Des Linden, 2018 Boston Marathon Winner

Des Linden (0:00)

Remember your why.

You know, when things get hard, you have the decision to bail, or you can tap into your why. And it could be a million different things. Maybe it's your family.

You know, maybe it's the time you spent training and you skipped out on a birthday or whatever. But think about the things you've sacrificed to get there and remember why you signed up. Why did I sign up for this? And use that to fuel you.

Michael Gervais (0:34)

All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais and I trade in training. I'm a sport and performance psychologist and the co-founder of Compete to Create. And that's a partnership, a joint venture that Coach Carroll had coached at the Seattle Seahawks and I fired up to amplify basically what we've come to learn and understand about training the mind and impacting cultures to do hopefully extraordinary things. And so the idea behind this podcast and these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery and we want to understand what they're searching for, what they're hungry for, what they're driven by. We want to know as best as we can their psychological framework, which is not easy to do.

And we want to understand the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft.

I want to take a minute here to announce a really exciting event that we have coming up. As you continue to navigate the challenges and opportunities of 2024, I want to pose a question. What are you doing right now to be great with stress? How are you working with stress on your pursuit towards your most important ambitions and goals? And I just want to get right to the heart of the key elements, one in particular for what it takes to excel in today's high heat, high stakes world. Because stress is not the problem that we think it is. Stress is a synonym for change. And our ability to be agile with change, that is the real opportunity at hand. So if you're wanting to unlock extraordinary results and sustainable performance in your life, it's not about avoiding or reducing stress. And as simple as that sounds, it's very tricky to do. But it is about fundamentally changing your relationship with it.

And that's why I'm so thrilled to invite you to a special event. It's a free virtual event that we're offering and it's called The Power of Embracing Stress. It's on Wednesday, March 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific. So to sign up, just head over to findingmastery.com/training. Whether it's advancing in your career or improving your health or cultivating stronger relationships, I think a new approach to stress can be one of the most powerful unlocks for you in your life. So join us for this free virtual training, The Power of Embracing Stress, on Wednesday, March 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific. Go to findingmastery.com/training to sign up. Once again, it's findingmastery.com/training. And I'm really excited to see you there.

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And I love learning from Olympians. There's just something about the way that they have organized and conducted their life and conducted their thinking that is extraordinary. And it's phenomenal. And the clarity is just so pure and crisp. And in this conversation, we talk about one of Des' more significant contributions to the sport and more significant achievements that she's experienced. And in 2018, she became the first American woman in 33 years to win the Boston Marathon. And there's a story, there's always a story. There's a story leading up to that, which is she came in fourth place the year prior. And prior to that, in 2011, she came in second place by just two seconds.