From Slopes to Sold: Resilience, Real Estate, and Reinventing Success with Athena Brownson - Ep- 665

Resilience really comes in the long run, not in short moments. And that was a very difficult, you know, lesson to learn coming from it, being in athletics and just wanting to get better. You know, when you're going through difficulty, no matter if it's chronic illness or relationship issues, work issues, you want it to be over. You wanna sprint through it so that you get to the other side. But usually what we don't understand at the time is that the greatest lessons in life and the greatest opportunities to know ourselves Come within these most in the most difficult moments.

Chronic illness forced a reckoning.

What emerged was clarity, resilience, and a life redesigned with intention. Welcome to Streams to Impact, brought to you by Steve Tucker Capital. I'm your host, Dr. Allen. When the body says no, life has a way of clarifying what truly matters. Today's conversation is about resilience, not as pushing through, but as listening, discerning, and redesigning life with intention. Before we begin, I want to invite you into Beyond the Paycheck: The Financial Clarity Compass, a private instructional masterclass for professionals who want their money working as intentionally as they do. And you can access our free gift at www.gobeyondthepaycheck.com. steetucker.com/beyond-paycheck. All information shared on Streams to Impact is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be financial, legal, or tax advice. All investments incur risk. You should not invest if you are not prepared to lose 100% of your investments, and you're always encouraged to consult your legal, accounting, and tax advisors before making any investment.

Some stories of resilience aren't about overcoming obstacles. They're about learning how to live honestly inside of them. Today's guest, Athena Bronson, is a former professional skier whose life and work were reshaped by navigating chronic illness. That experience didn't just change her pace. It clarified who and what her priorities were. And defined her decision going forward and redefined her understanding of strength. Athena's story is not about pushing through at all costs. It's about listening when the body says no and allowing that boundary to become a source of clarity, resilience, and intentional living. So today's conversation is about what becomes possible when limits are met with honesty, Rather than with resistance. So Athena, welcome. We're glad you are with us today. So you have faced chronic illness along the way. And so when the body started to say no, what did it force you to confront about how you were living and working?

First of all, thank you for the beautiful introduction. That was absolutely lovely. And I, you know, I have to answer that question question by, by backtracking a little bit. So to really understand my mindset and, and my frame of how I was approaching the world, I was a professional athlete, as you said. I was coached to pretty much push through anything. I was skiing 300 days a year around the world for over a decade. You know, I went through, I believe, 17 surgeries during that 10-year period.

Wow.

And I would just consistently get up, rehab myself and keep going on to the next. So I had a very, um, driven and determined mindset. But as, as I got older and I encountered chronic illness, I found myself bedridden. I was— I had never experienced in, in all my years of injury and, and facing adversity, so to speak, I had never faced something that was so all-encompassing, something that I didn't have the option but to listen to my body because if I did try and push through, I simply would collapse. I wasn't physically able to. So it really, it created almost a little bit of an identity crisis. I had really put so much of my life into what I did that I realized that my identity became intertwined with what it was that I was doing, not who I was as a person. So it really made me come face to face with this, and it made me come face to face with understanding who I am apart from my productivity or accolades or how much I was accomplishing. And for a, you know, a young person, that was extremely difficult, but probably one of the greatest gifts I could have been given in hindsight.

I can, I can imagine that as great as the pain was, I expect the psychological pain was even Even more significant. So how did you come through that time?

You know, I think the only way to come through is to put one foot in front of the other, truly. You know, when I was at my sickest, I had such a bad electric sense— electromagnetic frequency sensitivity, it's called. So basically any radiation from LED lights, phones, computers, that if I picked up my phone, I would get an electrical burn on my hand. If I used my computer, I had electrical burns all over my chest. And I ended up having to move into an RV that wasn't connected to any electricity because I was so sensitive to my environment.

Wow.

So I look at those months of living in an RV without electricity, no Wi-Fi, needing to put on lead gloves if I was using my cell phone. And I think the greatest gift that I actually gave myself at that time was the opportunity to mourn. You know, I needed the chance to mourn the health that had fled my body and the life that I had once led, especially coming from being an elite-level athlete where I had, you know, quite a bit of control over my body to feeling very helpless and very out of control. And what I, what I really learned about, you know, encountering adversity is that we have to give ourselves the opportunity to mourn and to feel whatever sadness, whatever anger comes up around that. The key is just not letting yourself get stuck there. And for me, that looked like having a really amazing support system around me, my friends, family, doctors, clients, and having something that I was really passionate about, which is my work. I absolutely love what I do in the real estate world here in Denver. And that was something that I could keep my eyes fixated upon no matter how bad I felt. I knew that it was something that I could always come to, and it kept my mind from basically going down the rabbit hole, I would say. But it was, it was a godsend.

Yeah.

Well, what kind of, what kind of skiing did you do?

Um, so I started off as a ski racer, and when I was 13 years old, I switched to the dark side, my dad would say, um, and I started freestyle skiing. So I, I primarily did halfpipe and slopestyle, and then some big mountain skiing. Um, but it, it took me all over the world. So I'm extremely grateful. It was a really good time, to say the least.

Yeah. Freestyling looks like a lot of fun, but I can see that that could be really hard on a body, especially over a period of time.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad you came through that.

Thank you.

Resilience is often framed as pushing through. How did your experience reshape what strength actually means to you?

That's a beautiful question. Thank you. You know, I believe that I was one of those people that meant that resilience was pushing through no matter the circumstance. It was, you know, being gritty, having the strength to get through anything that you're encountering. But what I recognized more in hindsight, going through years and years of chronic illness, is that resilience is found in the small moments. Resilience is not overriding what your body's needs are, but zooming out and recognizing that if you are going to be in this for the long haul or facing something for an extended period of time, that you're simply going to run yourself into the ground.

Mm-hmm.

And if you do not take care of your body. So having, you know, I think real strength comes from being able to look within and understand what the body needs that day. And it does change on an hour-by-hour, day-to-day basis. And to be able to check in with yourself Figure out where you're at and what you're capable of at that moment and do the best you possibly can at that moment. And if that means that the best you can do is make it from the bed to the couch, then that's a win because you're doing the best that you possibly can, but you're not forcing yourself to push through to a point that is actually going to be detrimental to your, to your well-being. And resilience really comes in the long run, not in short moments. You know, it's found in small moments, but it's small moments that accumulate on one another to create a story of resilience. And that was a very difficult, you know, lesson to learn coming from it, being in athletics and just wanting to get better. You know, when you're going through difficulty, no matter if it's chronic illness or relationship issues, work issues, you want it to be over. You wanna sprint through it so that you get to the other side. But usually what we don't understand at the time is that the greatest lessons in life and the greatest opportunities to know ourselves come within these most— in the most difficult moments. So instead of sprinting through it and not having the awareness of what it is that you're learning, it's being able to sit with whatever uncomfortability there is because that's really where growth happens. You never look back at life and think about how much you learned and grew when life was easy. It's in the most difficult moments, unfortunately, but I think that's what creates beauty out of difficult moments.

Yeah, I can certainly relate to that.

The—

I can look back on the worst times in my life as actually being the best times.

Yeah.

But, of course, in those moments, they never feel Like the best times, that's for sure.

That is for sure.

It's only in hindsight. So as you have lived many different identities— businesswoman, athlete, investor— and you, you've touched on this a little bit, but if you can go just a bit deeper in terms of how illness actually changed your relationship to Identity, and not just identity, but ambition, because from what you've described, you certainly were in a situation where it would have been reasonable for you to really relinquish any kind of ambition and just give in to it. So how did— All of that to come about.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I've always been someone that is very goal-oriented, and more than ever when I became sick, it became really critical for me to find things to look forward to, to, you know, goals to set, whether it was, you know, again, on a day-to-day basis, creating small goals of how can I Possibly be the best I can today. But it also really forced me to start analyzing and being really intentional with how I was using my time because all of a sudden time became very finite. It became something that I might get 3 hours a day of good work done as opposed to, you know, working 11-hour days like, like I was used to. So I had to learn how to really be intentional about what I was doing in my time and not being busy. But actually being productive. It also made me recognize that I was not going to be able to do this alone. Being that I was in a one-man sport of skiing and I was an only child as well, I was used to getting everything done on my own. And that meant that I was getting, you know, I was doing activities that were not even in one of my strengths. so to speak. And when I had to kind of take a step back and recognize, okay, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? And then from that, what are, you know, what are things that I can delegate to my team that are going to help me to not, you know, burn myself out, not overextend myself, but give other people the opportunity to succeed? Because where my weaknesses are, are— could be their strengths. So it's giving an opportunity for them to do what they're really passionate and good at. And it taught me the art of delegation, to be totally honest. It taught me the importance of teamwork and the importance of not doing everything by yourself because quite simply, we're not the masters of every single trade. And when we can find someone, our counterparts, to help fill in those gaps and allow them to excel. That's where, um, you know, those big goals are accomplished. And, and also, you know, talking about how do you keep ambition, I think when you're— you surround yourself with a community of like-minded people that, you know, are gonna help you stay very goal-oriented and help, help you from, you know, throwing in the towel, that iron sharpens iron. It really— it comes down to what you're feeding your brain with. And I So many doctors, I had multiple doctors say, you know, you should just go on disability, go on bed rest and wait it out. And I talked to my main infectious disease doctor 'cause I had Lyme disease and they knew my background as an athlete and knew that that was gonna be, you know, absolutely detrimental to my health to be sitting at home really just seeping and stirring in how sick I was and not having something to keep me active. keep me driving forward. So having something that I was passionate about was my driving force. And honestly, it was what kept me from falling into a deep depression and from sitting in the mud for too long. So I'm extremely grateful, but I really think it came down to having an amazing support system and just having a background that made me want to continue pushing forward.

Well, in, in all of that, coming to terms with yourself, how did you, how did you find that path from professional skier to professional real estate?

Yeah, that's an excellent question. I like to think my life is— I've had many lives already at the age of 35 because it's They've been very distinct chapters. But, you know, real estate was actually in my, in my family, in my blood. My dad's a residential real estate developer in Breckenridge, Colorado. So he builds beautiful homes. And I grew up going, you know, walking job sites with him and really watching the entire build process and really falling in love with homes. Now, what I didn't fall in love with at all at the time were realtors. I thought that, you know, realtors were a little bit of a dime a dozen, kind of used car salesmen, because we had more real estate offices in Breckenridge than we did t-shirt shops. Um, so, and that's really saying something for a tourist town. So when I, you know, finished up college after my skiing career, um, I was absolutely in love with the home and with design, and I started working as an interior designer. It taught me so much, but what I recognized was that I needed to be responsible for my own success. Coming from being an athlete, I wanted to find a profession where the amount of input I put in, I would see it in the output, and there wasn't really a cap on how far I could take it. And I was expressing this to a dear friend of mine at the time and just You know, trying to sort out what I wanted to do and where, where I was going to go next with, with my life and career, because I felt very lost. Um, this is after doing interior design for probably about 2 years. I felt very stagnant. And whenever I'm feeling stagnant in life, I recognize that something needs to change. Um, and my, my friend was in real estate and she looked at me and kind of laughed and said, Athena, You love people, you love homes, you love design, and you have a knowledge of building and development. Why don't you just talk to the owner of my company, see if real estate is something that you actually might want to explore? And if it's not the right thing, then at least you checked it off the list. I sat down with the owner of her company a couple days later. And he was one of the most, um, he is one of the most joyous, incredible humans I've ever met. And he really explained to me the art of relationship-based business and, and how intimate the relationship of helping someone find their home is and, and how being a trusted advisor in real estate is, is something to be really cherished. So he completely changed my outlook on, on what being a realtor meant. And I actually quit my job the next day, signed up for real estate school, and then about 3 months later, I was mentoring under him. So I followed everything he did for about a year, and it taught me everything I knew. But it's been almost 12 years now, which is hard to believe, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's something that I love dearly, and I never, ever would've expected it.

Yeah, a lot of those, a lot of the best things in life are serendipitous, and certainly that has been the case in my life.

Yeah.

Well, coming up to, I guess, really kind of the present now, what is one challenge you faced recently that taught you something unexpected about yourself and how you now move It's an excellent question.

So this is the first year in 9 years now that I have actually started making progress with my health. I have, you know, I've put in so much work to trying to find what it was going to be that was the right combination for getting me back to health. And finally, these years of, of really, um, intentional work and, and really difficult, you know, getting plasma transfusions every other week and getting, you know, you name it, it— I've, I've gone through it over the last 9 years. But what I've recognized through that is that I started to revert to my old tendencies of pushing through anything that you know, coming towards me because I started to get a— feel a little bit better. And I wasn't recognizing that if I pushed too hard, then I was going to be setting myself back for days on end.

Mm-hmm.

So finding a, you know, continuing, I should say, to seek balance and find balance within my life and health and work and And all of the things that encompass my current life has been something that I've had to have a really strong awareness of. And it's taught me that although I've learned so much over the last 9 years about listening to my body, that it can go away really quickly with a glimmer of hope. And how important it is for me to continue to really check in with myself and make sure that I'm taking care of myself because there are consequences to not doing so. And that's been, you know, eye-opening for me because I thought that I had got this down and that I was extremely self-aware and knew how to take care of myself. But, you know, that old athlete in me definitely popped up and then I'd be in bed for a couple of days and that's not productive for anyone or a happy place to be. So it's really taught me that, you know, no matter where I'm at with my health journey, with my work, that I have to be continually checking in with myself and, and making sure that I'm doing the routines and the habits that keep me in a place of being, you know, mentally, physically, and spiritually well.

For someone listening whose body or circumstances or life is just forcing a reckoning, what would you want them to know about redesigning a life with intention rather than resistance?

Yeah, so it's such a difficult thing when you're, when you're in that. And that's the first thing I would say is that, you know, no one is diminishing what you're going through because whatever it is, that whatever adversity someone's facing is, you know, is real and relevant to their lives and shouldn't be diminished. But But kind of going back to what I said earlier, you know, when we look back at the most profound moments in our lives and the times that we have really made huge growth or over, you know, really learned about ourselves or made pivotal decisions, it's usually when we're going through something that is the most challenging thing that we've encountered. So when we're in the midst of adversity, when we're feeling completely run down and tired of battling whatever it is that we're battling, recognizing that more than ever, that's the time to intentionally lean in and lean into the uncomfortable, figure out what it is that is the root of what you're supposed to be learning from this. And I guarantee that when you get to the other side and you look back at what you've overcome, not only will you feel a tremendous sense of pride and accomplishment, but you'll also recognize that you were probably learning one of the greatest lessons that you could for this chapter in your life. So no matter what you're encountering, recognizing that There is something that will come from it that will make you a better version of yourself. That doesn't mean it's easy. That doesn't mean that, you know, your challenge is not recognized, but it is something that will keep your eyes looking ahead and hopefully your head up.

Well, I appreciate that, Athena. Good information from someone who has certainly been there. Before we close, I do have one last question. But before we go into that, just kind of want to have a reflection on what we've talked about here. So today's conversation wasn't about overcoming or conquering, but it was about actually listening. And we explored how chronic illness can become a clarifying force, stripping away noise, urgency, and false definitions of strength and identity. And we talked about resilience as discernment about learning what to keep, what to release, and how to redesign a life with intention rather than resistance. And this was a conversation about honesty, limits, and the quiet clarity that can emerge when the body draws a line and we choose to listen to this. And I certainly thank you, Athena, for your straightforwardness and your honesty. Always refreshing to have these kinds of conversations. So for those who want to stay connected with Athena Bronson, you can find her on Instagram @athenabronsonrealtor, where she shares behind-the-scenes insights from her real estate projects, investing perspectives, and personal reflections on resilience and building A life that you love. So you'll also find opportunities there to connect with her directly. So Athena, our final question here today, uh, when all is said and done and you do come to the end of this life's journey, what do you hope was most true about how you lived your life?

When, you know, I, more than anything, my goal is to let people know that they're not alone and to inspire them that if, you know, my 5-foot little self can get through the challenges that I have faced and that anyone can, can get through anything and understanding and being inspired by how powerful we are and, and the fact that, you know, Listening to your body is not weakness. It's not giving up. It's a strength. And if I can inspire anyone to, to understand that and take care of themselves a little bit better, then I will be a very happy person.

Well, thank you, Athena, once again for your honesty and clarity. It has been a pleasure. And to our Enlightened Investors, thank you. Thank you for spending this time with us. If today resonated, especially if life has asked you to slow down, reassess, or redesign, I hope this conversation reminded you that clarity can emerge from listening rather than pushing. If you'd like to continue exploring how high-achieving professionals align capital with stability, purpose, and long-term impact, I invite you to Beyond the Paycheck: The Financial Clarity Compass. This private educational experience Experience is our gift to you, and you can claim it at www.go.steedtucker.com/beyond-paycheck. Until next time, stay grounded, stay intentional, and keep building a life and legacy that truly fits.

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