If You Want To ACHIEVE ANYTHING In Life WATCH THIS! | Sonja Wieck

It's totally cool. But here's what I want them to think about. If you have a lump or a bump and you're like, oh, my gosh, I got this weird bump in my boob. I better go see my primary care doc, get checked out. If you don't have a problem, then an authority, someone who's trained at this is going to be like, hey, you don't need to worry about that, right? If you do have a problem, they're going to get you the help you need. It's no different if you're experiencing some stuff or you feel like you're in crisis or you're having anxiety, but you're, you're in that place of like, oh, I can't tell anyone. Well, if you're not actually having a problem, then someone who is an authority will tell you, like, actually, you're good. So why not? Why not seek a little bit of treatment?

Welcome to Stuck to Unstoppable, where we interview the world's foremost thought leaders to break things down in order to help you get past your hurts, habits and hangups and finally level up and move forward. I'm your host, Stephen Scoggins. Now let's go ahead and get into today's guest and our featured conversation. You're not going to want to miss it. As a mother, 18 time Ironman and part of Team Iron Cowboy in the world's toughest race with Bear Grylls, Sonja Weck knows what it takes to merge mind, body and spirit to make the impossible possible. When she's not on an amazing adventure, you'll find her hosting her brand new hit podcast called Tales of Toughness where she and other extreme athletes trade their secrets of both inner and exterior ultra performance. You guys. Please help me welcome Sonya Weck. Sonia, what's going on? How you doing?

I'm doing super great today. I'm really happy to be here with you. I can't wait to dive in and have a blast today. Chatting.

Yeah, we're gonna have a blast. You know, it's funny, I was, you know, I've had a chance to check out your, your, your podcast. It is amazing, right? I was, I was joking with you just before we hopped on air. As you know, we talk about a lot of the same stuff but you know, from, you know, from mental breakthrough to emotional intelligence to just overall endurance of the mind just as much as it is powerful, obviously on endurance on the body, which you know all about the mind and the body. So yeah, you. Oh, my gosh. World's Toughest race. Come on, girl.

I know, right? I mean, even watching back the show, I was like, dude, I did that. I totally did all those things. It was a pretty wild adventure. And to not be able to have, you know, any electronics during the race. So we're so used to having our phones and capturing every moment. That's amazing. And we had none of that. I had no photos. So even to just see the race and. And have a picture of it other than just my mind's picture was so fun. So.

And a year to get part of the thing that every attendee, every person participating, it should actually get their own B roll. Like she. All the B roll footage. I'm just saying we don't.

But I agree.

But we'll start a new initiative where I'm going to call Bear as soon as we're done and say, bear, can you. Can you pull any strings?

Bear, bring the B roll.

Yeah, right. Well, look, I'd like to maybe if it's cool with you. So obviously there's a lot of. There's a lot of success around world's toughest race, which is awesome. But you're not just that. You're not just the world's toughest race. You're not. You're not just the competitor. You're not just, you know, I'm saying you're. You're a whole. There's a whole. Goes a whole lot deeper. Some of the things that I know that have taught you, the things that you know that even prepares you for the race and other things that you've done a lot of the endurance challenges and obviously the Ironman and all the kinds of stuff. Right. Started up here first. Right. So give us a little feedback on kind of where you come from and kind of like what drove all that.

Yeah. And. And for those of you listening.

Stephen pointed to his head when he said up here first, so.

Well, just for the record, our podcast is just. Is on YouTube as well as.

Places. So for those of you guys who want to see me point at my head, make sure you check out YouTube.

Do it, do it. You know, I got started honestly how so many people I think even right now in Covid are feeling is this disconnect between what you're spending your days doing and who you think you are?

Yeah.

And I was about when I really got started in sport, it was about a year after having my daughter Annie in 2005. So this is like, is she doing.

Okay, by the way? And he's doing good.

Oh, Annie's slang I mean, she's. She's slaying life right now. Like, she's doing it better than any of us, for sure. Freshman in high school doing high school from her bedroom.

My two boys just graduated high school. My daughter is now working at one of my companies here in the accounting office.

So I love it. Well, I'm gonna send Annie to you because she's a major math nerd, so you can get her into your accounting office as well. Yeah, I mean, it was a year, about a year after having Annie. And I remember I had, like, this mirror moment where I was looking in the mirror, and of course, you know, new mom, weight gain is a big part of that, but it's so much more than weight gain. I truly feel that our weight is really just kind of a manifestation of the life that we're having to experience. And so I was in a what I would call insulated state, and I looked in the mirror, and I remember thinking, you know, Sonia, you really considered yourself this, like, outdoorsy girl, like, likes to backpack, likes to camp, likes to be dirty. And I was looking in the mirror, and I was like, where is she? Where'd she go? And so I think, honestly, those are some of the really most important moments in our life, is when we see this humongous disconnect between who we self identify as and who we're actually manifesting as. And you're like, this is not lining up. So from that kind of mirror moment on, I really. I just thought about adventure. Like, I knew adventure was a big part of my soul. And so that. That ended up coming out. It was like I went down and got my husband's mountain bike, dug it out of the garage, dropped the seat all the way down. Cause he's 6 foot 4, got one of those little, like, trailers for Annie, and we just started going on adventures. We'd ride our bike to the store, to the playground, all. And they just kept getting longer and longer. And then they started incorporating, like, some running in the adventures. And then I just thought, geez, you know, I don't know how to swim. And I have a baby who's, of course, in a few years going to be swimming herself. And I don't know how to swim. I thought, and if I learned to swim, I can run now and I can bike, so I could do triathlon. And that was, again, it was just a dream. It was rooted in adventure, rooted in family. And so, yeah, I mean, I went and took swim lessons, and I. You know, swimming is a skill everybody can learn. How to do if you have the right people teaching you. And I think that's something people forget, too, so often is sweet. Some of these things that we're, like, really hung up on is actually just a skill that someone can teach you, and then you know it, and then it's not even a thing anymore. So once I did that, then, yeah, I did my first triathlon. The light bulb was massive. I just lit way up. I knew it was something I wanted to do from that point forward and then started the journey phase. And the journey phase is that phase where you go from the light bulb and what you really love to a really big outcome and all the crazy path that you take along the way. And so my big, crazy outcome was that I wanted to win my age group at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii.

Not a bad place to start.

Not a bad place to visit every year and try to get the most out of your body. Everyone thinks, oh, Hawaii, so, so lovely. And I'm like, well, we raced through the lava fields, so that's a little different.

Lava fields are my razor sharp.

They're. They're sharp, they're unhappy. Nothing thrives in the lava fields. But here I was in the lava fields trying to get the best out of my body. 5. I went five years straight to Kona. I did 18 Ironmans trying to win my age group in Kona. You had to qualify every year. And in 2014, I got second. And second felt like first. I mean, it had been such a journey to go from just a mom riding her husband's mountain bike around. You know, that was in 2007 you to 2014. So seven years later is when I got second in Kona. So it had been just a really big journey. But the best part of the journey, in terms of, like, my life moving on the trajectory that it needed to move on was the day after I got second in Kona. And really, I have to say, like, getting second felt like winning to me. Um, the girl who won was like an Olympic trials qualifier. She was, you know, she was downplaying effort.

Don't downplay the effort.

I wasn't downplaying the effort, but it. I just, like, some people don't understand that sometimes, like, you have to understand when you're satisfied. You have to understand when you're. When you're beating your head against the order, you're not going to get any more in terms of, like, life experience from that next push. So I was satisfied. I was satisfied. And I woke up the next morning and when you. When you get on the podium at Kona, you get a bowl. You get a big wooden bowl, and it's called a Miki bowl. And the next morning, I woke up and the meek bowl was sitting on my nightstand at my Airbnb. And I looked over and it was empty. Just like me.

Yeah. Been there before.

I was like, I thought everything would change when I felt satisfied by satisfying this goal. And that was the best moment. You know, I truly hope that everyone in their life gets a chance to get everything they ever wanted and then wake up the next morning and realize what you actually really might have wanted. It's a moment.

No, it is for sure. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. Was that the moment that obviously, in that moment, was that the moment where some of the identity obviously shift became or, like, trying to. Who am I? You know, what. What am. Why am I here? Like, you know, is it. Did that really kind of set in at that point in time and.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, that was the first inkling I had that maybe I wasn't put here on this earth to beat people.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Like, because that's all I had been running around actually doing was, like, solely focused on beating people, being on top of the podium. And you can call it winning, but the truth is, winning is beating people.

Yeah.

And so I was like, wow, was I really. Is that really what I was put here to do? Like, just beat people, like, month in and month out? That didn't feel quite right. Didn't feel like it was quite right. And so my next thought was, well, no, it must be service. Like, I must be here to help people. Not beat people, but help people. That's sort of the next thing. And that led me on a path of starting a coaching company and diving into entrepreneurship. Okay. I've got all these skills. I've got all these life lessons. But the funny thing is, what I did was then I built a whole huge company teaching other people how to beat people.

Like, wait a second.

Wait a second.

That's pretty awesome, I think.

And I made that company about how many athletes we coached, how many assistant coaches we had, what our revenue was, more podiums.

So I don't think I quite got the lessons, but I definitely experimented with them in a different. In that whole business entrepreneurship avenue. And that experience actually led to a major nervous breakdown, a major mental health Crisis moment in 2017. That really. That was when I got taken all the way down to the bottom, to the very depths. Um, and that's. That was where the lessons really started to come in.

Yeah, it's. It's funny. I. Can I share that with you? So for those of you. For those of you listening, a lot of people obviously listen to the show on a regular basis, know that, you know, I've. The homeless. The homelessness story that I faced, and then also my. My bridge moment where I decided that I had hit my bottom and. And I was about to go one step below that. So I totally understand the search for worth, identity, value, meaning, significance, purpose, like all of that rolled up into one. So obviously, you talk a lot. I mean, a lot about mental health and the power of vulnerability and things of that nature. How were you able to make the shift from, hey, look, I'm kind of in this desperate moment to, you know, now I'm. You know, it's not even three years later, and you just got through finishing one of the toughest journeys on earth, right? Yes. I mean, there's. There's a lot of fortitude there. So how do you develop it?

Yeah, one step at a time with a lot of help. And, you know, when you're in crisis mode, and you know this. When you're in crisis mode, the first thing you need to do is get out of crisis mode. When you're in a place where you want to end your life, you're in a place where you want to end your life. And so first and foremost is getting yourself backed out of that emotional and mental and spiritual place. And so that took. Gosh, that took at least like, three months. So I was in a lot of therapy, and I had a lot of. I'd walk the dog on the beach a lot, and I quilted. I got out the sewing machine, and I made this huge quilt I call my recovery quilt, because quilting was the thing I could like. It was mindful enough to keep my mind busy, but not so mindful that it was taxing. And so I could kind of, like, just. I did some quilting, which is so weird because I'm an endurance athlete, so it was just such a departure.

But, yeah, you make anything interesting while you're on the. On the show. Like, any baskets or anything on the.

Way out, then, no, I didn't, like, stop. And, I mean, I, like, patched up some wounds. I guess that's probably as creative as I got out there. I had, like, a backpack moment, but.

Yeah, so I had to work my way out of crisis. And then from crisis, once that. Once I kind of got out, then I had to unpack everything from my Past, like my parents, my issues, my everything, my relationships, everything had to get all put on the table and dealt with, like, one therapy session at a time.

Yeah.

And then after we backed out of that, we started getting stability there. Then it was really the focus on foundations of mental health. What do we need to put in place? We all know we need foundations of physical health, and we gotta, like, sleep and eat healthy and exercise. But our culture is not super great on addressing foundations of mental health. And I think because of that, so many of us get to crisis, we start having anxiety, panic, depression, and we think that's kind of life. It's hidden, kind of normal.

So, yeah, we're like, we can't tell anybody else about it.

We can't tell anyone else about it. We're in an industry where toughness is honored over vulnerability. Right. Like, we're supposed to be people. We're supposed to build companies, be leaders, et cetera. And leaders aren't. Leaders don't have anxiety. Well, actually, most of them do. So we've got some myths to debunk for sure. So, yeah, then we focused on foundations. And once I was in that, like, foundational place, then I got to start rebuilding my life from a different avenue and looking daily. And what I landed on, honestly, once I'm kind of foundationally strong, is it's as simple as what lights me up. Like, what do I look at, and I'm like, oh, you kidding me? Let's do that. Yes. Once I have that moment, I've now learned, like, oh, all I have to do in life is literally just go. Go with that moment. And then whatever it reveals, like, run with that. Stay in that lit up place. And then if something starts to get dark, like, you just back up the truck and you wait.

That should be your new wait on social media, is back up the truck.

Just back up the truck and wait. And then the next light bulb will come, and then you go that way. That's it. So that's what led me to the world's toughest race. That's what led me to, you know, launch Tales of Toughness podcast. You name it.

Yeah, I want to back up just a little. I want to back the truck up just a hair. Just a little.

Back it up. Back the truck up.

Right. So I want to. I want to touch on something real fast because I think this was important and it was at least something that I. I personally had to overcome, which was in that moment where you. You actually are aware that you think you might need some coaching or counseling. But then you're trying to decide, do I do it? And the reason you're trying to decide, do I do it? Is like, do I share that I'm here in this place? How you know, for me, that was a problem. I had a quality. Call it pride, ego, problem for a little while that, you know, that's essentially what led me from, you know, homelessness to essentially a bridge and vice versa. So help everybody understand who maybe. Who maybe is in that place right now. Or maybe it is for them, it is their darkest moment. Maybe that especially with the quarantine, they've been. They've been sidelined so much, they don't know what to do in there, and they've been doubting everything. Like, I want to speak to them because I want to make sure that they understand. Like, it's. It's cool.

Yeah, here's a. It's totally cool. But here's. Here's what I want them to think about. If you have a lump or a bump and you're like, oh, my gosh, I got this, like, weird bump in my boob. I better go see my primary care doc, get checked out. If you don't have a problem, then an authority, you know, someone who's trained at this is going to be like, hey, you don't need to worry about that, right? If you do have a problem, they're going to get you the help you need. It's no different if you're experiencing some stuff or you feel like you're in crisis or you're having anxiety, but you're. You're in that place of like, oh, I can't tell anyone. Well, if you're not actually having a problem, then someone who is an authority will tell you, like, actually, you're good, so why not. Why not seek a little bit of treatment?

Yeah, for sure.

I think that was where I had to. That's what I would want someone to know. Like, just remember, if you. If you think you're overreacting or you think it's not bad enough yet, then a professional.

That's all I need to wait for it to get bad enough, right?

There's no need to wait. A professional will be like, oh, it's not bad enough yet. Come back to me when you try to kill yourself, right? Like, you know, which isn't gonna happen. That's not how that's gonna go. If you're experiencing symptoms, then you definitely need some treatment. Like, that's bottom line. That's my bottom line. Now. If I'm experiencing symptoms I need some treatment. That's it. It's just like health, or it's just like physical health. If you're having symptoms, you need a little bit of treatment.

I think everyone undervalues, and I think you touched on just a minute ago, everybody undervalues. The benefit of working backwards to work forwards.

That's right.

To really unpack. Hey, look. How, how, how. How did I get here? How was I influenced? How was I made? How was I shaped? How are my values and the things that I think I care about? Really, the things I think I care about?

That's right.

I see a disconnect a lot of times with a lot of people. A lot of times they say, well, I really value this. And you're like, well, your actions say you value this?

Yep.

Well, yeah, but I. Where. So where did you learn that from? Oh, well, it turns out my mom and dad used to value that or my high school coach used to value that. Did you have to face the same thing? Because, I mean, that's one of the things that I think people need to do, and I'm trying to encourage them. Dude, it's totally cool to take an objective look backwards.

And I mean, can't we take that next step and literally make it universal and say, actually, we all do. It's called being human. Like, we all do this. We all need to unpack it if we want to move forward in our life. And the. The resistance to unpacking it will limit your life. And you getting rid of that resistance and moving into unpacking it will open up your life. And that's just a universal truth that is called being human. That's how it works on this planet. Yeah, I had to unpack it all. I come from. I'm an only child of alcoholic father who was super controlling. And so I had a lot of, like, I just wanted love and adoration from the people that no matter how many podiums I got on were not going to give me that love and adoration in the way I wanted it. So, yeah, I could say, like, oh, I. I want to win races, but really it wasn't about. It wasn't about that until I had to be honest with myself. I remember having this moment where I was driving home from therapy and my therapist had said we had really unpacked this idea of, like, all the things in my life that I did for approval. And I was driving home and I was like, okay, if I take all of the things I do in my life for approval out of the picture, what's left. What's left? Like, what do I do? Not for approval. And the only thing I could come up with was that I like to drive fast and listen to loud music. Those were the only two things I could come up with in my life that I wasn't doing for approval. And I was like, that is a problem. That's a big problem. So that was my starting point, was like, driving fast in loud music. Let's work from there. Can we find something else in my life that I do not for other people's approval, but instead for myself?

Yeah.

Okay, let's do more of that. Like, let's bring that back in. Let's discuss that. And yeah, that's how we had to go. I had to go to the very bottom and assess what actually was me and what was me trying to please everybody else in my life at my own expense.

Yeah, it's so good. I think the other thing too, that kind of comes off that programming thing. So we have all at some level, been programmed. And the reason. I believe that the reason. Call it. Call it generational curses, call whatever you want, bondage, whatever. Whatever you want to call it. So there's certain behaviors that will continue through generations if they're less unaddressed because the people that are programmed become the programmers.

That's right.

So as a result. So I have some. I was actually talking to a friend of mine. I'm getting ready to. So we're working on the next book, which is great. But we had this epiphany while I was talking to him. And the epiphany was. So I'm sure you're free with ancestry dot com.

Yeah.

So I did the whole DNA thing and found out I'm from Scandinavia and Ireland and Scotland and all these different cool places. And apparently I'm part Viking. Even I'm five foot nothing.

I see it.

I'm like the shortest Viking on the planet, you know. But I had this interesting discovery. So I went as far back as I could and I realized that people. My family came. Came from England over to United States, obviously, like in this. I think it was like the 1700, 1750s. Not because they were looking for a better. A better life, not because that they wanted to see a new world, but because they were a part of a penal colony. They were. They came. They came as essentially indentured servants to work on plantations. Right. So then you say, well, why? Okay, well, well, they technically. And this is all in the records. You can obviously, you know, if you spend enough time, you could go down that rabbit hole, which will take you a couple years. I had nothing better to do, apparently. So my wife and I both did it for ourselves. It was kind of fun. Fun for us anyway. You know, I dug into it. As I dug into it, I learned that what they did was they killed a deer. Somebody else's property, quote, unquote. The property, of course, the deer is a free range animal because the family was hungry. So then they were put on a ship and they were obviously essentially shipped here to United States and worked as an indentured servant all the way through hard labor style and occupations, poverty stuff, all kinds of stuff. All the way until myself. Whoa. All the way to myself. And I had this interesting epiphany because my dad used to say this. And again.

One of the things I talk about big time is grace, mercy and forgiveness and help. Right. So my parents, very fortunately, as part of my journey, me voicing my journey, they became very objective and began looking at themselves. And then. And now they're wonderful people. So your healing can inspire someone else's healing.

That's right.

At the same time, one of the interesting things that my dad realized, he used to say, he didn't know he was saying, this is part of that programming thing. He said, skagens don't get. Skagens don't get ahead. They get by.

Mm.

Skoggins, borrow, never repay. Right. So I grew up in this. Now I just. Fortunately, I guess. Fortunately, unfortunately, during the most difficult moments of my parents life, they weren't around a whole heck of a lot by surrogate parents and grandmothers and friends of family and stuff like that.

But I can only imagine where, like, I had a hard enough time breaking poverty mentality. I had a hard enough time believing that.

Life had value, life had significance, life had purpose, you know, and the only way I discovered that is to go is due to backwards, the backtracking journey.

Yeah.

And then what I did was I looked at my life like a movie rather than about how I felt about it or how I felt about me about it.

Yeah.

Me kind of work on it some. Did you kind of follow the kind of. The same kind of track record?

You know, I think I had to look at that, that. That pleasing part of myself. But when I think back on my journey, the little like nugget that always kept coming, the through line for my ancestral history has always been adventure.

My grandmother tells this story about. My grandmother was the head nurse for NASA. She was the women's nurse. She was Sally Ride's nurse. So cool, right? So Cool. And she was like the town nurse in this. In Boron, California, in the middle of the desert, of the Mojave Desert. And she would patch up all the kids in the neighborhood. You know, she was that. But she would take significant time off. My grandpa was a teacher, and every summer they would go travel. And my grandma's still alive, but when my grandfather passed, they had been to 56 countries and they're on a teacher and a nurse's salary. So she had this, like. And it was her. It was all her. It was never him. And at one summer in the 60s, she wanted to go to the Amazon, to Brazil in the 60s. Like, white woman, grandpa. Grandpa didn't want to go. Like, that was crazy. You know, people were. So she went and she went on this trip through the Amazon way, like back Amazon, on a boat.

She brought home some pet piranhas and some anacondas.

Okay. That's the story is she brought home this bowl, this like, ceramic bowl that had been made. And she tells this story about how she was way in the back and they wanted to give her a gift. They'd never seen a white woman, and she had spent some time with them and she. Because she was a nurse, she could kind of help things. And they brought out a series of gifts and asked her to pick one. And one of them was a shrunken head.

And so, like, my whole life there's this thing of, like, she brought home the bowl, like, the ceramic bowl. Like, we could have had a shrunken head.

Like, that's my through line. It followed through her. It was in generations beyond her. My father was super adventurous and I'm really adventurous. And so, you know, whereas you had this through line that kind of had this scrappy mentality to it, I've always had this explorer side to myself, and I really latched on to that as something not only multi generational, but just really fundamental to me, feeling like I'm doing things for myself and not for others.

Yeah. Do you think that that's starting to kind of become still a truth within your own generations, obviously, with your daughter, does she have that adventurer bug?

She does, absolutely. Like, it's pretty. It's pretty hard to have a mom like me and, you know, not have a ton of stamps in your passport. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Annie and I, you know, two years ago when she was 12, we hiked the John Muir Trail together. 18 days, backpacking 220 miles. Just 12.

Those memories will never go anywhere.

No. And she. The cool thing about her is, and I Love this. And I'm sure your, your parents feel this way about you is to see the through line come through with the new person in it. Like to see the theme be similar, but the personality be different. So Annie's very cool, calm, collected, down to earth. Like the opposite of what you would think of a almost 15 year old girl. She's like grounded, empathic, outgoing, prepared, like it's really cool to see. So she brings a whole different sort of rootedness to adventure that I don't bring. So we're great adventure buddies together.

That's awesome. So essentially she become the explorer in its purest form.

Yes. And like just owns it. You know, I always, it took me a long time to own it.

Yeah, I can. I. The funny thing is I actually enjoy.

Asking the question why? At least four to five times. Anytime I'm digging into something, I feel sad. Why?

Why?

Well, because I just, I feel lackluster.

Why?

You know, and you kind of dig back and a lot of times you can get to the root of anything. I learned a long time ago, if you're going to change the fruit of your life, you got to change the roots of your life.

That's right. That's right.

And that's, and that's how you do it. And I think one of the things that I, that I've, that I've heard you talk about before is this, these three staples of life. So share with everybody what the three staples of life from your perspective are.

I mean, the three staples of life from my perspective are the mental, the spiritual and the physical. I think of it, the framework I think of is for so long.

You know, there's sort of, we're here on earth, we're probably not from here. So we're kind of in this body.

Yeah.

To me that's the spacesuit. Right. It's, it's what's between my soul and the earth is the spacesuit. The dude inside, that's my soul. And then the thing that's running the spacesuit is the operating system for the spacesuit. So when we are, when we're in connection, mind and body, which I think is. People start with the body. Especially in sports. They start with the body working on the body and then that, that flattens out, right. Marginal returns. So like, oh, it's, it's all in the mind. So now we're going to meditate and we're going to visual, do visualization and we're going to, you know, take a million shots so that we can. Okay, now we got the mind and the body synced up. That's gonna get you really, really far.

Yeah.

But you're still missing something really huge, and that's the dude inside the spacesuit. So I think for a lot of people and for me, for, I don't know, 37 years of my life, I totally went around on Earth thinking I was just the spacesuit in the operating system. And it was all about the interconnection between those two. And that's what living a great life was. And that took me a ton of years. And I had a ton of great accomplishments with the interplay between those two. But the day I realized that there was a dude inside the spacesuit and that I was. I was that dude, the spacesuit, responsible for that dude, I was like, that is me. My life and the spacesuit and the operating system are just here for me to have a blast. Like, who knew I was given basically a Ferrari of a body? I mean, 12 years of endurance sports racing. World's hardest race.

I've never been injured in the world's toughest race. I mean, seriously, you're going to get injured. Yeah, you're going to get injured, and it's going to. It's going to. It's going to challenge you in ways that I don't think anything else on the planet can challenge you.

Can challenge you. And yet here I am, like, never done an adventure race before, did the hardest adventure race in the world. And you know what held up great? My body. You know, it was. So I've been given a gift. Obviously, I meant to. I've been given a really awesome spacesuit. Like, I just came here with one. And I think other people, they come here with different sort of aptitudes. But if you never realize you're the person inside that's been given these gifts on Earth that you're meant to use them for, then you're just going to, like, roll around and kind of try a whole bunch of stuff and feel a little bit unsatisfied.

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I'm sensing from you specifically is after obviously doing the work, looking at the guy in the spacesuit, looking at the dude, looking at the operating system, like, just literally looking at it objectively is one of the things that I've. That I have a sincere sense from you is the sincere sense of gratitude.

Oh, gosh.

Like, I'm really grateful for not just where I've been and not just who's my family is, but I'm really grateful for me.

Yeah, right.

Without having to prove yourself to anybody? No, I mean, so is that something that, I mean, obviously it took some work, but is that something that's becoming more and more natural the more and more you operate in it?

It's a practice. It's like yoga. And that's what being human is about, is the practice of self worth and the practice of tapping into the guy inside the spacesuit. This is literally what we're put here to do. We get those three and we get to run around and we're constantly going to be approaching an out of balance state. That's the fun of it. That's what makes it so fun. So I think for me, sometimes I'm in balance and I like to say I remember what I know to be true and then other times I get out of balance and I forget what I know to be true. And then I have to find myself back into remembering. And so I don't think I will never arrive. That's the super fun thing about here, is there one's constantly going to be pushing ahead. My body's going to be in a great place and my mind's going to be running to catch up and my soul is going to be like, you know, in the bathroom. And then other times I'm, I'm going to be tired, my body's going to be beat down because I've been racing for five days straight. But man, my soul, my soul knows that we are doing it, we're in it, we're doing the right thing. And my mind's going to have to manage thinner play between those two. So I think that as we move through life, like that's the fun thing, we're going to push these three areas in different directions. And as long as we continue to kind of quest for this place of expansion, we're doing it. We're doing the thing. Like that's all we need to do here. We don't need to do it for anybody else.

Absolutely. You know, you have this other comment that I thought was pretty interesting. And it's, it's about when the journey and the goal kind of are married together.

Like what you mean by that? Because I think it's kind of creative. A creative way of saying this is when you find your center.

Yeah. So, okay. I want to just like call out what I think is a myth that a lot of people talk about. And that's this idea of delayed gratification.

Okay.

That somehow we are supposed to sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice for this like thing at the end that is really awesome. Yes. The moment.

Yeah.

And that's. That's what training for Big Race is about. That's what building. That's what entrepreneurship is about. That's what building business is about, is like sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. So that. And I just call total BS on it. What I've found to experience is that your destination will always be a manifestation of your journey. Like how we do one thing is how we do everything. And so the journey, if you are hoping to have a great race in Kona and your entire buildup was tough and your training, it went, but it felt not right. And, you know, you didn't make well with your coach and you had trouble with your training partners, you're going to have crappy race. I guarantee. It happens every time. So it's really so much less about the destination. If you want to care for the destination that you've set out in your life, if you've set a big goal, which I think is cool, I think we should do that. Like, our soul wants things, so we want to give it what it wants. You protect the journey. You don't squeeze the outcome. You don't squeeze the bunny. You work on crafting a most beautiful and elegant journey along the way that has challenges and it has you overco and it has you having gratitude and it has you connecting with others. Then your destination will. It will all work out in its own way.

I love it. You know, one of the things you watch when obviously. So I've. I've had the luxury of watching the world surplus race all the way through.

Awesome.

Yeah, right? I loved it. My wife and I binge watched the whole entire thing over to, like, two days. I guess that's the dangerous part about how they do media now. But you really wake up, it's like, oh, hey, it's been two days kind of thing.

So true.

Um, you know, for the people who didn't. Weren't able to complete the race all in. It seems like so many of them got beat right here before they got beat anywhere else.

Yep.

Yep. I wasn't feeling the coolness of the water, of the sun, and the endurance, and obviously the paddling and the swimming and everything that goes into it, you know, But I feel like it's still a metaphor for life.

Like, you're gonna.

If you're gonna have an amazing life, it's gonna. You're gonna have to beware of up here. And one of the things that you talk about is trying to keep your stress bucket from overflowing. How have you been able to Manage your stress level in such a way or how have you been able to instruct others to manage your stress level in such a way that they can, you know, beat this dude that's, that's monkeying with their head all the time.

That's right. When, when our, you know, we've all got a bucket and when it overflows, we're in trouble, every one of us, universally, if our stress gets bigger than the container with which we can hold it, we have problems. Some of us have bigger containers. Right. We can manipulate that, the size of our container, how much stress we can with take, and we can also manipulate how fast the water is pouring into it and how quickly it's being poured out of it. Right. We all kind of have a hole in the bottom of our bucket. As we strip stress from our environment, we sleep. Right. That like takes our stress levels down. So there's really only three factors there when it comes to our stress bucket. How big is the bucket, how fast is the water pouring in, how fast is the water pouring out? That's it. When we get up to that point, we've all been there. We don't function, we don't show up well for the people around us. We make huge life mistakes. We start making decisions out of our programming. Do you notice that you think you.

Have all your stuff, all of it together?

Yeah. We suddenly are going back to these old patterns in our brain of how we make these default decisions that don't enable us to push ourselves forward in the way we want. So for me, how I instruct with people and as a coach, as an endurance athlete coach, one thing I always prided myself on was getting my athletes to recognize that training. When we train for hard races and we put our, you know, we go out for a five hour bike ride and then we run an hour off the bike. That's a physical stress, but it's water in the bucket. And if you have a difficult conversation with your boss that doesn't have a physical adaptation for you, like that is not a physical stress, but it's still water in your bucket. Exactly. So as an athlete who you know primarily the population I work with, what we have to get people to understand is that all stress goes in the bucket, but only training stress has a training adaptation. You're only going to get faster. So it's really about minimizing life stress so that we can maximize training stress. But if life stress goes up, training stress has to come down. We cannot stay at our same levels. And that's the Hardest thing for an athlete to come to their coach and say, it's been a really crazy week. And for me to chop training sessions off of their schedule. And they're like, no, I need those. I'm training for my race. And I'm like, yeah, well, if your bucket overflows, we don't get to train for anything. We're done now. We're done training and we're recovering and we're trying to get more water out of the bucket or increase the size of the bucket. But those that it's too late to sort of chase things at that point. You're now in recovery mode and there's so many things we can do to obviously decrease the water that we have going in our bucket or make sure that we're filling our stress bucket with things that again, we're getting adaptation from. Not necessarily just physical, but maybe we're really working on our marriage. That's stressful, but that's what we want the growth to happen in. Well, then we need to work. Stress can't be huge. Training stress can't be huge because we want that marriage stress to be dominating our bucket.

When you look at the bucket overall, I have this. As you're talking, I'm seeing this image. I'm seeing two essentially. You on one side and a bucket on another, and your teeter tottering back and forth. It's probably the clearest definition I've ever heard of balance.

Yeah, balance.

Right. Or being in your center at the same time. There's. I kind of think about it. There's only three ways to get the water out of the bucket. Drill a hole in the bucket, right up the bucket out, or let it evaporate. And the evaporation model obviously takes longer.

Because you're like, that sounds slow.

Yeah, you're like putting more work, putting more water in the bucket while you're trusting it to evaporate. Which is why I think people will stay in that anxiety overwhelmed sense of place so long. It is not realizing that just letting go a little bit can. Can offset that.

How do you drain your bucket?

Yeah, and that would be my que. That would be my question is how do you. How do you suggest. And how do you coach. Drain your bucket?

Yeah. So first is you have to be aware. Your water level line, you got to be aware, you know, because you don't need to drain the bucket when it's low. Like if you've been binge watching Netflix all weekend, you don't need a rest day.

You don't have Any water in your bucket. But if you're, you know, if work stress has been all crazy all weekend and you've been binging like you haven't been producing, you know, where is your line? So, okay, assuming our line is getting kind of to the top, and we really do need to authentically think about stripping some of that stress out, are we sleeping? Are we eating healthy? Are we getting moderate amounts of exercise? Are we connecting with others? Are we connecting to ourself? So for me, I mean, the real tangible practices that looks like is I have, like, a toes in the sand philosophy. Like, if there's sand in my bed, then I'm probably working on lowering my stress bucket because it means I've been on the beach, my feet have been sand, the dog is dirty. I have a spot in Montane de Oro, out my backyard called Valencia Peak. I have made myself the mayor of Valencia Peak, and I've decided it's my pilgrimage. So that's another. I go walk up Valencia Peak because you get high. So I often tell people, is there a summit in your area where you can get some perspective? Like, some forced perspective? Go walk up that hill, find yourself on the top, look around. Another one that I think a lot of people can use really easily because we want these things to be easy. Comedy, comedy. That's a big one. Because when we're laughing, our DHEA is increasing and our stress is going down. So I think between, like, sleep, comedy, sand in my toes, and Valencia Peak, if I go do all that, man, I'm in a. Like, I've drilled a nice large hole in the bottom of my bucket. And of course, giving it a little bit of time, recognizing that we're not in a place of achievement right now. We're in a place of reduction, stress reduction. A little bit can go a long ways.

Yeah, I think. I think to add to that, if it's okay, I think the other things. So what I heard you saying, all that is everybody's got to figure out because just as unique as your gifts and your talents and your identity is, so is your. Essentially your release factor, so.

That's right.

You know, so, for example, I remember I was actually. I had a great. I mean, I had a good day yesterday. I just know, like, I was in a weird space at the end of the day, long day, you know, I've got, you know, lots of team members and lots of, you know, lots of responsibilities. And I just had this weird epiphany on the way home. I was like, I haven't tried in A while.

But. So there is a. There's a release moment. Right. Just even. Just spending some time to release. Right. So it's like a pressure valve kind of thing. And the other thing I more heard you say is basically you have to have whatever your replenishment style is. So at least. So one of the things that I put in my weekly routine is a weekly routine of a replenishment day. So you're talking about going to the peak and doing the summit and things of that nature, right? Yep, that's one modality. The other modality might be. It might be reading a book for me a lot of times actually writing new books or writing new material, writing new content, writing, doing a lot of reflection.

I do a lot of journaling.

Exactly. I love that.

I do.

Why all that kind of stuff?

I do what's called. Gosh, what is it? I always forget the names. Like emotive writing. I do. So I do one page a day, every night. And I have a. I have like a Moleskine journal. And it's. It's meant to be. Has like the date on top of it. And you get one page a day. And the great thing about one page a day is it's a container. So instead of being able to, like, write and write and write instead, before I go to sleep, I've got one page. I get to put whatever I want on that one page. And the looking back on that, like, the journey of it is hilarious because I usually start out with, like, dumb details like, you know, I did this today. Then I usually move into all the things that went wrong and I just spew them. And by the end, like the last five to six lines, I am always sort of out of complaining. Like, I don't have anything more to complain. Always. Every time? Yeah, every time. And it just. You don't even have to script it. You don't even have to try. You just like, give yourself one page to get it down and it just will become this daily emotive practice. And sometimes Love that.

I love that. In fact, I might have to steal the one page a day thing.

One page a day.

Because I also think that if you're Only if you limit yourself to one page a day, whether it's in your iPhone or whether it's in your Moleskine or whatever your modality is, I think it would be interesting to say, am I putting down the most important things on that one page? I think it would actually challenge me to make sure that I'm. If I know, only get one Page. And I know I got two pages of material. I guarantee it would cause me to filter out, like the stuff that needs to go on the page.

And you might write a little smaller.

Well, that I do anyway.

But some pages I will write like so small because I'm like, I only got one page. And then other days I'm like, it's like loopy cursive and I'm, you know, don't have a lot to go. Some of these practices, I think another thing to think about for the people listening are, are you a routines person or are you against routines? Because when it comes to stress recovery, people who are more routine oriented tend to have success with building in, like you did, like days where they can always be, I guess, systematically lowering the bucket. I am, I do not work well with routines at all. So I'm all about, like, am I light or is my light dim? And when my lights dim, then I need to address that. And then when I'm light, I don't need to do anything recovery. Like, I just get to go and haul. So knowing also and just admitting like, hey, do I love routines? Do I wake up and like, you know, take my shower and brush my teeth and eat the same thing for breakfast? Because that's going to lend yourself to how you kind of keep your bucket under control. And it can be, I think, a little bit harder. For people who eschew routines because they're more likely to get themselves into a bit of an overflow state and not recognize that they need to, you know, pull the plug on the bucket for a bit.

One of the things I've noticed, and I apologize when I have a little time, but I'm having such a good conversation.

Me too.

One of the things that I've realized specifically is people who are trying to get their initial breakthrough, like the crisis moment and things of that nature, trying to get out of there. Routines are very beneficial. The problem is staying stuck there. So I would say that I have routines with a flexibility piece. So I do some of the same things every day to kind of keep me in peak performance, mental state, spiritual state, physical state. But there are other things like how I might. How might. How I might do my replenishment or, you know, if I feel exhausted sometimes I'll just go home.

Yeah.

And just kind of in. Or things of that nature. So I think there's definitely benefit for both. I think it seems like. And maybe. Maybe this is just some. Maybe I'm sparking some different concepts here. But it seems like those who are in crisis mode need stability. So routines could be beneficial, but as long as they don't stay locked in that place. Or would you say. Or would you. Or do you think maybe even the flexibility style is even beneficial in a crisis mode?

I think so. For me, when I was in crisis mode, rather than stability, what was beneficial for me was creativity.

Yeah.

A very non. So a good example is that I was really being woken up to the spiritual side of things. And so for me, it wasn't about starting to have a spiritual practice. It was about having a spiritual exploration and creativity, making space to do lots of different things, non routine things. While I, like, search and even now. So I do one spiritual thing every day. And that. So you could say that's a routine. I do one spiritual thing every day. But if you look at what my one spiritual thing every day is, is all over the map. Sometimes I'm reading spiritual texts, Other times I'm meditating. Other times I'm, you know, sucking on a grape for 30 minutes and, like, you know, I'm just all over. I'm like, give. Give me what you got. Give me what you got. So there's. I think there's a place for routine and there's a place for creativity. And when we're in crisis mode, like, recognizing what feels like it's gonna move you forward, just do that. It's not any harder than that.

For sure. I love it. I love it. I could literally talk to you all day. We have to do this again.

Let's do it again. I'm Gabe.

All right, cool. Sounds good to me. Well, with a little bit of time that we technically don't have left at all, which is fine. Tell me. Tell everybody a little bit how to stay in contact with you and then also where to find your podcast. Because I did listen to some episodes and I got to go back and binge listen to that now. Thank you very much.

I'm all over the Internet with under go sonja.com so Instagram @gosonia, G O S O n j a go Sonia.com and yeah, I launched the Tales of Toughness podcast. Gosh. August 12th, I believe. So we're six episodes in, and I interview athletes who did the world's toughest race. And really we have those illuminating conversations about the untold stories and their life and what happened to them out there and what they learned about themselves. And yeah, if you watch the show and you loved some of the racers and you want to hear about more of their stories, it's a pretty Dynamic, diverse group of athletes that came together for the race. So lots of fun stuff there.

Absolutely. 66 participants, right? 66.

66 teams. 330 athletes.

To try to cram that into a season of tv. All of them had crazy stories. I mean, one of my favorite episodes you did recently was probably one of your newer ones where one of the racers was talking about, you know, they were excited, they were expecting twins and then find out they only had one of their twins.

Yeah.

And then kind of what that does to the mentality and the person into your state and all kind of just. It was incredible.

It's a whole new perspective on just not even performance, but gosh, what's the word I'm looking for? I can't come up with a word that's actually really, really strong enough. It's purpose meets identity meets values meets significance. Like it's, it's all rolled up into one. Maybe call it the great. Aha.

Yes. Yeah, everyone's got one. I mean, everyone in the race had a transformative experience. Like nobody came away from 10 days of 24 hours a day racing over the entirety of Fiji and didn't ask themselves, like, what am I doing? Who am I? What am I here to learn? And when you take that universal theme in context to people's backgrounds, their diverse backgrounds and experience in the race, that though that's what I wanted to get to and that's what unfortunately, you know, an Amazon Prime TV show, 10 episodes built for the masses isn't. Is only going to be able to tap the surface of that.

Yeah. It would be a six hour episode every night for 33 days and we.

Would love it.

And you still wouldn't fit it all in. So. Yeah, I got to be honest, Sonia, Ivan, I flat out enjoyed our time today. I really appreciate you taking time to come on the show. I can't wait to have you back for sure.

I can't wait to come back.

Love, love to help. Anything you got cooking down the pipeline, anything you're doing.

Thank you.

Come down the pipeline, everybody go check out World's Amazing Race. Everybody go check out our podcast. You guys have to see this stuff and hear this stuff. It'll bless you. It'll make life just that much better. So, Sonya, thank you so much for coming on the show and I can't wait to see you again.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I feel like I have a kindred soul in, in with you. So I can't wait to be back and have more discussions. Thank you.

All right. I'll see you later.

Take care.

How motivating was that? Dude, Sonja Weck was phenomenal. And if you want to keep up your motivation and your inspiration, you probably should check out this interview right here. So go ahead and do it. Step is, you don't have to, like, start with a massive thing, right? Yeah, I've done that. You start with something small, and if that person can handle that something small.