Win Cycle | Not Too Late: Reinventing Yourself at Any Age with Gwendolyn Bounds
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon hosts Gwendolyn Bounds, author of "Not Too Late," on the Purple Patch podcast as part of the Win Cycle series, which focuses on performance in various aspects of life. Alongside Purple Patch Fitness Co-Founder Kelli McMaster, Gwendolyn shares her journey from an unathletic childhood to becoming a competitive Spartan racer in her 40s. She emphasizes the importance of mindset, commitment, and breaking routines.
Gwendolyn discusses the transformative power of obstacle course racing, which improved her health, work performance, and overall life satisfaction. She highlights the significance of community and coaching in her journey. The conversation also touches on the benefits of integrating physical challenges into one's life, regardless of age or current fitness level.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
Episode Timecodes:
:00-1:07 Promo
1:35-4:11 Intro
4:25-11:40 Gwendolyn’s Inspiration
15:56-19:14 Traits and Mindset
19:14-21:15 Catalyst
22:02-24:36 Goals and Process
25:18-27:05 Motivation
27:48-43:02 Advice
44:02-END Final Questions
Purple Patch and Episode Resources
Learn more about Gwendolyn Bounds and her book, “Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age” at: www.gwendolynbounds.com
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Hey, folks, just before we get going, we've got a special episode today. Not only is is it the second part of our Win Cycle series, where we put aside our triathlon hat and we think about performance in the broader lens, thinking about performance across work life and everything else that's important to us. We also have a very special guest today, Gwendolyn Bounds, author of not too late. You're going to hear more about her in the introduction, but if you want to connect or you want to follow Gwendolyn, feel free to reach out to her directly via the links that we put into the show notes. Make sure you go there. Give her a follow. And I would highly recommend that you purchase the book for a good read or listen. It's empowering and as ever, if you want to continue the conversation with us at Purple Patch, feel free to reach out. You know where to find us? Info@purplepatchfitness.com it's great way to continue the conversation. If you're interested in any of our leadership programming, whether it's a workshop or a keynote presentation, I'd be delighted to have a chat with you to see whether it might be a good fit. Same address info@purplepatchfitness.com without further ado, enjoy the show. It's a special one today. Cheers. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life. And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and today we have a very special episode. In fact, we've got a special guest. It is Gwendolyn Bounds. Is the author of not too late. It is a fantastic new book. It's subtitled, The Power of pushing your limits at any age. I got introduced to this book by Kelli, my wife, via a good friend of ours, Carmel Galvin, and Kelli read it. Said we've got to read it. I had a crack at it, and immediately we both knew we've got to ask Gwendolyn onto the show. It is an incredibly empowering story. She didn't grow up as an athlete, and in her mid 40s, she took the step to get way out of her comfort zone, and what emerged was a journey that not only took her to the upper echelons of Spartan racing and obstacle course racing, but had a profound impact on her life, her health, how she shows up for work. She's now the SVP of the Leadership Institute hope by the Wall Street Journal, and has a host of our other accolades. I'll leave her bio in the show notes for you. She can have a look. But this is an empowering conversation, and included in today's show is a special invitation and a co host. Yes, we welcome back. Kelli. Kelli McMaster, Kelli and I own Purple Patch together. We are husband and wife, as most of you guys know, and we couldn't miss out on both welcoming Wendy to the show. And so today's show is a three way conversation, and it is an incredibly insightful, empowering conversation. If you've ever thought about doing anything in life that you've always wished you could do, and you had that feeling of the moment's past, I can't do it now. I've got too many competing demands. Let me tell you, it's not too late. This conversation could be just the catalyst to enable you to take the first step into transformation. It's a great conversation. Kelli myself and most importantly, Gwendolyn Bounds. Don't miss it. It's a cracker. And I should say, feel free to share this with anyone who might benefit from the inspiration and education and perspective. It's a good one. It's one of my favorite shows we've ever done. And so without further, ADO Gwendolyn bounce, author of not too late, ladies and gentlemen, it is the meat and potatoes. All right, it is the meat and potatoes and goodness meat. Welcome to a special, I would even say very special, episode of the Purple Patch podcast, because we have got a special guest with us today, which is out of our Norman, but it is the author of not too late. I'd love to welcome to the show. Gwendolyn Bounds, Hey, Matt. Hey, Kelli. Hi, thank you for having us. And yes, Kelli, that is right, because not only do we have one special guest, we're also expanding the theme today, returning for her second visit to the purplepach podcast. Kelli, my wife and business partner, many people in Purple Patch now. Thank you for joining us for this conversation only
Kelli McMaster 04:59
Only Wendy could get me here,
Gwendolyn Bounds 05:02
and I got very special guests, so I'm already feeling really good.
Matt Dixon 05:05
There you go. Yes, I'm I'm not one to puff too much positivity into the conversation. But here we are, and we're going to get going. So we are here to talk about your book. Fantastic book. It's, um, it's been a read of inspiration for Kelli and I, which is very rare with and I want to actually start off with a story of how we got here. And this was a reference from a good friend of ours, Carmel Galvin, who said to us, you really got to read this book and, and I think you went first. Yeah, I did, yeah, and, and so you read it, and then you said to me, I
Kelli McMaster 05:44
said, You got to get Wendy on the podcast. It's such an inspirational story and one that everyone can identify with.
Matt Dixon 05:51
It's true. And so it was a cold reach out for LinkedIn, something that I assumed you would you would not respond to. But and here we are coming
Gwendolyn Bounds 05:59
together in San Francisco, from New York to San Francisco, New
Matt Dixon 06:03
York, San Francisco, in studio, one in San Francisco, no less. So I want to, I want to ask you first, as we do with every guest, I want to ask you a little bit about your background. But I think it's particularly relevant to your story that we're going to dig into what was life like growing up. So give us the very quick Wendy bounds summary of life, yeah,
Gwendolyn Bounds 06:23
well, an only child growing up in North Carolina, and unlike most of your guests, I was not physically active. When I was younger, I was this scrawny, gangly kid who basically hid behind her best friend during dodgeball, right? I don't know if you guys remember dodgeball. I'm so scarred from dodge I got hurled my ball hurling at my like bird, like frame, but I was, you know, the last and this is not something you'll hear from most you guys. I was the last picked kid for teams. My nickname when I was on the basketball team, because I was in a school where they basically let anybody on the team. The coach called me bones, like I sat on the bench the whole time, and there just wasn't something physical activity wasn't something that I was praised for. It didn't come naturally to me, and I spent a lot of time reading books and writing and writing stories. And you know that words were my friend when as an only child, and so we gravitate, I think, to the things that people praise us for, and we gravitate away from the things that they don't when we're younger, and then that becomes, to some degree, our life story. And for me, the notion I am strong, I am fit, was not a part of my narrative growing up, and so I became a writer and a journalist and stuck with the words, but it wasn't until midlife where we're going to get into where physical activity really came into play. And
Matt Dixon 07:47
we are going to talk about obstacle course racing today, and many people won't have read the book of course. And so I think it would be really helpful for for listeners to get a little bit of grounding about what the heck is this, and what is obstacle course racing. So ground us in that first Sure,
Gwendolyn Bounds 08:07
well, obstacle course racing was something I hadn't even heard of until a midlife and maybe we'll get into the story of how I did find it. But I actually think it's something, as we were talking about before the show, that your listeners and triathletes are very well conditioned for and it's essentially cross country running. So you're running through mountains or fields or farmland combined with military style hunter gatherer obstacles such as climbing a 17 foot rope and scaling six eight foot walls, carrying heavy buckets of rocks and sandbags up and down mountains, monkey bars. Everybody's listening to this thinking, Wait, why did the scrawny kid laugh? How did she end up there? But it is, I think, if it's a really good sport to be prepared for life, because, as you all talk about on this show, a lot respiratory fitness, endurance strength, keeping your muscle mass up, particularly as your age, are so important, and obstacle course racing checks a lot of those boxes. Well,
Matt Dixon 09:04
that's, yeah, what it's checking for me is, goodness me, that sounds like suffering, which it does, and I guess that's a good thing. But let's go into the book, and let's, let's talk about the book, because you always hear so many stories of the sort of seismic events occurring of in someone's life. And I think it's, this is really a memoir of sorts, of your transition to that, from that scrawny kid to a very serious athlete, but the impact goes well beyond so I'm I'm sure folks that haven't listened or read the book yet are interested in, what was the spark? What was the catalyst? What changed for you, where you went from just rider and relatively low physical activity to suddenly taking on such a thing like this, rather than a 5k or something like that one that most people do. Yeah.
Gwendolyn Bounds 09:57
So you know, I think often it takes. Takes these seismic events, as you were saying, to really trigger us to take action and profound change and get us out of our cycle of sameness of the things that we do every day. But in my case, it was something small. And I think for people paying attention to these small signs are really important, because then any day can be a day where you began to like embrace, to embrace change. I was at a dinner party, and I overheard this older man who was well into his Gen at the time. He asked this young girl very simple question that people ask kids, what do you want to be when you grow up? And she was like, pause for a minute. She was a little suspicious, but then she's like, this is a fun question, a safe question. She rattles off all these things, I want to be a computer programmer, or maybe I'm going to be an artist. Do you want to see the drawing I made of a caterpillar marrying a unicorn, and his eyes glazed over, and I think he was sorry he ever asked, and he wandered away. But I that question stuck with me for some reason that night, and I was in another conversation, and I realized, when you're hit midlife, and it's even in even before then people stop asking you that, yeah, and you stop asking yourself like you think you're fully baked. As you said, I am a writer. I am this, I am that, but I am not these things. And so the next morning, I woke up and I was really still very agitated for some reason by that question. And I got on my computer and I Googled. And I still don't know why I Googled this thing, but I Googled, what are the hardest things you can do, and the algorithm spit back, what are the hardest physical things you can do? And I started looking at them. I was like, Iron Man, I could never do that. I was like, What's this Spartan Race thing? And I clicked on Spartan racing, which is a brand of obstacle course racing, and I read about it, and it seemed so insane, like something I never do, but that was the beginning. It lodged in my brain of this long journey to become an obstacle course racer and to just get through my very first race, which then turned into last year, my 53rd race. It's amazing,
Kelli McMaster 11:55
yeah. What I love about that story is the part where inspiration can come from anywhere. Yeah, so I'm around your age, and a lot of my friends are in this time when they're taking care of aging parents. They have small kids at home. They're also mid career, and they're feeling just a little bumped up against life, and everything feels a little flat. And so that's what was so inspiring to me. It was just a simple conversation at a dinner party, a simple
Gwendolyn Bounds 12:23
conversation that law, you know, sort of disrupted that. What I referred to before is that cycle of sameness, the same work routines, the same food, the same restaurants, the same friends, the same conversation Monday, it blurs into Friday, and it was just enough for me to, you know, again, snap out of that a little bit to begin exploring this new pastime that seems so far into anything I ever would have been. But a little tiny flicker got lit inside of me, and it didn't go out. It doesn't mean it was easy. It wasn't like a rocky moment, right, where it's just the next day you're sort of out and you're, you know, you're a champion, like it happens in the movies. It took a long time, but it was the beginning, and it was a very small moment. What was your
Matt Dixon 13:09
first training session like? Because when, when people take on a The reason I asked this is when, when people take on a physical challenge, we immediately just go to the physical. Yeah. So I'm so I'm so I'm going to ask a follow up question, but what's the first training session? Because you had to put take the first step at some stage.
Gwendolyn Bounds 13:27
You know, it actually took months before I had that moment where I Googled it, and I was like, this sounds like something I might want to try and do, but it took months for me to get there. And because that's because all of life's sameness got back in the way. I got back in that same inertia of my own routines. And it was honestly my dog got very sick and she got she had cancer, and watching her so her slowly dying was a thing that actually got me back looking for something like Spartan to just basically reinvigorate and fill a void. I think that was a catalyst, but my first training sessions were awful. They weren't anything. They were me basically trying to figure out I had downloaded these free Spartan workouts of the day. I didn't know what any of these things were. A bear crawl, right? I had no idea. And I was I would so I would wake up. I didn't know how to build time into my day. I'd wake up just 45 minutes earlier. I'd be bleary eyed on YouTube, Googling, what is a bear crawl? And then I'd go out in my backyard, and I'd try and perform this while my neighbors drove by, and they're like, why is she crawling like a wounded animal in her backyard? But I was doing something, and even those very first steps, even though it wasn't real training with coaches or experts and it wasn't even in a classroom setting, it made me feel like I was doing something. And I think for anybody not letting this, I have to have it all be perfect in the beginning, just starting out to do something that is so important, and that's part of why. Okay, I'm sitting here today with you. It's just I did something, and
Matt Dixon 15:03
you've gone physically from those first disastrous steps, so far as how challenging they were, but critical steps to now 53 spot on races and on from there, there has been a journey of physical development to get there, and that's obvious. We always talk about mindset, and it's sort of the meshing of ultimately, to be successful, you need this physical foundation, obviously, as an athlete, that's really intuitive, but you also need the right mindset. So I'm really interested. You are an accomplished person, you're a writer, you're you know, very busy, professional, by all accounts, successful. What, in reflection, the journey of your shift of mindset and the development of some of the traits? What? What? What can you identify out of that? What's it given to you this journey?
Gwendolyn Bounds 15:59
I think, let's set the stage of really how far the journey has become, because mindset is so critical to where I am now. Because it not only is it 53 races, but I went from just trying to complete races to trying to compete in my age group, to going from I just want to get through it and not die to I want to actually try to be a contender, and that has turned into 20 plus podiums in my age group, and I've participated in three World Championships. And even as I say, this is still so far into my identity as a kid, I can't believe those words come out of my mouth. So we're going from bear crawls in my backyard to that. And physical training would have gotten me some of the way, but it's mindset that is given me, I think, the the power to stick with it and it's and that's true with any new thing. How do you stick with it? Because time? How did I make time in a life that seemed like where there was no time I had to figure out that aspect of it? How did I shift from being somebody who thought I am not this to someone who believes she could be that? Carol Dweck is a very famous Stanford psychologist who talks about the growth mindset, and she tells a story about students in Chicago and how they were given these grades when they were not doing well, instead of a failing grade, they'd get a not yet. And I have really come to believe that this thought of not yet is something very powerful from a mental standpoint. I am not an athlete yet. I am not a fly fisherman yet. I am not a surfer yet, because it gives us that permission to know that that is could be, be something we identify with in the future. And the other thing is, and this is really true, at this age, you have to be okay looking foolish, and we are not good at that. As we get older, we get used to, sort of having our hands on the master control switch. Social media teaches us to post these picture perfect photos of us. And I had to get really uncomfortable, being uncomfortable and being the worst at something, and knowing that that was the only way I was going to get better.
Matt Dixon 18:09
Yeah, it's growth through discomfort. Yeah, out of that zone which is critical, yeah.
Kelli McMaster 18:14
And one of the things that you said a little bit earlier was how you just started, and it was through that, just starting that you kind of made these breakthroughs. And you know, at Purple Patch, we work with a lot of type A very driven, very talented triathletes, but we also work with people a lot like me who are just kind of getting through the day and use the principles of Purple Patch, you know, endurance training, strength training and all of that, just to feel better in their body. But oftentimes, you know, when I'm out with my friends or talking, it's the sameness. It's the sameness that comes up over and over again. And there's, like, what Matt says, everybody in their suitcase of excuses, of why I can't do this. And one of the things that struck me is you kind of just broke through. So can you just talk through about how you got over those excuses and how you found time because your life was very busy,
Gwendolyn Bounds 19:05
I think first of all, you have to have something that is you have to found something in your life that's meaningful enough to you and gives you a jolt that you are want to pursue it, that you're going to chase that again. So my first race, Spartan Race, was a very short Spartan Race. It was 5k at Citi Field, and it was, it was, I did not do well. I fell from a 10 foot rope, and I collapsed in a heap, and I, like almost started crying and left and walked off. But I finished that first race, and it wasn't even a competitive heat. When I crossed that finish line, something in my DNA shifted. And despite the fact of how badly I had done, the fact that I had made it through and had done something I never thought I could have done in 40 plus years, that was a catalyst. So I had that catalyst. The other thing was, is that when I was in the moment of that race, something profound. Happened that had not happened to me as a professional and just a busy person in life, which was that instantly, when I took off running, and you all know this, there was nothing else that was in my mind. Suddenly, the only I couldn't worry about life's issues or like what that person said to me at work in that meeting or this presentation that was due or money or anything. All I could think about was, how do I keep breathing and get one foot in front of the other and get to that finish line? And that was a gift. No amount of meditation has ever gotten me as close to living in the now as that. So I had those two catalysts to chase. I wanted to feel that again, and so knowing that, I began to really to time block things. I would treat those workouts the same way I would a meeting. I would block them into my calendar so they were non negotiable. It had to become non negotiable in the same way I'm not going to skip a meeting. I'm not going to skip that that training session. I would leave visual cues out for myself, right? Here are my running shoes. Here is my here are my workout pants. Here's my shirt. So even if I wake up and I'm tired, I see that that was my I intended to do this today, and I held myself accountable. Those are a few things I think anybody can lean on. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 21:13
it's really important. I always talk about in a really envision, like sport. Is this, this most amazing crucible of of broader life, in many ways, because when you when you are immersed in something so challenging, so difficult and so immersive, it forces all of these, like absolute presence, controlling things you can control and and you get lessons. You get immediate feedback. Of Hang on, I started to shift and think about the outcome, and it was at the consequence of performance. So it's all of these things that are ultimately transferable that's really impressive, that sort of leads me into what comes out. For sure is you're obviously very rightfully proud of your accomplishments, and you've done incredibly well. You've been to the World Championships multiple times. My instinct, though, in reading the book, I'm not that smart, it's is the real journey has been the reward for you. You know, as you go, as you go through and you take on this journey. So I'd love, I'd like you to talk about the rewards that you've gained, not with finish lines, but with the day to day process. And you're coming in, what reward has that offered you from pre Spartan to now being a Spartan? Yeah, literally, it's
Gwendolyn Bounds 22:32
a good question, I will say, and I'm going to answer you specifically. But I do think goals and process are intertwined. And I think the fact that the process became so profoundly important to me was because I had a goal, and I kept shifting that goal and wasn't just like one race and I'm one and done right? That could have been the outcome. I could have said, I just want to get through one Spartan Race, get my finisher t shirt and check a box. But what? But? But the fact that then I wanted to do another race, and then I wanted to get better, and I wanted to not fail certain obstacles, and then I wanted to become a competitor, and then I wanted to become a better competitor, then I wanted to hit a podium, then I want like it just gave me something new to think about every day that I would wake up. So I do think process and goal are very intertwined, and I don't want to pretend like they're not, but in that, what you're probably hearing from me is that the process became the thing that I would think about before I would go to bed. Would make me not turn on Netflix, would make me read a book about, you know, training and VO two max over just kind of like slogging through maybe another novel. I had purpose in a way that I didn't before, and slowly that process became integrated back into my work life, right? I had more energy at work. I made decisions faster because I needed to, because I wanted to get to my training. I didn't let emails sit in my inbox. I didn't I wasn't angst ridden over it. When somebody would interrupt me in a meeting, I'd be like, Don't interrupt me. I can climb a 17 foot rope, right? Like, you know, there was just an the process feeds into all aspects of your life when you go on this journey of mastery, and you don't have to become a master for this to be a very profound journey, because every day, you wake up with something new to think about and to pursue, and that is incredibly life affirming, particularly when you're at an age where you feel like things are turning toward endings as opposed to beginnings.
Kelli McMaster 24:29
Yeah, that's great. I like. What I loved here is how these lessons that emerged in the in working through the process and then your evolving goals, because you were beginning more adept at all of this, were easily all those lessons were easily translated to your broader life, and it made your broader life bigger and
Matt Dixon 24:47
better. Yeah, I, I want to go back a little bit. You talked about having the reason, the catalyst, and getting going a little bit, and it sparked something for me, perhaps a little bit off script. But. Um, commitment against motivation. Because I think, in reflection, sometimes when we go through in these journeys, it's easy for all of us to sort of think about, yeah, I went on this journey and it was amazing. I had real purpose, etc. But I'm sure through this you had ups and downs of motivation, yeah, like, it's like, and you have some really hard days and you have some really good days that they're euphoric. But what really strikes me is, once you'd got over the hump, in many ways, you were committed. And did you feel I'm really interested in your perspective of the difference between commitment and motivation that ebbs and flows, because commitment is the power in many ways.
Gwendolyn Bounds 25:37
I spoke to a habit expert who was somebody that spoke with for the book, and he described the ultimate turning point in making something a habit or a commitment is when it's a part of your identity, when you it becomes non negotiable, because this is who you are. And that wasn't the case in the very beginning, but that became the case over time, and I think that is something I've come like now, I think I wake up in my hotel room this morning. I have 100 email in my inbox. I just started a new job less than 48 hours ago. I then I got on a plane from New York and flew here like everything is backed up. It is absolutely non negotiable that I'm getting up and going to the gym now, because that is a piece of who I am, and that's a huge psychological turning point. But I, I want to be really honest with everybody out there, because it's just, it's not like, hey, this just happens. I mean, there was just points of like, in the journey of mastery, you have, yes, you have rises where you're getting better, but you have a lot of dips. And more than that, you have plateaus where it's just you're kind of going along and learning to still stick it out on the plateau and in the dips where I had, you know, I had a race I DNF, which means did not finish, where I didn't because I was too cold and I wasn't prepared. I'd never quit anything in my life to that point, but that was a turning point for me. And learning to be okay in that and not just say, Well, you know what? I should move on. That's a lesson for anybody in anything that they're pursuing.
Matt Dixon 27:05
I want to ask a sort of follow up to it, because I think sometimes you found that I was very glad for you to hear like it's not this instant thing, because people, there are listeners right now that are thinking, I don't have time. I don't know what my thing is, so I don't know how to start. And are subconsciously or consciously waiting for a lightning bolt of magical motivation to to come down and say, This is you. So what? What would be your advice to someone listening to think, I don't want my story to sort of act in sort of just current state. I want something like this. I just don't know how to start or I don't have time for this. What would be your beacon of inspiration? I love
Gwendolyn Bounds 27:50
this question, because I bet, first of all, I think if I hadn't had that catalyst of that conversation at that dinner party, I don't know if I would have known how to find the thing I might have meandered along for a much longer time. I don't I don't know what would have happened, but that said, Now I actually think there's a couple of ways you can get at this. One is, what would you do? What do you enjoy doing if time and money were not an issue for you? Like, what do you like to do? What is something that you are intrinsically motivated to do because of joy, and not extrinsically motivated by a paycheck or checking a box or getting a medal? Right? What is something you would choose to do? And that, I think a lot of people probably have those inklings of things, and they just don't think they have permission to do it because it doesn't fuel like some goal that we've set for ourselves, a KPI we're monitoring in society, a key performance indicator. So that's number one in thinking about those things we talked earlier about, you know, childhood, you know, and finding something you were made fun of or not good at as a kid, and getting really good at it can become a superpower. So I think thinking back of those things, where you I thought I loved athletes growing up, I idolized girls who were playing sports I was born one year before Title Nine, and I envied the confidence that they walked down those high school and those junior high halls with. So I think thinking back to those moments can be very helpful to get that spark. And then, like I said before, just doing taking one step. You do not need to boil the ocean. Don't try and climb Mount Everest in a day, figure out what your base camp is going to be, and take tiny steps, even if it's one thing a week, to make a change that can start. We
Matt Dixon 29:36
were talking about building mini victories. Yes, I love that huge thing, rather than the whole bridge all the way around, yeah, and
Kelli McMaster 29:42
I guess one thing that's really coming up for me is this concept of identity, and figuring allowing yourself to have a new identity at any point in your life, and you found the identity of an athlete, but for maybe any of our listeners, it could be artists, or it could be. Hook, or it could be whatever it is, but it's this idea of just stepping outside of that comfort zone and allowing yourself to grow at any point.
Gwendolyn Bounds 30:07
My best friend, he became a volunteer firefighter. He just turned 60, oh, and he is now about to become captain, and that was something he never thought he could ever be. And there's just so many journeys or things we think we're too old for, or we think that we're not wired for. No one's like I said in the beginning. No one's ever said, you can be this. But what interested him, he had been driving by the firehouse every like week, and he would always be like, Oh, look, there's the fire. And finally, we were, we were just like, look, go in, you know, make a foul. And he did, and now he's, like, years later, the confidence he has from that. So you're so right. Kelli, it can be almost anything, but you've got to find the thing that, again, excites you and that you want to do on the days even when you don't feel like it, that when you don't have time, you still want to get up and do it. Yeah, yeah. I
Matt Dixon 31:02
want to ask about rewards a little bit. And what I mean by this is, you've gone on this, this amazing journey we work with a lot of time starved people, time starved parents, time starved executives, etc, CEOs and and sometimes when, when people think about taking on a challenge, I'm going to sign up for an Ironman, or I'm going to train for a marathon. I'm going to do a higher ox. Whatever it might be, it can be viewed sometimes as a selfish endeavor. It's like, you know, I'm already busy. And people externally can sometimes say, Well, hang on, they've got their their their role at work. They got their families, and now they're doing this engaging. And committing to this lifestyle, this this sport, Spartan. What is it delivered to you as a person, and particularly for our executives, listening professionally. How's it changing? You've talked a lot about confidence. You've talked about the physical orb and mental how has it changed you professionally and in broader life. It's
Gwendolyn Bounds 32:03
interesting. I was thinking about this the other day, Matt, which is that when I now meet executives and leaders, and I ask them about things that are beyond what they do for work, the ones who can't come up with an answer, I have real questions about how they're going to be as a leader, because if you don't have something beyond just the com, it doesn't mean you can't be fully committed to your work. But I have a lot more belief in people as leaders when they have something else that is profoundly important to them and they're investing in because I think it makes them understand this vision of a whole self, and bringing that whole self into the workplace, they can be more understanding for the people that work with and for them, I think they will make better, more clear decisions. I think they won't be angst ridden over everything and micromanage people. So I have a lot of I have a lot of confidence in people who have built out their their whole self as executives, and I find that they're actually better leaders. So I I would encourage part of this is people have to decide for themselves that they're not going to be embarrassed by this and that. And I think everybody probably has something that is important to them, and they try, as you were saying, not to talk about it too much at work, less you seem somehow like you're not fully committed. But the more we do talk about the more we find commonalities. And I find those commonalities are the things that make teams even better, because when you have that shared ethos and you're sharing those experiences, you come together. And I find people work together. They're more collaborative. I took a bunch of folks at my last job on a Spartan Race who'd never we just ran as a team and did that. We were very close after that. And I'm sure you all experienced this, and all the work that you do is
Matt Dixon 33:46
exactly the same. We whenever you take people, a group of individuals, and they take on a shared mission and challenge together, it creates just this something special occurs. Yeah, and, and I think it's very important that it's outside of the regular commitments of the work process, whatever their targets are. When you do that, you foster, I think, at the start of it, trust and understanding, which is at the core of highly effective teams, and you feel this sort of commitment to each other, and of course, you develop these systems of support and accountability, and that's where it transfers right back into the workplace every every single time. I think it's critical. I also think that there's a myth in in the broader corporate landscape which is slowly being crushed, which is that you can't the myth is that high performance requires winning at all costs mentality. And, you know, be damned who you are at home, be damned who you are as a human being. And the really, I think, smart executives that we work with that really buy into this is it's not just a mechanism of, you know, focusing on personal well being, encourage. Encouraging their teams and employees to get out of their comfort zone, living it as a role model, sharing it, saying, No, I'm going to go and take a 10 minute nap right now so that I can perform over the coming years. It shifts of like, look, we are investing in you as a human, but actually it's also as a path to get better results and outcomes. It can drive a high performance culture in many ways, when
Gwendolyn Bounds 35:21
you're attempting to master be high performance in something that you deeply care about personally, which you know, as Kelli wisely said, it can be something athletic, but it doesn't have to be. Yeah, you you become sharper in many ways, and you and you begin to make decisions in different ways. You have, you know what your at your personal attributes are, and attributes are different than skills. Like, attributes are things like, Am I funny? Do I have grit, determination, courage? You become hyper aware of those, and once you are sensitized to that, you're then bringing those back to the workplace. And you are becoming better and better at your job. You're becoming faster, more productive, more thoughtful, more creative. They all tie together, and I think that is something we're truly missing in leadership and work culture. But as you said, I think we are breaking down some of those walls. It's also not that I'm gonna go down the rabbit hole of humanity versus artificial intelligence, but it is part of what makes us human, and it is what gives us our edge and makes us so important to be a piece of the economy moving forward, versus just AI, which could just, you know, crank things out, we It makes us fully human, and that is a superpower itself. Yeah.
Matt Dixon 36:37
Magic word for us is capacity. Yeah, yeah,
Kelli McMaster 36:40
capacity. And then also, you know what you were talking about, there is this idea of an integrated self. So instead of work life balance, it's this integrative self where you're bringing your whole self at home, at work and all of that. And then that kind of dovetails into capacity, because if you're not being dragged down by whatever this heavy load at work, because you're not your authentic or integrated self at work. Kind of feel tired,
Gwendolyn Bounds 37:08
and I don't, and I don't think work necessarily is going to get easier, right? Yeah, I think somehow this makes us able to withstand it and to put it in the right framework where it doesn't just drag us down. That's my mother calling you. Yeah. Podcast is going,
Matt Dixon 37:27
Yeah, call you in a minute right
Gwendolyn Bounds 37:29
now. But for instance, this week, I told you I started this new job, and yeah, I'm I've been working remotely for five to six years now. I'm going to be, I live in the Hudson Valley, outside of New York, and I'm going to be commuting almost two hours each way. How did I bring that sort of full self, that integrated self, to work? Because we say integrated self, and people may be like, what does that mean? So I packed a 20 pound ruck plate on my back and that, you know, I did carry that to work for the 15 minute walk from the train to the Wall Street Journal's building and then back, and that getting 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back, even if it's not the greatest, you know, workout in the world, it's something and it makes me feel like I see that there. I'm like, I am now this piece of me didn't get left at home. Taking this new job with this commute isn't going to pull that piece of me away, and all day long, no matter what's gonna happen, I will see that there, and it's a visual cue. So I think there's just things like that we can do to actually make integrate itself feel very real.
Kelli McMaster 38:31
Yeah, I love that story. I love that story. And the other thing that just came up from you when you were talking about this is how much you're working and how much you actually have you have so much capacity? Yeah. How has your capacity changed? Or are your perspective of capacity evolved by taking on obstacle course
Gwendolyn Bounds 38:47
racing? Well, one thing I think, and I don't know if you guys will identify with this or not, but I think I took a real I took stock and made a list for about a week of all the ways I wasted five and 10 minute slices of time. I call them these little time slice sucks. I was horrified. I mean, if you put a and put a video camera on, like, when I picked up my phone to, like, look at something in an email and scroll on social media, I need this on Amazon. I have to do it right now. Ooh, look alert on my phone. I mean, just these little tiny things when I made I was horrified, but getting kind of an account of counting of those allowed me to begin to go in and one, wipe out the ones that I could actually get rid of, but two, begin to bucket things. So I would just make lists of all the things that I thought I needed to order, and I would only allow my to do myself to do that on Sundays, I began saying no to things like all these volunteer things or people asking for little chunks of my time. I got very it was hard at first, but I got very comfortable saying no to those. And if you I think if everybody does that, you'll actually get yourself 45 minutes to an hour. It makes you more productive, right? You can your. Taking out those time slice sucks. You have more time for the thing that your passion, but you're also going to have more time to just be focused at work, because you're not going in and out of every task so rapidly. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 40:12
I want to ask you about one of my favorite words, which might be sound ironic to mediocrity. And preface this, I can't help but tell you a really brief story. But one of the one of the athletes that I talk a lot about, is a guy is amazing gentleman, Sami Incan, and is his name, but he was the founder of Trulia, and we went on this incredible journey with each other, where he formed Trulia went on the journey, and it went IPO. In the year that that Trudeau went public. He not only finished the Hawaii, I remember, he won the whole darn thing. Wow. I mean, it's completely, you know, it's just absurd. And as an amateur, and we sometimes talk about him, but one of the things that I'm highly aware when we talk about Sami is that feels really out of reach, because he is physically, incredibly gifted. Not everybody is going to take a company public, not everyone is going to win the world championship as an amateur, and so sometimes that can feel out of reach. And what I've seen working with a lot of the leadership teams that we work with is a lot of the most powerful role modeling and biggest transformative impacts that we see is from someone that is either currently sedentary, that hasn't cracked the code, or is struggling more broadly, that makes a commitment and goes on this journey so someone that is embracing whatever it might be, Marathon, Spartan, etc, without the reward, the extrinsic reward, of podiums, qualifications, championships, you started as very much mediocre, a complete novice, and I'm really interested. Do you feel like the rewards are maybe even greater for someone that is mid pack in any type of thing than the people that are on the podium, so that the people that are consistent, that are getting the external validation. Do you think that there's almost greater power unleashed from
Gwendolyn Bounds 42:10
that mediocrity? Yeah, I like this question a lot. So you know, my coaches are actually elite racers, and I have seen and they have been athletes since they were kids and and they, you know, everything that they do is benchmarked by where they place and if they meddle. And I, one of my coaches, was midway through a world championship that I was in, and it was so cold, and we had a swim in the middle of this with all of our gear on, and then we had to get back in the snow and run, and she didn't have the she was. Had relied on her own fitness, and so she wasn't doing well in the race, and she was close to being hypothetically, she just quit because she knew she had no podium shot, right for her, not having that what was the point? But there were so many of us, like myself, who were mediocre and in the middle of the pack, where, again, this just getting to the finish line, that was our goal, and being in the we and we finished and that day. And again, she's a better athlete than any of us, but she called up that night and was like, I have to rethink why I'm doing this. Because it she was only driven by that extrinsic thing. There is something profound to be not good, and then the slow walk of getting better. Everything for me, Matt and Kelli is gravy now, like I never thought I would be anywhere close to this, like be as strong as I am in my 50s, or at any point in my life, did I think I could ever do a pull up? Did I think I could run three races over three days in the last mile being 17 the last day being 17 miles? No, but, but everything is upside. And comparing that, I'm not comparing that to a younger self. I'm not comparing it to a 20 year old or a 30 year old me who was really good, I just have that ability to, like, have been mediocre, and then incrementally get better, and watch what that does to the rest of my life.
Kelli McMaster 44:10
Yeah, I think it's also good for everybody on the podcast that's tuning in to realize that there is a whole subset of Purple Patch that are mediocre, that are just starting like if you were to ever come visit us in the Performance Training Center, we have people of all walks of life, all just trying to get better, and they reap so much from it just by showing up. I
Matt Dixon 44:34
think that's the common thread that I always love to talk about, is that I couldn't care less who the best here, and what I do care about is everyone's trying to improve and
Gwendolyn Bounds 44:44
their commitment. Yeah, you must see people come in and, you know, you can see that spark in someone who comes in and has an experience here where you can see something shift in their eye, like and you eyes, and you know what that's going to do to the rest. To their life. And I think looking for that and having helping people find that like that is that's incredibly profound. There's not that many people who are going to be the best, and they're not that many people are going to be elite athletes, or even, as you said, compete in a world championship. But you know, when I finished that first race, that first time in the middle of pack, and it wasn't even competitive for me. That was almost like an impossible with a little i and that was a world championship, and that changed my life profoundly. And you know, it sounds like that's what you all are doing here at Purple Patch,
Matt Dixon 45:32
yeah, but I will say, and I get the opportunity to do the grand reveal here, Kelli, but I'll let you jump on top of it, because one of the, one of the things that the book did for Kelli and i is, is, you know, for me, I'm, I'm really familiar with endurance events. So last year I went and ran a 50k Yeah, and I, couple of years ago, I rode through the Alps with my brothers. It was really hard. I had never had any feel whatsoever that I wasn't going to finish. I knew I could finish. It was absolutely fine. And on the flip side, you really good at strength.
Kelli McMaster 46:10
Yeah, I was a gymnast growing up, and just pretty naturally strong, and love lifting weights. So yeah, so
Matt Dixon 46:16
we're like, we've, we've got to get out of our comfort zone. And so what we decided was being very fashionable. We wanted to be cutting edge. So we're like, we're going to do a high rocks. And it's like, you talk about mediocre. I mean, it is that you talk about pull ups. So you can do many more pull ups than me, but we're going to do
Gwendolyn Bounds 46:34
it together. It's hot. Well, that's if you've
Kelli McMaster 46:35
done it yet you've not. Oh no, that's fantastic. That's going to be in the fall. But I also want to use this as an invitation. Do you, or whoever else wants to join us for a high rocks event? Yeah,
Gwendolyn Bounds 46:45
and then I'm gonna get you to a Spartan obstacle race only after High Rocks,
Matt Dixon 46:50
there you go. I'd be all in. You guys would be great. Both of you can be great at it. It's the dirty secret of Purple Patch. We always talk about so much education around all of the aspects. You know, mindset, nutrition, hydration, how do I integrate your training into life? Strength, blah, blah, blah, and the whole Purple Patch team would always make fun of me because I hate strength training. I actually failed to do it, but I have since, yeah, I have. I'm two months in, and now probably looking like I'm bulking up. How
Gwendolyn Bounds 47:19
did you know? Obviously you're looking at your eyes. I'm
Matt Dixon 47:22
getting a bit worried. Seriously,
Gwendolyn Bounds 47:24
you all, I mean, this is what we're talking about. You've just you, despite being fit, you're shaking up the routine. Yeah, what you were doing? Yes. And, you know, in the physical realm, there are so many of these types of high rocks and DECA fit and running a five. There's so many different things you can try. And you can try a bunch of things until you see one, if, like, if getting fit is your goal, see what fits. And even if you were somebody who has been an athlete all your life, which both of you have been in different ways, to push out of that cycle of sameness and try something new. I mean, that you don't know what's going to happen at high rocks. Like, you could decide you hate it or but you could decide, oh my gosh, like, I'm in like, Kelli. Could be like, you know, this is all I'm doing now, goodbye. I
Matt Dixon 48:10
wouldn't be surprised I tell you that it's really interesting because it resonates. We We obviously work with a lot of triathletes that there has been a long cast model of, I am a triathlete, which is a good identity, but without a willingness to actually step outside, and more and more now, and a lot of it on our encouragement of like, no go and try a gravel race if you want, or go and do a 50k or go and do whatever it is. And the division that I think is less so now, but I remember five years ago, so CrossFit is terrible. Endurance sports are terrible. Hang on, it's all really great, right? And it's really interesting, and
Gwendolyn Bounds 48:45
it makes you more well rounded. I mean, I think people are once you get really good at something, the idea of stepping out and going to something that you're not that familiar with is hard, because you could look foolish again, right? You could finish middle of the pack. You could feel mediocre that day. All of those things that are fearful once people become high performance, like you don't. Being high performing is really important, but once you're high performing, you need to put yourself in situations where you're mediocre again, because that's how you just continue to become a fuller, happier human being, and you're not just dialing it in with what you're good at,
Matt Dixon 49:21
all of the traits that make up what we label high performance, mindset and, you know, stuff that we've trodden over here, but resilience, adaptability, coach, ability, which we haven't spoke about very much, prioritization and focus. All of these, they only emerge out of your comfort zone. That's the only way that you can continue to keep them polished, you can continue to develop them. You can ignite them in yourself. Because these are traits that are not genetic. They're not they're actually in all of us.
Gwendolyn Bounds 49:49
Can I say something about outside your comfort zone? Because again, people hear that all the time, and I think they think, well, then what do I like? What do I do with that? And I think it's really important. Certain when you put yourself in that situation, that when you're struggling, soon after you come back and you take note, like, literally write down the moments that were, the lowest moments, and the why, and try and unpack that and figure out why it was so hard for, like, when I dropped out of that race because of for DNF, because I was so cold, it was because I didn't have all the right gear. And instead of just thinking like, well, this isn't for me, I got help. I learned everything that I could about thermo regulation and my clothes, yeah, then I wrote it all down, and that gave me a path out of the misery of having not finished, and I had to go to the gym the next day, and I didn't have a finisher t shirt, and it felt like not getting invited to the prom. I mean, I just that could have been a moment of like, I'm done, and you and I would never, we would all never be having this conversation. Take, make, make it part of your practice to write down what was awful and why? Yeah, right, and that's going to be your path out of that with
Matt Dixon 50:58
our pro athletes, our we had lots of silly sayings because I'm English, and I have lots of silly sayings, but one of them, but all of them, have depth of meaning and but one of them was freedom to fail. And what that talked about was liberating with whenever you're chasing something that's very, very important to you, we of course, get drawn into the outcomes and and things that are often out of our control, whether it's conditions competition, whatever it might be, with our pros, we wanted to liberate them just say, Look, you, there is no failure here. You do everything under your control to the best of your ability, and then we learn. And it absolutely liberated them to race in a fearless way. And it's funny when, when we first sort of presented this to them, a failure, no not having failure, but it repositioned what failure was, and it became really galvanizing in many ways. So
Gwendolyn Bounds 51:53
in the workplace, that gets tricky, right? Because your bonuses and your paychecks and your promotions get so wrapped around this notion of, did you hit your targets? One of the things, and I think I learned this by listening to a podcast about was someone who's a World Poker champion, but she talked a lot about how, even when you have wins, going back and analyzing those wins and saying, Did I actually win as much as I could have won, like treating everything is a moment to go back and look at it, so it doesn't make failing the only time you're doing that. But even, like, if you hit your target or you won, you won. Oh, did you actually make all the decisions, the right decisions that could have, or did? Could you have won more right? Like and that, I think, takes us out of this mindset of, it's a failure. Everything can be investigated to see what went right, what went wrong. What do we do more of? What do we do less of? And leaders can take that and create a culture where it actually does something for the business and empowers people, as opposed to them saying, Yeah, failure is great really. Like, you know when every
Matt Dixon 52:57
every victory is not a great performance correct and and reflection is the word, and it's like, what did you do really well? What are the areas that you fail to do up to your ability, so that you can learn? And then, where do we apply our focus and attention from here? And I think that's equally important, and to your that it's so sage, because we are always ready to dissect struggles in areas, but we're always ready to just ride the cloud. That was great, yeah, and you haven't, actually, I haven't learned anything of why did we do? Well, yes, actually, is sometimes it you sometimes, you know, I had pro athletes win because of external circumstances. They had a good race, but someone else had a poor race, and so they actually didn't execute as well as you can. And that's really that, that's the continual long arc of performance. Taking the long perspective, I know we're running on time, so I want to ask one quick question, then I'm going to then we're going to have a closing question, but I can't let you go without, I think, something that's really important that we haven't talked too much about yet, and that's team, because Spartan racing is, for the most part, an individual sport in the same way that triathlon is, you know, swim, bike and run as fast as you possibly can. We took a team approach with our professional athletes. I know on your journey, you had a lot of support, a lot of accountability, a lot of guidance from both coaches, but also community. How has team or community fueled your journey in Spartan racing?
Gwendolyn Bounds 54:28
I think, first of all, having teachers and coaches, especially as you get older and you don't have them anymore, like that's built into our system of growing up teachers and coaches, but we don't have those. And so having someone like that, I have been fortunate enough to have had a couple of people and their characters in the book as well, who really gave me that they saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. In the beginning, they saw the little things that you're talking about, and we were hinting hitting on a moment ago. But when you see someone's eyes. Purple Patch when something they seized on that and they kept encouraging me. So I needed that. I needed teachers, but I also needed the surrounding athletes around me to give me that motivation, because I was terrified. You know, no matter how much better I got, I would never go to the front of the starting line in my age group. I just felt like I didn't belong there, even when I was starting to do well, it was so ingrained in me, this, you know, growing up. And I would how I was when I was growing up, but I would have these athletes who would start to see me, and they would call me to the front and they give me a big hug, and they'd say no, used. And even though we were, in some cases, competing against each other, if they were male, we weren't. But just having that, having those people give high fives, having people say, you know, good job. Even though you can't help each other, you can't touch each other on the obstacles like that was incredible. They would also give me tips verbally upon like they'd see me like, struggle with something we'd be running as competitors, and they'd give me tips. All of that builds into the why you keep coming back? The motivation, the commitment, seeing those people again and again. And I think we, you know, in our society, where, again, we are staring at screens and we're sitting too much, and we have all of these, you know, online relationships, which is perfectly fine to have this, these face to face interactions you cannot undersell how
Matt Dixon 56:23
important that is. Sure makes it a lot more fun. Yeah, yeah. And just
Gwendolyn Bounds 56:27
supportive. I mean, it's a world where we often feel like all everybody's trying to do is cut you off in traffic and beat you out and everybody's so angry all the time, and to get yourself into a space where people have a common shared experience like that is you'll build relationships you'll have for the rest of your life. Yeah,
56:45
yeah, that happens here.
Matt Dixon 56:50
So final words of advice. Wendy, I've had a question down here. Someone listening feels stuck and inspired or believes it is too late for them. What's the one thing that you would want them to hear? We have talked
Gwendolyn Bounds 57:06
at several points in this great conversation, and thank you for having me about breaking the cycle of sameness. And I think for anyone who is trying to figure out either what they're not too late is going to be what is the thing they're going to dive into, or motivation, or just wants to figure out how to embrace and invest in another part of themselves? What is one or two? What are one or one or two? Ways this week, you can shake up your routine. Can you get up 15 minutes earlier and stretch? Can you change what you order at lunch. Can you be in a meeting where you feel like you're never the first person or you never speak? Can you raise your hand and be the first person to speak? Can you do something small that feels uncomfortable, that you didn't do, and that is honestly one of the first, best, first and best steps people can do. It's also a great step. If you're like the two of you, and you're going to shake up your routine with high rocks. So breaking that what is some way to break that cycle of sameness? That would be my, my call to action.
Kelli McMaster 58:10
Thank you for coming. It was great to have you. Thank you
Matt Dixon 58:14
so much. It's such a great conversation, I guess. Where can listeners find you
Gwendolyn Bounds 58:18
Sure? Gwendolinbounds.com that is my website, and from there, you can subscribe to my sub stack newsletter. If you end up buying and reading the book, I'd be very appreciative. And also, you can get a free Spartan Race. If you want to try obstacle racing, just go to my website and you can get a free code for a free Spartan Race. That's good
Matt Dixon 58:38
news, because I just committed to a Spartan Race up for obviously, we're going to leave the the link in the show notes for everyone, but thank you so much. We'd love to hear from you and feel free to reach out with any thoughts or, most importantly, sparks of inspiration that one change that you want to make this week, you heard it from from Gwendolyn. Appreciate it so much. It was a lot of fun, and for you folks at home, we will see you next week, but thanks a lot for listening. Take care, guys. Thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe, also share it with your friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey, and in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info, at Purple Patch fitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch patch. Age, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community with that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care you.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Not Too Late, Gwendolyn Bounds, obstacle course racing, midlife transformation, physical limits, mental strength, growth mindset, commitment, motivation, integrated self, team support, leadership, personal development, capacity, resilience.