scared me, and I thought it scared me. Yeah, it was the only time in a race. So what do you do? That's what I did. You get on your back, I talk to myself. I knew that the worst thing I could do is panic, because panic was gonna get my amygdala firing, and I you're not using your right, your right, you're not in your right head. So that's the one time.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:09

Okay. So people don't really drown in in drown in triathlon. So I don't want to scare people because they don't. It does happen. It does happen. But that's why your training for swim is so, so important. You can get I just knocked my glasses over. Okay. So confidence is not built because everything goes according to plan. Now you've heard that, right? It's built because you learn how to adapt what it doesn't. I just gave the example of me starting what I did in Cleveland when I got on my back. That's really, really important. You know, that's how you develop confidence. You you're putting in the reps and you're you remember your training. And that's important too. Remember your training. Remember what you did to get here. And I had to remember that in that race. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:53

And I think that's when confidence and discipline or dedication, whatever you want to call it, that's when they start to get a little closer to each other, right? You need to become disciplined in mastering a skill.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:07

I do think discipline now discipline comes in because you have to put in the training. I I I think if you're don't phone it in. Don't phone it in.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:17

Don't be half-ass about it. Don't try not to blow off workouts. You know, I I've said this before here. It's one thing if your kids are sick or you're up all night or you're sick. That's different. We're not talking about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:27

But you know, I we did a whole episode on reasons versus excuses. A lot of people give excuses. 80, 90% are excuses, 10% have reasons.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:37

Right. And you may have legit reasons every now and then, but but yeah, do the work.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:41

I I just think it's hard to eventually become confident in something if you don't have the discipline and dedication to give effort and try again and keep tr keep pushing forward, right? That's I think where those two worlds start to kind of line up, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:57

Yeah. I remember, I've say, I remember this one race we did years ago, and it was that same race, but I think it was it was up in Lake Andrea. And you, your wave, this is back, this is way back because you went ahead of me, and you had a wetsuit on, and you guys had to run in. We had to run into this lake. It was a rocky beach, and it was like went down. It was like a descent. You had to run down the beach, rocky beach into the water. And I'll never forget watching you run into your when your wave, the gun went off, and your wave started. Yeah, you ran in and you lost your balance and you grabbed the zipper line that's the traffic in front of you to hold your own balance. I couldn't believe you did that. I mean, I was like, Tim, you pulled that guy back. You totally pulled that guy back. I'm pretty sure he lost his balance and flying back, and Tim went running past him. He held your balance.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:55

I'm pretty sure I unzipped his wetsuit.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:57

I just remember you grabbing that mom zipper as you were leaving your balance.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:00

It's unintentional.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:01

I know, but you grabbed a zipper to hold your own balance. He flipped back and you jump, you dove forward in the wall. I'm like, okay, guess that's how it's done. That's how it goes. Okay, so next lesson discomfort and danger are not the same thing. Really, really important. Okay. So the lesson, this lesson changed the way I practice therapy and the way I coach. Triathlon, it hurts. Running a marathon, running any race, balls the wall hurts. There's discomfort. There's fatigue, fatigue, fatigue throughout every part of your body. Yeah. Self-doubt comes in. Here comes the mind. Self-doubt. Sometimes fear comes in there too, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:44

But not all discomfort means to stop. Most discomfort does not mean to stop. Sometimes it means you're growing, you're stretching yourself, right? Sometimes it means you're simply doing something that's difficult for you in this moment. Now, sometimes pain does not stop. All right. There's a difference between discomfort and injury, right? So if you're feeling discomfort, that's turning into injury. If many of you who are runners, you know this, you count, you rate your, you rate your discomfort. If it starts, you know, it's it's a three. Can I run through this? You know, it's a four, starts to go up at a five. Let's say, like I know you and I have dealt with old injuries that rear their ugly heads from time to time. IT band, can you continue? Is the IT band pain, stay hip flexor pain, you know, gluteus, the glute mead, you know, a lot of traffics and and runners have this calf, knee pain. You can't run through knee pain. So knee pain for me is an automatic stop and you're walking. You know, but there's, you know, the chronic ones like IT band is is really common in runners. You know, can you will it stay? If the pain goes up, then you stop. That's pain. Okay. I'm not talking, that's not what this episode is about. That's that's common sense. Stop. You're gonna make yourself worse, right? I'm not talking about pain. The wisdom is learning, though, for the most part, when it comes to doing really hard things in your life, which is which, right? Emotionally, it is the same inside your brain, right? Many people avoid difficult conversations because they're uncomfortable. There's a discomfort here. So I'm gonna avoid this conversation. And whether you know it or you don't know it, you may make the situation worse, right? Not because you know that person's an unsafe person for you, but because you don't know how to sit with the discomfort of talking to somebody or calling somebody up and saying, hey, can we talk? There's something we need to talk. Can we talk? You know, that feels really uncomfortable to you. It's not painful, I will say, in general. It's just really an uncomfortable idea that you may have to do that or that you need to do that or you ought to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:46

And so it's like, I'm gonna take the easy way out. I'm just gonna not have a relationship with that person anymore. I'm gonna barely ever talk to them, right? So, what happens? People avoid setting boundaries, they avoid applying for jobs because they think they don't have the goods, they don't have it in them. I'm never gonna get this job. I don't have whatever it might be that we tell ourselves, people avoid starting businesses. And I see this all the time in coaching. People avoid, you know, they got knocked down by an employer or something that happened to them in a former job, somebody said something to them, somebody did legitimately do something to them that was awful. So they're they their confidence has been rocked. Yeah, and so they avoid, avoid, avoid, right? They, you know, they avoid having honest conversations, like I just said, maybe with their spouse that they need to have, and not because the situation or that person's dangerous, because they're uncomfortable. Yeah, it feels really hard and really scary to apply for this to make a pivot in my career, to make a shift. It feels really uncomfortable to have to talk to my sister-in-law that I kind of don't like, but I need to have this conversation, or my brother or my mom, you know, or my adult kid, yeah, or my best friend who's really making me mad right now because she's doing stuff that's making me mad, and I'm tired of it, but I'm afraid to talk to her because of this and this and this and this and this, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:17

One of the greatest emotional skills we can develop is asking yourselves, am I actually in danger? Or am I simply, and I know it might not seem simple for people, am I uncomfortable? Right? Yeah, those are very different questions. Are you actually in danger? No, you're not in danger. 95% of you are not in danger, you're uncomfortable. Okay. Yeah, those are very different, two very different things.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:41

Yeah. And I think that's why you and we'll use air quotes on this one. I think that's why you train hard, right? Whether it's physical or it's mental. Like I think I think you it's it's wise to take yourself beyond the comfort levels that you normally would have in training, whatever that means, and stretch yourself a little bit so that you've you can say, you know what, I've actually been here before. Like I've been uncomfortable before. Yeah. Right. And I've done this before. How many times have you said that?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:13

How many times have I said that? How many times have I been so, so, so, so nervous? So I mean, I you all know this if you've been listening. I I run anxious and I have spent my life dealing with my anxiety, yeah, my nervousness, especially around sport performance and speaking. Speaking is a number one anxiety the world over. Number one anxiety. And I have it, you know, and and I don't have it so much today because I have put in the reps, put in the reps, put in the reps over and over and over. When I'm about to give a talk, do I get nervous? Yeah, less so than I used to. But what do I do? I practice with myself. I practice in the mirror, I practice with you. You listen to it. I practice, I practice. That's why it's not it's hard for me to get up on stage in front of a microphone. I'm comfortable. I've been down at second city, I've done all the work, went through improv at second city, been in shows, down at second city, done stand-up. Have to get back to that, by the way. I do need to get back to doing some stand-up, but I've done it. Was it easy? No, it wasn't easy. It was so, so hard. I'm like pitting out, like sweating through my shirt, sweating through my clothes. You all would never see it, but I got lots of deodorant on any person because I'm sweating. I'm nervous, it's hard. And I still did it.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:27

Many of the people that I've been in ensembles with, they're all we're all nervous. Everyone's nervous. Oh, someone's doing push-ups in the corner, like other people like by themselves, going up, people going over their bits. Like we're all everyone's nervous. I've been in stand-up with people who that's what they do. That's what they do, and they are nervous. Yeah. Because on any, especially in stand-up, on any given night, you can bomb. And you could be a real great, really great stand-up comedian, and you can bomb and nobody in the audience. You're just, you know, I don't know, it's not their vibe. They're not in the mood and they don't think you're funny.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:00

And you're still up there. You what that's nerve-wracking. And they still continue to do it. It's the same with everything in life. And I think you all know this, but that's true. All right. So the next lesson: your brain lies when you're tired. Your brain lies to you when you're tired. Every insurance athlete knows this voice that rears its ugly freaking head when you're tired. So halfway through a long run, right, Tim, your brain starts negotiating. At least my brain starts negotiating. Halfway through a half Iron Man, because that was my distance. So that's 13.1 miles. Sometimes in an Olympic distance race, which is a 10K, if I'm really, really, really going hard, my brain will be like, you need to slow down. You can slow down. You know what? You should slow down. You're fine. Slow down a little bit. Just a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:55

Just that's that the devil on my shoulder, who is kind of, I think, a little bit of the angel, but it's the devil going, slow down, slow down. You know, you've done enough. Uh, you can quit. You know, you can quit. I've done that before swims in really difficult half ironmans, where usually it's the weather. If it's raining or the there's chop and we're in open water, not like a lake. We're usually in Lake Michigan or an ocean. My brain's going, You can you can just not start this race. DNS did not start, you know, or you can don't don't do it. I mean, I do, you know that I get so nervous before these swims. Right. So, so that's when you see me nervous. Remember, we were in Ohio at Sandusky at that, what's that big amusement park? Port Putin Bay, Putin Bay, Sandusky, Ohio. You all know outside of Cleveland, the really big it's like it's like great, our great America. We did a race there and they but they switched it from Lake Erie, once again, Cleveland area, back. We swam in the harbor, and that was so much better. But they said the water's 56 degrees, and I was so nervous. It wasn't 56 degrees. So I I could work myself up into an anxiety lather. My brain's like, you need to not do this today. You need to go back. But then the other part of my brain's like, but if you don't do it, you'll forever be mad at yourself. I have serious an angel and a devil on my shoulders when it comes to these races. You know, no one will know. That's something I tell myself. No, no, no one's ever gonna know, Anna. You could just slow down, or you could just not do the race, right? It's it's such a form of mental torture. Yeah. So I have been there. I don't think you don't go through it the way I do. I wish I had part of your brain. So here's what here's what fascinated me.

unknown 1:20:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:35

You know, sometimes my body, especially in the run part of a half hire man, it still had plenty left. You know, it was my mind sort of trying to conserve energy, you know. You know, as a therapist, I smiled, you know, when I realized this is exactly what we teach in in CBT and cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, and how I coach my clients. Thoughts are not facts, right? Thoughts are mental events. It's a mental event, right? Some thoughts do deserve your attention, some don't.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:05

You know, and Tirathlon has given me thousands and thousands of repetitions over the years in running races, of practicing that skill of not stopping when your mind goes, you can stop now, you can slow down. You know, that's why I think sport can and is such a powerful teacher. You know, being at mile eight of a half iron man and you've got five more to go, and you're just counting down next eight station, the eight stations are at the mile at the miles till nine, till ten, another mile till eleven.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:38

And you're going as hard as you can.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:41

And I'm telling my, I'm looking at my watch going, you have to keep this pace, you have to keep this pace. If you want to get on the podium, you have to keep this pace, or an Olympic distance where I can Olympic sprints, I don't really do sprints, but Olympics, I can gauge where the women on my age group are. We tend to know each other. I can gauge where they are, not so much the swim, but I can see where they are on the bike. If I've passed them, or I can just see if there's out and back. We've had we, you know, you pass each other.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:06

And I can see, Anna, you have to keep this pace up. You have to keep this pace up. She's, you know, if you want to have a nice lead on the run. Or the worst is when you're on a run and the person you're competing against because you want to get on that podium, is like behind you, and I know she's gaining. And I am in so much pain and I'm in mental agony because I want to slow down, but I have to keep this pace because they don't want her to catch me. The worst is when you hear the breathing coming up behind you, and it's like mental torture.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:36

And you're not really sure who it is, right? And you want to slow down. You don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:39

Well, you can look sometimes. I'll look back, but I don't want to look back because it's like I don't want her to see me looking back because then she'll see she's got an edge up. Oh, because Anna's, she's looking back, she wants to see where I am.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:51

So there's a whole mental part to this competition, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:54

So just keep looking forward and running forward and keeping this fast pace, and your body's going, stop, stop. That's hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:02

Well, I mean, the other negotiation that's going on too is like you you also in real time are knowing that there is potential that if you push too hard, you might crash and burn, and then it's all over. Yeah. Right? That is possible. That's a this so there is a you're you're negotiating with like, yeah, I need to continue to work hard and run fast or bike fast. And I also need to know that there is a line there somewhere where it's like I can't push beyond that because then 20 minutes from now, I'm gonna overheat. There you go. I'm gonna cramp, I'm gonna whatever it might be. So you're you've got this internal turmoil.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:42

There's always something that's going on inside your mind as a traffic that you're trying to gauge. You know, it's a hot day. I I can't keep I can't redline it right now. I've got right six more miles to go. I can't redline it. I can redline it maybe at mile 10 and do two miles of it or at 11. I can't do it now. And, you know, where I dropped a goo, I dropped one of my gels, or, you know, okay, shoot, there's no day of Gatorade. I don't drink Gatorade. That's not what I train with, although, you know, and so I would carry my own, because my sports dietitian didn't like Gatorade for me. So I would have my own liquids on me and maybe some liquid leaked out because I didn't get my bottle on right, or you know, something, or they ran out of ice at the aid stations on hot days. That's the worst. And they often would.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:26

And what are you gonna do? What do you get? Or they don't, and you're you're dying. You are dying, and you have ice. So you're putting ice in your bra. I'm putting ice in my baseball hat and getting and pour pouring water over your head. You're grabbing all those waters, pouring them over your head, putting ice in your baseball cap, ice in your groin, put ice down your running your shorts. So you have ice on your groin to keep yourself, you're trying to cool your core. Sure, you know, and just you're yeah, like knowing like when can I redline it? But your mind is so very active in many ways trying to get you to stop, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:58

It's trying to get you to stop and then so take a couple of steps back. I think that's why then we're going back into confidence again now, because now that's why you train so hard, and that's why you you kind of replicate these scenarios that could happen. You replicate that in training.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:15

And I think what happens in racing though, which doesn't really happen in training, is that you can be confident, but we we tend to play there's a line between confidence and self-doubt. And I think this happens a lot with people, is that, and this is why you why you have to train your mind. And this is why I work with people and training their mind, you know, with life. So in I I draw from sport and how I've been trained and how I've been coached and how how how how I have been counseled in sport is how I work with my coaching clients. Yeah, sometimes my therapy clients, but mostly my coaching clients is that remember, come the moment of the event, come maybe you have to have a hard conversation with a family member. Maybe you are the team leader, maybe you have to give a talk, or you have to, you have a pitch coming up and you have a big pitch coming up. You can you can be confident, but oftentimes when you're in the moment, a little bit of self-doubt creeps in, and you have to ride the line, you have to ride that that that place, that itchy, scratchy place inside of us between confidence and a little bit of self-doubt.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:21

Yeah. And I think what separates a coach from a good coach is the coach that tells you the why.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:28

I think that's a good coach to a great coach. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:32

I mean, whatever, but like I think that's where it separates. Like, like a coach, you've been coached by people that just say go harder, go faster, and that's the end of the statement. And it's it's the the great coach that will tell you, well, you need to do this because of this. Right. This is the reason why, or this is what's gonna, you're gonna get exposed to this hard stuff in the race next weekend or two months from now, or whatever it is, at mile 11. Yeah, and you're like, oh wow, I would have never put those two things together.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:05

I remember we were we were up in Wisconsin the day before, we were doing a half hour man. I was with there with our good friend, Jen. And she, I had done the race before, and I watched you do the race, or years that I didn't do it, you did it, and there was I think I did it the year before. And I so I knew that race, the run course. And the run course, it's like talk about like does a number on you mentally because they bring you at mile six, it's it's two out and backs at mile six, six and a half, they bring you literally down the finish line, and then they make you turn and go right back out. You go right back out for another six miles, and mentally that is hard for people because you're like you're tired and you're like, oh, they make you run down along the beach and you see the finish, huge finish sign, and you see all the people who are there with their waiting for a family member, their athlete to come in. And I we and I said, This is gonna be hard for you. I, you know, this is gonna be the hard part. Now let's go look at it. I want you to see this. Now, Mile, here you are. You're my six and a half. And I said, That's not for you. That that shoot, the finishing shoot is not for you. You you stay over here, you turn, you go right back out. You're doing another six. And the next, I think it was the next day we did the race. And she said, Anna, that helped me so much. You told me that. She goes, I remember I had it in my head. I had it in my head. You said, That shoot's not for you. That shoot's not for you. She goes, and I remember Jen. And she's like, I remember that. She goes, and it really helped me because I knew just don't even look over there, stay to the right, stay to the right, look to the right, turn the corner, go right back off for another six miles. Yeah. And it really did help her. Sure. So it is so much of it is mental, right? Yeah. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about self-doubt. Sports psychology research consistently shows that elite performers are not free from self-doubt. We most of us have some version, a little bit to a medium bit of self-doubt. They simply recover from unhelpful thoughts faster and return their attention to the task right in front of them. So like I was telling, like Jen's, like just stay to the right, keep your stay, keep your body to the right, stay in the right shoot, keep your eyes on the prize, which is your finish and it's not for another six and a half miles. Go stay to the right.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:13

You know, you go out and back, right? That's emotional regulation. That's emotional regulation. This is not positive thinking. It's learning to regulate your emotions because we do have self-doubt from the the elites and the professionals, they even have it from time to time. Now they are really, really training their minds. Today, most of them have sports performance coaches helping them. Yeah. And this is why it's so important. They train their mind. Okay. So the next lesson is for me, the medals were not the biggest reward at all. Don't get me wrong. Standing on the podium, that was my goal. Did it feel good? Hell yes, it felt good. I love it. Winning my age group, that felt even better. So coming in third or second was great. Coming in first of my age group, that's all I wanted. It that felt amazing. You know, seeing years of work, years, people, years, not weeks and months, years of work pay off was incredibly satisfying. I'm I'm proud of those moments, of course.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:17

But here's what surprised me the metal, the metal lasted a day. It really did. And you know, the half Iron Man's it lasted a few days, maybe a few weeks. You had bragging rights with your triathlon team. You're proud of yourself. You would tell people, people in our group would know, yeah, yeah, that would last a week, two weeks. And everybody forgot about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:37

At most. Yeah, at most. It might last three years ago.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:40

You know, maybe when I when I qualify for worlds, that that lasted. But but still, it goes, people go on through our lives. It's like, okay, aren't you doing a race next year? Some national competition. Like no one even remembers that, right? You know, it was a person that I became while chasing all this. That stayed, that has stayed, right? I became someone, you you know, you heard about me talking about my high school years, my college years, all my partying years. You know, I became someone who kept a promise to herself. Yeah, you know, someone who understands how to delay gratification, someone who knows that I can recover after disappointment. I've done the ugly crying after races when I had a terrible race, things didn't go according to plan, when I was unrealistic about how well I could do.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:29

Ugly crying, people staring at me. I've had that. I've had bitter, bitter disappointments, right? You know, and I learned to recover from that. You know, somebody who learned to not panic when things would go sideways. Swimming in Lake Erie in Cleveland, that went sideways. But I've had other times where my chain came off where things just happen. Like I got smacked in the head, you know, somebody like whatever, just things happen in races. Not everybody, most people are really great, other traites, but there are people who are jerks, you know, people who stole stole my water, stole my water bottles in transition. And you go running off the bike, running off the swim, you go to get your bike and your water bottles are gone because someone stole your nutrition. Now, what are you gonna do? Yeah, I mean, there are major disappointments and things that go on, you know, but you learn not to panic. You got this, okay. You got this. So, what are you gonna do? You're gonna roll with it. Those lessons have served me for far longer in my life than any trophy ever could. They've taught me how to sort of just really roll the punches, but it's it's taught me how to coach others.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:36

Sure. Right. I mean, I mean, there's nothing more fulfilling, I don't think, than like for a coach, anyway. It's like you get that, you get you know your athlete's going to race on that particular weekend, and like you're you're not there. You it's not always possible. You're you're at every race with every athlete that you coach, right? You don't go into life with the people that you coach either. You you turn them loose and off they go and they report back to you, but you get that text later in the day, right? And it's like that person's like, Oh, you know, they're all like really happy and they show you their medal, and it's like they didn't win anything, they just finished and they're like overjored, and you're like, you know what? That's what it's really all about.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:13

That's what it's all about. Yeah, it's setting personal goals for yourself and achieving them.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:17

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:17

It's saying, I want to do something, I'm curious, I want to see what my body can do. I want to see what my mind can do. I want to see if I can, you know, do this 5K, and then I want to see if I could do a 10K, you know, and then it's like, oh, I'd like to try my first triathlon. You have a lot of those people now. I wanna I did a triathlon 25 years ago, and now I'm 62, or I want to do this for my 60th or my 65th birthday, and I wanna I wanna go back to the Chicago triathlon, and I want to do that sprint again, and I want to see what I can do. Yeah, you know, I want and you know, I it just it's the personal stuff. And so the medals don't really matter at the end of the day. It's it's it's bragging rights, but it's more than bragging rights. It's you having that deep sense of contentment and peace inside of you about, hey, I did it. I tried something, I tried something that was hard for me, and I did it.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:04

Yeah, right. And then what do you do with that? Right? Like what what how do you take those lessons and then apply them in other aspects of your life, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:14

So, so in closing, why do I still think that those 20 plus years mattered of trathlon and you know, marathon running marathons? Because, you know, trathlon and and marathons didn't make me and didn't make you, I think, a better athlete. I think it made me a better therapist. I think it I know it made me a better coach. I know it from really a lifetime of being coach. I think it made me a better wife, mother, you know. I think it it it's taught us patience, it's taught us diligence, it's taught us discipline. It I know that these are the skills and the values. We've taught the skills, and we've also more importantly taught the values, handed them down to our children because you see that those are our family values, right? You know, I think it's I know it's made me a better leader, you know, not because I learned how to swim faster or to bike harder or bike faster or run longer or run faster, but because I learned how to stay steady when life, in this case, these races got uncomfortable and they are got uncomfortable. That's a guarantee. Life for all of us is going to get uncomfortable. You know, and I and here's what, you know, I hope that you all who are still listening in an hour and a half in, this is a long episode today, baby. You know, that you don't have to become a triathlete, you don't have to be a runner, you don't have to do anything extreme. But I do think that every one of us needs something in our lives that regularly asks of us, who are you becoming? Who are you becoming? Something that does require discipline, patience, resilience, and humility.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:57

You know, something that reminds you you're capable of more than you thought. You know, and that's the the number one thing. You have capacity more than you thought, more than I think you think. I tell my clients because confidence is not something you're born with. Most of us are not born with that. We're not born with discipline. It isn't something that you couldn't just buy. It's it's it isn't something someone else can give you. You can coach them up to, but you can't give your swimmers and your triathletes confidence. You can't give it to them, right? It's it's something you build, one promise, one difficult conversation, one workout, one setback, one ordinary boring day at a time. So if this episode resonated for any of you, I'd love it if you'd share with someone who needs to hear it. And they don't have to be an athlete.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:50

Not at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:50

Take the lessons from this episode and apply it to your life. Think about you. Think about what you're dealing with in your life. Maybe it's your personal life, maybe it's for your professional life. Take today's episode and apply it to you in your life, right? And if there's something in your life, maybe it's a sport, a hobby, a career, raising kids, maybe you're caring for aging parents, you know, that has taught you lessons far beyond the activity itself. We would love to hear about it. All right. Please, you know, reach out, let us know. You know, what have you learned? What, where have you gained confidence? Maybe it's got nothing to do with anything we're talking about today. I'd love to hear it. Okay. Thank you. If you're still here, or thanks for listening. We, you know, extend mad love to all of you and hope that this was this was helpful for you, for you in your life. See you next time.