Sam Gash on the Power of the Pause
Aug 17, 2026Episode 45 · Resilience, capacity and the power of the pause · 51 min
With Layne Beachley AO & Tess Brouwer, featuring Sam Gash
About this episode
This week Sam Gash, ultra-endurance athlete, speaker and AIA Ambassador, joins Layne and Tess on the couch. Sam was a corporate lawyer when she decided to test the limits of what she was capable of, becoming the first woman to complete the legendary Four Deserts Grand Slam, crossing India on foot to support education initiatives and traversing Nepal’s Great Himalaya Trail.
The conversation goes everywhere but running: where unwavering self-belief actually comes from, what suffering for achievement really costs, why capacity means honouring the person you are today, and the power of the pause when life gets real hard.
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Key takeaways
- Resilience is being adaptive, quicker and with greater ease. It is not the act that builds capacity, it is the reflection afterwards: diagnosing where your defaults showed up and which invisible rules you quashed your capacity with.
- Commitment beats the blueprint. Sam had no athletic history when she took on the Four Deserts. You do not need past experience to do hard things; in the presence of utter commitment, your history stops dictating your capacity.
- Do not wait to be invited. Sponsors would not back a woman in expedition sport, so Sam backed herself first and the rest flowed. You do not need confidence to get started; the action is what builds the confidence.
- Suffering is necessary only to a point. When suffering becomes the price of every achievement, it stops serving you. Some things deserve an easefulness to the effort, and choosing ease is not going backwards.
- Capacity means honouring who you are today. Not what you wish your capacity was, or what it was a year ago: showing up best with what you have in this moment, without judgement.
- The power of the pause. Micro moments in the day without input are where you catch outdated default settings, uncover invisible rules and close the gap between the person at home and the person in the outside world.
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Transcript
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0:02Welcome + introducing Sam Gash▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (0:02):
You're tuning into A Wake Up Call, which is your weekly dose of purpose, packed with science-backed tools to beat burnout and boost happiness. Hosted by us, Tess Brouwer and seven-time world champion Layne Beachley. We're the founders of Awake Academy. This podcast mixes raw life lessons, expert wisdom and practical tips to help you stop sleepwalking through life and start living it on your terms. You ready to wake up and thrive? Let's go. Season three is proudly brought to you by AIA, a leading life, health and wellbeing insurer supporting healthier, longer, better lives. Protect what matters most, and AIA will help you to do it, for life. Welcome back, Dream Team. Today's guest has been doing something we all try and avoid: the hard path. Sam Gash was working as a corporate lawyer when she decided to test the limits of what she was capable of. That decision led her to become the first woman, and the youngest person at the time, to complete the legendary Four Deserts Grand Slam.
Is someone younger done there? Well, not at the time. Not at the time. Not at the time. Okay. Running 1,000 kilometres across some of the world's harshest environments, including India, almost 10 years ago. But somewhere along the way, running stopped being about running. It became about purpose. Since then, Sam has crossed India on foot to support education initiatives, traversed Nepal's Great Himalaya Trail, inspired audiences around the world and shown that resilience isn't about being fearless. It's about continuing to move forward when every path wants you to stop. No wonder you're an AIA ambassador. You... She does it for life. She does it for life. You may also know her as one of the sharpest strategic minds to play Australian Survivor, and I want to know a little bit more about that today, Sam. So today we're not actually talking about running, believe it or not. We're talking about courage, purpose, resilience and what it really takes to keep moving when life gets real hard. Sam Gash, welcome to A Wake Up Call. Oh, I feel like I just kind of reminded myself of the things that I've done, which I think sometimes it's nice to hear the reminder of the breadth of experiences that you can bring to your everyday. Sometimes we quarantine them like they're done, and then move on to the next thing. But yeah, what does it mean to you when you hear that read back to you?
2:29Resilience is being adaptive: Sam's wake-up call▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (2:29):
I'll tell you what it means to me. Recently I've really thought about the, just because you've done hard things in a certain domain doesn't mean that it transfers to your capabilities to do hard things in other frontiers. So I'll often have people go, "But you're so resilient," and I'm like, not in everything. But the thing is, it's not the act that creates resilience or capacity. I think it's actually the reflection - the reflection of that moment and diagnosing it, almost going, where were my defaults showing up in those moments? What invisible rules did I quash my capacity with, to think more broadly? And the biggest thing - we talk about resilience a lot. Resilience for me is just being able to be adaptive, quicker and with greater ease. In the environment that you find yourself in? Yeah. So would that be your wake-up call? Looking back now, on one of the greatest sporting achievements - because you're doing it, it's just you, the mind, and a backpack, right, going through crazy environments - looking back and reflecting, what was your wake-up call?
Well, that I can do hard things if I am utterly committed. And in the presence of commitment, it doesn't really matter what my past experiences would tell me my capacity could be. I haven't always had a blueprint of past experience, like being a physical athlete, to then go and take on a marathon or an ultramarathon. So I don't think you need to have had exposure to certain things to do it, but I do think you need to have an unwavering self-belief that you're in it - skin in the game, you're going to find a way forward - and you can bring to the forefront different moments of your life where you've shown yourself that you can just keep moving forward. And I think that's all it is. Difficult moments are just about finding the capability of turning down the duress, turning down the overwhelm, turning down the imposter syndrome, the fear - which all of us have. No one is immune to that. Sometimes it's really obvious on someone's face; other times it's deeply held, but everyone's working through it in some way. So I haven't, until recently, really had to challenge that notion of self-belief. It's been something more in my last couple of years that I've been feeling less of a capacity than what I used to have, and so that's challenged my self-belief - can I make this happen if my capacity feels less than what it was before?
5:13Where unwavering self-belief comes from▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (5:13):
So are you comparing yourself to previous versions of yourself to find the confidence and the belief to push through? Because you've done a lot of hard things, and obviously when you overcome challenges and push yourself, if you take the time to reflect on it, you're like, wow, I'm pretty good, I'm pretty strong, I'm stronger than I gave myself credit for. So perhaps the first question is actually, where does that unwavering self-belief come from? How can we all develop it? And then in those moments where you feel like it's been compromised or sabotaged, how do you come back to that? How do you find your way back? Oh, there's so many things in that, because I'm challenging some of my capacity, some of my strength or resilience from the past, and going, where did that come from? Was it always best served? Did I sometimes think I needed to suffer at all costs, in every domain of life, to be someone or something? Of course you did. I saw you suffer.
Yeah. And I'm proud of it, but I also now want to challenge it, because I don't think life is always about suffering at all costs. I just think we have a certain amount of footsteps - use them wisely. That's probably why I say youth is wasted on the young. I know, because we don't have the wisdom. But also the naivety is perfect, I think, because naivety helps us tackle things that if you knew too much, you would never do it. So you don't want to quash that youthful naivety. Sometimes people look at it and go, "You can't possibly do it," and it's like - actually, they probably can, because they don't know what's ahead of them, and they are utterly present to the moment. And that's, I think, a really powerful tool. Our capacity to be present, and to not hold on to past blueprints or be overfixated on the path ahead, means we can just deal with the granular, moment to moment. That's where you can surpass yourself. Yeah, of course. But in terms of where my self-belief or desire came from at the beginning - I think my parents played a big role in it. They're not sporty, but they're dogged. In everything they've done. Battlers? Ozzie battlers. Ozzie battlers. Hard workers. Yeah, hard workers. Grit. My dad came from - his parents were from Czechoslovakia, they came over during the war. My grandfather was the commander of the armoured fleet, and his whole battalion passed away around him in the arm of tanks. Even their journey to Australia - two brothers married two sisters, not from the same family. That would be any choice - it was the Depression. You've got to do what you're going to do. It was survival. You're looking for common connections.
So I see that my family are survivors in different ways. My dad had polio as a child - he was on a plank for a period of time dealing with polio. And he's kind of built himself up from the ground. And my mum's just a country gal from Muswellbrook. I think that wiring and DNA - even though I place it in a very different domain - my mum's a massive gardener, and I used to always say, "Go for a run," and she'd say, "You should just be working in the garden." And now that I've turned 40-plus, I'm in the garden all the time. You think these things you will never do, but it's funny how you return to it - you return back to that lineage, to smell the roses. So it sounds like you were geared for survival and struggle - it runs in our genes. And I'm so interested - you said something before about the labels or the prescriptions that you had to let go of when you were doing these runs. So for someone who doesn't know, can you give a very quick overview of what that run entailed, and then tell me at what stage you dropped a label, or became aware of one that constrained you, and had to let it go to get to the next point.
9:16Dropping labels and flipping the script▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (9:16):
I have so many labels that are still existing. I've dropped them at times to do certain things, but I don't think they eliminate - and I think that's the biggest thing I've learned. You can be someone who is scared of heights, who is an introvert and probably prefers to be in small dynamics, and still be someone who can be magnetic and captivating in a large audience. We can do things that don't necessarily sync with the inner version, and it doesn't mean we're being incongruent - it's just that we know how to turn the volume up and down. When it suits us, hey? Well, when it serves us - when it's intentional, when the purpose or objective for it is greater than the inner voice that can hold us back. So that's what I've learned. You might not be able to tell, but I'm very short, so my big inner critic was that my size really affected my physical capability. I didn't really think too much about the mental side of endurance sports, or any sport - I really just held on to what was obvious: you're small, you're uncoordinated. Were you bullied about that at school? Yeah, definitely. Were you reminded a lot as well? I still am today. But now I find I can turn it into a joke and it doesn't bother me - it's like Teflon. But when I was in, maybe, latter primary school, I was put in a trash can because I fitted in a trash can. So when I went to high school, I decided to beat people to the joke - I'd get into the locker myself, and lock the keys in, and go to class. You flip the script sometimes in order to take control of the narrative. Yeah, what a pivotal moment. No wonder you became a lawyer - you became the loudest person, the fighter, the one who could cut through. Well, using your words - what do you have at your disposal? Words. Words can count. I always say to Harry, words matter, manners matter, and words count. And you're not small. And I'm not small, yeah. But I am small, and so what?
11:58Inside the Four Deserts Grand Slam▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (11:58):
So the overview of the race, just very quickly, so the listener can get a grasp on this - take us back to the race. Ultramarathons - what's so out of your comfort zone is that they're always different, because they're typically in extreme or isolated landscapes and environments. My first big exposure was the Four Deserts Grand Slam - not to be confused with the four desserts Grand Slam. I would like that version. I know - give me the extra S every time. Sometimes when I do a keynote and someone introduces it, they accidentally say "desserts," and I'm like, don't you all wish it was that. What would be those four desserts? What would be your favourite desserts that are very different, and it'd be a Grand Slam? I've got to have a sticky date. Lamington. We really are a naughty chocolate brownie - walnut. And then the last one, I think, a sundae or a cheesecake. I'm not a cheesecake fan anymore, but I used to be. Well, it doesn't mean you don't always like all the desserts. They confronted you with things that really challenged you, and they were never the same - you think you'd get the format, but just because the distance name is the same...
Each race was 250 kilometres over a certain number of days. 250 kilometres, on average how many days? Five or six. Antarctica was a bit of an outlier, because based on the environment - as long as the weather is good, you could stay out there and do laps. One time I was out there for 45 minutes before the weather flipped and we had to get back on the Zodiacs; another time I was out for 11 hours. So the biggest challenge of that race was you have to sustain yourself for whatever it may be - it's so hard to go, how do I pace myself? Should I pace for it being a short period of time to get as much distance done as possible, or think for the long haul? In fact, that was my first exposure to track-style running, in a sense - even though it was Antarctica, it was loops, because they can't have you too far from the Zodiacs to get back to the boat. I must admit, I've never thought of Antarctica as a desert. It's about the level of precipitation. I know - and that would be our ice-cream dessert. So that was the really unique one, but the others were point A to point B. So you were never returning to the same place. Mentally, was that easier? They both have their own sets of things. It's getting locked into whatever the format is and embracing what you know, and letting go of what you can't control. Which is everything. Other than your thoughts and your emotions and your response - and how frequently you eat, unless you've run out of food. You've got to carry all the supplies you need in a pack on your back for the number of days of the race. The only things they gave you at checkpoints were water, because obviously you can't carry all the water, and a big tent at the finish where you'd sleep with ten strangers - smelly boys, typically. They had mandatory equipment as well as, I think, 1,500 to 2,000 calories - I can't exactly remember - which I always thought was bizarre, because some people were 6'3" and weighed 50 kilos more than me, but we all had to have the same minimum calories. Not at all bespoke. Everything else, for the most part, I considered luxury, because I couldn't carry those things - and that became almost my obsessive thing: how can I release my need for that degree of comfort? Can I be comfortable sleeping on the cold desert floor at night, knowing that might impact my quality of recovery? Back home you'd never run the next day after doing that distance, but this is what the format is, so you just accept your new baseline. Yeah, and that's the cool thing - when you get back, it's amazing how quickly you go, oh, it's so nice to have these things. But we can survive with less, we can thrive with less - it's actually about managing our expectations of what the baseline is. Did you - so you've got Antarctica, Chile, China, Egypt - was that the sequence? Going to the Atacama Desert in Chile, the driest desert on earth... Which I think was the most spectacular - the salt flats in Atacama were brutal to traverse, so hard, and you never knew the integrity of the terrain underneath. That was the most blisters I've ever experienced - my feet swelled so much, and maybe that was also because it was my first one. Your body has such an intense reaction the first time you do something so hard, and it's amazing how quickly adaptation happens - I didn't get the same blisters after that. Maybe the terrain was different too, but I think your skin gets a little tougher, your toenails get used to the pounding until they don't go as black, and you learn to cut them a bit more just before the race. You're just different. Your body adapts, but you also accrue information that you build into your formula. Yeah, and your mind's adapting too - it's both the practical application and the learning experience, which only becomes integrated through reflection. Otherwise it's a disassociated state - well, that was hard, and then it's all gone. There's nothing consolidated in extreme, non-intentional, hard situations that you'd rather forget than absorb. Maybe we don't learn the lessons from those moments because we didn't sign up for it, but all hard things in our life have the ability to teach us something we can take into the next iteration of who we want to be. We're in the business of helping people be better humans - we're in the human capacity and human performance building business. It sounds like real intense commitment to being the best athlete you can be in that situation.
18:35The drive when there is no trophy▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (18:35):
I want to come back to the concept of drive really quickly, because from my perspective as a professional athlete, my inner drive was based on prize money to get me to the next event, a trophy to hold above my head, validation from others - a lot of it was extrinsically driven. But for you, I'd love to understand what is the drive to go and do something like this that is so extreme and intense - there's no prize money at the end of it, there's no trophy on a podium, you're not being sprayed down with champagne. What is the drive? It's a great question, because as time passes, you sometimes impose a different drive than maybe what it started as, so I always try to go back to that version of me. I can still feel that person who was knocking on the vice-chancellor's office trying to convince them I was an athlete representing Australia in a sport that didn't really exist, so I could get time off and be sponsored to fund some of it - and then he just decided to avoid me, so I waited outside his office. I remember that person - I was so unwavering, like, "I can pull this off." I think I loved the jigsaw puzzle of it - the pieces of the puzzle were so complex, even getting to the start line, that it didn't even feel like a physical challenge to begin with. It was, how do I make these things feel appealing, feel complex? I didn't even know how complex the physical side was - that was something I'd never viscerally undergone. But I liked the idea of making something possible that not just I hadn't done before, but that very few people had actually done.
So why an ultramarathon? Well, I had read a book about two Australian brothers who had taken on the Sahara race. Even though I wasn't an ultra runner then - I was a recreational runner - I remember their journals, written each day of the race; they just seemed like normal people putting themselves in a situation where they had no idea how it was going to go. And, funny, there was no real technology then, but they had these little keypads they'd type into, and it would get published to the internet so people back home could read their experiences each day. So you're still alive. Yeah, that's the only way. I remember the process - even for myself, I was so tired after each day just reading about it - but it felt like a ritual I wanted to take, because of what it was like reading from the brothers. And the only way I found out about it is because the editor of that book was the mum of a friend of mine who was a law student, and she was talking to me about it. Isn't it funny that something can be not in your domain, not your personal interest or hobby, and yet you hear an experience from someone decoding it and sharing it, and you think, could that be for me? Yeah, it ignited the spark. And I can't even explain what it was, but I liked the jigsaw, I liked the unknown nature of it, and I think I had something to prove - I always felt different, I always felt challenged by other people to explain why I did the things I did and thought the way I did, and I think there was a defensiveness in me: I'm going to make this work, I'm going to make this unconventional path credible. Silence the critics. I've only more recently been tapping into why I did what I did - did it always serve me, or did it hold me back? Because just because it's unconventional for other people, after a certain point, being unconventional is your conventional. Yeah, and that's testing your own defaults within that. But, as we like to also raise - at what cost? Because, as you just said, it's either serving you or sabotaging you, and a lot of us with this unconventional wisdom believe we have to persevere and persevere to prove ourselves right, to silence the critics, to overcome the challenge, to make it credible. But at what cost?
22:52Suffering and achievement: at what cost▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (22:52):
Well, it can work until it doesn't. It can be all fine until you find that resistance - for me, it was a suffering element. Achievement. When I suffered, it typically equated to getting to the finish line - achievement. These races are really a lesson in the art of suffering. How poetic we can make it sound. No, it's really important to expand on this, because I know plenty of people who are suffering to achieve, but at what cost? And they don't believe... You've spent a whole career in it - suffering is growth, suffering gets you there, suffering is necessary - it's necessary to a point. And what you've tapped on is the reflection of that - did I have to go through that, and can the achievement happen without it? I think that's the thing - it's like, that's okay. If you're someone who likes to operate in spaces that haven't always been paved for you or for people like you, go and do what you want to do. My big thing is: don't wait to be invited to enter a space. It's frustrating handing over power to everybody else and not doing what feels innately right for you - you have to be in the driver's seat of the life you're living. I think we hand over agency to other people all the time, even when they don't want to take that agency. Well, then they may not even be aware of it either. There was always an expedition-type sponsorship for men, but never for women, and I just went into it. I wasn't invited - I just put my hand up. Yeah, adventure - particularly extreme adventure - has not typically been held by many women.
24:44Back yourself first: action builds confidence▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (24:44):
And so even going into it, it was a battle getting sponsors to back me. And so then I learned, well, unless you back yourself, why should anyone else back you? And so it became, to be honest, a really healthy positioning - my disadvantage, not having that automatic place of credibility, meant it became more innately based on what I wanted. Because it wasn't like I was waiting for someone to hand this moment to me. Why should someone pay for the adventure of your life unless you're offering value? So a lot of my advice, when people ask how I got sponsored, is: I sponsored myself, and irrespective of anyone backing me, I decided I'm going to do this - and then it just flowed. So it's like, you don't need to have the confidence to get started; in fact, it's the getting started, the action, that actually builds the confidence. Yeah, confidence is actually earned because it's built - it accrues through the doing, the momentum of it. And this is what I don't like about Disney - when you get married, the prince saves you, and then, "I will be happy, and my life is happier ever after." I had this realisation deep in a meditation: unless I take control of my healing, my journey, and don't outsource it to everyone and everything else, until I take the reins and believe in something different... I remember where I was, walking up a path, walking forward, and I thought, I have to be that person, I have to make this for me. But I'm the flip side too, because I don't believe in convention - that's not my natural default. I definitely got sucked into the girl-boss era of "I don't need a man," probably way too independent - it needs to be a fight, I need to fight hard for it. Suffering again. Again, suffering. So that was probably the biggest cost for me - not accepting that some things should have ease to them. They should always be effort, because in the absence of effort, things won't grow. But I think there needs to be an easefulness to the effort - a mutual effort. Where have you found ease now?
27:00Capacity: honouring who you are today▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (27:00):
Parenting, interestingly - I mean, ease in the sense of my desire. I've got this untapped desire to be all in, so that's kind of my little test: what am I naturally leaning towards being all in on? My instincts are typically pretty good; my capacity is what's changing - and maybe that's on the cusp of perimenopause. Explain that - explain capacity, because it's a word that keeps coming up in our worlds, and yours. It seems like you've got a really good grasp on it. It's funny, because when I was a lawyer, "capacity" was the word - "Do you have capacity for this?" That was literally the framing, the language, as a junior lawyer. I only did a couple of years as a junior lawyer before I was like, I can't sit down, I don't have capacity, there is no capacity. I actually professionalised endurance running so I could leave the law - I turned it into a profession because my mindset is that I like being professional, I like working with structure, I like accountability, I like teams, I like purpose, I like goals - but I just like to do it in a different kind of way. That's the wonderful part of humans - we put people in these boxes of who they should be, but we need the difference. So capacity to you - what does that mean now, that's different to junior-lawyer Sam?
The capacity for me versus my legal days is honouring the person of me in this very moment - not what I wish my capacity was, or what my capacity was even yesterday or a year ago - without judgement, going, what can I show up with, best, with what I have? How do you connect with that? Yeah, this is a work in progress - this is not a tool or practice I've honed, this is what has become critical for survival. We have a quick favour to ask. If this podcast has been landing for you, please hit subscribe and leave us a rating or review. It helps us grow the show and keep bringing these conversations to more people.
30:15Invisible rules and a changing baseline▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (30:15):
I think there are some skills and frameworks we just bring into our everyday because we read about them and think, yeah, that makes sense, I should do that. And then there are others we're confronted with when we hit rock bottom or have a reckoning - it doesn't have to be this total breakdown like some people talk about; it's this internal going, if I don't make a change right now, I'm not going to be able to evolve into the version that syncs with who I want to be. And interestingly - I know you both talk about this a lot - it's so fascinating being a woman, that our baseline is meant to constantly change. Yeah. So we're never the person we were yesterday or last month, and then obviously in the different stages of womanhood it's changing as well. So no wonder we're constantly flying by the seat of our pants. Constantly winging it. Which is beautiful, but isn't it great to just know it, own it and say it? And so I now radically own the version of me that is probably never going to be polished - and thank goodness, because that's also not me. I did a presentation for AIA at the end of - gosh, I'm terrible with numbers - it was at the end of traversing Nepal's Great Himalaya Trail, a run/hike/fastpack, whatever you want to call it, from the Tibetan border to the Indian border. How long is that? It was roughly - sorry, numbers are not my thing - about 1,000 miles. Lucky you're a lawyer, not an accountant. Yeah, I've got to do my own accounting too. But the thing is, there was no set trail, so if you've been to Nepal, you know the landscape's constantly changing. Sometimes we'd get to a certain point - I was doing it with a friend of mine, Jesse - and we were navigating ourselves, and I'd go, "Not my skill set, delegate to someone better at it." It's so funny you say that - I have to call you out on that, Sam, because the more you repeat that, the more you let go and give that control to someone else, and then you don't have to take responsibility for it. And this whole discussion, you've just said to us how you're the puzzle piece that can figure it out. No, but I'm also happy to delegate certain things - happy not to own everything. If I thought I could do it all, then maybe I would go and do these expeditions by myself, because sometimes the dynamic can be hard to manage. But I want human interaction and dynamic, and I also want teamwork. Yeah, this is an element you can own, and I'm going to support. But you own these parts, and maybe I'll own these parts - we didn't have it super defined, but we had this passing of the baton. Symbiosis of trails.
And maybe because I've been so comfortable to go - like, at home, I don't do the bins. You don't do the bins. And you can call that an invisible rule - of course I can do the bins - but by saying it, it's like, okay, my partner takes that part. There are times in life when you don't need to do everything, you don't have to be the jack of all trades. I just want to be okay at this particular area, and you can do that, and I trust you, and I'm not going to micromanage you. Yeah, because I think there's this thing - I work a lot like you, Layne, in corporate spaces, where sometimes we get stifled with consensus - why does everyone have to have an opinion on something that's not even their domain, that they haven't researched or investigated? Sometimes it's, I trust you enough that you've done the work and outlined a path forward, but also if it doesn't work, I'm not going to burn you - we're just going to acknowledge it, reiterate and go for the next direction, create the next best plan. As Tess and I do in our workshops - ta-da! We'll just leave it to you guys. I made a mistake, we're still alive, let's keep going. It's such a thing - we're in this really interesting dynamic of time where things are changing a lot, and you have to hold things lightly. I think for A-type personalities, we like to hold on to maybe too many things, and it can be overwhelming and confronting. And for me, I want to hold on to less stress - when you have stressful situations confronted on you, not of your choosing - it's not like an ultra that I've chosen, it may be a parent being unwell, navigating difficulties with raising your child - and it's always constantly the unknown, and you're always wanting to do a good job, and how could you do a good job at something you've never done before? So there are all these things that are already difficult. So I am learning to try and create ease in other areas where maybe my default was to make it hard. Push the boulder up the hill - I can't do it if it's not hard. So what happened after that presentation?
35:40Stranded on the Great Himalaya Trail▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (35:40):
My point was, I was in such brain fog - I had just done the 50-day expedition, got hit by a natural disaster and was actually stranded for 12 days out of the 50, in some of the most remote parts, remote communities, near the Tibetan part of Nepal, where I always thought that relentless forward motion was the name of the game, and I was stranded. I was so conflicted - am I failing, I'm not moving forward, we're going to have to jump parts of this course, I'm not going to finish this route because it was already an ambitious timeframe. And I'd said 50 days was my max, because I didn't want to be away from Harry any longer. I felt like I didn't get it right - I've always got the job done before - but sometimes your will isn't about your desire, it was just a circumstance in front of me, and it was my job to make the decision of how I wanted the next step to be. And I had to do a talk for AIA afterwards, and I thought, I don't know what any of this means - I just did it. And everyone always wants to ask, "What's next?" and I'm like, does there have to be something? Wasn't that enough? So I used to say, "Oh, I'll lie down" - but actually I got up on stage and thought, I'm not going to package this, I'm not going to get up and tell you I know what that meant and put a bow on it. And interestingly, it was at the end of the year, they were all burnt out, and I said, this is what I think I experienced, but really what I'm going into is I need to give myself some solid pause to actually recover and let this sink in - otherwise it's jumping onto the next thing because I feel the compulsion to prove to other people, what's the next thing, bigger, harder, faster, higher? And if it's not intrinsically intentional, focused, it doesn't count the same way for me - and you get burnt out halfway through, and you're out there in the middle of nowhere thinking, why am I not back with my son? Yeah, exactly - because when you're away from your kid, particularly, it needs to be for a reason - otherwise, why are you doing it? It turns into: what are you running from, versus what are you running to?
Yes. And I'm very happy you didn't go into the Forrest Gump analogy that so many people do - "are you like Forrest Gump?" I'm like, no, I'm like Samantha Gash. So it's great that you've found a sense - well, you've given yourself permission to pause, and you've found ease in aspects of your life that you perhaps didn't think you would, especially when it comes to parenting.
38:33Teaching kids resilience over reliance▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (38:33):
So in a world that's teaching kids reliance more than resilience, how do we teach kids to be more resilient and embrace discomfort, which is right where the growth occurs? Oh - to go on new start lines. And I'm not just talking about race start lines - just to try different things without the expectation that you perform in a certain way. Harry, early in his life, couldn't hear particularly well, and then we were caught in COVID and couldn't get into specialists. Finally got into a specialist, and they said it's like he's six feet under water, he can't hear - and it's most likely affected his hearing, but also his speech and his language. Oh. And as a parent you think, I've let him down, I've affected his academic progression and understanding. I remember I went into intense mode - I'm very action-biased, so I'm action, action, action - it was like 4am and I'm doing phonics with him in the morning, trying to curb the gap of time we'd lost. And then I thought, no - all you want is Harry to be a confident child who tries things, and even if he's behind in some areas of life, that doesn't affect his confidence to want to try something new. Because I know for me, the feeling of failure really stopped me from trying stuff, stopped me from seeking new opportunities - it made me a more "no" person, until I challenged that in my twenties. So as a parent, I just want to put Harry through different experiences, expose him to different people, different places. And helping him manage his own expectations starts with you managing your own. Absolutely. And I always just say to him, all I care about is your effort. Was that all he cared about, though?
Well, we talk about it all the time - he knows this, you create your own language with your kids. Sometimes he's getting a mini keynote presentation, but he actually teaches me too - we talk about these things all the time. And it's, of course, I come from a whole high-performance background of what I demand and expect of myself, and I think we all should be seeking to perform to our high - but it has to be sustainable. Yes, and it has to be healthy.
41:00Success as congruence, not polish▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (41:00):
Is that what success is to you now? Yeah, it's just about constant stock-takes, constant moments of pause, to make sure that what I'm doing is deliberate and intentional, and that it syncs with my purpose - to be congruent, that the person of me within the four walls of my home marries up with the person on the outside. So if that means I sometimes get up on stage and honestly say to people I don't completely understand what this experience was, and the version of me that felt like an incredible presenter would have a clear, crystallised idea to get up and say - I do that instead. An authenticity to it. Yeah. If you're human as well, do you ever get that wrong? Always. And now I say it - how do you respond to that?
I have to accept that people do sometimes see you as less credible by showing the human side, and that's okay, that's their own stuff. I would rather show up as the accurate version of me, and for it to maybe chip at the perception people may have of what I am, because I've run across deserts, but feel comfortable with the person I am in presenting it. I think that's been a big lesson too - there's no one shape of resilience, no one shape of what it means to be a capable, confident person. And the more we see the breadth of expression of that, the more comfortable we are recognising other people and not judging them for one moment. Stories are told best when they're more authentic and people believe you - I don't subscribe to "people see you more if you're more polished," because, well, what's wrong with you really? But we need to see more of it - that's been the version of the past, when leaders at certain types of organisations were typically male, and even a female leader often still emulated that style of leadership. It takes people of both genders to question that and showcase themselves, and be comfortable taking a few knocks for it, to overtime accrue. And so that's why anyone who goes out and does something for the first time, whether you agree with their position or not, deserves some respect and care, because it's very lonely to be that person, and it's not typically you who gains the accolades - it's the start-line medal, the second wave of people who go, "Oh, that worked, I can do that now." So being a pioneer or trailblazer is nowhere near as exciting or lucrative as people like to think. Do we see that version of you on Survivor?
44:35The Survivor edit vs the real Sam▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (44:35):
No - it's a TV show. So you were a performer, you weren't the authentic, congruent... No, no, no - it's an edited version. They film you 24/7, so you can't hide, and I have to be honest, I'm not very good at masking. Not at all. That's why I've got a terrible poker face, which is why I'd often hide when someone was asking a direct question. But the edited version is quite different - it's spliced and moved around. But particularly, they've got to create a formula for a show, and a character - there's 24 characters. Did you like your character that they created? At times, when I felt like it was me; and other times I thought, that seems really palatable for mainstream society, and that wasn't always probably the accurate version of what I was internally experiencing. So there were different times I liked it, but it also wasn't - Survivor's not real life. There's not a metaphor for life, though. I think, in terms of how you're displayed in the world, there's probably a million versions of you, five million of you out there, because we all see each other through different lenses. And isn't it great that we just start to accept there are many different sides of people - we're sometimes so quick to find a very rigid understanding of someone, because it's easier for us. I can put you in that category, and then when someone challenges that, because they're multifaceted, all of a sudden you don't feel comfortable with that - well, why? There are many shapes of you. And I think because of remote working now, we're actually seeing more facets of people, because the delineation between personal life and professional life is being rubbed out - and I think that's great, though we're in a transition phase of how we understand and accept it. But essentially it's creating a humanisation of people, and I think that's only going to be a good thing moving forward. That's what people say to us - we're rehumanising the workforce.
46:55AIA toolkit: the power of the pause▾
Sam, Layne & Tess (46:55):
Sam, to close, can you rehumanise us today? We have the final bit, which is the AIA Do It for Life toolkit. Now, I was going to take this into one direction, but what I really want to focus on is your mental toolkit - not the one that you use in ultramarathons, but the one you apply to everyday life, in those moments that are hard and tough to find ease in. Yeah, in the sticky moments - when you're on the precipice of, are you going to keep going, or maybe do you need to pull back? I first try to say to myself, pulling back is okay, and in fact it's not going backwards - so maybe "pulling back" is the wrong term, but either direction is fine, as long as it's intentional. The pause - the power of the pause is something that I - and it's not like I need a two-week break to pause, I don't need to be on a silent meditation retreat, though that would be lovely. It's just finding those little micro moments in the day where I'm not influenced by technology, by consumption of others, whatever it is, and I get to sink in and go, am I operating from an outdated version of me? Am I operating from these ingrained default settings that are no longer serving me? And do I need to reboot into the version that - the 41-year-old version of me that has accrued all this experience and has this focus now. So for me it's just challenging and questioning a little bit more.
And I think, with invisible rules, it's important to know they're invisible for a reason, so you have to uncover them to begin with - but then also not be harsh on yourself for them, because they actually kept you safe at some point; they got created because at some point you believed you needed them to move through the world. And at times, maybe that was a seven-year-old version of Sam - maybe the seven-year-old version of Sam was scared to climb the rock face, but that's not the case anymore. Yeah, now it's survival. So: the power of the pause, and understand your invisible labels. And the very last one is just really seeking to close the gap as much as possible between the version at home and the version in the outside world - which also means you're giving the same, best version of you to the people in your inner world, which I think often happens the other way around - I'm performing and giving great energy outside to other people, but at home I'm a shell. Yeah, so it's like, match it up. Sam, complete this sentence: your wake-up call is not a wake-up call until... ...you invest in yourself. Beautiful. It's been an awesome conversation, Sam - I always love sitting on a couch and listening to you. As we know, our lives aren't measured by the kilometres we run - it's measured by the person we become along the way. We're always evolving, we're always growing, so whatever mountain you're climbing, resilience isn't built at the top or the finish line - it's built in the decision to take one more step. So we encourage all our listeners to choose one step from Sam's life MBA, from Sam's life toolkit - get on the start line, put it into practice this week, challenge yourself, challenge your regular ways of thinking, your regular ways of showing up, the performances, the masks that you're wearing, and be more curious about that. And just thank you for sharing your insights and knowledge and wisdom with us today - we've loved this conversation. Yeah, I have to put my sentiments in there - Sam, you've just lit a fire in me to do things differently and take more risks in my life. I won't be doing an ultramarathon. That's what she thinks. My version of that is just being a really good mum, and putting - being the best I can in that. And this conversation has expanded me in so many ways. So thank you.
Where can the world find you? Oh, yeah... on top of a mountain. On top of the mountain. You can find me where there's nobody - in Antarctica. Yeah, you can come to Antarctica. No - I mean, in person, anywhere in the Dandenong Ranges, at the coffee shop. But, yeah, Sam Gash - Samantha Gash, samanthagash.com. Well, from us to you, Dream Team, this has been a wonderful, expansive conversation. If it has stirred something in you, please share it - it means so much to us that this message gets out to everyone. And we will see you next week on A Wake Up Call. Doodles!
Guest
Sam Gash
Ultra-endurance athlete, AIA Ambassador, speaker & former corporate lawyer
First woman to complete the Four Deserts Grand Slam, on backing yourself before anyone else does and why capacity means honouring who you are today. Find her at samanthagash.com.
