April 18, 2024

#17 Transforming Fear — Courage, Curiosity, and Staying Alive to Wonder

"What nature asks of us when we go outside is to be strong, is to use our cognitive faculties, to be nimble, to be exhilarated, and to be brave. All of that flies in the face of what we're told about our aging ." ⛰️ 💪🏾 Caroline Paul, a true renaissance woman, has spent her life shattering stereotypes and embracing adventure. In this episode, we journey alongside Caroline as she shares her remarkable experiences, from the remote landscapes of Siberia to the exhilarating waves of the P...

Show Notes
Transcript

In this episode, we journey alongside Caroline as she shares her remarkable experiences, from the remote landscapes of Siberia to the exhilarating waves of the Pacific Ocean. We discuss her latest book, "Tough Broad," and explore the transformative power of outdoor adventures for women (and men) as they age.

Takeaways:

Embrace awe 🧘‍♀️ It can lower inflammation, boost positivity.
Assess real risks 🤷‍♂️ We often blow them out of proportion.
Find accountability buddies 🫂 They add fun, community, motivation!
Expand your comfort zone 💪 Small steps upend expectations.
Seek novelty 🏔 It's key for health, happiness and longevity.

Time to ditch narratives about "frailty" and get rad! 🚀

Resources:

Caroline Paul's Website: https://carolinepaul.com/

Caroline Paul on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinembpaul/

Tough Broad: From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking, How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age: [online or your favorite bookstore!]

The Gutsy Girl: [online or your favorite bookstore!]

Dacher Keltner's Book on Awe: [Link to purchase book]

---

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WEBVTT

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Folks welcome back to the ageless athlete podcast.

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This is your host Kush Condell.

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Well, Broadcasting from San Francisco, California.

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Bringing you stories of age, defying, genre, defying adventure athletes.

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Doing extraordinary things.

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In the outdoors.

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It's gorgeous here today.

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Spent some time at the beach this morning with my cute pup Rodger, and I am feeling quite fortified.

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Are you ready to be inspired today on ageless athlete?

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We have a true Renaissance woman, Caroline pod.

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A former firefighter who battled blazes in San Francisco, California.

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Caroline's adventurous spirit has taken her from the remote landscapes of Siberia to the dizzying Heights of the Bolivian Andes.

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braving blizzards on Denali.

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Her tourist for new experiences led her to become a pilot.

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Uh, surfer and even of in Walker, And as an author, she has spent numerous books, including the New York times bestseller.

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The gutsy girl.

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And our latest, incredible book.

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Def bride.

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Which explores the transformative power of outer adventures.

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For women as the age.

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We will be diving into her.

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Beautiful journey.

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The inspiring women she's met and how getting outside can redefine our expectations and lead to a more fulfilling life.

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So buckle up and get ready for an exciting conversation with the one and only Caroline Paul.

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I really appreciate you tuning in today.

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If you have enjoyed the journey so far would love it.

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If you dropped a little rating.

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Click the star icon and apple podcast or wherever else, like Spotify, you listen to your body.

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Trust me, it really helps get the word out and it helps support the show.

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Now onwards with the pot.

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It's rote.

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Hi Caroline.

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Great to have you on the show.

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Can you tell us where are you right now?

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Where are you from?

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And what did you have for breakfast today?

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Oh, hi, Kush.

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I'm so psyched to be on the show.

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I am in San Francisco.

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I had coffee this morning and.

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I'm from the East Coast.

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I was born in New York City.

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but I'm a New Englander at heart.

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Northwest corner of Connecticut.

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Very rural.

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From the right coast to the best coast.

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I just discovered your lovely book, Tough Broad, and I've been, hooked.

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I want to start off by asking you to take us back to the time you rode into Yosemite on an electric skateboard.

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I've traveled through the gate, check at Yosemite National Park, numerous, I don't know, maybe a hundred times over the last 15 or so years, but, you blew my mind with your creativity in getting past the entry system.

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Would you mind giving us a peek into what transpired that day?

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Yeah, I'll quickly tell you I was going actually for my first interview for Tough Broad, and I got to the gate and it was the pandemic.

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And so there were the rules had changed and you needed a reservation, which was fine.

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I, I had the, my friend had sent me the reservation.

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It was on my phone, but the very young ranger said, Oh no, no, your name has to be on the reservation or you can't bring your car in.

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And I said, well, wow.

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Okay.

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Well, can I walk?

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And she's like, no, it's nine miles to the Valley.

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And I remembered that I had my one wheel in the trunk of my car and my one wheel for those of you don't know is an electric skateboard it looks more like it's like a snowboard with a big wheel in the middle.

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and I asked her, I said, well, can I use my, my one wheel, my electric skateboard?

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And she was.

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Shocked because she had just seen my age, which was at the time, 57 and, you know, I drive a very stayed, Prius.

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she had obviously made a lot of assumptions about me.

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And one of them was not that I had a one wheel in my trunk and that I could ride it.

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she asked her supervisor and the supervisor like, yeah, I mean, she can't bring her car in, but yeah, the human can go, which I thought was so funny.

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But I get it.

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It's, it's all about traffic, I guess.

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Anyway, so I went and I got on my one wheel and I one wheeled into the valley and it was beautiful.

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It was amazing experience.

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I keep my one wheel in my car for these, these, sort of eventualities, which never really come up and it's just often that I have some free time and I see like a little open space or a little bike trail and I want to get on it.

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And this time it really came in handy, but it was a great opening to the book because what it showed was, you know, Sort of our implicit assumptions about what people, what women especially can and cannot do after a certain age.

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I think if I had been a man, they would have been maybe a tiny bit surprised, but not really.

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But because I was a 57 year old woman, I really sort of all the rangers gathered around when I came back up in my one wheel.

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You know, to get permission to then go, go down the gate.

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They were asking me a ton of questions about the one wheel, but I could tell there were a lot of questions in their head about me.

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thing and the beautiful thing.

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And then when I say this in the book was what I inside, I was laughing the whole time because the person I was meeting in Yosemite Valley was about my age too.

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And she was way radder than me because she was about to base jump off of.

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of El Cap, and that's why I was going.

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I was going to interview her and also not base jump with her because that was the only, um, adventure I did not do in this book.

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by the way, the subtitle of the book is really explains the book.

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if that beginning has not, which is, it's called tough broad, but the subtitle is from boogie boarding to wing walking, how outdoor adventure improves our lives as we age.

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I see electric skateboards in San Francisco all the time and, uh, they're more common here, I guess, than the, uh, the hallowed roads of Yosemite National Park.

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But I think even here I'll have to be careful on, uh, on what I think about the person riding that skateboard

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you know, the truth is you won't see a lot of women my age riding them.

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And I knew that.

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And that's actually why I wrote the book.

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I mean, I, this book came out of being on my skateboard and looking around and there were no women my age.

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I could see a couple of men my age and also when I was on my surfboard, I'd look around in, especially when it was winter surf and I see no, no women my age and no women older.

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And there were men my age and older hmm.

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when I flew my experimental planes, there was just hardly any women doing it, but again, men, my age and older.

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So I just thought, Oh, well, what's going on here?

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Is there something I don't know?

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Is there something I'm not supposed to be doing anymore?

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And I didn't want to give up my outdoor adventure life.

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And I had a feeling though, that it was actually key to fulfilling aging.

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So the book is really a quest, more than than my other books, which have been more statements, uh, or opinions.

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And this is a quest I actually don't know.

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And I do a lot of, a lot of research.

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you have been breaking barriers and you have been dropping jaws through this quest of yours.

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I'm so excited and humbled to have you, join us today.

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I'm inspired, but yeah, just going back to that little story, curious, where do you get this?

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You know, this, this chutzpah as well most people who were raised in this country, in the US, most people, like you said, who might be around your age, they would not have thought to do that.

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I come from a country, I was raised in India and people are always looking for ways to get around.

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So I would not be as surprised if people would try and find ways to abandon their cars and get on their bicycles or, or whatnot.

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what is it about your personality that,

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Pushes you to challenge convention or traditional thinking.

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I just think that I had my one wheel in the back of my car because I always wanted an opportunity to get on it.

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It's an opportunity to get outside and explore something.

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So it was more my sort of exploratory mindset, I guess, I grew up in the, I was born in 63.

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Those of us born in the sixties and grew, who grew up in the seventies really were used to kind of a feral childhood.

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it was pretty much a get on your bike and come back at dark kind of thing.

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And we lived in the country for most of our young lives.

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I have an identical twin and a younger brother.

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And that's what we did.

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We got on our bikes and we went swimming.

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We've got on our bikes or we, you know, we went sledding.

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We went, skating.

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We did things outside to pass the day.

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And so it's kind of second nature.

00:10:04.596 --> 00:10:06.096
Have you always been.

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Outdoorsy and an adventurous, any favorite story of you growing up that, was perhaps, defining as you grew up and continue pursuing this life of, uh, adventure.

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Yeah.

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I don't know where, I got this idea that adventure was a value that I wanted to pursue, except for that.

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It was just, we did grow up in the country and it was clearly the way to have fun.

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Also we had national geographics that arrived at our house every month, I think it is.

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And they were those yellow spined magazines that everybody, many people.

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That I knew had and then we'd keep them and line them up on the shelf.

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So there are all these back issues going back years.

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And they were kind of the internet for us.

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And in it were lots of adventurers.

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And it just looked like the exciting life that I wanted to have.

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You know, my parents were not outdoorsy.

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But what they did do for us, is that they wanted us to be well rounded.

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It's not even that they wanted us to be brave or resilient or learn risk assessment like I think parents might do now.

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Those weren't part of the vocabulary.

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They wanted us to go outside and do things because they thought it would make us more social.

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It would, uh, get us out of the house and it would just make us more well rounded that when we were adults, we could pick and choose what we'd liked it because they had given us, you know, all these options.

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We also learned the flute and we also went to a church again, not because they were specifically religious, but they wanted to give us the choice later.

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So they laid that groundwork.

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So we got lucky that way, but I will say that my siblings are not like me.

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They don't live.

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An outdoor adventure life like I do though.

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They both love the outdoors.

00:11:51.697 --> 00:11:57.481
Uh, they don't have a practice of adventure, my sister walks and she swims outside.

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She does lots of open water swims, but yeah, so it's just sort of a haphazard intersection of.

00:12:04.964 --> 00:12:08.777
I couldn't really tell you how, but, I wanted to live a life of adventure.

00:12:09.090 --> 00:12:11.029
I find a little parallel here.

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I was fortunate as well, where my parents also exposed me to, uh, a myriad assortment of things, including.

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Sending me to summer classes to do artsy things, including backpacking And I don't think they knew which would stick.

00:12:29.351 --> 00:12:39.363
the, uh, outdoorsy, Sports things stuck with me seems to me from what I have been learning about you, that you were also quite competitive.

00:12:40.082 --> 00:12:45.863
I read about, uh, how you were attempting to set the Guinness record.

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I'm curious, you know, in that spectrum of, adventure and, sports, where do you think is your, happy medium?

00:12:55.009 --> 00:12:56.609
not that competitive, actually.

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I mean, I think when I was young, I had a lot to prove, and so we all want to be first, and we all want to be noticed.

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And I have an identical twin who's very, very competent at pretty much everything, so, but neither of us want to be better than the other.

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But we also didn't want to be outdone by the other.

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So it was this really crazy, I mean, the way I describe my childhood with my twin is that we were both really good swimmers.

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I mean, relatively speaking in our tiny town, we were on the swim team and we would do, first of all, we would not swim against each other.

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We would, we pick different strokes, but we would always work out extra after practice.

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And we would swim across the lake and back, which is about a mile and a half.

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we were like 11 or 10 when we did this and routinely we'd stop in the middle of the lake and yell at the other one because they weren't swimming the straight line that we needed them to swim, which meant that if they were serpentining at all, they were getting more of a workout than we were and we couldn't have that.

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Like we had to be exactly equal because there was always this sense of like, you want to keep up with her.

00:14:00.523 --> 00:14:04.383
But you, you know, but you don't, you kind of want to be better, but you don't really want to be better.

00:14:04.503 --> 00:14:05.592
that would also hard.

00:14:06.253 --> 00:14:07.712
It was just this really fine line.

00:14:07.962 --> 00:14:14.562
I don't really think of myself as competitive, but again, I was always seeking exhilaration.

00:14:14.592 --> 00:14:33.527
So I guess when you try to set a world record because you want to be in the Guinness book of world records, which by the way, every kid I grew up with wanted to be in, was, it was, And you would flip through the pictures and see the person with the longest fingernails or the, you know, tallest person in the world.

00:14:33.897 --> 00:14:35.947
I mean, we just thought it was fascinating.

00:14:35.947 --> 00:14:41.106
So to be in, it would be just a kind of a, a stake in the ground, like something that really bragging rights.

00:14:41.456 --> 00:14:45.567
If you were, you know, a kid, I don't know if that counts as competition.

00:14:45.606 --> 00:14:48.917
I mean, I definitely did sports and I happen to be okay at them.

00:14:49.326 --> 00:14:54.706
Wasn't, you know, honestly, I wasn't super great, but I was very dogged.

00:14:54.927 --> 00:14:57.736
Like I trained, I did extra work in order to.

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So that in that way, I think sports are great, but I don't really do competitive sports anymore.

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Once I got out of school.

00:15:05.406 --> 00:15:06.025
that's not true.

00:15:06.025 --> 00:15:06.255
Okay.

00:15:06.255 --> 00:15:06.586
Okay.

00:15:06.806 --> 00:15:11.816
That's not When I was at Stanford, I did try out for the luge team.

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which is a competitive sport.

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And I think everyone knows what it is now, but back in 1985, nobody knew what luge was, it was, it was an obscure sledding sport where you lay on your back and you went down a, you know, a ramp, a shoot.

00:15:26.441 --> 00:15:32.490
And, uh, so I did do that after college for a little while, made the national team left.

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No, no, it's not.

00:15:33.557 --> 00:15:33.897
Wow.

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I promise.

00:15:34.787 --> 00:15:36.086
I a good luger.

00:15:36.966 --> 00:15:40.496
I crashed all the time, and that was my nickname, actually.

00:15:40.547 --> 00:15:43.774
Crash, I really wanted to make the Olympics.

00:15:44.204 --> 00:16:01.336
I just thought the Olympics were the coolest thing ever, and I had no skills, so I simply picked a sport where there were hardly anybody doing it, that's actually the key to my success in life, is I just find a niche very few people are in, and then of course, you know, you're always in the top 10, because there's really only 10 of you.

00:16:01.801 --> 00:16:07.860
you found these niches, but maybe these niches also came to you because maybe there was this thing.

00:16:08.409 --> 00:16:11.710
natural aptitude you had for excelling in certain ways.

00:16:12.197 --> 00:16:15.288
Your response made me go down memory lane in two ways.

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One is, I am, maybe my generation we'd loved the Guinness book of records.

00:16:20.748 --> 00:16:21.827
And then next.

00:16:22.081 --> 00:16:36.961
I discovered accidentally over the last few days that your twin starred in one of my favorite TV shows from the 90s Nobody I asked here seems to know Baywatch for some reason, but I and my friends, we were huge fans.

00:16:36.981 --> 00:16:37.282
So,

00:16:37.591 --> 00:16:37.892
Okay.

00:16:37.892 --> 00:16:44.562
So this is the hilarious part about that is both my twin sister and I were obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records.

00:16:44.591 --> 00:16:46.402
So I attempted on my own.

00:16:46.777 --> 00:17:02.231
Well, actually with a friend, but not with my twin sister when I was, I think, 13, 14, 15, something like that My sister actually broke a record because she was on Baywatch, which was the most watched show in the world at the time.

00:17:02.241 --> 00:17:04.192
And it made the Guinness book of world records.

00:17:04.412 --> 00:17:11.567
And don't you know that she logs that over me I think it's been broken since, but nevertheless, she was in.

00:17:12.307 --> 00:17:14.048
The lauded book.

00:17:14.643 --> 00:17:23.325
well, she was breaking records and Caroline, you are, You're winning minds and you're inspiring a generation.

00:17:23.481 --> 00:17:33.895
moving on, you took your Stanford degree and your childhood of seeking adventure and then you became a firefighter in your 20s.

00:17:34.079 --> 00:17:36.349
What prompted you to do that?

00:17:36.482 --> 00:17:39.769
From what I could tell, your parents had white collar jobs.

00:17:39.944 --> 00:17:47.466
And your sister was a TV star and you took on this, slightly off the beaten path, profession

00:17:47.758 --> 00:17:48.577
I fell into it.

00:17:48.577 --> 00:18:04.240
I was a journalist by then and I was just, let's see, it was, I had been working odd jobs and I was volunteering at KPFA here in Berkeley I was the morning news anchor and there were all these stories come across my desk about the fire department at the time, which was like 1986 to 87.

00:18:05.530 --> 00:18:07.890
and how racist and sexist they were.

00:18:08.411 --> 00:18:10.669
And they were, under a court order actually.

00:18:10.690 --> 00:18:12.980
And they were just admitting their first women.

00:18:12.980 --> 00:18:14.380
They had a class of five.

00:18:14.987 --> 00:18:20.807
there was a new test coming up and I decided I would go take the test, but only as an undercover reporter.

00:18:21.067 --> 00:18:29.219
And I would ferret out racism and sexism because, you cannot ferret out racism and sexism in like a three hour test.

00:18:29.219 --> 00:18:31.429
It's just not the way racism and sexism works.

00:18:31.429 --> 00:18:33.689
That's why it's so insidious and powerful.

00:18:34.098 --> 00:18:44.519
It's woven way more deeply into institutions, but I was young and dumb and I took this test and I passed the first part and then I kept passing every single one.

00:18:44.519 --> 00:18:48.058
And by the end, they said, you've, you're now in.

00:18:48.622 --> 00:19:03.050
there was no story because there was no overt racism and sexism that I could talk about and I made it and I actually was so stunned and here's, here's where my own prejudices came up is it was probably my own classist prejudice.

00:19:03.601 --> 00:19:10.790
I couldn't see myself as a firefighter as a blue collar worker, and I didn't want my dad who had paid for my education.

00:19:11.240 --> 00:19:11.901
I just felt.

00:19:12.385 --> 00:19:16.766
But what I did is I deferred and then I went off and did some adventures.

00:19:17.026 --> 00:19:24.036
I think I quit my job at the time and then did some adventures and came back and the 1989 earthquake happened and I was here for that.

00:19:24.056 --> 00:19:32.375
And I started to read all the stories of bravery and compassion and smarts that the San Francisco fire men showed.

00:19:32.615 --> 00:19:41.306
And I realized, Oh, come on, like you are as narrow minded as you're claiming they are by just painting them with this broad brush.

00:19:41.306 --> 00:19:51.496
It's a terrible institution and also by then I'd really kind of fallen in love with what firefighting was, which was basically getting paid for adventure, which is why I wanted to be a journalist in the first place.

00:19:51.976 --> 00:19:54.996
So, I call back the department and I said, I'd like to take the job and.

00:19:55.480 --> 00:20:00.121
So I went in, uh, it was the 15th woman and there were 1500 men.

00:20:00.390 --> 00:20:09.598
I'm so lucky because it was an amazing job with really, uh, incredible people, brave people, honorable people, some bad people, but of course that's the way it is everywhere.

00:20:10.028 --> 00:20:12.538
and it was, uh, really a coming of age for me,

00:20:12.950 --> 00:20:17.109
sounds like quite, quite the incredible coming of age story.

00:20:17.545 --> 00:20:28.346
What I'm sensing about you a little bit is you don't just, when you think about, people doing different things, extraordinary things, you're not content by just.

00:20:28.836 --> 00:20:30.997
hearing about them or reading about them.

00:20:31.487 --> 00:20:40.576
Maybe your personality calls for you to go and seek and try and experience those things yourself, talking about your book.

00:20:40.576 --> 00:20:51.721
Now that the heroes, or shall I say the she ros that you write about, it's full of these heartwarming stories, you know, full of, Full of these people of all backgrounds.

00:20:52.731 --> 00:20:57.765
Where did you go to find these Renaissance women?

00:20:58.313 --> 00:20:59.598
how did you discover them

00:21:00.189 --> 00:21:01.298
the book is really about.

00:21:01.574 --> 00:21:12.916
How I can find fulfilling aging as I neared my 60s and onward and how outdoor adventure would fit into that.

00:21:12.957 --> 00:21:25.124
And I did a lot of research before I set out to interview these women, mostly because I was going to kind of huck myself into the interviews, like the paraglider that I was, but the pandemic happened.

00:21:25.134 --> 00:21:27.824
And so we were in lockdown, I couldn't interview anybody.

00:21:27.824 --> 00:21:46.990
So what I did was I did a lot of research on what we need as we age and about aging in general, which was great because I came into each adventure knowing where I would kind of want to put it, how it would, you know, fulfill this aging need that we would have.

00:21:46.990 --> 00:21:52.451
So for instance, well, here's what happened is like, I realized as I was.

00:21:53.372 --> 00:22:01.872
outside and I didn't see anybody my age out there with me again, like I said, there were men my age out there.

00:22:02.219 --> 00:22:09.259
what I realized is that it was the toxic messaging that women get about our own aging that was keeping us from going out there.

00:22:09.620 --> 00:22:11.690
I don't know what that messaging is for men.

00:22:11.700 --> 00:22:13.299
This is also a book for men.

00:22:13.643 --> 00:22:18.353
They can learn a lot about how important it is to stay outside as we age.

00:22:18.593 --> 00:22:35.450
But again, I was seeing men out there so I knew that the messaging was different and then specifically that we're frail, that we can only really hope for a future of, guarding our frail bones and our cognitive decline and we're boring.

00:22:35.961 --> 00:22:43.692
And when I was doing my research, I was interested in this mindset because I thought it was the biggest reason I didn't see women out there.

00:22:43.852 --> 00:22:52.501
And what I found, Kush, was this amazing science that said, the way we look at our own aging predicts how well we age.

00:22:52.971 --> 00:23:01.931
So what that means is if you have a negative view, if you think aging is a time of diminution and frailty and Cognitive decline.

00:23:02.199 --> 00:23:08.128
You actually have a much higher chance of, of being frail and on a cognitive decline earlier.

00:23:08.128 --> 00:23:14.778
So they've done studies you have a better chance of a cardiac event earlier, cognitive decline earlier, and the opposite is true.

00:23:15.138 --> 00:23:15.888
So if you have a.

00:23:16.211 --> 00:23:19.281
really robust sense of your aging.

00:23:19.561 --> 00:23:26.322
If you think it's going to be a time of exploration and exhilaration, you're happier, you're healthier, and you live seven years longer.

00:23:26.592 --> 00:23:28.261
So that seemed huge to me.

00:23:28.652 --> 00:23:57.371
And so my quest when I went out was to find, I had a feeling that outdoor adventure was going to be An antidote to this negative mindset about our own aging because, and you know, this is a climber, what nature asks of us when we go outside is to be strong, is to use our cognitive faculties, is to be nimble, is to be exhilarated and fun and brave.

00:23:57.804 --> 00:24:01.034
All of that is flies in the face of what we're told about our aging.

00:24:01.094 --> 00:24:02.683
So I knew stepping outside.

00:24:02.959 --> 00:24:05.548
For women was going to be really transformative.

00:24:06.169 --> 00:24:13.229
And so what I was looking for was specific ways to do that, depending on the wide range of the way we age.

00:24:13.239 --> 00:24:17.205
So some of us age with, more physical limitations than others.

00:24:17.716 --> 00:24:27.790
So I knew that I couldn't just do, for instance, I went scuba diving with an 80 year old, but that's a lot of equipment to handle and to throw on your back.

00:24:27.800 --> 00:24:29.530
And Louise Holey is.

00:24:30.615 --> 00:24:32.405
Incredibly robust.

00:24:32.873 --> 00:24:35.732
She has injuries, but she's incredibly robust at 80.

00:24:36.234 --> 00:24:48.765
so I also went birdwatching because I knew that it was important to get outside, but I went and interviewed Virginia Rose who was in a wheelchair since she was 14.

00:24:49.204 --> 00:24:54.045
And so, as she told me, you know, we're all temporarily able bodied, Caroline.

00:24:54.075 --> 00:24:56.674
Soon enough, everyone will be where I am now.

00:24:57.087 --> 00:25:04.256
And so I knew that Virginia can go out in a wheelchair and bird watch, then most of us can do at least that.

00:25:04.576 --> 00:25:12.265
And so I wanted a wide range of outdoor activities, but of course, it's not, this book isn't profiles of all these women.

00:25:12.414 --> 00:25:16.474
It's a real look at fulfilling aging and how different.

00:25:16.765 --> 00:25:21.644
Ways of getting outside offer us that but the women I interview are amazing.

00:25:22.204 --> 00:25:23.164
No doubt about it.

00:25:23.576 --> 00:25:24.007
No doubt

00:25:25.074 --> 00:25:28.584
These women that you interview are Badass.

00:25:29.374 --> 00:25:39.339
And, uh, yes, this book is about the broader theme of defying some of these, mindsets that are not helping us progress.

00:25:39.906 --> 00:25:56.987
But again, the fact that you shone light on these stories and these people, and not only that, you went and embraced that adventure with them yourself, I think brings me as a reader closer to your experience.

00:25:56.987 --> 00:25:57.047
Thank you.

00:25:57.801 --> 00:26:02.612
And I also agree that this is absolutely not a book just for women.

00:26:02.622 --> 00:26:05.201
This is a book for, for everybody.

00:26:05.422 --> 00:26:08.142
I almost wish that there was a book like this for men as well.

00:26:08.231 --> 00:26:12.507
And maybe there is, but I think that, you are opening the door here.

00:26:12.634 --> 00:26:38.661
One fun question to ask here is as you went about, discovering these profiles of people doing these different adventure sports, What sport helped redefine the definition of an adventure for you as well, where you were like, goodness, I had no idea something as kooky and as fun as this existed.

00:26:39.721 --> 00:26:43.621
You know, I went boogie boarding with a bunch of boogie boarders down in San Diego.

00:26:43.621 --> 00:26:50.280
They call themselves the wave chasers and they, they're made up of women between 60 and really the oldest was 97.

00:26:51.111 --> 00:26:54.980
And they're mostly in their seventies and eighties.

00:26:55.111 --> 00:27:04.300
And I went down there because I thought that it would be, you know, It was a simple sport that we could all learn at a later age and also that it was pretty forgiving.

00:27:04.540 --> 00:27:09.891
But I have to say that I'm a surfer, not a great one, but I have been surfing and I kind of was like boogie boarding.

00:27:10.290 --> 00:27:12.050
Like, is that really an adventure?

00:27:12.681 --> 00:27:15.121
is adventurous to me, basically.

00:27:15.381 --> 00:27:19.296
I mean, honestly, I got schooled throughout this book.

00:27:19.296 --> 00:27:22.405
Same with when I went birdwatching.

00:27:23.756 --> 00:27:28.796
Part of me was like, it's not really an adventure, but I really want everybody to get outside.

00:27:28.986 --> 00:27:33.306
So, but what I found was, well, let's take birdwatching actually.

00:27:33.336 --> 00:27:43.746
And then we'll go back to boogie boarding is that with birdwatching, you know, we're on a quest, you're anticipating the bird, you hear it, but you can't see it.

00:27:43.796 --> 00:27:45.145
There's the exhilaration.

00:27:45.145 --> 00:27:50.445
When you see the bird, there's all the uncertainties of the terrain and the weather.

00:27:50.855 --> 00:27:57.046
And there was this physical vitality because we actually, uh, Virginia wheeled, I walked six miles.

00:27:57.296 --> 00:27:58.806
It was a bird of thon that day.

00:27:58.836 --> 00:28:02.816
We went to seven different parks or so we logged 52 different species.

00:28:02.826 --> 00:28:04.415
I'd never been birdwatching before.

00:28:04.846 --> 00:28:08.326
And I realized, Oh, this is an adventure.

00:28:08.425 --> 00:28:17.796
As long as you're feeling exhilaration, exploration, pushing, pushing a little bit of some boundaries, learning something new and you're outside, it's an adventure.

00:28:17.806 --> 00:28:18.961
So I really had to, yeah.

00:28:19.320 --> 00:28:36.530
I had to redefine what an adventure was and I had to believe, and I believed it like I was kind of just paying lip service and then I, and the same happened when I went boogie boarding, what I went in the water and realized, Oh, this is, this is incredibly transformative.

00:28:37.125 --> 00:28:44.855
To be in the cold Pacific Ocean to be, um, with all these other people who are having fun on the same wave.

00:28:45.145 --> 00:28:46.205
And that's what the women told me.

00:28:46.205 --> 00:28:55.935
They said that when they became boogie boarders, especially if they didn't have an outdoor life before that, they upended their own expectations of what they could do.

00:28:57.195 --> 00:29:02.135
It changed them and it changed their outlook on their aging process and what was possible.

00:29:02.216 --> 00:29:04.086
It was really, really powerful.

00:29:04.296 --> 00:30:11.766
And I think the outdoors in particular does that because of, again, the uncertainty that the outdoors is makes you feel way more robust because you're making decisions all the time.

00:30:12.076 --> 00:30:15.416
And also the physical vitality of the cold Pacific ocean.

00:30:15.686 --> 00:30:20.256
You know, the day I went, it was actually windy and actually cold outside too.

00:30:20.686 --> 00:30:23.476
There's stingrays in the water and.

00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:30.581
You have it, you, you cannot possibly feel frail or boring when you're a boogie boarder.

00:30:30.901 --> 00:30:35.281
I had to really change my whole idea of what boogie boarding was about.

00:30:36.260 --> 00:30:40.861
And then, by the way, it's the actual simplicity of boogie boarding that makes it so beautiful.

00:30:41.831 --> 00:31:08.311
It's so simple that it cuts away All the sort of difficult learning process, which can great and it lays bare like this elemental fun and this aspect of play that we really forget about as adults, especially as women, there was just this kind of abandon in the water that was so unusual and so refreshing.

00:31:08.311 --> 00:31:14.750
And I think really that freedom was incredibly invigorating for these women on a life level.

00:31:16.301 --> 00:31:17.770
So many amazing things.

00:31:18.071 --> 00:31:22.411
Jump out of, jump out at me from what you just said.

00:31:22.441 --> 00:31:23.490
Thank you for that.

00:31:24.461 --> 00:31:34.988
I'm a surfer myself, and I think I, I have a bit of your mild condescension as well.

00:31:34.988 --> 00:31:37.222
When I see people on boogie board.

00:31:38.043 --> 00:32:04.701
But I think the way you delightfully narrated that story in your book, you know, made me, uh, think about, some of the essentials of why we take up these sports and what you experience on a boogie board is, is in many ways, the same as surfing, you experience the, the beauty, the majesty, the power of the ocean, also the uncertainty because every wave is different.

00:32:04.996 --> 00:32:10.476
and then finally you also experience that camaraderie you have of sharing that with, uh, with good

00:32:10.476 --> 00:32:10.936
friends

00:32:11.221 --> 00:32:16.141
which is not as much in the, I mean, surfers, like they talk about the aloha spirit.

00:32:16.141 --> 00:32:19.801
I'm like, that is such baloney, boogie boarders.

00:32:19.811 --> 00:32:23.980
First of all, they weren't even most of them weren't even on the face of the wave.

00:32:24.020 --> 00:32:32.121
They were just doing the whitewater and they loved sharing a wave and that does not happen a lot.

00:32:32.161 --> 00:32:43.291
I mean, and certainly, you know, I mean, surfers talk a big game about the spirit, but boogie boarders really embody it, especially these women.

00:32:43.932 --> 00:33:02.549
I have to agree that surfer, especially in the, uh, In the cold waters we have around where we live are usually not as friendly or as filled with like the, let's say the, uh, the goodness of the human spirit.

00:33:03.453 --> 00:33:09.285
I think these women seem to be more deserving of good waves and this group of women is a good example of that.

00:33:09.465 --> 00:33:29.605
Many of these people, again, profiled in your book, they seem to have had somewhat of a, uh, of a midlife awakening of sorts, you know, maybe they were not athletes in their prior lives and they discovered the sport and they have so much passion for it.

00:33:30.195 --> 00:33:32.825
Is there a particular reason why?

00:33:33.265 --> 00:33:51.152
Or is this just happenstance that many of these people are like that and you did not go and spend time with people who were, let's say, lifelong athletes and were just seeking to continue their performance with aging?

00:33:51.985 --> 00:34:02.255
I didn't mean, I wanted to have a wide variety, so I did want to have some people that had never had an outdoor adventure before, but I was surprised how many of these women hadn't.

00:34:02.255 --> 00:34:05.215
I mean, partly I wasn't looking for really good, you know, people.

00:34:05.424 --> 00:34:09.375
Athletes, because I wanted to them to be relatable.

00:34:09.904 --> 00:34:12.174
Uh, so nobody's an expert at what they do here.

00:34:12.184 --> 00:34:18.945
I mean, there's maybe one woman who was a champion runner and is now an orienteer, and I went orienteering with her.

00:34:19.434 --> 00:34:23.585
Um, but in general, they were just, they were all just sort of enthusiastic.

00:34:24.034 --> 00:34:43.954
I think it's for women, a weird thing happens in this culture where our identity Is all the, all the cultural currency that we had, which is basically our looks, our reproductive ability, um, often our, our job, uh, our caregiving skills, all that is changing.

00:34:44.844 --> 00:34:53.755
Our looks are changing our, we're through menopause and so, and the kids are out of the house and we're often at the apex of our career.

00:34:54.384 --> 00:34:58.184
I mean, and we are not really given a new identity.

00:34:58.579 --> 00:35:01.579
And I think men are, and I see that in the media.

00:35:01.579 --> 00:35:07.369
You know, you still have Indiana Jones running through the tombs at 75 doing the, his bad ass things.

00:35:07.869 --> 00:35:10.259
You have Liam Neeson beating up people.

00:35:10.269 --> 00:35:16.684
I mean, they still have some sort of cultural relevance, but for women, you're just grant a grandmother.

00:35:16.974 --> 00:35:25.844
I mean, and it's, it's this big gaping hole for women that could be a big opportunity, or it can be really disheartening.

00:35:26.494 --> 00:35:39.025
Um, and I think that not to be underestimated too, is the fact that we have been through perimenopause, and I looked a lot into the, chemical, the hormonal changes that.

00:35:39.514 --> 00:35:55.650
And what it does is that those extreme caregiving hormones that have served us very well, as we raise kids and, and nurture a partner and a relationship, um, those change and they, And it's not that we become less empathetic.

00:35:55.679 --> 00:35:59.380
It's that we turn more to ourselves and what we need.

00:36:00.039 --> 00:36:10.279
And so here we are in our late 50s, 60s, and we have this change in our hormonal system and our identity is pretty unformed.

00:36:10.289 --> 00:36:15.659
Nobody's given us a template of that is, that feels useful for us.

00:36:16.329 --> 00:36:25.739
And so into that, if you want, you can step and open up your life or you can freak out and it can all shut down.

00:36:25.750 --> 00:36:29.710
You can listen to the messaging, but I think that's why these women.

00:36:30.085 --> 00:37:32.744
did not have an outdoor background, but they, something spoke to them or they wanted to change.

00:37:33.134 --> 00:37:36.044
And I think a lot of them did this at an inflection point.

00:37:36.054 --> 00:37:44.764
Like for instance, Lorraine Voigt, who is a boogie boarder that I spoke to, she had no outdoor background before when at 60, it was the pandemic.

00:37:44.944 --> 00:37:47.625
And she saw these women in the waves and they looked like they were having fun.

00:37:47.625 --> 00:37:48.814
She didn't even like the ocean.

00:37:48.844 --> 00:37:49.664
She didn't like swimming.

00:37:49.664 --> 00:37:51.114
She knew how to swim, but she didn't like it.

00:37:51.754 --> 00:37:52.964
But she thought, what the heck?

00:37:53.004 --> 00:37:59.159
Because I think at that inflection point, there's a vulnerability of like, Oh, well, you know, how bad could it be?

00:38:00.159 --> 00:38:05.879
And, uh, she had had a really tough fifties and she just decided to try it and it changed her life.

00:38:05.939 --> 00:38:08.209
And she told me that boogie boarding changed life.

00:38:09.586 --> 00:38:14.686
that needs to be the title of an entirely new book by itself.

00:38:17.041 --> 00:38:18.776
Changed boarding can change lives.

00:38:19.246 --> 00:38:24.026
One thing I know I appreciate about discovering something later in life.

00:38:24.602 --> 00:38:33.012
That perhaps one is not inherently gifted at is the deeper sense of gratitude.

00:38:33.702 --> 00:38:35.032
and fulfillment.

00:38:35.292 --> 00:38:36.962
I know this is for my surf journey.

00:38:36.992 --> 00:38:48.811
I didn't start surfing until my thirties and I learned in again, the, uh, tempestuous waters of San Francisco going around and it was a difficult journey.

00:38:48.811 --> 00:38:55.007
I mean, every little victory was harder, you know, every wave caught every skill mastered.

00:38:55.277 --> 00:38:58.038
And I just feel like, obviously, obviously.

00:38:58.267 --> 00:39:26.436
If I had learned early as a kid and I had gotten good, I'm not saying I would regret that, but I, I'm just as grateful today for everything I've gotten out of that because I feel that sense of accomplishment that maybe these women do as well because maybe these women never had the opportunity to, you know, jump up, I don't know, jump out of airplanes or try, uh, water sports when they were younger for all kinds of reasons.

00:39:26.436 --> 00:39:31.916
And now that they're discovering it, there is the sense of aha and joy that is so infectious.

00:39:32.956 --> 00:39:36.986
Well, it's also unencumbered by all those sort of the angst of youth.

00:39:37.016 --> 00:39:43.067
I think it's hilarious that you think thirties was old I in thirties and learning new things, I still like had that thing.

00:39:43.067 --> 00:39:44.106
I had to be really good.

00:39:44.116 --> 00:39:45.016
Who's looking at me.

00:39:45.276 --> 00:39:47.186
Oh, you know, How am I doing?

00:39:47.936 --> 00:39:51.696
But as I got older, I enjoyed things way more.

00:39:51.696 --> 00:39:58.236
Like all my adventures, I enjoyed way more, um, because I was older and was not encumbered by those.

00:39:58.677 --> 00:39:59.038
things.

00:39:59.038 --> 00:40:09.107
And in fact, when I talked to Vijaya Srivastava, who is also, she's from India, she had no background in outdoors because it was not expected of girls at that time.

00:40:09.107 --> 00:40:12.207
She said she had played badminton like a couple of times and that was it.

00:40:12.657 --> 00:40:20.777

#17 Transforming Fear — Courage, Curiosity, and Staying Alive to Wonder

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