The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

The Moment When Everything Starts With Sarah Peck

Sarah Peck is an writer/designer/entrepreneur whose life has been deeply influenced by swimming and writing. In this chat we discuss lessons she’s learned on her journey from college swim team member to writer and open water swimmer, whose swims have included braving the treacherous waters of San Francisco bay to make it to Alcatraz and back.

The “not good enough” narrative that we all deal with
Changing our narratives to serve us rather than sabotage us
Why we can’t be too hard on our egos
How learning not to stop can be life changing
Letting of the things we think we’re capable of for something better
Why it’s ok for things to be incredibly difficult
Trials and tribulations of Sarah’s college swimming experience
How open water swimming changed Sarah’s life
Why challenges, quitting, and obstacles reveal who we are
Leveraging incredible mental frameworks to overcome pain
Fighting through pain when you’re absolutely miserable
Why the worst of times reveals somebody’s true character
The correlation between happiness and hard work
Why pain is a signal from your body
Learning to recognize and leverage your areas of expertise
Why Sarah teaches writing as a mechanism to get access to your inner wisdom
The power of committing to the act of creating and doodling

Sarah Peck is a writer, open water swimmer, designer-entrepreneur and urban nerd who is on a mission is to find and capture insights from everyday, extraordinary living an share them with others.

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Duration:: 1h 13m
Broadcast on:: 17 Feb 2014
Audio Format:: other

As you probably noticed, this month we're bringing you our "Life of Purpose" series and revisiting some of our most transformative episodes, tune in to explore expert insights and practical strategies on help, performance, and community well-being, all aimed at helping you achieve personal and professional fulfillment. If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll not only get recaps of the key ideas in each interview, but at the end of the series, you'll receive our free "Life of Purpose" ebook. What you have to do is go to unmistakablecreative.com/lifepurpose. Don't be afraid to be miserable. I mean, it sucks, right? No one, like, diarrhea sucks, puking sucks, right? Like, I know these things. Like, when you're in the middle of them, you're like, "Oh, my God, this is never ending. I want to know, like, I'll trade anything to make this stop," like, being miserable sucks. But don't be afraid of it, right? 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My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com/results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com/results. Terms and conditions apply. Linked in, the place to be, to be. Forging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit at Chevron. We donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the communities we call home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer, all to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit Colorado dot chevron.com. Sarah, welcome to The Unmistakable Creative. Hey, Srini. Thanks so much for having me. It's really great to be here. Yeah, my pleasure. You've been a long requested guest by many of our listeners, and I've been following your work for quite some time. I remember sitting at a dinner with you several years ago when we met in San Francisco and I was like, "Wow, I've never seen somebody take so many notes in a moleskin." You're a writer in every sense of the word. I've always appreciated your voice as a writer. You're one of my favorite people to read, and I remember I would be, I'd look at yours and Amber's Instagram feeds and think, "If I had handwriting like that, I would post all my stuff for my moleskin, but my moleskin is full of chicken scratch, but that's a whole other story." So, Sarah, you've heard our show, so you know what? Let's get right into your story. I mean, how do you get to where you're at today? I mean, walk us through this journey of yours that leads to the work that you're doing today. Sure. Oh, wow. I love that you brought in the moleskin reference, too, because I'm actually right now in that gap between I finished one moleskin yesterday and my new ones are about to arrive tomorrow, and I'm totally flummoxed because I don't know what to do. I'm kind of in "Little Panic" mode, because I'm like, "What do I write on? How do I do this?" And you're so right. It's almost a crutch for me. I write down, I scribble things down all the time. It's like, I carry the common book, if you've heard of it around with me, just trying to take notes on everything and capture it. Okay, so you asked me a big question, though. He said, "What's my story? How did I get to where I am?" I don't really feel like I am anywhere. That might be a very zen kind of strange thing to say, but I've lived a pretty interesting life for the one that I've been given, and there have been so many ups and downs, and I see it all as a series of stories unfolding, and I try to share some of them. I'll go back a little bit of time, we can go back about a decade, maybe, maybe more. When I left home for the first time, I left when I was very young, and I started college, and I always had this idea that I was somehow left out or left behind or not good enough, and it's taken me a number of years to realize that that narrative is maybe something I'm just carrying in my mind, and not actually true of the world. I went to school, and I was swimming at the time, and I ended up going to one of the hardest training programs of my life. We did 10 practices a week, about six hours a day, college swimming, and I was a walk-on by many, in many senses of the word, and I almost quit a number of times, and over the course of four years, transformed my life and really ended up becoming this person who could use my body and swim fast and compete at the national level, and it included all sorts of things like falling down a flight of stairs, breaking my foot, dislocating my shoulder, every single trial and tribulation that happened within it was part of it. I left school, and I began, I started in the traditional corporate world, and I started a job, it was not right for me, and I knew it within two minutes of walking in the door and I ended up staying for almost five years, and it got worse and worse and worse because I wasn't able to move, and I had fallen in love with being able to use my body and be able to swim, and here I was, trapped in a job where I had to work 12 to 14 hours a day, sitting behind a desk, unable to move my body, and after about five years of working in this corporate world, I started to feel pain in the right side of my body, and my hand started to hurt a lot, and I ended up going home, and I was hanging out with my sister, and I was doing this thing, I was putting my hair up in a ponytail, and I said, "You know, my right arm looks kind of funny," and my sister said, "Yeah, you know, it does. It does. You've got more veins on one side than the other," and I happened to have the whitest of white skin, it's translucent, so you could see bloody blue veins popping out, so I called my grandpa, who's an MD, and I told him, I said, "You know, my arm kind of hurts," and he was like, "Oh, you know, you might have a little blood clot in your arm, you should head over to the hospital," and I ignored him because I had a deadline at work, and the next night, the tingling and the numbness in my hand didn't go away, so I ended up going into the emergency room to the urgent care center, and they discovered that I had a blood clot the size of a small sausage in the middle of my chest that was blocking all the blood into my arm. And I ended up in the hospital for a number of days, and they ended up cutting up in my chest and removing my top rib, and they said, "I remember when the doctor looked at me," and she said, "I just want to let you know that you might never be able to swim again." And I'd been okay, like very pragmatic, very type A in the hospital up until that point, and I just, I kind of lost it. My boyfriend at the time left, my mom left, I was alone in a hospital bed with dozens of IVs coming out of my arms and hands, and I just started crying because I realized how badly I wanted to use my body and how much I didn't like what I was doing, and it was a pretty terrible scenario to be in a eight-hour surgery undergoing this major blood clot in your chest. Maybe you'll live, maybe you won't kind of moment. And I realized that I didn't want to go, I didn't want to, I had to change, I had to do other things. And it took me a while to recover from that, I actually remember, it took me about six months to get back into yoga, and then it took me another year to be able to swim again, and once I did start to be able to swim again, I started doing these open-water swims. And I joined, I remember the night when I was, you know, not my best shining moment, it certainly turned out well, I was very drunk in a bar, and this guy asked me about swimming, and I told him very brazenly how good I was, I was just like, "I'm so great, I'm better than you," something really classy, I'm sure. And so he challenged me to join his relay team, and so he was what instigated me to do my first open-water adventure swim down in Santa Cruz. And I ended up doing this open-water swim, and starting to do these Alcatraz swims. And eventually, I mean, now I've now done the Alcatraz swim nine different times, and I've done these six and eight, nine-mile open-water swims, and I'm in New York, and I'm doing yoga teacher training, and I'm running my own business. It's just life-changing. Cool. All right, so there's a ton here, so I want to go back to the very beginning. You probably expect this by now, since you've heard some of my interviews. I think where I want to start is with this sort of narrative you're talking about, this sense that you've felt left out or displaced. I think, to be honest, everybody listening to this show feels that to some degree. I think that's largely what is often the instigator of creative endeavors for many people. And I'm really curious, one, if we have that narrative, how we change it, and if we don't change it, how we can turn it into something useful or meaningful or positive. Isn't that a good question? It's a really tricky one because every moment, right, there'll be a moment when I'm finishing up a yoga class with many of my friends and three people congregate in the corner, and I just have a twinge of, oh, they're doing something without me, or I feel a little bit left out, or this underlying current of loneliness or wondering whether or not I fit in. And I think, it's actually the topic of some of my research right now, but I wonder all the time about loneliness and about these voices in our head and this ego that's in our head, and trying to find the light side of the shadow side, because this is a shadow side of existence. And so what is the light? Why is this voice useful? What is it telling me? Where does it come from? And historically speaking, we need to trust one another because we need to survive. So we have a huge emphasis on, I need to know that I can go to sleep in our Neolithic era. I need to know that I can go to sleep and that people will keep me safe, and that somebody will find me food and you'll take care of my kids. So it's a survival mechanism for us to trust one another. So it's kind of embedded into our hardwiring. And then also, I think, and this is just something recently that I've been thinking about, I think your ego or your negative voice or whatever it is, sure, we're certainly working to untangle it. Like I'm constantly working towards peace, striving towards peace within myself and in this world. But it's that moment, that voice, that sometimes is the instigation. And my yoga teacher always tells me, she's like, don't be too hard on your ego because your ego is what got you here. It might have been that you saw as a poster and you wanted to look that fit and you wanted to look good and you wanted to feel good and your ego is actually what walks your butt through the door. She's like, you're a different person now that you've been here for a number of years, but your ego is actually what got you here or that twinge of loneliness or that. And so it's really interesting how these voices for whatever they're worth, good and bad, and sometimes still propel us towards what we're supposed to or meant to do or what turns out really well. It's interesting, I've never, I've never heard anybody describe ego that way. Is it, you know, I mean, I'm exceptionally hard on my ego, probably more than most people because I'm like the ego is the source of all of my worst problems, but I've never, never thought of it that way. But I mean, the truth is it's this battle with my ego that has led to so much of this work as well. Right. And so isn't it funny, like actually, when we're mean to our ego, we're just doing more of what our ego does to us, like we're being cruel to the part that's being cruel to us. So it's kind of a never ending cycle. And so for me, sometimes to short circuit that cycle, I try to just like like sprinkling salt or pepper on your eggs and like just add a little kindness, like, what's your ego saying? And sometimes if I just turn around and I'm like, dude, yo, like, what's up, like, are you okay? Like, what's going on? And I, and I give it a little bit of niceness. It's like, well, Sarah, we just don't want to like be left out. Okay, like we're just, we just, and then they kind of like get a little bit easier to deal with. And I don't know if you've ever read Michael Singer's untethered soul. Have you ever heard of that book? I've heard the name of the book, but I don't think I've read it. Well, he is hilarious in how he describes like the voices in the chatter in your head. And I am not like disentangled enough to sink deep into meditation unless I'm moving and like swimming. And I'm sure you know this really because of surfing. But, but I am aware of the voices. And so he just describes them so perfectly because they're like, they're like, you wouldn't invite them over for coffee. If you imagined you were having a brunch and you tried to invite like the four or five different voices that are in your head over to brunch, you wouldn't invite them. They're not nice people. Yeah, I would definitely have to agree with that. They're kind of a pain in the ass, right? But giving them that like light side, you know, everything has a shadow side. So what's the opposite of the shadow? It's light. And what's the light side of this ego? It's like, hmm. Like, are you useful? Okay. I'm not going to listen to everything you say, but I am going to treat you with a dose of kindness. Uh huh. So what's this? Let's let's talk about swing a little bit. I mean, I know swing is this huge part of your life. So there's no way I'm letting you out of this conversation without without without talking about this. I mean, I, but what I'm really interested in more than the swing itself is sort of, you know, your evolution as a swimmer. I mean, you go in as a walk on, then you go, you know, through all this hell, you know, to the point where you're competing nationally, and now you're doing open water swims. I mean, I remember, you know, reading about the Alcatraz stuff and thinking, I'm like, I've been in the San Francisco Bay. There's a way in hell I would put my foot in there without a wetsuit on. Right. So, you know, I, so I want to talk about sort of your journey through, you know, going, getting to where you're at as a swimmer. And then, you know, we'll talk about how that sort of evolved and affected every other part of your life as well. Sure. So, I could talk about swimming forever, and I try not to write about it too much, because I feel like I tire people of it, but it's one of my favorite things. Let's go way back. So, I remember when, when I was growing up, we were growing up in Palo Alto in California. But we were a family with four kids, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and my dad was a PhD graduate student. So, we had actually very little disposable income for the, however wealthy the town we lived in was. And so, we didn't really do too many, I don't know, fancy after-school activities. But we did get this membership. We did the AYSO Soccer, our local soccer league, and we got this membership to the local pool. And when we got old enough, my mom said we all had to learn how to swim. It was just a requirement. And when we got old enough, we were allowed to join the swim team. And my mom, I was so mad at her, she told me that swim practice was Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And so, I didn't put my cap on, and I put my little suit on, and I walked down to the pool on time, every, all three days. I was so excited. And then one day, on a Tuesday, I was like, "I want to go to the pool." And my mom was like, "Okay." And so, I went to the pool, and there everyone was practicing without me. And I was livid. I was like, "What? What is going on? Mom, why didn't you tell me?" And it turns out she didn't want to burn me out, because I have such a high rate of starting things and then not finishing them, at least when I was younger, it's still kind of true today. She didn't want me to get overwhelmed, so she told me that practices were only three days a week, and she wanted me to get used to it. Well, once I found out that they were five days a week, I went every single day. And that was my first introduction. And I started around age eight, and I went up until, through the end of high school, just doing the high school swim team and the local swim team. So, when you get to college, I mean, you go through an experience in which you overcome numerous obstacles, it sounds like. I'd love to hear a bit about that and kind of how that's informed everything else in your life. Yeah. Ooh, this is like a basket full of millions and millions of stories that I would love to tease apart. I don't know where to start. Let's see. I remember when I applied for college, I chose a bunch of different places that I wanted to apply. And then after I realized that I wouldn't get to swim anymore, I thought, well, maybe I should look at the schools I applied to and see which one have swimming programs. And there was a small school in Ohio that had the number one swim team in the nation. The previous year, they had won nationals, and I was like, whoa, well, that was one of my top choices, so I would love to go to this small liberal arts school and then also be able to swim. And we got in touch with the coaches, and I ended up doing a visit. And then I went to join the team, and it was such a radical shift because when I first started, or when I was in high school, we were swimming five days a week after school. And when I got to college, we swam 10 times a week with two sessions of weightlifting, two sessions of plyometrics as well in all of that practicing. And I got up at 529 every day, and we got to the pool, and we started our workout by 550 until 730 in the morning. And then after school every day, there was practices from about 220 until 430, and then another practice from 430 until 645, and you picked one of those. And then we also had a Saturday workout. And it was nuts. The first, maybe six months, when I was a freshman, when I was a first year walk on, I remember there were times when I tried to move my arms forward, and I couldn't, like my entire musculature collapsed. And I would try to get to the side of the wall, I could no longer lift my arms over my head, and the coach would come over, and coach was like six, seven, six, eight, this Italian man giant, and he would come over and just scoop his two hands under my shoulders and lift me out of the pool. And then he'd throw a bunch of bags of ice at me, and I'd sit there with ice on my shoulders, and sometimes I would just start crying, and I couldn't stop crying. And he came over, and he was like, kind of grabbing me by the chin once. And that might not have been actually true, but that's what I feel like. So I'm saying that as the lustre of storytelling, because he's a great guy. And he looked at me, and he was like, look, you have the potential to be great, but right now the only thing you need to do is not stop. He's like, I don't care if we do 600s, and you only get through 500. I don't care if you just don't stop, get in the slowest lane, you're going to be the slowest one in the pool, but if you could make it through this first semester, it might be life-changing. And I remember him saying that to me, and it was all I could do to just show up. And there were days when I got onto the pool deck, and my body hurt so badly, and it was about 130 to 133 pounds when I left high school and I went to college. And I lost weight when I first started, because I couldn't even eat enough to get enough calories to do all the workouts that were now required of me. And I remember there were times when I would just sit, and I would try not to let anyone see, but my goggles would fill with tears before I got on the pool because it was just so hard. I remember it still was just like, there's no other way to explain it than it's just really hard. And then there started to be some breakthroughs, maybe at about three months and about four months in, and things didn't hurt quite so much, and I was able to race and compete, and I was nowhere near my times that I was in high school, so I felt like a failure because I was going slower than what I thought I could do, and I just didn't see the window out. Like, how can you do this? Like, this isn't going to be possible. And things really started to shift, exactly as he said, about the end of December and the beginning of January of my first year, and I had muscles that I could use. And by the end of my first year, I weighed in at about 148, 150 pounds, so I put on 15 pounds of muscle in my first year. And when we did our final conference meet of the year, we do this thing called tapering, where we slow down our workouts and we start to rest our bodies for one of the first times. And we got up on the block, and I remember, I remember Coach telling me the week before, he just said, "I really want you not to think about what you've done before because that might hold you back. What you think you're capable of is going to be really important and just start to play with the idea that it could be way better than you expected." And when I got on the blocks and I started doing my swims, every single one of my times just like dropped, I dropped two seconds, which is a huge amount in the swimming world, especially for a sprinter. And I don't know if people are associated to know much about times, but I dropped like two seconds in my hundred event, and I dropped, over the course of four years, I dropped ten and a half seconds in my 200 events, and I became like, I made my first national cut in that first year, and I was just bewildered and surprised. And I was this lift, lean, just nimble bodied swimmer. And I had arrived as this kind of scrawny, pudgy, fleshy freshman. So I love it, and that's why I asked a question, because I knew there was going to be a lot where there. It's interesting, there are two themes that really stood out for me as you're telling the story. One is this idea of don't stop, and then the other is looking at thinking about the concept that of being capable of far more than you actually, historically, have shown to be capable of. And I guess what comes from me in terms of questions is, how do we take that, and how do we translate that into our lives and what we're doing? I mean, how do we bring that sort of resilience into what we do on a day-to-day basis and the way we live? It's really an interesting question, because I think for most corporate employees, and also for a lot of projects, they're very murky, and they're in this middle ground of mediocrity that's not very exciting. You're not very motivated by it, and there's no clarity around what you're doing or why you're doing it or where you're going. And so then you just end up in this muck that's kind of the same old, same old. And when you have more of a, I mean, this college swimming experience is all the recipes for a lot of success, which is do it with a group of people, put in the time, put in the hours, have mentors available, and then also, it's okay for it to be really, really challenging. Like, that's actually where some of the best of our stuff comes from. Like, when we crystalize greatness, it's not because we were just sitting around twiddling our thumbs. It's okay for it, and this is something I talk to my clients about too all the time. It's okay for it to be really, really hard. There should be, like, we sometimes, we have this collective fear of hard being bad. And those are two very different things. And I think just realizing like, first of all, you don't know how much you've got until you test it. And so just go for it. And if it's hard, and if you're crying, and if you're building something at the end of the day, and like, it takes you being up a lot of the time, or you have to do, you know, it might be worth it. And those kinds of experiences are far more satisfying than just being tired all the time and not knowing what you're doing and doing something for someone else that's not very clear to find. Like, those are two very different things. I don't know, there's so much more. That's the start of what I'm feeling, though. Do you ever want to quit? Oh, my God, all the time, I actually did. I, yeah, so much. And then other times not at all. And it's really, it peers into the depths of your soul and asks you, like, who are you? Is really what it does. The more you challenge yourself to grow, the more you find out who you are. My junior year, my parents know, my parents had finalized their divorce my freshman year, my junior year. Oh, God, it was a series of like, I don't know if anybody reads the Bible, but I felt like Joe was my book of the book of the year. But it just was Murphy's Law, what could go wrong would go wrong. And I got pneumonia and bronchitis and I dislocated my shoulder. I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my foot. I don't even remember everything, the trials to tell you the truth because it's been so long. But I just remember it was a year like none other. And I just kept picking myself back up and trying to keep going. And it was miserable. The moment I broke my foot was just horrible because we had, we had just finished the second to last meet of the year and we were going into nationals. And I was actually making chocolate chip cookies for all the people who didn't make it. And I was like, just trying to do this kindness for people. I was like, we love you, like we love you teammates, you guys did so great. And I was carrying two trays of cookie sheets like one on each hand and the kitchen in our dormitory was down a level. So I was carrying these two trays down and I totally bit it. And these cookie trays went like flying out of my hands and I fell down the flight of stairs and there was like cookie dough everywhere and like my foot just didn't feel good. And I ignored it. I went back upstairs, I hopped back upstairs. I was crying a little bit. I got the cookie dough. I got new cookie dough. I made more cookies. And I went back stairs and I was like, I should probably ice this. And so I grabbed a whole bag of ice from the ice bucket, threw it on my foot and finished making the cookies. And the next day I woke up, my foot was probably four times as big as it normally is and it had like purple stripes all over it. And it was February in Ohio. So there was ice all over the road and it was freezing. And I like slid down the hill to get to the pool and I just, I literally tried to ignore it. I was like, I can't handle this. I really like, I don't know what to do. And got to the pool deck and the assistant coach came over and she, there were a lot of expletives that came out of her mouth and she was like, what did you do? What's going on? Because remember, we're like 10 days out from nationals and I'm one of the sprinters on the team. And I remember, this is a good story. So I'm segueing away from your question. I remember my coach, he looked at my foot and he looked at me and he said, get in my office. And so I got in his office and he sat me down and goes, what is it? I said, I don't know. And he said, I think it's broken. And I said, I'm not sure yet. It might be. It hurts a lot. And he goes, okay. So we're going to decide now, before you find out whether or not it's broken, whether or not you're going to nationals, which do you want? And I was like, what do you mean, which do I want? Like, I don't understand this question. If it's broken, he goes, no, no, no. Let's reframe this. Either you're going or you're not going. And this is up to you and your mental framework. And if you're going, I don't want to hear about your foot at all for the next two weeks. And if you're not going, you have a broken foot and you're sitting on the bench. It kind of blew my mind and it was really a difficult decision to make. But it was a kindness that he did. Because when I decided I said, actually, I'm going, he's like, great. We're going to come up with strategies for how you can deal with this. And we're going to talk about pain tolerance. And we're going to talk about all of this stuff in a very analytical way. And it never became a crutch that I was allowed to use. I wasn't allowed to say, oh, I didn't do that well because I have a broken foot. And so we ended up taking-- we all went to the national meet and I swim with a broken foot. I relearned how to do a start. You can either do a track start, which is one foot forward and one foot back, or you can do a two-legged start. And I learned how to do a two-legged start so I could punch off my right foot. And adrenaline actually carries you through pain. So when you get up on the blocks and you have, like, the starting block goes off and you have this, like, pow, you don't actually feel anything. I didn't feel anything until after I got out of the pool. And it actually didn't hurt that much because after two weeks it had started to self-heal. And I had it wrapped most of the time and I was icing it. And the doctor had confirmed that I wouldn't be doing aggressive damage to it if I kept using it, which was also a relief. But after that epic year of kind of pushing through, I gave up. I finished the national meet, I did what I did, and then I put my swim cap down, and I walked into my coach's office two weeks later and I just said, "I don't think I can make it. I just don't think I want to swim next year." I quit. And he was pretty, pretty frustrated with me. And I went home to California and I had a job out there and I was working as a sales person in a garden center, I was selling plants and I was telling people all about plants. And occasionally I would go to the YMCA and swim a couple thousand yards, like once or twice a week. But for all intents and purposes, I got real fat and real lazy. I just got pudgy and soft and I didn't swim. And at the end of August, I finally wanted to swim again. And so I reached out to my coach and I said, "I think I still want to swim, is that okay?" And he was like, "Yeah, we'll take you back." And I was in the slowest lane again. I was super slow and I made friends with all the freshmen. I was a senior. I made friends with all the freshmen. And the body of work that I've built into my physical body ended up working out so well. That was the year I actually, so I was really slow again for the first couple of months. And then I just started to take off. And so by the time the final meet came around, we went to our conference meet and I won every single event that I was in. I was just like sweeping everything up and it was exhilarating. And my ego was there being saying things like, "Oh, you're not that good. And it was just kind of like, but it happened anyways." And it was a really nice end of the career, at least the college career. And then I kept swimming afterwards, as you know, in the Alcatraz craziness. Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my hundredth mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited to premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com/switch, whatever you're ready. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes of seat details. You might not realize it, but most people have damaged hair. Damage gives you that frizzy, dull, and lackluster look. But there's a new way to fix it. You can reverse damage from the inside for hair like new with K18. Powered by biotech, the patented technology works in minutes. You may have heard of the TikTok viral K18 mask. 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With energy and progress, visit colorado.chefron.com. You know, there's so many profound lessons and takeaways to everything you're saying for me. I mean, this whole idea of not stopping. There's two things here that really stood out to me and you kept showing up no matter how miserable you were and then you didn't let your broken foot be a crutch. But I guess my next questions are, and we'll wrap up this segment of our conversation, are one, how do we get through this misery? I mean, because I can tell you, there are moments in building everything that I have that I've been pretty miserable. Yes. I mean, everybody knows I still live at home and I was willing to go through that pain of doing something that would come with a lot of stigma and judgment from people, probably even people who listen to the show thinking, "What the hell?" But I wasn't going to let that be the deterrent from where I was supposed to ultimately end up. And then I finally learned not to use it as a crutch because, you know, I've said this before, for a while, my circumstances of this situation were my identity. And because the two were intertwined, my life reflected that. So I'm curious, one, how you fight through the pain and show up when it's miserable and how you ditch your crutches. Mm. Mm. Oh, okay. Both of these are really good questions. And I just want to reemphasize the first one, which is don't be afraid to be miserable. I mean, it sucks, right? Like, no one, like, diarrhea sucks, puking sucks, right? Like, I know these things. Like, when you're in the middle of them, you're like, "Oh, my God, this is never ending. I want to know," like, "I'll trade anything to make this stop," like, being miserable sucks. But don't be afraid of it, right? Like, there's profoundness in it, there's wisdom in it. It shows who you really are. Like, you know, watch somebody when they're in the best of times, they're great people. Watch somebody in the worst of times and you see who they really are. And I'm not wishing terrible times than everyone, but don't be afraid to be miserable. And if people need examples of this, one of the things I love to do, actually, is just read history. Like, read the histories of people who have created the greatest works that you admire. Because they're not these beautiful little stories. And if people have written them as beautiful stories, remember that that's writing, and that might not actually be true. Because people who are living the life and living the experience are often going through... I mean, Mark Twain was an insurance salesman. He wrote his books at night. He wrote his books after he could finish his job, make the paycheck. Like, a lot of the people we admire the most are the loneliest, weirdest, strangest, most miserable people ever. So if we're looking for doing great work, and if that's the priority, and I would argue that doing great work, and having great love, or some of the biggest, if not the ultimate things in life, then you're just going to get the gamut of emotions and some of it's going to be not so good. I think that society, like preaching right now, the do what you love, follow your passion, everything should be great, happiness ideal, is actually doing a lot of people a disservice. Because then they chase after things that just feel good. And things that just feel good right now are McDonald's and sitting on my couch and watching a movie. And then I feel like shit later because I haven't actually done any, because I know I'm capable of more. Part of my French. And I just work. No, I'm not slowing you down. This is brilliant. It's genius. And I do love that you brought up that idea that so much of it is doing a disservice to us. I mean, it's interesting, you know, I mean, as of this morning, we published an episode with Pam Slim where she was talking, she said, you know, there's this sort of escape from cubicle nation. She said, that's one conversation that's happening. And she said, you know, to some degree that conversation has made a lot of us really miserable. Yes. It's it's really when you look at that, you're like, Oh, quit your job, you know, travel the world, you know, whatever, escape the escape the nine to five, everything. That actually, like the pressure that that's what you should be doing, I think has really honestly, it's, I think it's caused much more. More misery. Yeah, exactly. It's caused a lot more misery than good. Yeah. And, and I love what you said about Pam because because it is a narrative. We're all like, Oh, we can escape and just be happy. And I actually think much of and in my experience, much of the root of happiness comes from good old hard work, like really diving in and becoming a master of something and using my body and my mind and my capabilities to the full potential and to really push myself into those areas. I mean, everything I everything I'm doing right now is like, it's still, I love it and it makes me miserable, it's kind of a paradox, because I'm reaching and stretching and trying these like really hard things. And that doesn't mean every yoga class I go to is this blissful paradox where I'm in a Zen moment. No, there are some, there are some times when I try and I try and I try and I try and it's miserable. And, and so just, it's so, it's okay, right? I feel like we need permission, like it's okay to not feel good. It's actually, Oh, here's another good one. It's actually a wayfinding signal like pain is our body and our minds way of talking to us. It's like, don't do that. Right? And it's like, no. Right? It's actually a really loud signal. And if we start to listen to those signals, right? Like we're miserable at our job. It's like, oh, don't do that. So sometimes this is, this is a different instance and I'm changing what I'm saying, which may confuse a lot of people. But sometimes, sometimes pain is good just because it's a voice to talk to us. And other times it's us just discovering who we are. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting, right? You know, like, I would love it if every surf session involved not taking waves on the head. I mean, the last time I got let go from a job, the next day I went out and tried to surf a 13 foot day in Nicaragua. And I mean, I nearly drowned. I thought I was going to die. And it like suddenly it put what had happened the day before getting like over in the job in perspective. I was like, wow, I guess that's not such a big deal. Right. Actually, sometimes I feel like it's the universe or the world just kind of being like, whoa, laughing at us because it's like, it's so much bigger than you can even imagine. Like you are, you're like, your misery at your job is so small right now in this moment in this little piece of time because there's so much more, like a wave can crash on your head. Well, speaking of misery at jobs, let's, let's shift gears a little bit. And you know, it's interesting, I think that, you know, you've talked about doing good work and really all of this. And we've spent a lot of time talking about things that are important, things that feel good. And you know, you being somebody who has this deep seated need to move your body, you know, you mentioned going into a job and within two minutes knowing that it was going to be the wrong thing and then staying there for five years. Oh, God. I mean, yeah. Talked was about that conflict. I mean, that that can't, it can't imagine that didn't tear you up inside to some degree, but also, you know, I don't imagine that, you know, even though we've just literally said the opposite of this by saying, hey, be miserable at your job and be okay with it. Hey, I can't imagine that there aren't people feeling exactly what you're feeling. And you know, really, I guess really what I would say is there's almost a lack of environmental resonance in these situations because I don't think it's about escaping the job. I think it's about putting yourself in a situation in which there is environmental resonance. Hmm. What do you mean environmental resonance like feels good? Like, well, I think the combination of feels good, but then the other thing I would say is that if your talents aren't matched with your environment, you were going to fail. I know this because this is my story. Like I've realized I've been fired from every job I've ever been at because I was at that wrong. Damn job. Yeah. And you know what Robert Cooper in this book I'm reading right now called the other 90% has some interesting things to say about this because he says, and lots of research says this, but we each have our own unique talents and it's, and there aren't that many of them, right? It's not like most people are wildly talented. As a collective, we're all wildly talented, but you personally have a couple and you have a handful of really interesting, unique things that you can do better than most people. Those are your areas of expertise or your areas of, and maybe it's like cartooning or maybe it's just being a good listener or a good hugger, but you have a couple of things that you're really good at and disproportionately so compared to other people. And it's our job over time to begin to listen to those cues and those voices which are like, what can I get lost in? What feels good? You know, what do I do just because it's fun for me? And what am I naturally good at? What kind of skills can I develop? And that, I don't know about you, but for me, the art of listening to that intuition and inner wisdom takes a while. I know now that my inner wisdom was telling me the moment I walked in, but at the time all I could tell you was probably that it didn't feel quite right, but I didn't know any better because I hadn't had any other experiences. I hadn't had another job to tell me that this wasn't right. I just, I kind of knew it didn't feel right, but I wasn't quite so sure. And over time as you start to find your right people and your right talents and your right job and your right space, it becomes, for me at least, easier and easier to discern and say, nope, that didn't work. And now I know, I've been through this experience, that's not the right shape of the environment for me. I need, you know, like I work best with these people in this type of environment, and I'm really good at these kind of things. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's kind of, you know, sort of pie in the sky, you know, wishful thinking that you're going to figure this out without any trial or trial and error. I mean, I think that you kind of have, you know, I would say, you want to learn how to surf, you got to take a few waves on the head. A hundred percent. And if you want to learn how to surf, the first thousand of them might be waves on the head. You know, that's the other thing that's really hard because like, there's, you have to pay attention a little bit to this, this intuition and this inner wisdom, but give yourself the grace of experience and like commitment and trying things out for, for a decent amount of time, you know, six months, a year, two years, you like, it's okay if you don't know right away and, and experiment, I'd say experiment with both sides because some people like the beautiful Amber Ray has just this wonderful sense of intuition and she just knows like being an instant and she's honed that wisdom and she can just be like, doesn't feel right. I know it. And other people, like, takes a little bit longer and so kind of finding that middle ground where, okay, this time, I'm going to try following what I feel, right? Because this is going to be one experiment of many. And then afterwards reflect like how did it feel? Did I make the right decision? Because I've made decisions based on what I think is intuition and then regretted it later. And I just add that to my arsenal where I'm like, okay, actually, I need a better reading on what I think that I'm feeling because the outcome wasn't what I expected. And then other times I wait for too long, you know, what, where I should leave within two months or three months or six months, it took me two or three years. And I'm like, you know what? Next time that comes up, I'm leaving way quicker. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think you've more or less described the entire process of how the heart of being unmistakable is written pretty much through intuition. Oh, yeah, I, that book went just crazy. I remember when it was a Glenn back, right? Yeah. I have so many questions to ask you about that. I'm getting you on my interview series after this so that you in the room and ask you about your stories. Well, so speaking of writing, you know, I think that this is what a lot of people are going to want to hear from you about because I think you're very much admired as a writer on the Internet. You have a very distinctive voice as a writer and you have a way of assembling words. I mean, you know, I mean, I got a slight dose into, you know, a little peek into your creative process. When we sat down at dinner, I mean, I was like, what I saw was a madwoman writing in a journal every second. I was like, wow, I'm like, and remember, you know, just a few days ago, I said on one of my Facebook status updates, I said, you know, I'm like, I wonder how much of that has come across my way without me even realizing it in your writing. So let's talk about this. I mean, you're, you're really somebody, somebody who has taken the craft of writing very seriously. And I, you know, it's part of why I wanted to have you here. And I want to dig deep into this and really hear your thoughts around this. Oh, so many good things. So I teach a couple of writing classes, ones on storytelling, ones storytelling and writing and the other ones on content strategy. So it helps people take all of the mess and jumble in their brains and put it onto paper, like, because most people aren't short of ideas, they actually have far too many. And then they get frustrated. They don't know how to start. And so we map it. We like tease it out. We map it out through all these fun exercises. Writing is, is, oh, so many things. I think I'm going to start deeper down with the philosophy, because we've been having such a good conversation here. And I don't say this out loud as many times as I should. For me, I teach, and I'm using air quotes here, writing course, right? That's what I teach on the surface. But, but my deeper belief is really that we are all in, in need of connection to ourselves and connection to each other. Because when I look at the root of a lot of the problems that we have, we're lonely. We are disconnected, we're lonely, and we're not only disconnected from each other in a bit of a fragmented society, but we're also disconnected from our true selves. And we don't know who we are. And so we're kind of miserable, and we're kind of bored, and we're kind of lonely, and we don't know why. And so I teach writing as one mechanism for gaining access to your inner wisdom and your inner soul. And so I give you a lot of skills and tools about one way to use your voice. But the deeper, the deeper kind of philosophy is that you are this brilliant creation. If you imagine it as like a glowing ball of white light, like you are an orb and a brilliant piece of creation. And the layers of experience and the world that you live in and the voices in your head and your ego are like little clusters of black plaque that have lined this beautiful orb of glowing light. So much of the point that there's film and there's dust all over it. And that's some people would say that's our body, some people would say that's our mind, but it's the worldly manifestations of the way that the world that we live in. And so when we're trying to access this beautiful bountiful, like inner wisdom and soul and spirituality and whatever you want to call it, we have these little lifelines that we can use to share our words and our stories. And it's talking and it's touching and it's seeing and it's writing and it's everything that we've learned about interacting and engaging. And so one of these little lifelines is writing. And I think it's very, very powerful to know how to tell your own story. Because if you have access to what you actually think and who you actually are, it can be a very empowering thing. And so then I packaged that up and I call it a writing class. And my own life, I think this is what you're asking actually was, I spend a lot of time writing. I try to write every single day. I get up in the morning and I write a couple of pages and I don't profess that it's good. It's like Julia Cameron in the morning pages. It's just chicken scratch. Like some mornings I'm writing an ode to how much I want my coffee. And like it's so bad, I'm like coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. Am I done yet? Did I get there? Like I'm just whining on the page. Things it's to do lists because I wake up in such an urgency and such a adrenaline-fueled state. I'm like, oh my God, I have so much to do. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm like panicked. I'm like, blah, blah, blah. And so I'm just like, I just literally write it to do list. And what it does is it kind of cleanses your brain. It's like just a little wash. It just gets some of that junk and that garbage off. And then I get to think a little clearer through the day. And just like in swimming where I might have a shitty day and then an okay day and then a much better day. It's this rhythm of getting into the flow. And when it finally clicks, it's not because I showed up and it is because I showed up and I had two terrible days. It's because I committed to the act of creating. And then after carving and whittling a little bit and just writing these god-awful essays that no one would want to read, including myself, I finally arrive at a moment where my voice is clearer. It's more lucid. I'm fluent. And so for me when you see me scribbling all the time, it's just because I want to have access to my words. And the more that I scribble, the less I have to think about, should I write? When should I write? What does writing look like? Do I use a word document? Do I use a moleskin? How do I do this? Is someone thinking of me? Should I do it now? How about later? No, you shouldn't do it now. Like, I just get rid of that by doing it as much as I can. And so that I know that whenever I have a thought or something that feels like it's good or feels like I want to write about it, I have permission to write about it because it's just a habit. I love it. I don't really know what else to say. I don't have much to add. I'll share one thing that my friend Brian and I were talking about. I'm glad you brought up that idea of flow states because I think that people are under the impression that, you know, like when people ask me, how do I produce something every day, I think they're under the impression that I sit down and that's what just comes out. Right. No. What you read takes what Sarah was talking about. And you know, it's interesting. My friend Brian was telling me that he was watching this documentary about this video game maker in Japan who I think made the latest Gran Turismo. He's apparently like the Steve Jobs of video games. And one of the things they talked about in that movie is that people who are peak performers at anything apparently are only in flow states about 15% of the time and the rest of the time they're working to get into the flow state. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what Big Wireless does. They charge you a lot. We charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right. Switch. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees extra, speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. Hey, it's Paige from Giggly Squad. Everybody knows about Daphne. They know I just got a cat. I would literally die for her. I was so nervous about the litter box portion of getting a cat. And honestly, I think it was like the number one thing that was keeping me from being a cat owner. 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Expand the way you work and think with Claude by anthropic. Whether brainstorming solo or working with the team, Claude is AI built for you. It's perfect for analyzing images and graphs, generating code, processing multiple languages, and solving complex problems. Plus, Claude is incredibly secure, trustworthy, and reliable, so you can focus on what matters. Curious? Visit claud.ai and see how Claude can elevate your work. Forging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit at Chevron. We donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the community's WeCall home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer, all to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit colorado.chefron.com. Discover Hydro, the best kept secret in fitness. Hydro is the state-of-the-art at-home rower that engages 86% of your muscles, delivering the ultimate full-body workout in just 20 minutes. From advanced to beginner, Hydro has over 500 classes shot worldwide and taught by Olympians and world-class athletes. For a 30-day risk-free trial, go to hydro.com and use code ROW450 to save $450 on a Hydro Pro Rower. That's H-Y-D-R-O-W.com, code ROW450. That reminds me, actually, amen, first of all. You show up and you practice, you practice, and you practice, and you practice. That's why I encourage so many people, and that's why the blog that I write right now is called It Starts With, because I encourage people just to get started. That little moment where it's like just writing one sentence every day is going to be more for you than anything else, because you've given yourself permission to open that word document and write a sentence, and so many people just crash and burn or they collapse on themselves and say, "Oh, no, I'm not going to get even started," and I want to share with you one thing, and I think it's called the zero odds ratio, zero odds, something. I wish I knew the name. We'll have to link it up in the comments afterwards, but the idea is this. For all of the researchers out there, people who are publishing academic papers, and I have to credit James Clear, because he's the one that told me about this. Also, if I get it wrong, I'm blaming James Clear. He said, or so the thinking goes, that the researchers have to publish a certain number of academic papers. When you look at the body of work that people produce, the chances, the people who produce the best academic papers, like the ones that are well known and well read, aren't some isolated set of people that just happen to write really good things. They actually have an equal odds ratio of producing really crappy papers. The people who produce the best work are the people who produce the most work. The people who writes 10 books has a better chance of having a New York Times bestseller than somebody who writes zero books. That's pretty obvious. But so many people put so much weight on that one time or that one chance, just like that one essay or that one day that you're writing. It's like, this has got to be the one that they fail to even start when the best predictor of success is just quantity. I love it. I'm going to add one other thing to this and we'll start wrapping things up. If you want proof of this, I had a virtual assistant once. I said, can you do me a favor because I was trying to put together a list of books of all the people who've been on the show? I said, can you do me a favor and go to Amazon and get links to everything Seth Godin has ever written? What you'll find will shock the hell out of you because some of it is just complete crap. Seth Godin, I think there's a book called Email Addresses of Famous People. Can you imagine? This is a guy that more or less every one of us looks up to and there's a reason because he was willing to do exactly what you're talking about. Most things are, aside from killing people and a couple other things, most things are recoverable. If you make a giant mistake or you put something out there, I know that we live in a challenging politically correct world, but just put it out there because you are allowed to say later, I changed my mind or that actually wasn't that good. When I look back at my writing, it's like, and I'm sure that this will happen again in two years' time and two years after that, I look back and I'm like, oof, oh, it could have been so much better and literally the only way to get there is to go through it. Yeah, Seth Godin, so he wrote some crappers, okay, right? What do we remember him for? Exactly. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I feel the same way about stuff that I've created earlier. I mean, if I go back and listen to old interviews, I'm like, this sucks. I can't believe we publish this. Right? Yeah. And yet, and yet, here you are. It's pretty cool. No, it's pretty cool. Like, I, and this is, I actually think this is, we're so quick and this is, this is a paradox of storytelling because stories are, we tell stories because they're easy to remember. And so we're constantly simplifying the world around us in order to understand it. But we tell stories about people around us too. And so we're so quick to judge because we wanted to find people. And so we're like, oh, that person is bad at writing and we'll just put them in a box, you know, put them to the side. And when rather, it's so much more complex and I love it, I love it when my friends grow up and when you give them permission to change. Like you see somebody and they're pushing stuff out time and time and time again. And it's like, not that good. And yet they're the ones publishing. And then a year later, you go back and you start reading their stuff and it's like, oh, wow, this is getting pretty good. And then a year later, they're writing really great work and they're starting to get known for it. And then a year later, they have a bestseller. And then, and then you watch somebody come up to them and say, yeah, I'm not as good at writing as you. I like, I just won't start because I'm not as talented at you. And you're just like, no, no, no, that's not the way it works. This person has put in their hours. They have been working hard and it's been beautiful to watch them change. I love that because the truth is, I mean, I still look at people like you and Amber and I'm like, wow, you guys are so much better than I am. No, it's a comparison. You know, but I mean, I think that the idea that you'll lose that, I think, is one of the myths, right? Like you'll get to this moment when you're like, oh, yeah, now I'm just badass. And I'm like, yeah, it's really weird how that completely just goes away. Right. I don't even think that that is always there. But like your ego kind of just dissipates in that moment for some reason. When you actually have one of these big successes, you're like, is this actually happening to me? Right. Right. And then you have all these other challenges because every new situation has its new like tests and trials and tribulations. And then you're dealing with all sorts of different things like, you know, holy crap, how do I answer a hundred thousand emails? And wow, I need to learn to not take comments personally because I'm getting a lot of comments and some of them are hater, how do I deal with hater email? What happens now? You know, stuff like that. Yeah. It's just there's always new stuff to deal with. I'm sorry, you know, we're getting close to about an hour. I want to wrap with my final question, but I want to do this a bit differently. I mean, you've swam, you've done the Alcatraz swim. To me, that's, that's, you know, a demonstration of grit on so many levels. And I am really, you know, I mean, when I look at a lot of what has happened in the last four years and I look at people who are successful, people who are unsuccessful. I mean, I've seen people, I have seen people for, you know, for metaphorically speaking, who started the swim with us and they probably got eaten by a shark somewhere along the way. And I want to know what the difference is between the people who make it back to shore and the ones who don't. It's a really interesting question. Well, first of all, I hope they weren't all eaten by sharks. I hope they just like got on a boat and decided to go sailing because that was their life's calling. So, and then if they did get eaten by sharks, I hope that it was like a warm, wonderful shark's belly or they're reincarnated as something else beautiful, but, you know, I think I do like this question about grit and determination. And I think resiliency is a really, a really big key word of mine, you know, like keep swimming, keep on going. It's like, I mean, everything I'm going to say is going to sound so tripe, but like there aren't that many days and like you're lucky to have them and keep going. And it's, it's Corbett Barr. I think he wrote to me this really interesting quote. I don't know where he got it from, but the amount that you can accomplish in a day is pretty small. And the amount that you can accomplish in 30 days is pretty big. And it's the same thing for swimming back from Alcatraz. Like when I am out at that island and I look back at San Francisco and it's these tiny dots of light on a black hill and it's pitch black because I get up really early and I swim, I actually don't know how I'm going to do it. I don't think my mind can comprehend it because what I'm about to do is leave all motor vehicles and adornments behind and get in the bay without a wet suit and trust my body to pull myself from one side of the bay to another. And there's no like, I can't put all my effort into one stroke. It's not like one master stroke is somehow going to sweet me from one side to the other. And yet you just kind of keep going. And I, it's just sometimes I have to count to myself in there like, like I count my strokes. So I just start counting to 10 and I count up to 10 and then I keep going until I get to 100 and then I keep going. And right in the middle is the worst because you look like you're not moving anywhere. You like keep, I keep looking up and sighting and the same buildings are the same distance far away and Alcatraz is far away. And I'm very aware of the fact that it's like me and my cold body and nothing else. And the bubbles from the goggles start to dance in front of my eyes and sometimes I get really scared because it looks like they're shark swimming below me because there's all these like light bubbles like whooshing in front of me. And my mind can go into really dark places and I just, I have to really focus on my breathing and realize it's okay, keep going. And once I settle into the habits and the systems that I've learned over time and focus on concentrating my effort just on doing what I know how to do, which is to keep moving my arms back and forth. Maybe I get there and it's pretty remarkable. I think that makes a perfect and poetic way to sum up our conversation. I'm not even going to touch it. So thank you know, I have to say I'm not surprised. I mean, I, you know, at this point, you know, speaking of intuition, I have an intuitive sense for who is going to be a big hit with our audience and I am positive that you will be. So I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share some of this with our listeners. I'm very, very happy you reached out to me. Oh, thank you so much. It was just a delight to be here and I hope these stories really like just help people encourage them to be as awesome as they already are. Thanks, Rini. Yeah. And for those of you guys listening, we'll close the show with that. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Unmistakable Creative Podcast. While you're listening, are there any moments you found fascinating, inspiring, instructive, maybe even heartwarming? Can you think of anyone, a friend or a family member who would appreciate this moment? So take a second and share today's episode with that one person because good ideas and messages are meant to be shared. Discover Hydro, the best kept secret in fitness. Hydro is the state of the art at home rower that engages 86% of your muscles, delivering the ultimate full body workout in just 20 minutes. 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The “not good enough” narrative that we all deal with
Changing our narratives to serve us rather than sabotage us
Why we can’t be too hard on our egos
How learning not to stop can be life changing
Letting of the things we think we’re capable of for something better
Why it’s ok for things to be incredibly difficult
Trials and tribulations of Sarah’s college swimming experience
How open water swimming changed Sarah’s life
Why challenges, quitting, and obstacles reveal who we are
Leveraging incredible mental frameworks to overcome pain
Fighting through pain when you’re absolutely miserable
Why the worst of times reveals somebody’s true character
The correlation between happiness and hard work
Why pain is a signal from your body
Learning to recognize and leverage your areas of expertise
Why Sarah teaches writing as a mechanism to get access to your inner wisdom
The power of committing to the act of creating and doodling

Sarah Peck is a writer, open water swimmer, designer-entrepreneur and urban nerd who is on a mission is to find and capture insights from everyday, extraordinary living an share them with others.

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