Polly Mertens: 0:27

hey superstars.

Samantha Pruitt: 0:27

Welcome Pollyhere here and sam pruitt. What’s up, my beautiful humans? Hey guys, we have a uh.

Polly Mertens: 0:34

Well, first I want to say, before we just dive right into our episode, I just wanted to welcome you back, my dear. I know um, what you guys don’t know, but in the background, ms Pruitt has been battling some health dip, if you will, and so I just wanted to say I appreciate you for showing up today, even though you’re not feeling 100%, and maybe you want to talk a little bit about what’s been going on this week and how it leads into what we’re talking about today. How apropos.

Samantha Pruitt: 1:02

Somehow most of our topics do Every day Awesome. Yeah, I was on a big business trip. I’m on the production team for Ironman World Championships. There’s three races stacked back to back to back around the globe. I’m on that team to produce and so this last one, I was in Kona producing the men’s race. I had an amazing race. It was mind boggling and our team absolutely crushed it. It was beautiful, Felt great. During, of course, we work our buns off, we don’t sleep very well, we don’t eat very well All of those things that are going to happen under crunch time Normal. I got on the plane, jumped home and got off the plane, felt decent for about half a day tired but decent and then proceeded to wake up in the middle of that night and just start vomiting for the next 48 hours. So since then I’ve had the flu and it’s been hanging on and it’s slowly letting go of me.

Polly Mertens: 2:02

And it’s slowly letting go of me. Yeah, well, and I just appreciate you for making this episode happen today, even though you’re not feeling 100%, and what you and I were talking in the background. So the topic we’re covering today, as Samantha and I were, you know like, okay, what’s important right now Like you know, we like to keep these episodes fresh and like what on in life, in the world, or in our life, or things that we’re seeing, and something that you brought to the conversation before we hit record, is this practice. I’m going to read it it’s Kintsugi K-I-N-T-S-U-G-I, which means to join with gold.

Polly Mertens: 2:37

That’s one meaning of it, and this is a 15th century practice of a Japanese tradition, is a 15th century practice of a Japanese tradition and it says, is a reminder for us to stay optimistic when things fall apart and to celebrate the flaws and missteps of life. So what is this for you? How did you come upon this? Like you, I’ve seen this before too, but how did you come upon it? What do you think about this and how is this relating right now in your life especially?

Samantha Pruitt: 3:05

Yeah, kintsugi is a Japanese art form and what’s so beautiful about it is they take broken art pieces pottery, clay, whatever it might be, glass. They bring those pieces back together with tree sap. Actually, they use natural products, re-mold whatever the broken thing is, plate, dish, this or that you can imagine and then they take gold and fill in the cracks, highlighting the broken areas as part of the beauty of the item and the item’s experience. Through life and, I think, in the human experience, which is where we play and where we live hardcore every day, it’s also for us the same.

Samantha Pruitt: 3:50

Is so true, right, we all have cracks, broken pieces, whatever that might look like over this life’s journey, and we too put those pieces back together in order to march on down the path. You know, sometimes they come together easily, you know, with that glue, and sometimes we paint them with gold and sometimes we just kind of put them back together and sort of mull our way forward. But it can be that we choose to make that one of the most beautiful aspects of ourselves and at my current lifetime moment and I’ve had many of these, just like you have, and our clients have had the wheels fall off the bus. Things break all the time we think life is going to happen a certain way. We set goals, we have expectations, we have ideas and concepts about ourselves and about the world we live in and what our story is going to be and what our life’s going to be, and then it’s not at all what happens we’ll start.

Polly Mertens: 4:48

So tell us. So you’ve been training for iron man, so it’s we’re recording this in october of 2024, november now, excuse me, it’s november, just entered november, holy smokes. And you started, like nine months ago, 10, 10, 11 months ago now, uh, training for this race and you and I were talking about like it hasn’t always gone as planned, you know, and and you don’t live in this vacuum of like where, you know, I brought up um, it just reminded me when I was growing up, uh, the gymnast nadia komanichi was a thing you know at that time and you know it was very, seemed like very Russian. You know, cold War area regimented. You know, like, you’re just like a robot kind of training which they now find. If you look at Simone.

Polly Mertens: 5:36

Biles how it’s like sort of the opposite. Like do it with fun and flavor and excitement and creativity. Like you get way more performance right and so for you, you know you’re like I I, as you started this, the road that you were on with your iron man training, you know want to hit it hard. Personal record, like gonna come back and all this stuff. You got into a, got hired a coach and get into the, and it’s like and that there was some friction there because you are a woman that’s got a lot going on in life. You’re not an audio combination and a silo with like everything protected around you, like all your bills are paid, food’s prepared. You know coaches working on your muscles and you know all this. Here’s your training plan. Just follow this Right. You’re like excuse me.

Samantha Pruitt: 6:19

Yeah, a quick shout out about Simone Biles. If you haven’t seen her Netflix fairly recent docu-series must watch the four-part series. It’s absolutely beautiful, she’s a phenomenal human being. But to understand her life story, and then her recent accomplishment at the Olympics, of course. But you got to see the lead up, okay, it’s a must watch. It’s a must watch, boom, okay.

Samantha Pruitt: 6:44

So yeah, currently some of my shenanigans are up against this iron woman that I have in two weeks, as of tomorrow, in two weeks, I tow the line to go 140.6 miles of swimming, biking and running. So, yes, I made a commitment to take a break from ultra running and adventure, move myself back into triathlon, which I did back in the day, tow the line at a full iron distance triathlon Ironman Arizona, specifically on November 17th. And then I made an additional commitment to myself and set a goal for myself at 55 to PR in the iron distance, which means I would go faster than I went in my original race, full iron distance, 13 years ago, when I was much, much, much younger, obviously, and had a different, a lot of things different and then I marched myself down that path.

Samantha Pruitt: 7:36

Yes, I hired a coach. I got much more regimented about my training and stuff. I also have been a certified coach and had a tri club, whatever. So I know some things about training and I also know a lot about myself as an athlete after all of these years what to do, what not to do, what I’m capable of, and you know. But I was looking for new, exciting, more structure, whatever it might be.

Samantha Pruitt: 7:58

I met a lot of resistance in that experience. Very little adaptation was allowed for me or understanding for me, the individual, and that’s doesn’t resonate with me. I am a coach and I coach humans for a living and I have a value set there. So there was a lot of personal conflict there that I felt wasn’t going to work for me. And then, secondarily, life started happening pretty quickly where I travel for work, I produce events. I have a family. I have, you know, elder parent care, I have a brother who has cancer. I have a lot of other things that I’m committed to doing with my life besides training for one race. So you know, within reason I will do what it takes to reach my goals and I’m very committed to my athletic goals, as you know, but you have to be able to be nimble and to be able to adapt and weekly make adjustments and so on and so forth.

Samantha Pruitt: 8:58

All of that said, I ended up letting go of that coaching, coaching myself, and I really was crushing it, to be honest, and feeling great about my training, fitting in in between everything, still meeting my family obligations, my work obligations and balancing life while training 20 hours a week of swimming, biking, running, which is no joke. But all of that said, I came back from this last trip, um, where you know, when I do these production trips, especially at this very, very high level, I cannot train. I am working 12 hours, sometimes 20 or 24 hours a day to produce these events and I’m committed to that and I love it, I’m not complaining. But you lose big blocks of training time and then getting off the plane and proceeding to be sick. For the last three, four days Now, I realized very quickly that my original goal of the PR is probably not realistic.

Samantha Pruitt: 9:54

It would take a small miracle for that to occur at this point and I had to come to terms with that and realize that I also have other goals. Right, I am there with great intention and purpose to do this in honor of my brother who is battling for his life with cancer. That’s much more important than if I’m going to PR. I’m there because this is a lifestyle choice that I make. I love the community and everything that goes with the fact that I train ultra endurance as a lifestyle and all of the other things that means to me and all of the other rewards I get mentally, spiritually and emotionally that are completely secondary to any kind of performance I would have.

Polly Mertens: 10:36

I want to put a pin in that and I just want to ask you when you started to think about, oh crap, I’ve been throwing up for 48 hours and you go and you do the math on when your race is in two weeks and if you don’t know about Ironman level and just you know what, what level you need to be at at this point of the game, you know like two weeks out, it’s not deathly sick, like that would not be what you would want to be. When you face that moment, what was going through your mind and how did you navigate it? What did that inner conversation start to sound like? It would be great for us to like walk through the way you approached it and and how you know, and maybe it was like, oh, my God, you know I was like, or maybe it wasn’t. What was it graceful? Was it what? How did it go?

Samantha Pruitt: 11:20

Well, of course, I’m a human being, just like everybody else listening to this podcast. So for a little while I was pissed off, okay, and then I was sad, and then I was trying to navigate and negotiate around it all Denial, denial. What can I do? What can I do? Oh, I can’t go running at all, but I can jump in the pool and I can swim 4000 meters. You know, like you start doing all these, I needed to see really where I was at and it was this compounding interest of being off my training cycle and then being sick that really like for me was. It wasn’t like I trained all the way up to that point and now I’m in taper because a lot of the listeners would be like, don’t worry about it, you’re tapering now.

Samantha Pruitt: 12:13

No, I was just off training cycle for two weeks and last month I was off for another two weeks. So it was this compounding interest, if you will, that accumulated and ended in the illness. So I had to really do a reflection on all of that, take inventory, if you will, and say, okay, have I done enough to still be able to reach my primary target goal of the PR, honest evaluation? No Acceptance, accept it. Being pissed off does nothing. Being sad does nothing.

Polly Mertens: 12:48

Well, so what was it like, going from sad, pissed off to like how did you like, did you?

Samantha Pruitt: 12:53

ride the roller coaster.

Polly Mertens: 12:54

Yeah, like did you just naturally go, oh, I’m no longer pissed, or like were you pissed off for like a long time and then you just got tired of being pissed off, or or you know. I’m just curious because this is like important, like these steps that you’re navigating. It can go different directions, right, and so I’m wanting to like hone in on how you kept from going down the dark road and you stayed in the path of intention, right, like yes right.

Samantha Pruitt: 13:22

Yeah, in my own experience and also in working with other humans in these areas, you know setting big, audacious goals and then how bumpy is it on the way to the start line, whatever, if it’s business or financial, whatever, it’s all the same. Really Many, many times, maybe historically in the past, when I was younger, younger and didn’t have the frame of mind and spiritual grounding that I have now sense of value and self-worth for myself and the world I would have bailed, and I’ve seen many people bail or attempt to bail, because it’s like if I can’t reach that primary goal, it’s all for nothing. Surrender. That was never a consideration for me. Bailing was never an option, never even crossed my mind. So I didn’t have to do tango with that dark horse, if you will.

Polly Mertens: 14:15

And that goal wasn’t crushed for you, meaning there was like the doorway was still open. We talked about. You know, when a doorway closes, another one opens, but this one was like the door is still open. It just doesn’t quite look like the doorway or the path that it did, you know, 30 days ago or something.

Samantha Pruitt: 14:29

Totally so. In this particular instance, talking specifically about my iron woman, in two weeks like I can still get myself to the race. I can survive and perform to a certain extent within the race. I will finish my secondary goal, which is to cross the finish line and do it in honor of my brother. That’s all still happening. That’s not gone. We totally recognize. In some instances life occurs and we’ve both had this and there is no secondary opportunity. Things are no longer an option. There is no plan B, c, D, e or F and so navigating those I mean I’ve closed businesses, I’ve left relationships, you’ve done all these things too Like there’s hard closures and the heartbreak, anger, sadness, acceptance, the stages of grief, if you will, that come with those. And then there’s instances like this where you can pivot to secondary reasons for doing what you’re doing, staying connected to your why and your why being so much broader than that one little thing.

Polly Mertens: 15:35

And the word that we talked about, that I think this, I think this is the best use of this word is resilience, right, and the definition I have it here is the ability to bounce or spring back into shape position, the ability to recover strength, spirits, good humor, quickly, like buoyancy, right, Like your spirit is still high and carrying you through right. It’s not like down in the doldrums, I’m resigned, I give up or whatever. You’re like okay, like you’ve got that resilient muscle, if you will. You’ve had to practice and you know sometimes we have to go up against a lot of resistance to create resilience in the spirit, in the body, in the makeup of who we are, how we see ourselves.

Polly Mertens: 16:15

You’re like I’m not a giver-upper. You’re like I go for my goals. They maybe need to be adjusted, modified, set back. Timeframes maybe need to shift. My expectation of how high I can fly maybe needs to come down a little bit, because I can only jump this far, I can only go at this speed, or whatever. So it’s like, but I still have that buoyancy, I still have that resilience to want to go at it Right.

Samantha Pruitt: 16:39

You know what’s a big skillset I recognized in myself and I hold deep appreciation for myself having is the ability to troubleshoot. Oh yeah, cause that’s what you went into, right, I went into troubleshooting mode. Ding, ding, ding, ding. This is who you are in the world too. You are the queen of trouble shooting, the most solution oriented human I know. Let’s look at all the opportunities and options, right. So, having that skillset and being able to navigate that and I understand, not everybody has had a lifetime of experience like you and I have learning this tool, I mean, that’s funny, dude, that’s the money talk about it.

Polly Mertens: 17:20

And so here’s just a funny this. I will try to see if I can tell this story in a way that it conveys. You know, people are listening to this audio, not visual, but if you can picture. So we’re redoing. We built a new garage in this person’s home. Right, his old garage had a sink. Hey, I wanted a sink in my new garage. Oops, we forgot.

Polly Mertens: 17:38

All right, so the thing’s basically constructed, there was plumbing in the wall, but it was put in the wrong location. It doesn’t have like an exit. And so there’s like three feet of concrete outside where this, like I mean like thick, like three feet, and thick right. It’s like, oh, how do we get the plumbing out of the sink that this man wants and expects in his you know? And he’s like, oh, my God, you have to cut. And then we, we had just laid that concrete, like this concrete was not like 20 years old, and he’s like, I don’t care, I just cut it up. It’s like, no, actually that’s pretty new. So, anyway, and I was like, okay, these are plumbing pipes. So like, talk about troubleshooting. I’m like, if you know, if, if X exit is not very viable, is there a Y? Is there an A? Is there another way? And I started like troubleshooting through all the walls of the house. I’m like, where else is plumbing in this house? How can we get plumbing uphill?

Polly Mertens: 18:31

You know I’m like, and then I started you know, cause that’s kind of what you need to do. It’s like usually it just drops right by the sink and then it just goes out the house. I’m like the nearest plumbing is about 20 feet away. And then my mind went well, I’m sure and you know we’re not, this is california we don’t have a lot of basements. I’m like I’m sure there’s people on the east coast who have sinks in the basement and they need to get them uphill. How do they get them uphill, right? And so I started thinking I’m sorry I’m getting a little off track, but like, yeah, it’s this, the, the, the door, the door to like cutting in this concrete was kind of like, yeah, I really don’t want that. Right, how do we and I’m still working on that, I don’t have the exact solution, but working on that solution and that’s where we show up to life. It wasn’t like I just went all right, boys, let’s go home, we’re not going to have a sink here. It exactly, we still have to have a sink. It’s just how’s it gonna look and where’s it gonna go, and and and actually some of the team members that I play with like they love these challenges and that’s how, like, some of these things are fun.

Polly Mertens: 19:26

I was talking to one of my kind of handymen and I was like do you think we can get this to go over 20 feet, you know? And I was like maybe a pump like they do in back east when they need to get it literally stairs, like, is there something like that? You know, never done that, because in california everything usually downhill kind of thing. And he’s like oh my god, I found something on amazon. I think we can like plummet, you know, no problem. And I was like oh my god, right this is the beauty of it, right?

Samantha Pruitt: 19:52

so, whether it’s a goal that is no longer within reach, for whatever reason, things get in the way things change, whatever circumstances, all of these instances that we’re giving I mean on the daily. This comes up in our everyday lives and in big risk takers like you and I are you building homes, remodeling homes, building communities, me doing all this stuff I do. I mean we’re risk takers. We’re putting ourselves into situations where shit’s going to go terribly wrong all the time. If you think there is one path to reach the end goal, you are terribly confused and also you will be terribly disappointed.

Polly Mertens: 20:33

That’s not going to work. Well, I would think here’s something that’s coming to me. As you’re talking, I was like I don’t really have as much to say and how this relates, because what we were talking about this topic and I was thinking mostly about your race, but I think about you know, this house that I’m remodeling right now, and you have this architect nine months ago, a year ago, whatever drew some lines on a piece of paper and said build it like this, right, and he’s like there you go In concept concept.

Polly Mertens: 21:00

Yeah, this is right and this is what we do in life. I want life to look like this and we design it, we structure it, we put the bathrooms here. We say, you know, I’m going to have this house and this person in my life and I’m going to look this way and whatever. And then life goes, you know, and it adjusts, it puts little roadblocks, it says, oh, that material you know if I could tell you how many times that, oh, that material is not available right now shows up. Oh, we can’t ship that to California.

Polly Mertens: 21:20

Like, oh, hey, architect, did you know you expect something that we can’t get here in the state? I’m like try plan B, right, and so going off or being so merry. You know, we have this thing in construction that’s called an as-built, which means we take the architect’s original plans and then at the end we say this is actually how it was built. Like it was built like this or as built like this, so that the client knows this is where you thought. You know that gold talk about that little gold and whatever type of thing.

Polly Mertens: 21:54

You know in the Katsuti or whatever it’s called. Like, we fill in the cracks with adjustments that need to make, changes that need to take place and I guess you know, as we talk maybe it’s my work as a project manager that’s made me better in life to adaptability, resilience, you know, changes in all kinds of plans, I would like to say I feel like a little bit of my world traveler-ness, my, like you said, risk taker-ness out in the world, like the amount of times plans didn’t go on a trip, or a flight was canceled or a train didn’t you know, whatever Like that’s you know, if you try and navigate yourself through life, whether it’s, you know, from one state to the next or one country to the next or relationship to the next, like there’s all sorts of things that you’re adapting to.

Samantha Pruitt: 22:39

That’s probably why you thrive so much in adventure, racing and Spartan and, for me, and producing events where, from event to moment, you literally do not know what’s happening. You think you know what’s happening. It’s not that we don’t have a plan. Oh, we have plans. We have hundreds of pages of plans and timelines and all the things. But you get there on site with this team and this influence, and then the weather, and then the whatever and all the moving parts and pieces, and then, by the way, here comes 2,700 athletes and all their friends and family right and the amount of renegotiating, if you will.

Samantha Pruitt: 23:18

You know that nimbleness and willingness to look above and beyond the moments of what appear to be crisis or challenge and see them as opportunity. Maybe we’re not going to do it that way. Maybe we can actually do it better. Maybe there’s room here to do it better or differently and have the experience be more rich. I’m wondering for yourself. I’m super curious about this. I just came out of this experience. I’m experiencing it myself with the Iron Woman race in two weeks, but then also, I just came out of this giant production. How do you stay in it so you can be that person who is open? What skills are you utilizing to be the one who is solution oriented, looking at the possibilities?

Polly Mertens: 24:21

came to mind as soon as you said that one is you never lose sight of the goal, like like my. My purpose is to craft as beautifully a finished product for the person that has asked for it as possible that’s the why right, that’s my motivation is like my outcome is the same, like bear with us things.

Polly Mertens: 24:36

Forces, materials may not be concretes in the way you know, oh, whatever, like, oh, you know, um, and then I would say, and I think you would say this too in terms of events, is the people you surround yourself with, right?

Polly Mertens: 24:51

So I just this morning it’s funny, this morning I was having this friction call because communications with one of my subcontractors because the people I like to surround myself with, the subs I like to surround myself with, are on the team called client success.

Polly Mertens: 25:10

Like like if we all put as a team, like we all want to do well, we all want, you know, profit and success and timelines and everything like that, and they have to be adaptable, right. But if we stay working as a team, that the goal is much more possible than if one has issue and restriction and doesn’t perform and constantly has excuses or something. It’s like the function of that team, right. Like Like I think about you trying to put on, like I’ve been around you and in the events, some of them somewhat, the events that you participate in and you navigate it so gracefully and so beautifully, and when you don’t have performing peoples. You know some of the people around you can pick up that if you will, but very long you don’t keep inviting that person back to come and play again, right? It’s like, yeah, you just go.

Samantha Pruitt: 26:03

You know this is, this is the game we’re playing here and you don’t seem to like to play in the sandbox, so maybe just go play in another sandbox, you know I’d say those generally tend to be the people that get lost in their own agenda or mindset or cave of suffering around, not being able to adapt or see or understand the end goal, staying focused on, like what you’re saying Ours is in event production. On this level, the athlete experience and safety comes above everything and all things. Nothing is more important. So, like, if they don’t understand the clarity there and can’t toe that line, because that’s a critical line, and then the fact that we as a team will be doing this, succeeding or failing, together as a unit. There’s no individuality.

Samantha Pruitt: 26:53

It doesn’t matter who you are, what level of role you play, right, everybody is critical to the success of that. And then I would just add, for me personally, being there in these instances and then generally being in some kind of leadership role, whatever, in whatever capacity, is me just saying staying fully in tune and aware with the individuals and what’s going on around me. I mean, I do have that spider sense it’s a little bit of who I am in the world and saying for you, like I can easily read this is after years of doing this work. But read people’s body language, their verbal cues, their energetic cues or whatever, and be like oh, before this becomes a problem, I can see what’s going on over here with this department or this group of people or in this area or whatever, whatever the dynamic is and putting myself in that position, which means I have to take really good care of myself.

Samantha Pruitt: 27:53

So the self-care element under high stakes situations or high crisis or high pressure or whatever we’re talking about here, Um, the self-care is number one. If I haven’t fed myself, slept properly, done whatever I need to keep myself calm, cool and collected so I can have my spidey senses, my capacity is what you and I call it being open, having capacity, I can’t be of service to others.

Samantha Pruitt: 28:23

And so you know when something like, whatever all the things are called life are happening. If you aren’t very you used the term resiliency, I’ll use the term. If you don’t have the capacity, if you have not created for yourself a level of capacity, you won’t be able to tolerate the change. You won’t be nimble, you won’t be able to service others Like. All of those things are just cut short, they’re not there.

Polly Mertens: 28:51

You’re not having your own needs met or something like that. You have no capacity for giving more you know, or like overflowing with it. Absolutely, Absolutely. So, totally, totally Well, so let’s. So I want to join back to this, or I want to go back to this like to join with gold. I love that, and you had something that I wanted you to read about the Kintsugi as well, so what I think is so amazing about looking at this.

Polly Mertens: 29:16

So I was trying to coach one of my clients in when things weren’t going well, like on a job, and it was like this isn’t showing up how I expected right, you know like why is this dark gray and it should be light gray or something like that, right, and it’s like why is this not perfect?

Polly Mertens: 29:33

Right, and I’m, you know, one of the one of the phrases that I try to stay in kind of a zen space with life and as I dance with life is um, everything is always working out, and if it’s not working out, it’s not done yet, right? So, like, just keep allowing this to unfold and see where this is going. I mean, life is a give me fucking perpetuity, like it keeps going right. And if you just snapshot in this moment, you go ah, this shouldn’t be happening. I think this kintsugi. It says you celebrate the flaws and missteps, like celebrate them, right. And and there’s a whole philosophy that I’ve learned and adopted about the ability to recognize, in the moment when you have resistance or frustration or something, it’s like you’re actually creating what you do want, like you’re getting clarity in that moment, like I don’t want dark gray, I want light gray, right? Or I wanted light gray. And it’s like I get more clear about the desire that I have to create and manifest what I want.

Polly Mertens: 30:34

Some people lose sight of just you know, this isn’t right, this isn’t right, this isn’t right, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And they just sort of anchor themselves and hold themselves in the resistance instead of to well, everything is always working out for me, and if this isn’t the way that I want it, it’s just not worked out yet and I just haven’t gotten there. You know we need to. We need to keep finding the solution to where the sink is going to go and how we’re going to. You know, it’s like it’s okay. The sink doesn’t. It’s not in its final position, we still have time to figure out where it’s going to go, and you know, just staying with that, right.

Samantha Pruitt: 31:03

And at the root of that element where people think it’s either one way or their way, like there’s a right way, right? Is this? Control, fear, anxiety, all of these things that are not actually very positive experiences at all, you know. So living in that on the daily is really not a healthy place to be.

Polly Mertens: 31:27

Right, right, talk about decreasing your capacity, right? So the more we resist what is going on in life, guess where that resistance lives Inside of us. Inside of us, the resistance isn’t out in life.

Polly Mertens: 31:41

It’s inside of us, creating tension and, you know, breakdown of cells, whatever you want to call it, it’s structural, it’s. It’s creating inflammation, stress on the body, nervous system, your mitochondria. All the things are under resistance instead of being optimized and like free to flow and feel good. And you know, and I’ve been feeling some of that myself, the stress that I’m feeling is me not allowing, sometimes, the things that are happening in life. You know, I’ve got project deadlines and things and I still catch myself in those resistance modes. It’s never going to go away, but I stay in the flow with it. I’m like, oh, how do I adapt Whatever? Like you? You’re like I’m pissed at the moment and then I get a little sad and then I go, okay, on to troubleshooting.

Samantha Pruitt: 32:30

Right, yeah, yeah. And if we have this idea that our spouse or our boss or an employee is wrong, you know they’re not meeting our expectations or doing it our way. We’re causing ourself suffering and angst. It’s not about them at all. It’s about our own interpretation of the situation and our expectations.

Polly Mertens: 32:52

Yeah, yeah. And so when we release that resistance to what’s going on, you know, one of the things that I like to say is there’s what’s so like what’s happened or is happening, unfolding in life, and then there’s so what like so, what like, what’s so what’s your story about that? Like, this shouldn’t happen. This is frustrating. This is causing me delays. This person is upsetting me, whatever it is. Or, like you, you turn and you bounce back right. You have the resilience to see well, this is just what’s so. So what next? What now? Do I adjust my goal? Do I adjust my expectations? Do I give up? Do I totally you know, change course? Do I just let it go? Do I accept? Do I surrender? You know what is it? What is the story that this moment is bringing to life for you? Maybe there’s a seed of growth in this. Maybe there’s a new clarity about something that you do want to create, something that you want better or you want different for yourself.

Polly Mertens: 33:50

Maybe like, oh, you know, like I just had this with someone else where we had negotiated a price and then I I thought it was different and I overlooked something right, and it’s like well, I have to accept that I didn’t, didn’t see that right, and it’s like I could, I could create, like in that moment I was like our you know resistance. But I was like, am I gonna hold on to that resistance towards this person that I care for? I’m like that doesn’t serve anything. I still want this person in my life. That didn’t do anything wrong. It was actually me taking responsibility. I missed something, right. How fast do I want to let that go and have no resistance towards that person?

Polly Mertens: 34:24

You know, put that situation behind and sometimes you know that was a small to medium-sized moment, I would say the thing that we were talking about and sometimes there’s bigger ones, you know, like your race. You’ve got almost a year of commitment and energy and time and financials that you’ve put into this. It feels like, if that doesn’t happen, that feels like a bigger win. Sometimes those are bigger moments of growth, like, okay, I surrendered to what is and you’re’re like I’m resilient enough and I’m still committed to the outcome, so you’re going with it right and you’re going to have a great race and, like you said, in support of your brother’s life and what he’s up to exactly, exactly, you know it’s keeping the big picture of your life, which means your goals sorry, which means your goals sorry, which means your values, which feed and set precedence for how you even set goals.

Samantha Pruitt: 35:18

So your value system and your purpose, if you have that identified, are what is driving any and all of these things. So if I just lean back on my value system and my purpose for doing the things that I do, no problem, easy to adjust. I got to read this. It’s so Please, please, please, please. I love this. And before I read that, I want to just say you also ask this great question all the time that I freaking love, which is what is this?

Polly Mertens: 35:50

trying to teach me. Yeah, I wonder what’s trying to happen here. Why am I?

Samantha Pruitt: 35:53

supposed to be learning what is trying to happen here? Sometimes you say that to me and I go, yeah, what do you mean? But it’s spot on, it’s spot on. That’s such a great tool for people to have in their toolbox. It’s almost like that should just be tattooed right here. I don’t know what people are putting all these tattoos right here. They should put that. I mean you can just on a daily basis, got it? Yes, life is happening.

Polly Mertens: 36:15

Okay, great, got it All right. This is what’s unfolding Life is unfolding Right.

Samantha Pruitt: 36:22

Oh, here we go. The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery is called Kintsugi, which means join with gold, which means join with gold. The process involves gluing broken pieces back together with tree sap and then decorating the cracks with gold, silver or platinum. The goal is to highlight the damage rather than hide it, to embrace the imperfections that make the piece unique and valuable. Kintsugi can represent the idea that beauty can be found in imperfection and that sometimes, repairing broken things can create something even more beautiful and more resilient. The process can be a form of meditation and a mindful practice that encourages people to fix rather than discard. What I’m in love with this. I love it. I love it. We’re going to teach this art class.

Polly Mertens: 37:30

You’re going to be the art instructor I was going to say we talked about. You know, your life is art, right, and so one of the things I picked up when you said that is like highlighting the imperfections, and I think even a slightly different way of saying that is just highlighting what is right, Because there is no perfection in life. You look at nature.

Samantha Pruitt: 37:48

I mean everything’s imperfect.

Polly Mertens: 37:50

Everything’s beautifully imperfect. Right, it’s by design beautifully imperfect. Actually, it’s probably more perfect than we could ever think. So it’s we’d call it imperfect, but it’s even more. And it’s like highlighting the imperfections, or highlighting where you had to take a left, or you had to change this, or you had to try, you know whatever. And sometimes those detours of light take us down roads that we never expected, but we were actually supposed to go.

Samantha Pruitt: 38:18

Oh, yes, we were. All the times I can think of, really, you know, if this didn’t occur, which seemed like, you know, a life-altering, negative crisis moment, at the time you wouldn’t have met this person and gone here and experienced that, and et cetera, et cetera. I love to think back on moments you do this too where it’s like the happenstance of like meeting somebody or going to a place that would have never occurred if you didn’t get on the wrong train or shown up at the wrong time, or which we call them wrong, but they’re not wrong at all. There’s nothing wrong about these situations. This is how it’s meant to be happening.

Polly Mertens: 39:02

It’s magic, as Steve Jobs so beautifully said it’s. You know we can connect the dots looking backwards right, you know we can connect the dots of our life. Looking backwards can’t always see it in the moment, and so I think what we want to impress upon people here, in this dialogue that we’ve had, which has been so beautiful, based out of your blip or your dip in, you know how you’re feeling, but it’s given us a moment to celebrate the pause, to celebrate the imperfection, and no, I don’t wish you to feel bad and another day or another minute. You know that, yeah, um, it’s just when, and I, uh, about two weeks ago, I also had a flu, not as severe as you’ve had, but I can tell you, sitting okay. So there was two moments that I remember in this experience of this flu or cold, or whatever it was the just before, let’s say, the onset, or I knew what was happening. I remember driving down the road and maybe I was parked at a stop sign or a stoplight Right. So I had just a moment of pause and I just did sort of a body scan and I checked in with my body and I went wow, I am not well right now.

Polly Mertens: 40:02

And the thought, the next thought I went was am I always going to feel this way? Like you know, as you age? It’s like, oh, am I? Is something severely wrong, is something that you know? The mind’s like right, because I’ve been going through some endocrine changes and my thyroid medication has changed menopause, all this stuff.

Polly Mertens: 40:19

I’m like, oh my God, have I suddenly like tipped the curve of my life and I’m going downhill? Now you might say, right, and I was like, oh my God. And then so, like then I got sick, sick, you know. And then I was like, and I was like, oh my God, you know, I can’t wait to feel better.

Polly Mertens: 40:35

Right, and in those moments we appreciate more than ever, you know, as a man who, a woman or man who has their health, has many dreams, a man who has no health as but one, and that’s to have health Right, and so we can’t take those things for granted. One, and that’s to have health right, and so we, we can’t take those things for granted. And I’m sure, as you bounce back from this even more, we kind of like appreciate, even if we’re not where we were. You know, as we age, and there maybe is a perpetual, you know, curve to it, some of us have more steep curve, whatever. But we can appreciate the now and and I mean I do this so much with my aging kitty cats, you know, and I sit with them and I’m just like, oh my God, I love you so much.

Samantha Pruitt: 41:17

I just love that you’re feeling good, right, and yeah yeah, totally, I was talking earlier, I told you with my so I have my brother who’s in cancer treatment and I have my cousin who I basically grew up with. It’s like a sister to me who’s also in cancer treatment. It’s crazy, this is all. And we had a long two and a half hour conversation and in she was asking about my iron woman coming up and all these things and I was like, dude, it’s not chemotherapy, it’s not radiation, it’s sure the hell isn’t fighting cancer. This ain’t nothing.

Samantha Pruitt: 41:52

I got this, you know, cause she’s just like blown away and I’m like are you freaking, kidding me? You’ve been battling for your damn life, the shit you’re going through. So it’s like this stark contrast that sometimes we need to have these moments of challenge with our health or a loved one’s health or whatever, where we have this wake up, wake the hell up people and then take this precious life and body and brain and do something with it, and the last thing you should be doing is thinking it should be perfect.

Samantha Pruitt: 42:26

Just get on with it.

Polly Mertens: 42:27

Just get on with it, or resisting what is it’s like, it is what it is. You create resistance in your body which you know suppresses your immune system, your joy, your emotional body, all of it, you know, takes the dip, takes the hip when we do that. I’m speaking to myself right now. So this is for you guys, and for me as well, it’s like let go of those things that are causing the resistance, the story, the tension, whatever it is, and let’s be in acceptance and surrender and flow with it. You know kind of be in the boat of life, riding the waves instead of, you know, crashing on the shore and like holding onto the side, like damn it.

Samantha Pruitt: 43:03

I want to go that way, yeah, and learn the skill that we double clicked on, which is troubleshooting, and if you don’t have that skill, start learning it. And if you need help with those skills, call us or get with a friend who has those skills. Right, don’t just sit in your shit if you will and make yourself miserable. Find resources they’re available to you to navigate those storms and build the resiliency, build the skill set to continue to bounce back forever, forever.

Polly Mertens: 43:36

We talked about that spectrum and I just want to remind you of the story that you tell. In the moment that resistance shows up, not feeling well, something you didn’t expect, imperfection, whatever starts to happen as the bowl starts to crack and create, you know, imperfection, right Is the story that you tell will give you that next level experience, right? So you went through the phases of emotions as you rode through anger, resistance to what’s happening, sad to like, oh, some things aren’t going to turn out the way that I wanted to. Okay, what can I do about it? Right, and so the faster we can go through those phases will give us a different trajectory, a different outcome. If we stay in the first one resistance, pissed off, screw it, I won’t do it, you know then our life takes a different turn, and that maybe it’s supposed to right.

Polly Mertens: 44:21

Maybe it’s supposed to, but and maybe that is where you’re supposed to go, as long as it helps you to feel better, like well, I didn’t want that anyway, if that’s true.

Samantha Pruitt: 44:29

If it’s not, then or maybe you stay stuck.

Polly Mertens: 44:33

Yeah, even more for decades Like your life is passing you by.

Samantha Pruitt: 44:40

You’re stuck way back there, still thinking about that. Well, that’s helpful, yeah, not, not so all right, my dear, please pick up the phone. How do we close this baby? What’s the one thing? What close?

Polly Mertens: 44:51

this baby. What’s the one thing, what’s the, what’s the one takeaway for you that you know you’ve been, you know, feeling this this week. What’s your takeaway, as you kind of brought us to this?

Samantha Pruitt: 45:03

kintsugi, this beautiful japanese art. That’s been happening, by the way, since 1336. They got some knowledge that we didn’t apparently Okay. So the fact that this became an art form, I mean, is a great example of how us, me, the individual, us, the collective humans, can also be living our lives in that way, with how we would acknowledge cracks or brokenness in the path, the journey, the self, the whatever like, turn it into beauty, turn it into gold turn it into art.

Polly Mertens: 45:48

Yeah. So you know, as I’m reading a little definition here. It’s just remember that. I don’t know if I’m going to remember that name, kintsugi. But you know, join with gold right To join with gold is a reminder to stay optimistic when things fall apart and to celebrate the flaws and missteps of life. So how can you recognize? Oh, I’m in one of those moments. This is one of those missteps, flaws, frustrations, whatever. I’m a creator moment. And to find the gold in it.

Samantha Pruitt: 46:15

Dude, I’m going to get this tattooed on me. Hey, you think I’m kidding K I N T S U G? I? Yeah, I’m getting that tattooed on me. This is going down by Iron man, Iron Woman With an M dot. It’ll be all like crack with the gold.

Polly Mertens: 46:35

I totally am into this.

Samantha Pruitt: 46:37

This is happening.

Polly Mertens: 46:38

I like it oh okay, All right people. So what do we want to remind our beautiful humans as we wrap today? My friend.

Samantha Pruitt: 46:46

Oh well, hello. How your life feels is more important than how it looks. People.

Polly Mertens: 46:51

Yes, and every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.