Stubbornly Young
Stubbornly Young
"Not Too Late" Author Shares Amazing Energy and Mindset
I’m so excited about this episode with Gwendolyn Bounds, author of a book that caught my attention called NOT TOO LATE – THE POWER OF PUSHING LIMITS AT ANY AGE. Wendy had a life changing transformation when she became passionately involved in obstacle course racing starting in her late 40s. Like many of US, Wendy had a successful career before she started this new chapter... as an award-winning journalist, an on-air host, and author of many books. Listening to Wendy’s book (which she reads), it feels like Wendy was REBORN with a passion that’s inspired the book, and all kinds of activities surrounding it. This book has been the catalyst for personal introspection, added workouts, and meaningful conversations with my wife. The Stubbornly Young will love this episode - and Wendy's book!
Takeaways from the episode:
- Embracing new challenges in midlife
- Importance of embracing discomfort and being purposeful
- Significance of movement as people age
- Managing time and reclaiming time for meaningful pursuits
- Pursuing passion and maintaining relationships
- Overcoming fear of feeling embarrassed
- Choosing activities that bring intrinsic excitement
- Pursuing mastery at an older age
- Embracing discomfort and pursuing passions at any age
- Not waiting to pursue passions and embracing the process of learning
Ponder and Share:
“If you wish to improve, you need to be content to look foolish, and that is true at any age.” –Gwendolyn Bounds
“Don't put up too many barriers to entry for yourself before you actually just get going.” –Gwendolyn Bounds
Connect with Gwendolyn Bounds:
About Gwendolyn Bounds:
Gwendolyn (Wendy) Bounds is an award-winning journalist and author of multiple books, including her newest — Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age — which will be published in June 2024 by Ballantine Books.
Read my Blog called Rules For Being Stubbornly Young and let me know what you think!
Email your thoughts at dave@stubbornlyyoung.com
Check out where it’s all happening on the Stubbornly Young website
Thanks and looking forward to hearing how you’re remaining stubbornly young!
[INTRODUCTION]
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:00:02) - Part of the way you can shake yourself out of the inertia of middle age is exactly what you're saying, which is to embrace something new that interests you but might make you really, really uncomfortable and look foolish for a while.
A little bit of obsession is healthy because it means you're deeply interested. I wanted to know what it would feel like to get better. I wanted to know what it was like, at this age, to pursue this long road of mastery, even if I never reached expert.
This notion of looking foolish, right? And you started to get at this by saying, oh, weren't you embarrassed to be tackling something hard and new like this at your age? And I actually think that is one of the most constricting mindsets somebody can have as they age. What is the thing you love that you're not doing? The clock is ticking. There is no one is putting more sand back in the top of your hourglass.
Dave Tabor (00:01:08) - Welcome to the Stubbornly Young podcast for people in their 50s, 60s and beyond who want to remain engaged in the world and relevant to the younger people in their lives. I'm Dave Tabor and I am so excited for this episode with Gwendolyn Bounds, author of a book that caught my attention called Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age. Wendy transformed her life when she became passionately involved in obstacle course racing starting in her late 40s. Like many of us, Wendy had a successful career and she continues it before she started this new chapter as an award winning journalist and on air host and author of many books. I've been listening to Wendy's book Not Too Late, which she reads really well and it feels like Wendy was–I'm using this as my word, not hers–reborn with a passion that's inspired the book and all kinds of activities around it. Wendy, I mentioned before we even started this episode that I've been loving your storytelling in Not Too t Late and pausing often to consider how this can impact my journey and those of the Stubbornly Young audience. So welcome! Glad you could join me.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:02:15) - Thanks so much, Dave. I appreciate that you're reading the audiobook. Recording that was an endurance race in itself. You know, I'd never done it before, but that's quite, they've always said authors should read their own books, and I think it's true. But you need to be ready not to talk the rest of the day.
Dave Tabor (00:02:31) - Wow. Yeah. And you do a really good job. Great energy. And by the way, listeners, if I sound a bit like a groupie on this, I apologize, but I am a fast fan. So, Wendy, you know, let's start with some sort of the basics. Like, you chose obstacle racing as a way to what?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:02:48) - That is the existential million dollar question that I think my family is still asking, Dave. Well, just for people who may not know exactly what obstacle course racing is, let's define it, because I think people have different images in their heads. It really is cross-country running through mountains or rocky terrain, farmlands, occasionally in cleaner places like baseball stadiums, but usually out in the dirt where there's water and mud combined with obstacles, right? Military style obstacles such as scaling six foot, eight foot walls, climbing a 17-foot rope carrying heavy sandbags and buckets of rocks.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:03:29) - Hence, we go to the existential question of why in the world would you do this (inaudible) in your mid-forties? But I, as you noted in the intro, I'd pretty much been a person glued to my screens, right? A lot of sitting, a lot of screens. I'm a journalist. I grew up, you know, a skinny kid, last pick for sports teams. Not athletic at all. And it wasn't until I was really at a cocktail party in my mid-forties. And I overheard an older man ask a younger girl there, a little girl, what she wanted to be when she grew up, and she rattled off all these amazing things and I think he was eventually sorry he had ever asked. She said so many. But it stuck with me, Dave, through that night, that when you're in middle age, nobody asks you that anymore. And more importantly, you often stop asking yourselves. We stop asking ourselves. And I woke up the next morning. I googled what are the hardest things you can do? And the search algorithm eventually led me to Spartan racing, which is a form of obstacle racing. And that's where our story begins.
Dave Tabor (00:04:35) - Yeah. Yeah. I loved your line to where you said, we spend our whole lives trying to be comfortable financially, with friends, with family. And now if we're going to undertake something new, like we have to set being comfortable aside, right?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:04:51) - Getting comfortable with discomfort I think is super important at any age, but particularly in middle age and beyond. We become, you know, I think you're this is what you're getting at. We start to gravitate toward our competencies more and more. What we're good at. This is what people have praised us for. This is what we've earned money for. This is what we get thumbs up for on social media. And we shy away from those things that we're not so good at. It's a trap. It's a competency trap, and part of the way you can shake yourself out of the inertia of middle age is exactly what you're saying, which is to embrace something new that interests you but might make you really, really uncomfortable and look foolish for a while which, obstacle course racing certainly did for me.
Dave Tabor (00:05:40) - Haha, yeah, I mean, it sounds super humbling and I want to come back to that notion of being uncomfortable, looking awkward and potentially embarrassed. But first, I mean, Spartan racing is something you chose and, you know, for your, put it in quotes, “It's not too late,” other people might choose something else like to, but to what extent do you feel like the physical nature of obstacle courses is something that really is important, as you choose whatever's next?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:06:08) - I think the metaphors of obstacles themselves are what are most important and applicable to everybody, right? We're all going to have walls put in front of us whenever we want to try something new and hard. Something's always going to get in the way. We might have a health issue. We might have a problem in a relationship. We might lose our job. There's always going to be a wall. There's things like a spear throw where you get one shot, right? and that's a metaphor for life as well.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:06:37) - There are many times when we're making making a presentation or we're trying to get funding for a job or something where you're really you get one shot, right, one shot at making a first good impression. So I think the metaphors of obstacle racing are highly applicable to everyone, I don't think I certainly don't think that everybody will choose obstacle course racing for their “not too late.” I think whatever passion it is that you want to dive into. One thing I would add is that movement of some sort is important for all of us as we age, just so we can keep doing what we love with the people we love for as long as we can. And we know that this is the time of life when our bodies are in the crosshairs, as are our minds, and things are starting to decline. And the surest control mechanism we have, there's so much that's out of our control is daily movement. So I don't think it has to be obstacle course racing for your movement.
Dave Tabor (00:07:34) - Yeah. Yeah.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:07:35) - But I do think movement of some sort is really critical.
Dave Tabor (00:07:39) - Yeah. And you know, you fully embrace that. And, but I could see where other people clearly won't. And their “it's not too late” will be something else that drives them, right? Now, I prepped for this interview and I mentioned I was camping before we started. I was the first one at our campsite. The wind was blowing through aspen trees. It was beautiful, there’s this loud little brook behind me. And as I was drafting this outline, I got distracted and I wondered if I should set up more of the camp before the others arrived and so forth. And it took me from, it was tempting me from a deep focus to something just busy. And that struck me, and it reminded me that, you know, it's different to move away from being busy to being purposeful in one's “not too late”. What's your thinking around that?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:08:29) - Yeah, well, my dog's starting to weigh in on the couch here a little bit. Woofing has some thoughts, but, I think being purposeful is, I think focus is really important if you're going to inject something new into your life. Right? We already, most of us, probably have days where we have more on our list than we can cross off by the end of the day. And so the idea of injecting something new and spending all this time and finding time for it just seems impossible if not overwhelming. But I actually think that if all of us had a camera on us for a day or two, just when we play it back, right? And you're, you already know where I'm going with this, you'd be like, oh, yeah, I just wasted ten minutes over there. You know, just browsing through Amazon for these new whatever, insert your favorite thing, I just scroll. Like you, we would be horrified at the little time suck slices that we have throughout the day, and if we can start to cut those back and be very purposeful about it. I like that word that you used. It's amazing how much those things can add up to real chunks of time to invest in something else.
Dave Tabor (00:09:40) - But I tell myself that, oh, I need a little headspace. I need a little decompression for ten minutes. Like, I know I interrupt you for, like, how do you get past that?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:09:49) - You know, it's hard. I mean, that's the dopamine hit we're accustomed to now, right? Oh, I'll just get to check this Instagram feed or this or this. I mean, we're just kind of jumping and I, I still, even after writing this book and interviewing a lot of really smart people about how to manage time, I still have to catch myself when I'm doing that, and that's about making a choice to stop. And I think if you don't, you can't actually get anything productive really done unless you just stay in that moment. I close out screens now all the time, and I just am like, until I'm done with this, I'm not able, like, I don't get to check that. It's easier said than done, but if you can do it even 65% of the time, even 50% of the time, you already got time back.
Dave Tabor (00:10:37) - Yeah. Well, you know, it also strikes me that what motivated you to do that–and you tell that portion of your story in the book–what motivated you to do that was how passionate you were about spending more time learning to get better at obstacle racing. So my question actually was how do you find balance when being purposeful and not being so intense that life isn't fun anymore? But it sounds like in your case, you are just driven by what you wanted more than what you didn't want.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:11:06) - You know, people have asked me, do you think you were obsessed? Do you think you got obsessed? And you know, I have to pause and try and be honest about that. I'm sure there were moments where I have been, but I think a little bit of obsession is healthy because it means you're deeply interested and it means you're not winging it or just, yeah, you know what? I'll go out there and, you know, run a few races, which is fine, but I wanted to know what it would feel like to get better.
I wanted to know what it was like at this age, to pursue this long road of mastery, even if I never reached expert. And so that did require some focus, some obsession, and a lot of trade offs and those trade offs in the end, for me I think, were worth it. Right. And to the degree that, for instance, I had to give up social activities that, you know, I might have otherwise said yes to, I had to say no to things that I was saying yes to before. I look back now and I think it was worth it because I don't know that I would have gotten this far on this journey. I know I wouldn't have gotten this far.
Dave Tabor (00:12:15) - Yeah. Did it feel like you were giving things up, or were you just that motivated.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:12:19) - In the moment It really felt like it was very hard to say no. I think all of us, when we get used to say we don't want to hurt people's feelings, and, you know, we end up sometimes punting like, oh, well, maybe in a couple of months or maybe this.
And I think the better thing to do is actually to be quite frank with people. And I was very honest, like I am not seeing I'm not doing things socially right now until I get past this race or when I really I had to focus even more when I doubled down to write the book, because then I was writing the book, I had a full time job and I was training and I was racing. So the more important, to do that. But it's hard. I do think what I will say is that people are far more understanding than you might think, and they prefer a clear answer as opposed to just bringing them along. Well, maybe let me see how things go. And then that's not fair to them.
Speaker 4 (00:13:16) - And they don't.
Dave Tabor (00:13:16) - Understand either where you're coming from at that point. So now this really made me wonder a lot. Wendy. Training for the Spartan Race was, for racing is really a solitary activity. I mean, you did some, with a class and so forth, but a lot of it was your on your own.
Dave Tabor (00:13:33) - And so, you know, I think about whether it's Spartan racing, obstacle racing, woodworking or like hiking, like it's your burning desire. But what if it's not like, part of the life of your partner?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:13:46) - Yeah, it's a perfect question. Well, it wasn't the part of my, I mean, my wife is not an obstacle course racers. That is not what she is interested in. And, you know, in the beginning, I think I was very quiet about my training because I didn't understand why it was so important to me. So I couldn't explain it to her. I couldn't explain it really to my best friend. He was somebody I had always done hard things with, and yet I wanted to do this on my own. My parents were baffled. My mother's from the South. She's like, you want to go crawl under barbed wire and in the mud? She was just horrified. She's like, why not beach volleyball? So I didn't do a very good job in the beginning of explaining why I needed this so much. And it really wasn't until I processed it for the book that I think I was able to start communicating. And so I hope when people read the book, they'll take some of my advice and do it better than I did when they started.
Dave Tabor (00:14:40) - Well, but I mean. This is going to be an awkward question I'm just going to ask. I mean, could others have just looked at you and felt embarrassed on your behalf that, you know, here's this 45, 46 year old woman, you know, doing these things. And it felt, did it feel uncomfortable for them?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:14:57) - I don't think so. Because if you look at Spartan racing, overall, I think more than 25% of the people who participate in age group competitions are over the age of 50. That's a significant amount. And there's also the degree that everybody looks a little bit foolish starting out in this sport. It doesn't matter whether you're 25 or you're 55, if you fall off a rope or you can't get over a wall, you all look equally silly.
And I also think, too, as you start to get better, no one's laughing at you when you're climbing a 17-foot rope, Dave. No one's laughing when you're up and down a mountain with a sandbag, and you're getting stronger and you're getting more fit. And people are looking at those pictures, and instead what they're saying to me is how? How did you do this? Right? How? And they kind of want in. So it's a great question, but I never felt it.
Dave Tabor (00:15:53) - That's cool. And I could see that paralleling though with any kind of new thing. I mean, if somebody learned golf and they're terrible at first or somebody doing woodworking and the leg doesn't stand up in the like, whatever. So I could see that. But as you do get better, I think people admire whether they admitted early because we all look so silly starting something out. But as we progress, I think that's such an admirable trait that people, you know, it's infectious, isn't it?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:16:17) - What I find often–and I don't ,I'm not going to play armchair psychologist, although maybe want a little bit.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:16:23) - Is that I think people who are pursuing their own passions tend to be like, I totally get it. I think people who are fearful to break out of their own cycle of sameness, in their own inertia, and they aren't doing things. Those are the people who might tend to be negative and say, what are you doing at this age? Oh, don't you feel silly like, it's, and so I kind of know that and I understand it because they're locked in their own world. And once they get out of it or, you know, those are the people I try to encourage and to maybe come and do a race with me or to just, you know, to push them on their own edge. I don't, anyone, and you must know this from all the people you meet on this podcast, the people who are pushing their own limits and trying to do hard things and–the name of your podcast goes, are stubbornly young–there, they get it. And so that's kind of, that's my analytical approach on this.
Dave Tabor (00:17:18) - That's cool. And you know, I also wondered when you think about as people are considering whatever it is that is going to be there, not too late kind of activity like, how do you know whether you're choosing something that's challenging for the sake of being challenging or something like, that you found that actually sort of seem to fill your soul?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:17:37) - I tried a lot of things that were challenging in different ways before that never stuck, right? I tried to learn to fly fish. I loved it, but it didn't stick. I tried my hand at boxing at one point, but I hated getting hit in the head. I tried, no, I tried. I've done, I've tried to learn to start. Like there's a lot of things that are hard, that I've been nothing ever, again, I crossed my first finish line in obstacle course racing, and I just knew something in my DNA had changed, and I wanted nothing more than to figure out how to get better. And I think people have to trust their guts when they, I mean, when you find something you love, you know that that's the thing that you're Googling and thinking about before you go to sleep and thinking about when you first wake up. And if something is that intrinsically exciting to you, then you've probably got a pretty good sign that is something you'll stick with. And if it's something that's just kind of like, oh, that was fun, and then you move on, maybe not. So I don't, I'm not one of these people like I'm not going to go try something dangerous and hard for the sake of doing that. And I don't even, I'm very careful about obstacle course racing. You can get hurt walking out of your front door in the morning. So I'm very methodical about how I train and how I treat my body and what I wear and how I approach a course. So I'm not doing it because I want to. I'm in this for the long haul. Like I want longevity. Not just like not just medals. Like I'm in this for the long game.
Dave Tabor (00:19:08) - Yeah. And you know, you describe some great stories in the book, how you learn the hard way about all the things you just listed. And they're great stories. Now, you've observed, I'm sure my audience, people in their 50s and 60s, beyond choosing activities that keep them busy, even activities they love because, you know, they're learning something new, things like that. But there is this notion of that feeling daunting when we consider, like, mastery against how much time is left. Like, how do you think about that? You've talked about it.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:19:39) - I've talked about it. I wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal about this. And it really in the beginning, I think it was a bit of a stumbling block for me because I was haunted by the 10,000 hours rule that was made popular by Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, which is that it roughly takes 10,000 hours of a specific type of deliberate practice to become an expert at something. And I did the math, and that really wasn't feasible for me.
So I couldn't approach this in the sense of, I am going to become the best female obstacle course racer there is. I don't even think I had the the natural skills and ability in terms of speed to be able to have done that. Even if I started in my 20s, I'll never know. But the truth is, I was okay with just the process of getting a lot closer to good. And then occasionally there are days when I feel like I have a great race. And that is all upside at this age, right? And especially never having been an athlete, to go from the back of the pack to earning gold medals for my age group is something I couldn't have ever expected. And that's enough for me. And I'll never be done learning. I'll never be done figuring out the best way to approach this sport. And that's what gives me, you know, what they talk about is the will to live in the morning, and that's that's critical.
Dave Tabor (00:21:05) - You still. It sounds like you're still, and you used the word before, I will–obsessed with this.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:21:12) - I love this sport. Right? I don't know, there's a thin line between obsession and love and passion and use whatever word you want. But I think when you care deeply about something or someone enough to invest in them or it, and to learn and to get better, and to be your best self and to hold yourself accountable. And like, what more can you add? Like people who make you do that are good people in your lives and activities that make you do that? Those are things that are healthy for you as well.
Dave Tabor (00:21:45) - Yeah. Now you must, in your day to day be you must hear from people and you observe people who have not, maybe through obstacle racing, but through other ways, have sort of done this not too late and are living it. Some any interesting story come to mind?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:22:02) - My inbox is filled with them now, especially since this book came out. I mean, people who are pursuing race car driving in their 60s, people running marathons for the first time in their 50s.
I met a woman who's in the book who is in her 80s, who became one of the oldest people to ever engage in an obstacle course race, people leaving careers as, you know, working in the government and becoming assistants in veterinarian hospitals because they always loved animals. I mean, these are the types of things where I think not too late is really applicable across such a wide spectrum of activities. It's like, what is the thing you love that you're not doing? The clock is ticking. There is no one putting more sand back in the top of your hourglass. So you get one shot at this. And those are all words, and we hear them and we know it. But until you actually shake yourself out of this and pursue that thing, like who wants to die with regret? And this woman who I just mentioned who was in her 80s, she said, if she said to me and she had done an obstacle course race and she said to me, you know, if people think there's something they might want to try, I would tell them just to try and get it out of their system, because then, you know, like and I'd rather know. She also told me to get low on the barbed wire crawl so that I wouldn't (inaudible). And I thought, oh, that's really good advice. She was right. So, wise person.
Dave Tabor (00:23:34) - Yeah. Hey, I've got some more questions as we wind down, but first question, at the risk of being embarrassed by missing a huge point altogether. What haven't we talked about that we should that's really important to you?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:23:50) - I want to just go back to this notion you've been kind of dancing around it, but this notion of looking foolish, right? And you started to get at this by saying, oh, weren't you embarrassed to be tackling something hard and new like this at your age? And I actually think that is one of the most constricting mindsets somebody can have as they age. And that, you know, the stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “If you wish to improve, you need to be content to look foolish.” And that is true at any age. And somehow when we get older, we get this in our mindset that we need to have our hands on the master control knob, and we need to be perfect and wise.
And, you know, we need everybody to think that we're the master of everything. And it's just silly. And like, who said that? That isn’t the case. So I think there's a real case to be made for being okay, looking a little bit foolish no matter what your age and being all right with that. And that's just great and it's freeing. And there's like Saturday morning I'm running through a muddy course at West Point in my 40s, and I'm not sitting there with a mimosa at brunch. You know, like nothing wrong with a mimosa at brunch. But I'm pretty excited to have mud splattered up all over my face. It's great. So be okay looking silly.
Dave Tabor (00:25:09) - So what about just extending what you just said, Wendy? What about someone who decides? Okay, I'm going to try to learn. Takes your advice. I'm going to try to learn, in my case, Spanish, which is going really slowly, or I'm going to learn to play guitar or whatever.
–- And they try it and they don't really get very far and they stop. And so, you know, how should they think about that experience before they take the next one?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:25:32) - I didn't get very far when I started. I mean, it took me almost a year and a half to even get to the first race, and then I fell 70. I mean, I fell ten feet off of a rope into a crumpled heap at Citi Field, and I thought I was going to walk off the course. There was another race I never finished because I got too cold, but I kept going back because intrinsically I loved it. And I think if you're not, the guitar's really hard. I mean, I have one sitting behind me here that.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:26:02) - And it's calling to me, it's saying, hey, you know, when this obstacle course racing thing's over, why don't you pick me up and I will, and I bet. And you know what? It's going to come slowly to me.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:26:11) - But I don't mind. As long as it's bringing me joy in some way. And at some point, I think if you push through the discomfort and the plateaus and the dips, it's really hard to be on a plateau a day. You know, I mean, we're like, I want to get better. I want to get better. I want to get better. And you're just like, I'm not getting. It's some point that changes. So getting okay on the plateau is fantastic, but if you're playing the guitar, you're not enjoying it. Well then stop right? No one says you have to stick with something if you're not having fun. But if you're having fun, who's to judge? What is the metric of your success except for you?
Dave Tabor (00:26:49) - Yeah, I think that's the healthy way to look at it. And what will be is guitar next for you when your body says it's time to stop Spartan racing?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:26:59) - Well, I hope, given what I said about Mildred in her 80s.
Dave Tabor (00:27:03) - The 80 year old. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:27:05) - But I certainly, look, the guitar is one thing I'd love to pick up. I mentioned fly fishing earlier. I didn't ever. It's not that I stopped being interested in it and I just didn't have the opportunity or something else came along. But I still have a lot of interest in that because the patience that it requires and the precision, there's an intellectual component to it, as well as sort of the beauty of the physical side of it. I'd like to pick that back up as well. And you mentioned I love that you mentioned learning a new language. I'm going, I went to Greece earlier this year, and I'm going back to Sparta, Greece in November to race in a world championship. But I'm starting to learn to speak Greek. And so, you know, there's lots of courses and things we can do online to help. So I got a list that's like so long I can't even show you how long it is, but that's okay. And I won't get through it all. But I'll get through as much as I can.
Dave Tabor (00:27:59) - Cool. Now that you've published Not Too Late and you've started speaking about it, you're speaking with people like me about it. I mean, how has your thinking about the subject evolved even in this short period of time?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:28:13) - It's been interesting to see the themes that really have resonated universally with people. And a couple of them you have hit on. Right? How do you embark on something that's the road of mastery when you think you never will, never finish? And we talked about that. And I think another one that has really come to the surface is that we live in this world filled with hacks and shortcuts being thrown at us to find good health and happiness. And it's not working. If you look at the latest World Happiness Report, the U.S. fell out of the top 20 for the first time. We know we have worse health outcomes in this country compared to other countries of similar economic means. And so to my mind, this is yet another rationale for engaging in something that really, has brings your mind and your body together in a way that is not about a quick fix or a hack. I don't (inaudible) hack away. That is something, Dave, that has been coming to the surface and I think is really important to discuss in our culture.
Dave Tabor (00:29:24) - So last question for you is, I mean, is there anything else you want you'd like to leave us with as we wind down before we wrap up?
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:29:32) - You know, I would say if you want to get started trying something new. Don't put too many barriers up in the beginning. We live in this culture where I think, again, where I think we're like in addition to the hacks, we think, oh, I need to know everything about this before I get started. I need the perfect gear. I need all the intel, all the information, and sometimes it's great just to go out and fumble your way around. And the fumbling will eventually give way to process. And so don't try too hard to know everything. Just give something a shot, right? Like I just started training in my own backyard without the perfect coaches or the perfect equipment and I. Yes, to your point, I probably looked very silly to my neighbors, but that's okay because it was enough to get me started. So don't put up too many barriers to entry for yourself before you actually just get going.
Dave Tabor (00:30:24) - Right. I think that's a good note to end on. So I'm going to wrap us up. I'm your host, Dave Tabor. And today on the Stubbornly Young podcast, you've been listening to my conversation with Wendy Bounds, author of Not Too Late The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age. Wendy, what a great conversation. I'm glad you could join me.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:30:42) - Thanks so much. It was really fun. Glad to meet you.
Dave Tabor (00:30:45) - And nice to meet you and I hope the book goes crazy. So it sounds like it already is.
Gwendolyn Bounds (00:30:49) - Well, my dogs again. Like you, everybody now has met my dog as well, but it's been really fun so far and you know, I hope people will reach out to me. I'm pretty easy to find off my website. Let me know what they think and stay in touch.
Dave Tabor (00:31:02) - Great. And listeners, this has been episode 14 of the Stubbornly Young Podcast for those in their 50s, 60s and beyond remaining engaged in the world and relevant to the younger people in their lives. Hey, do me a favor. Help the podcast spread by submitting a review and by sharing with your stubbornly young friends. Catch you next time on Stubbornly Young.