The Seesaw of Stride and Harmony -Alana Zamora

 The Seesaw of Stride and Harmony -Alana Zamora 

In this deeply philosophical episode, marketing leader Alana Zamora explores the delicate balance between ambition and inner peace with host Taran Singh. Zamora, who describes herself as an "ambassador for compassion," shares how her professional journey in advertising evolved from print to digital to AI, always keeping her learning and adapting. Her approach to life centers on finding harmony amid chaos, which she beautifully articulates: "When I first think of harmony, I do think of the simultaneous combination of notes and music where there's highs and lows, but ultimately it's just this pleasing or agreeable sound." This musical metaphor extends to her philosophy of navigating complex workplace relationships and personal challenges by receiving negative energy as opportunities for education and growth.

Zamora challenges conventional thinking about failure, arguing that what we typically call "failure" is simply missing expectations rather than true defeat. "I don't even like the word failure... it really is just missing expectations—missing expectations, you missed a target," she explains, drawing from her athletic background to reframe setbacks as learning opportunities. Her perspective suggests that the absolute failure lies in not trying at all, rather than in falling short of goals. This mindset extends to her views on AI's impact on marketing careers, where she sees human connection and authentic energy as irreplaceable elements that technology cannot replicate, making professionals more valuable rather than obsolete.

The conversation reveals Zamora's deep connection to nature, particularly trees, which serve as her grounding force and meditation anchor. Her most peaceful memory involves lying beneath a tree in Hawaii during a high school volleyball trip—a moment she returns to whenever seeking inner calm. "You're suddenly so small, and you're suddenly looking at this tree going, 'What have you experienced? My goodness, what you've been through and you're still so peaceful,'" she reflects. Her closing wisdom emphasizes radical self-compassion as the foundation for harmony: "If you can start by having compassion for yourself and being very mindful that you are a vulnerable creature that has just as many insecurities as other people, you can reflect that and trust that every other human is going on with that." This approach, she suggests, allows people to navigate life's pivots and challenges with greater grace and authenticity.

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Transcript

The Mountain in Us Podcast

Episode: Alana Zamora - The Seesaw of Stride and Harmony

Taran Singh (Host): Yeah! Welcome to The Mountain in Us, a podcast where the journey gets its voice. I am Taran Singh, your host. Here, we greet the thrills, jolts, ascents and descents of our uncharted adventures. Hey, everybody. Today, my guest on the podcast is Alana Zamora. Alana is my soul sister. We have known each other for a long, long time, but I can only recall the last 20 years or so. She is a marketing leader, an explorer, and an ambassador for compassion. Welcome to The Mountain in Us, where the journey gets its voice.

Alana Zamora: Well, thank you for having me today, Taran. It's a pleasure to be here and talk about the seesaw of stride and harmony. Let's jump in.

Taran: Yes, let's jump in from the hills. You know, I know you live in Hayward, next to Hayward Falls, with a stunning view of the bay and amazing sunsets. How did you end up in Hayward?

Alana: Yeah, it was never something we planned on, I'll tell you, but it is something that we have grown to love. My husband and I have lived all around the bay, including a few international stints, but we came back to the Bay Area and we had this seesaw question in our minds: Do we find a place, go to the city, live in a loft and really double down on a child-free life and a child-free experience of a small place living in the city? Or do we choose a larger house—one that can incorporate my mother-in-law or my father-in-law who are falling ill?

We were torn between those two. It was pre-COVID. We wanted to have a very economical decision anyways, and we decided to choose one that aligned with our values of bringing in family. It didn't turn out that we actually had to bring our mother-in-law in with us, and she's living perfectly on her own as it stands. And as a result, we actually really got to know a new side of the Bay that is very beautiful and diverse, very peaceful. And we just love it.

We get out in the hills and we get out to the bay trails, and we are very close to all of these destinations—40 minutes from San Francisco and San Jose, the East Bay and the Peninsula. So it's proven to be a lovely location. And all the great food for an economical pricing that one can find in the Bay is in Hayward. Most people probably forget.

Taran: Yeah, they call them hidden gems, but they're not so hidden anymore.

Alana: Yeah, no, I love coming to that side of the bay.

Taran: I know talking about detours, you've also taken a lot of detours in your professional life to end up where you are today. Did you always do the kind of work you wanted to do? How did you end up professionally where you are? Just give us a glimpse of your trail there.

Alana: Yeah, so I've been in marketing my entire career. When you go into your early years of college, everybody's asking you what you want to major in, what you want to do with your career. It's so hard to choose something. And I happened to pick advertising. I went to San Jose State, but the actual degree was in advertising, not even just marketing. And I picked it because it felt creative and scientific. It felt challenging.

And little did I know really how much it would be a fruitful endeavor and take me all around the world, especially as it's evolved from going from print to digital and to now AI and all of the in-between. Being part of this industry, especially in the Bay Area in tech, has really kept me on my toes and kept me learning and challenging all these years through.

So I did detour out of actually being in proper marketing roles. I took a short time to be in product and sales, still within a product that serviced advertisers. But that gave me different perspectives of an organization and actually helped me become a better marketer when I did parachute back into those roles.

And yeah, I think that I've always wondered—some days you have the worst days of your career and you feel like you have so much history and debt accrued for being in marketing and advertising—how could it possibly be if I wanted to change my life or change my career? Could I even do something like that and make a huge pivot as you see people do? And I'm not at that stage yet, luckily. Luckily, I've always kind of come back to a center where marketing was still fulfilling and a job that I could be successful at.

But I think there's a lot of times where you do consider if you've made the correct career choice and you're still good at it. Or not, I don't know, but it's still keeping me employed. So it's certainly been fun.

Taran: Yeah, I think we all have that. We all go through that. I think AI pulls the plug on us now. Are we relevant for the world we are in?

Alana: Exactly, yeah.

Taran: But one of the most grounding persons that I met in my life—and I know you travel a lot and you go out of the way to go to destinations or places where the crowd basically is not there, right? And talk to us a little bit about traveling, especially, and I know you have a mission when you go on traveling. It's not that you're just traveling to relax, of course, but you also try to get to the harmony side of the world when you're traveling.

How did that come about? Were you always a traveler, a dreamer traveler when you were little? How did that shape you? And give us some stories of your travels.

Alana: Yeah, I do. I guess I didn't know that it was in me. You have family that is from other countries and so you're experiencing your oma or your grandma from Sweden, and you have these stories of their cultures, and that becomes part of your psyche and your subconscious. Ultimately you do dream of wanting to go visit their towns that they grew up in.

Even within the U.S., I was just thinking about and looking up last night my great-grandfather who was in Elmer, Missouri. And I thought, what kind of a town is that? Turns out there's only 51 people there, a population of 51 people. So maybe there's some ancestors I could go visit when I go there.

Taran: You only have 50 doors. The 51st would be the door you would have unanswered already there.

Alana: That's true. But we do travel internationally. It's been a real blessing that I've married somebody who also has a creative and curious nature. And so every time we travel, we tend to go mostly city center, because that's where you can get the most access to food, which we love to try. How food comes about when you go to a restaurant—the restaurant experience can be very much so tied to their culture, very different from what we experience here in the U.S. It could be fast pace, turnkey, it could be something a little bit more elevated or long and drawn out. And so we really do pick up a lot of those experiences just by going out to eat.

And then similarly, we connect with nature. And so we do try to find those beautiful aspects of their town or their city where you can enjoy the parks and sit on a bench and people watch. How are people spending their time?

Taran: Is there a place that you would say, "Taran, this is one place that I would say that has stayed with me," or multiple places? I know you went to Mexico last year and the pyramids there were amazing and I was like so drawn to them.

Alana: That was a great experience because that blends architecture and history of course, but then when it merges with somebody else's belief of religion and how that connects with people building cities and societies and the rules of the nation, I learned a lot about visiting the pyramids there.

But I think the one that I've always been drawn to my entire life is a park somewhere in Hawaii. I went on this volleyball trip with our high school—how blessed were we to be able to go to a competition in Hawaii—and the one memory I have from that trip of being in high school is just laying down on the ground with a large tree up above me. And every time somebody asks me to meditate or to think of my most peaceful spot, I imagine that moment exactly. The breeze, the tree, the sky.

And it's just—I feel a real connection with trees. And here we are in the Northern Bay Area. We have Muir Woods and some of these most spectacular trees on the planet. So I do feel like that gives me a lot of peace and keeps me grounded. And I'm always reflecting on the trees that I come about wherever we travel.

Taran: Yeah, it... Isn't it amazing when you look at the tree, when you are lying down, not even you become minuscule, but also you become infinite at the same time. And I find that a daunting experience that you look down and you're suddenly—you can—the sky and the tree become one and you become one with it.

Alana: You're suddenly so small and you're suddenly looking at this tree going, "What have you experienced? My goodness, what you've been through and you're still so peaceful."

Taran: Yeah. And I kid with my son sometimes, when we go on Redwood Trail, I tell him the tree knows everything. We just have to dig on it a little bit. It has seen so much past that, we humans, when we go to it, we might be in our arrogant self, but the tree has more to give us and talk to us in many ways, especially the Redwoods. They are in many ways our guardians.

Alana: I believe that.

Taran: Talking about guardians, you also share a very caring part with your mother. And over the years, at least what I know of you, that relationship has evolved and you moved to this house and you bought a house and also thinking about her in the future. Give us that—as the parents are aging, as you see yourself especially your mother—how has that relationship changed in the last decade or so, especially? And I know more about it, but I want to hear it from you.

Alana: Yeah, no, I think a mother-daughter relationship is always evolving and can be hot and cold. But yeah, my mom and I, with my sister too, we went through hardship very early on with my dad passing. She was a young mother—she had two daughters, my sister was nine and I was five—and so immediately there we were thrust into the sisterhood of looking out for each other and being very mindful of how we were all growing up in kind of a new world where we lost somebody very special to us.

Of course over the course of years, just as you would, and as I teased, you do still have your relationships that you question whether your mom is making the right decisions or you question her loyalty to you. And maybe she's distracted by trying to pursue her own independence or figure out her own life. And I think it's not until you become an adult yourself when you realize that we were all just trying to figure out how to do this. We've never been moms before. We've never been adults before. And so everybody is witnessing your first attempt at being age 40 or being—now my mom is age 78.

And I do try to give her a lot of compassion for the choices she's made in her life. And I think she does the same with me. So we do have that reflection on each other to say we've both just tried to do our best with the information we had.

And now as she—even though she got remarried, her second husband passed, my stepfather passed, and now here she is again, widowed again. But I'm very inspired by how she is taking on this next phase of her life as a very senior woman. I mean like I said she's 78 and she couldn't have more energy. She dances with the community center and she's going to France with a new friend that she met and she's taken on more independent challenges than I actually ever thought she would be able to do.

And I think we inspire each other both ways. I think I have inspired her and I think that she's become more willing to take chances and do her own thing. So it's been very pleasing to witness somebody change and where I had this certain belief of her, because I saw her in a relationship with my stepfather—you form certain beliefs and you think that they have certain qualities about them that maybe can't change. But she is actually very independent and maybe that's where I get it from. She can't sit still. So she's going after it regardless of her age.

Taran: Yeah. Well, I—when you said so and I know I sent you that three sister card—I didn't... sometimes I just have a feeling I just have to go through the very end of it. I can't just... and I picked up the card, I knew who this card is going to. And I had my little sister with me and she asked me who is this going to, I said it's going to one of my sisters and she asked me do you have another sister that we do not know?

Alana: It's beautiful, it was beautiful.

Taran: Yeah, no, and I think your mother's story is a good—age is just a way of how we think and but harmony is also ageless in many ways right? You have to find that harmony at every aspect of your life. And I just want to understand, how does Alana look at harmony, right? When she is looking up that tree or when she's talking to her mother or when she's in a client meeting where she's scratching her head. There's so many aspects of life that are orbiting in your head, heart. And how does harmony play that picture, right? And paint us a picture of what is harmony to you?

Alana: It's a great question, because I do feel like now at this age, mid-40s, I'm much more aware of how I can practice being harmonious and practice being true to the energies that I'm receiving and giving. But I've always kind of been that way. I think I've always tried to find alignment.

When I first think of harmony, I do think of the simultaneous combination of notes and music where there's highs and lows, but ultimately it's just this pleasing or agreeable sound. And then when you think about being harmonious in life, you do still move with an awareness of those energies—highs and lows and all the forces around you—but honoring them and giving them all respect because maybe a high-pitched sound wouldn't otherwise work for you, but actually it does when there's a counterbalance or something to make it sound a little bit more beautiful.

So the practice that I continue to put in place now when I'm in this intense work environment or a very disagreeable person or somebody that I'm frustrated with, I've learned now—and I still practice every day—to receive that energy as if they are just asking a question and I can help educate. And if I can help educate even by saying, "I don't know the answer to that," or "I can follow up," or with a little bit of humor, then that goes a long way.

Because I think what I'm observing with people is we all just want to do a good job. We all want to be proud of the work that we're doing. And we all, whether this is the right way to say it or not, want to be liked. And not that you should go in pursuit of being a people pleaser, but we have things to give that we want to be valued by others.

And so if you're in a tense environment and somebody's yelling at you, they have a point that needs to be made. They're just not expressing it in a way that feels very productive. But if I can take a beat and really reflect on that and own the confidence that I've now built, whether it's my career, my relationship experience, my friendship experience, and come back with a grounded response, then I feel like I'm practicing the right maneuvers to kind of make progress happen.

And when I think about harmony and I think about the seesaw of nature, you're going to be thrown in these environments that really feel uncomfortable, but you're going to come back again and provide that other momentum shift that the energy is calling for just to even it out and be a little bit more harmonious with that interaction.

Taran: In terms of letting go, to be able to get to that harmony stage, I'm assuming that you have to sometimes let go some of the stride in you just to get to that harmony and not get... not keep running at everything that you need to do. And not be so stubborn.

Alana: And not be so stubborn. I think that's where humor can come in, where you can respond with a cheeky... I just had an interaction at work and I thought, "Oh, why are they giving me a hard time?" And it's like, "Oh, I didn't think that they could read my mind." And I just responded back with, "You couldn't read my mind with what I was asking you?" And we just played off of a little bit of humor because I realized that maybe the way I asked the question didn't provide the best way for them to respond. So yeah, you have to kind of give up a little bit of your ego in order to make the progress.

Taran: Yeah, yeah. But do you think as we grow and as we age in the kitchen sink of life, we accumulate so much ego that when we go keep looking for center there's no center—it's mostly ego, right? How does one go about it? Because at the end of the day, we're all putting labels, right? We're capturing so much and work especially means a lot more to us than anything else in the current way of the world. And that's why people are so scared of AI because their meaning beyond work is impossible, right? And that reckoning is coming to a lot of us, right? And including me, right?

But in this kitchen sink of life, right? My question is that how does Alana go about making sure that the ego is good enough, but not taking over the kitchen sink?

Alana: It's a very good question. And I'm lucky that I have this many years of experience or what I call data that I can fall back on. And I do think about the younger folks who are challenged because they don't have a reputation to fall on.

And so I think part of my response to your question is: At the end of the day, we're all humans and we're all searching and yearning for connection. And if you can find a team, a work team, a friendship team, a community where you have that connection, then anything in the periphery is just going to be additive.

So in the case of AI and marketing, we could say it's taking our job and it certainly has really provided some products that I would otherwise go to a human for copywriting help, for example. It's not perfect, but you could see very clearly where there's moments where AI is going to come in and really challenge somebody's real position of where they've produced work and otherwise earn an income off of.

But I think that there's still a capability of you within to do great work. And that's when you make the connection with teammates where they see the value of what you can bring rather than it's just being—you can write a headline for an ad. You can do so much more than just that product and that output. And I think that's what we're going to learn. And it's probably almost going to be more beautiful than we should be scared of it. Because we have these connections, we have this worth, and we have a different type of product—a harmonious, a human, an energy product—that is actually way more worthwhile in an organization or in a community than what might be able to be produced through technology.

Taran: Yeah, and when we talked last time, we talked about how to get to connection, you have to embrace failure in a way that I think you said it, that you have achieved everything in failure and I want to hear a little bit more about that philosophy of failure with some tangible examples that you know... I just thought that was such a unique perspective on failure because we say it but as soon as somebody fails, the big foot comes from the top and smashes the failure like an eggshell, right? And then done, right? And it takes...

So just give us a little bit more about—actually a lot more about failure as something... I think I feel that this failure is the lever of stride and harmony. It can get to both levels—you might fail in stride and get to harmony, or you might fail in harmony get to stride, right? And it acts as a lever to get this play rolling, otherwise we'll just know the outcome and we'll do nothing.

Alana: Right, and I think this is such a good topic because—and maybe this is the marketer in me coming up with a way to rebrand failure.

Taran: Well, yeah, make sure you do a good job.

Alana: But I have really always been frustrated with everybody telling me you have to be okay to fail. You have to be okay to fail. Failure is part of the process. And it just confused me for way too long. I'm an athlete, played volleyball, as I mentioned, and what do you really ever fail at when you're an athlete? You just lost a game or you just didn't hit everything in your practice, but you actually are still moving forward and you just missed expectations.

So I've come to this conclusion very recently that I don't even like the word failure. Not that I'm trying to diminish what that notion could mean, but it really is just missing expectations—missing expectations, you missed a target. You put on a target that you want to do a marathon or you put on a target that you want to do X, Y, and Z and maybe you worked out so hard that you couldn't complete the marathon, but that's just a missed expectation and that's just a missed target. But you've done so much work and maybe along the way you found that you're great at 5Ks or you're great at something else and you just love running for fun—that is success.

And so through the course of you actually putting these goals in play, you learn a lot about yourself and you still are making progress. And if I were to say that anything is a failure, the failure is not trying or not setting a goal and working towards that goal.

Taran: Do you think that because A, winner gets everything on the table in the world we exist and then B, we worship overachievers to a degree as cult, right, that puts failure in a bucket of a nauseated sink that you can't be being failure because you're going to get the nausea of failure and hell you can't wake up from that nausea. Right? And I feel that being stuck in that mode sometimes, even if you have all the spine to shake that up, sometimes you're not able to, because you're looking at yourself from "winner gets everything" and that you're not the overachiever that people could worship.

Alana: Yeah. And life goes on. And if you missed something, if you propose the wrong plan and everybody went to do this marketing campaign and it was a flop...

Taran: Yeah.

Alana: You know, life goes on. I hate to say it, but it goes on. And so you made a mistake. Oh, I made a mistake. Oh, my math was wrong. My calculation was wrong. My idea wasn't what I expected that outcome to be. If we can just tell each other, "We made a mistake and move on. And we're using that additional data to feed the next iteration," then that's going to help us stay mentally stable and mentally connected to the project rather than just completely opting out and ignoring maybe what had happened because that feels a little bit more pleasing at the time.

Taran: Yeah. The way you said it, I think failures are like the soft spots of life. The more we have it, the less brittle we are to snapping.

Alana: Which is really challenging. I've gotten laid off. I've made bad recommendations. I've remained friends with people that I probably shouldn't have kept in my life. These are all things that maybe you could say are failures and they hurt deeply, even if it is just a simple work project that you commit to and you build, but it didn't work out—that hurts very deeply, but is it really a failure? I think that's a good question.

Taran: No, I think if you can... And I think as you said it, I—we are going to make decisions that are not going to pan out the way they are going to pan out, but we are not all knowing and in hindsight you can connect every dot. But living in the present you have to give yourself the luxury to fail but also the luxury not to, but also the stride that you're not going to be in inertia and point the failure that other right? So that's for me that is the hardest challenge, right? What is the failure like...

Like I was at a game with my son on Sunday and they played four games, lost the championship game and they were blaming on the ref, the referee fallout on the basketball. I said, you know, you can blame it on the referee, but that's not the outcome.

Alana: Yep. Yep. You're always going to have those refs.

Taran: Yeah. And it's the same ref, right? So, and I think that's what I think we also want to figure out when we fail, who is the referee that we can blame sometimes. And that's why failure becomes harder to chew. And I think that's what I think we also want to figure out when we fail, who is the referee that we can blame to sometimes. And that's why failure becomes harder to chew. And I think as mortal beings, chewing outcomes that are not relevant to us are very hard.

And I want to get to my final question, which is how do we as mortal beings enjoy this bliss of this beautiful play of stride and harmony? Are there any practices from your daily life? Or what could Alana share from her Zamora wisdom?

Alana: You know, we could go on for days, Taran, okay? Too much wisdom for an hour podcast.

Taran: I need advertising cliff notes.

Alana: I think I'll close by kind of coming back to maybe some—one of the words you used earlier in the podcast, and that's compassion. Sometimes it can be really hard to have empathy and compassion for your fellow human or coworker and even for yourself. And I think if you can start by having compassion for yourself and being very mindful that you are a vulnerable creature that has just as many insecurities as other people, you can reflect that and trust that every other human is going on with that.

And so as you try to take chances in life, or if life gives you an opportunity to pivot, whether you asked for it or not, cut yourself some slack and do your best in that moment. Don't try to force the energy. Think it through. Come back to your very special tree or your moment of meditation and just allow yourself to process what's going on so you can be a little bit more in harmony with that decision that was landed or that you made.

Taran: Yeah, no, that's a good way to look at the life. The perspective changes to pivot and you said it so beautifully when you talked about looking at the tree and I wonder, even though I've never been to that place now, every time I look up a tree and—I have special relationship with my garden, but just, I also find it easy to talk about tree. I have a big tree in my front of my garden that sucks up all the water that I give to my trees. But we have this tension in our relationship. I tell him, "Please mark your roots still here. Let me grow some tomatoes, buddy."

Alana: I can't wait to see it. That's great.

Taran: Thank you for coming. This is amazing. I'm so glad to make it with you. Knowing you has changed me a lot. The compassion is hard. Being a parent, it even harder—you go through so much rage sometimes just to be able to say okay what do I have to do? Adults still okay—you can still reason them out—but when you have to do with kids and teens especially it is a different ball game and yeah...

Alana: And I really value your friendship and being able to have these conversations. I think when we—your poetry, your podcasts and knowing you from a work environment—it really is this beautiful constellation of who you are and who we are together and I just really value us taking the time out to think a little bit more philosophically about life because...

Taran: Yeah, no and I can't leave my soul sister away, right? We gotta make it to the next world together.

Alana: Oh, you'll be the first one I call.

Taran: Cool. Thank you for coming in. All the best. Till next time. Have a good one.

Alana: Thank you. You too.

Closing: Thank you for joining us on the Conversation Trails of The Mountain in Us podcast. Each episode here is crafted with love, adventure, and reflection. We hope you have enjoyed this one and we welcome your thoughts on it. And if you want to be on the show, feel free to reach out.