Welcome to Episode #257 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast.
I’m in Berlin.
I arrived earlier today, and I’m here for the marathon. It’s my second one. I ran New York last year.
What’s been interesting about arriving this time is that I’m by myself. Jay comes a day later and leaves a day earlier, but when I signed up, I assumed it would just be me running and just me going.
I’m not here for work, which is what I usually travel for. Not for fun exactly, though I’ve done plenty of that. Not a couples trip, which Jay and I take. I’m here for a goal of my own that has nothing to do with my work or my family, and that makes it a different kind of trip entirely.
I noticed it in how I arrived. I’ve been in this almost clinical mode, not really focused on the fun of it, even though it will be fun. Berlin is one of the world majors. The energy is incredible and the city is beautiful. But I’m trying to run a personal best. I want to beat my New York time. I want to see what’s inside of me.
Today was the Expo, figuring out public transportation, the logistics, the flights, cramming German at the last minute. And the packing, which I think was a masterpiece, though there are still a couple of things I wish I’d brought.
It’s a completely different part of my brain. It isn’t work or leadership or sales or coaching or training. It isn’t the Spiritual Achiever work. It isn’t the mom. It’s about performance, mindset, and my own body.
And underneath all of it, I’m working on something I keep working on. How do you go after a goal without making it everything? How do you find real meaning just in getting to participate, and still reach for something big and hard?
There are three questions in that, and they’re the ones I want to hand you.
Who we were
We were people before the jobs, the kids, the responsibilities and the community work.
So here’s the first question. Where in your life is there a thing that is just for you? Not for work, not for your family. Just yours.
When people come to coaching, this is often where we start. Who are you outside of your roles? Going on a retreat is an act of defiance against the standard role you’re expected to play, and that’s part of why it works.
Before I was a mom and a wife, I was a person doing my own thing. I played sports. I did all the extracurriculars. And nobody in my family really knew what any of it was.
Nobody came to cheer. Nobody watched the games or asked how it went. Not for any terrible reason, and I didn’t feel bad about it. I didn’t have a single thought about it. I was just happy to be there and happy to go.
Enjoyment wasn’t even a category I considered. It was more like, I get to do this thing, and it’s mine.
I think that’s why it’s still easy for me to sign up for something and go without anyone coming. I know what it’s like to do something and have it be for you, without the people closest to you really knowing much about it.
Who we are today
The work I’m doing now with my family and my life is the opposite of that. It’s bringing people along.
Because when you’re used to going off and doing your own thing, the hard part is the bridge. How do you bring people with you? How do you keep growing in a relationship if you aren’t doing things together?
That middle ground is who we are today.
We aren’t people on an island anymore. Our lives are interconnected, and our decisions affect the people around us. How we spend our time, our money and our energy affects them. So there is a time and a place to take some of that independence back, in a way that actually works with the life you have.
If I’d tried this earlier, when it didn’t fit, I wouldn’t have done it.
I was much more physically active before kids. Jay and I used to run together. I didn’t pick running back up until 2020, and by then our girls were around five and seven, old enough to be a little less physically dependent on me. There was finally some room in the morning to leave and go do something on my own.
Whether it’s running or starting a business or figuring out what you’re passionate about, it’s the same exercise. And I think we know when it’s time, because inside, we know.
We know that parts of us got put down. We know the spark dimmed a little.
There is a giving of ourselves to our work and our families that genuinely takes something, and we’re willing to give it. But there’s also grief in it. Grief for the things we could have done and didn’t, because of where we live, or who we married, or the shape of the life we built, where those moments just don’t fit as easily.
Which leaves the question. What now?
Who we want to be
The third one is about letting yourself dream again.
A lot of my dream things already happened. The first dream jobs in my twenties. The MBA. Building a business in my thirties. Surfing and marathoning in my forties.
I’m not talking about some enormous goal that was predestined and handed to you years ago. I’m talking about giving yourself enough time and space and curiosity to notice what’s actually coming up.
That requires letting yourself feel, which is the part I’m not naturally good at. I mentioned the clinical mode I go into when it’s performance time. I shut down the feelings and get the job done.
Someone once asked me, you must have loved playing field hockey. And I sat there thinking, I don’t actually know. I’m sure I did. I would have kept playing as long as it fit in my life. But liking it wasn’t a priority I was tracking.
Now, letting myself like something feels a little dangerous. As if enjoying it means the other shoe is about to drop.
And still, as I’ve gotten closer to this race, I’ve noticed that I want to run more. Half my brain thinks that’s a wild thing to want, because running isn’t always fun. It’s early mornings and constantly working around a schedule.
So I’m sitting with the idea that I could do more. That maybe I want more marathons and faster times and to really push at this. And that I’m allowed to go after it without being afraid it will burn me down or swallow my life.
Here’s the thing about goals. They’re never really about the thing.
They’re about the conditions that wanting the thing creates. I wanted to go to Columbia Business School because I wanted to be closer to my family. There were other ways to do that, obviously. I could have just moved. But it felt like a natural progression, a thing I was going to do anyway.
The same is true here. What I’m actually funding is a life where my health stays top of mind, with structure around it, because I like structure. Training plans and training blocks. Strength, yoga, Pilates, nutrition. Every time I do one of these, I feel like I grow another brain.
That’s the part I’m enjoying. The learning, the growth, the visible progress. And the fact that it can be built to fit a family. I’m on a low mileage plan. I don’t run every day.
There’s a Buddhist idea that we shouldn’t be attached to outcomes, and I understand it. But I also think we need goals.
We are directional people. We move toward things. If we don’t put our minds and our energy and some real focus into a direction, we float. We feel unfulfilled. The grind wears us down, and it wears us down because there’s no meaning in it and no progress.
You’re allowed to have goals and not have them consume you.
Not a goal where you’ll only be happy if you get it. A direction you point yourself in, chosen because the kind of person it requires you to be is the person you want to become.
This training forces discipline on me. It forces attention and presence. I can’t check out in a training block, and when you’re doing something hard, you’re very present. If you drift, you don’t hit the goal.
There was a stretch in my life when I was so tired and so burned out that another goal would have been unbearable. So the fact that I’m reaching for new ones now is a sign of something.
And I wasn’t grasping for it. I left the back half of this year open for a marathon, if one appeared. Then the Boston chapter reached out asking whether I wanted to apply, they had spots on the team, and it worked out.
I should have known what it meant that I was so excited when they said yes. Driving back that day, I had tears of joy, and I don’t let myself feel that kind of deep joy very often.
What I realized is that I’m going to be okay, because I was excited about doing something hard, and excited about raising a lot of money. Neither of those is the easy path.
I’m running for Girls on the Run Boston, and my campaign is called May’s 26.2 for the Next Generation. If you want to be part of it, the page is here: https://www.girlsontherunboston.org/solemate/May-s-26-2-for-the-Next-Generation-Berlin
It funds programs that help girls build confidence in who they are, which is this entire conversation, just started a lot earlier.
Why it works that it isn’t my whole life
People who do this tend to be achievers. There’s something in wanting to push.
But what makes it fun now is that running isn’t my personality. It’s one of several side quests. And getting to travel internationally for a sports competition for the first time, getting to be an athlete for a week and really focus on it, is a specific kind of joy.
I turned that part of myself off right around high school graduation. I remember thinking, well, I’m not going to be a professional field hockey player, so put the sticks down and get back to your studies. I played club at a D1 school, and I knew that if I wanted to play there for real, it would have to be the thing, and academics would come second. That was clear to me then, and my priorities are still clear now. My work is my priority. I wouldn’t want this to be my work.
That’s exactly why it’s so good. It’s amazing to have things outside of work that bring you joy and meaning and purpose.
Surfing started the same accidental way. Follow the breadcrumbs and see how it feels. I’m scared of deep water, and the danger in surfing is real enough that it genuinely frightens me, so I have a love-hate relationship with it. Running is different. I’m on dry land. Though if I were a swimmer, I might feel the opposite.
And because running isn’t my whole identity, the progress itself is what I find interesting. I even caught myself thinking, I don’t want to run too fast this time, because then what will I work toward next time?
A little at a time turns out to be more enjoyable, more meaningful and more sustainable than all or nothing right now.
So is it selfish?
I don’t think so. I think it’s finding your spark again, and finding the parts of yourself that existed before everything else did.
You do have to account for who you are today. Bring people along. Don’t let it cost more than you’re willing to pay.
And then pull toward who you’re becoming. Not as some future state you’re chasing, but as a decision about right now. I’m going to point myself in a direction. I’m going to wake up and do something with my day. What is it, and why?
Whatever that direction gives you, whether it’s challenge or joy or determination or just a sense of being alive again, go after it. Sign up for the thing. Say yes to exploring, to learning new things in new places with new people.
That’s what this week in Germany has been. And in a couple of days I get to share it with Jay, which I’m excited about.
I’ll tell you how the marathon actually goes next time. Right now I’m nervous and excited and full of anticipation, and I have no idea what it will be like. I’m hoping for good and smooth and all of that.
I’m also preparing for it to be painful and to not go well. Cold, hungry, tired, in pain, in completely new territory. Figuring out how to manage through that is part of it, and honestly that’s exciting too.
This one is about who we were, who we are today, and who we want to be.
If you want help figuring that out, reach out at www.mayempson.com/contact. Fill out the form and we can schedule a complimentary strategy call, and work through the family, the stress and the work, as well as what joy and adventure and aliveness is waiting for you too.
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