A Year of Epics
When I turned 40, I decided it was going to be a year of Epics.
I’d complete one every month - 12 in total - for my entire 40th year. They would have 3 elements : a physical challenge, a mental challenge, and a chance to deepen a connection to people or places that are important to me.
Epic # 1 in October ‘21 was a bucket list adventure. A Rim-to-Rim run across the Grand Canyon with a crew of dear girlfriends from Bozeman. We rented two camper vans and split our group in half to camp on either side of the canyon for pre-dawn starts. We would trade keys somewhere at the bottom of the Canyon and spend our second night on the opposite canyon rim after traversing the 25.68 miles and 8,829 vertical feet (says my AllTrails tracker) of our objective.
Ali, Allison and I started at the Bright Angel trailhead at the South Rim. It was a freezing start. I remember my teeth chattering, but as we got moving the sun began to rise in brilliant pinks and oranges over the desert.
Allison was in charge of reminding us to eat. She had a training plan from an endurance coach for a 100 miler she was working towards the following summer. Every 45 minutes we’d be pulled from our silence or chatter and take down the calories we needed to support the micro stages of the bigger journey.
Fueling during big mountain adventures was never something I had really dialed in - and definitely never with the help of a professional. When I first began to test my mental and physical fortitude in the mountains, I was in my early 20’s and I knew how to dig deep and push through.
If things got hard, I would just try harder. When push came to shove? Just push harder. Most of the time that worked… until it didn’t.
I would make it to the finish line, or the parking lot or the trailhead completely spent, my resource tank at -10% and needing days to bounce back.
I began to notice similarities in how my drive showed up in the first half of my career as it did on mountain adventures. The sheer force of will to make things happen in the earlier stage of my working life had some great rewards, but it always came with a cost. Usually to my own personal well-being, sometimes in sabotaging or undermining the very thing I was pursuing in the first place.
The parallel learnings from this run continue to become crystal clear to me in the unfolding of my last several years … which I will heretofore refer to as a “midlife awakening”.
I think it’s about time to retire the words “midlife crisis”. I wouldn’t say it felt (feels?) like an acute crisis. Things just felt dimmer, duller, like I was stuck somehow in a version of my life I was grateful for but wasn’t really lighting me up. Cue the awakening.
The themes that were emerging for me personally also consistently surface in conversations with the high-achieving professionals I work with in my coaching practice:
1/ Reaching bigger goals requires a different playbook : What got you here won’t get you there, and this is especially true for rising leaders. Even if you are the very best “do-er”, the next level requires more from you in the areas of self-awareness, self-command, and mental resilience. These are not things we are traditionally taught in school or even rewarded for on the path of achievement. (More in a future post about that deceptive path of achievement.)
2/ Fueling (and rest!) is key: Traversing the Grand Canyon was a perfect lesson in pacing. The 45-minute fueling plan kept us resourced to tackle the steep climbs, monotonous straights and most importantly it kept our systems from crashing. Careers are long and varied with many obstacles and opportunities thrown in along the way. I learned the hard way that submitting to a perceived expectation to sprint, hustle and “do all the things” would spill over into my personal life - leading to exhaustion, frustration and burnout. It doesn’t have to be that way.
3/ A peer support system is not optional: My running buddies are dear friends, and they are also leaders pushing boundaries and mapping new territory in their own careers. We’ve each navigated and negotiated really hard things in life and in work. Having a place to be vulnerable amid the loneliness of leadership can be like finding shelter in a storm - especially as women leaders in spaces that are historically and predominantly male.
One of the things I pledged to myself as I move into the second half of my own career is to be a part of creating safe containers for others to push boundaries, explore, ask unpopular questions, get a little scared about the bigger goals their hearts beat for. This isn’t work we need to do alone (please see #3 above!). It can be both grounding and inspiring to tackle these questions alongside others who get where you are coming from, but also bring a fresh perspective. This is why I’m building Elemental, and it’s the coolest professional adventure I’ve ever been on (to date).
Are there any big themes you have been coming up against as you push boundaries, challenge your perception of what is expected of you, or move towards the choices that will light you up in your life or career? I’d love to hear from you!
