How to Put Yourself Back in the Game | Identity Shifts, Intuition & Midlife Growth

In this episode of SHE Asked, host Anna McBride sits down with mindset and performance coach Dani Dellarco for a conversation about identity, intuition, embodiment, and what it really means to put yourself back in the game.

Dani shares her journey from lifelong athlete to scientist-in-training to fitness instructor, coach, and mentor — including the pivotal transitions that required her to release external expectations and claim her own identity. Together, Anna and Dani explore how movement, running, and training can become powerful tools for healing, clarity, and self-trust, especially during seasons of major life change.

This episode dives into why identity shifts are essential for real transformation and how Dani is driven to make wellness and fitness more accessible, compassionate, and inclusive

Dani also shares why running has become a metaphor for her life, how community and movement support mental health, and why we often have nothing to lose by going after what we want.

If you’re navigating a transition, questioning your path, or feeling the call to live more fully in your body and your truth, this conversation offers both grounding and momentum.

✨ This is an episode about courage, clarity, and reclaiming your desires — at any stage of life.

🔔 Subscribe for more conversations where healing meets practical hope.
📲 Follow Dani Dellarco: @danidellarco | @builtbydani
🌿 Learn more about Anna: annamcbride.com

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to She Asked Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I'm so excited that you're here. Today, my guest is Danny Delarco. Danny is a mindset performance coach and physical trainer who bridges intuition, embodiment, and accessible wellness. What I love most about her work is that she coaches from a lived experience. She's someone who understands what it means to put yourself back in the game after a long time of being in a familiar role. So, Danny, welcome to She S. I'm so glad you're here. Yeah, thank you so much. You're welcome. And I want to gush a little bit on you, if I can. We met via one of those interactive indoor cycling bike programs back in 2019. You were one of my favorite instructors. I think I only took your classes when you first started, mostly because you had you have and you possessed back then such a refreshing outlook on life and yourself and the pivots you've been through, and that's something I can certainly relate to. And you came at such an incredible time in my life. I was going through a divorce. I was my businesses, which I didn't know yet at that moment, were going to be shut down because of COVID-19. I had also, I think, just the year before, lost one of my sisters. And so there was a lot of things going on in my life. And I turned to that bike as a way to get some mental health. And you were so on point about that. So we'll get to that a little bit in this episode. Yet, first of all, we like to begin these podcasts with a story. So I want to invite you to share your story about how you became an athlete coach and storyteller. So let us know about you.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Yeah. So I grew up an athlete. I started playing sports when I was really young. I think it was something that my dad just really thought was important for learning things like teamwork and hard work and commitment and dedication. And I just remember at a young age we were always doing a sport, both my sister and I. And so I took to ice hockey at a really young age. It was just something that I really loved and pretty much dedicated my whole life to it. Where did you it? I grew up in the DC area.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah. So just at a super young age, I really took to the sport. And it was funny because I think at the time that I wanted to play, I was like five or six, and you had to be seven to play. And my dad like lied about my age, got me into the program, and was just like, she's small for her age. Like, I promise you, she's seven. Cause he just saw that it was something that I really wanted to do. And so I played hockey all the way up until college and then switched over to playing rugby. But for me, sports and being on a team had always just been a huge part of my identity. I think that you just learned so much from being on a sports team. I always played team sports. So you learn a lot about like communication, you learn a lot about relationships, you learn a lot about yourself. And it just was how I grew up. I was always on a team. I was always playing hockey. I played year-round, going to different kinds of summer camps and festivals, and then dedicating myself to my team during the season. But it was just a huge part of my upbringing. That I think it's a lot of what I try to create in a in fitness space is like this idea of being an athlete. Like if, in my opinion, if you wake up in the morning and you go to the gym, or you after work dedicate yourself to going to the gym, like you're an athlete. That takes a certain level of commitment, that takes a certain level of dedication and practice. And I think that for a lot of individuals who didn't necessarily play sports growing up, that term can be like a really hard one to embody because of like the societal connotation of that word. But I think that the more we start viewing ourselves as athletes, and you start to see, wow, like I literally am doing the same thing that someone who's playing professional sports does, right? Caring about what you put in your body, caring about what time you go to bed, making sure you get your workout in. That's what an athlete does. And so it's always been a huge piece of my identity. And it's something that I really try to bring to the spaces and the clients that I work with.

Discovering Running And Community

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Okay. Wow. It's it is interesting to me. I also was a lifelong athlete in various forms: swimming, cycling, triathletes, running. And I know that you've really taken to running. Like running is almost like a metaphor for your life. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that's grown to be so important to you?

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah. The funny thing is, I really hated running growing up. It was something that I'd watch my dad do. Like my dad would wake up, he'd go for a run, and he'd come back. And I don't know, I think I just was so enamored with my dad growing up that I thought it was cool. I was like, oh, that's that's a cool thing to do. And I remember when I was probably in eighth grade asking my parents, like, can I go for a run? We lived along this really beautiful park. And they said, sure. Just go down to the park, run in the park, and then come back. And I probably made it like half a mile, and I was like, this is the worst thing in the world. I was like, this sucks so much. But I was too embarrassed to go like back right away. So I just sat in the park for like probably an hour and then went back to make it seem like I'd actually done the whole run. And so it wasn't really until later in life that I started doing it more. I was living in New York City and I was so broke. I just graduated from college and I was living in the East Village, and at this point in my life, I'm not on a team anymore. I'm not playing sports. I think that was a big like identity shift, not having that. And I didn't have money to really like belong to a gym. I I tried when you're living in New York, you're paying so much money for rent. And so would be I would belong to a gym in the winter and then cancel my gym membership and try to take advantage of things happening in in the city in the summer and started running. And I I didn't love it, but I was starting to understand, man, I feel really good after this. I don't really love being in it, but I feel so much better when I finish. And I tore my ACL in college and I was really struggling with how much muscle I'd lost. Was talking with some coworkers at the time, and there was this half marathon coming up, and they were like, we should all do this together. And I was like, okay, this would be great to help me motivate myself with my rehab from my knee injury. And I honestly didn't take the training seriously at all. But I still did the race. I think I did four of Pong runs and I knew nothing about running back then. I just was like, I'll just wing it, I'll just figure it out. Like I'm fit enough to do this. I got so humbled in it. I just remember like walking and being like, wow, this is like actually so hard. But I've always loved things that I'm not necessarily the best at. I love the process of getting better at something. I think that because I it was challenging, I was like, man, there's so many people who are like doing this right now. And I think the unique thing about running, and like anyone who's ever been to like a marathon or half marathon, like it's incredible. You'll see people of all shapes and sizes passing you and ages, and you can't look at someone and be like, oh, they're probably not a good runner. There's races where there's people in their 70s just smoking past me, and I'm like, oh my god, that person is incredible. Or like a 10-year-old just like zooming past me, and I'm just like, wow, that's what I love about running, is like you see every type of person that you could probably imagine at a race, and all different ability levels. There's just this like camaraderie there that I find so unique to other sports. Like you're watching strangers run, yet you're like cheering for them, and they're not even professional athletes.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

And I don't really know like another sport where that happens, right? If there's like a pickup basketball game in the park, you don't really see people cheering for that. Yet there's this event that happens in cities where the whole city comes together to cheer for like strangers, and not everyone is a professional. And I think I really haven't seen that in other sports, but that camaraderie and support was something that like I really needed in my life. And it was a realization that I made later in my running career. But I think that you see a huge boom in running and running communities and running clubs right now because of that support. I think that we're living in a little bit of a loneliness epidemic where people can feel quite lonely. And there's so much just support in running as a sport, regardless of like how fast you run. And to me, that's pretty unique.

Loneliness, Clubs, And Mental Health

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Yeah, that's a really great awareness to note that there's a benefit mental health-wise through running. And that because I think what I hear you saying is that it provides a connection that is it built into the whole events that are held for running. So there's a lot of socialization, which is why clubs are beneficial and even popular. Do you think that this is a factor because of COVID or just in general?

SPEAKER_00 10:26

I think a little bit of both. I think that during COVID, there wasn't a lot of opportunity for people to engage in certain indoor sports or certain team sports. And so I know a lot of people that started running because gyms were closed during that period of time. And it's a very easy entry into you just need running shoes and a place to go. You don't need equipment or anything like that. So I do think that's part of it. But I also think that there really is no other feeling like it when you're in a race and you have all these people chairing for you. I think that just like the confidence that you build through that. I tell people all the time, if you want to learn a lot about yourself, sign up for a half marathon or a full marathon because yeah, it's a one-day event, but it's weeks of learning about yourself and it's weeks of having conversations with yourself and pushing yourself to do certain things and having yourself out of your comfort zone in in many ways.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Yeah. I think it's great that that you're really challenging people to grow. And I think that when you're when we're talking about the different seasons that we have in life, tell me a bit about what the big transition is that you're going through right now, or even some that you've gone through that as being both personally and professionally something that you can not only help coach people through, but also been using for your own growth.

Big Life Transitions And Identity

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah. My entire start in the fitness world was through transition. I was working in a research lab in New York City and went down to Miami for grad school. My parents were both scientists. I I think that I don't want to say that I was naive, but I just think that my understanding of the world was you just do what your parents do or you do what you're supposed to do. And and I don't mean that to be like in any way negative to the experience that I had growing up. I think that a lot of times when you live in one lane, like it's hard for you to see other lanes. And so I think for me, I just was like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to go to college. The funny thing is, I really struggled in college. I called my parents, like my freshman year, and I think like my junior year, and I was like, I want to drop out. My parents were like, oh my God. They were like, What do you mean? My sister is like so academic and she's older than me. She went to really good school and went on to law school, and it was like easy. And then here I am, like freshman year, like I made a mistake. I don't want to be here. I want to drop out. I don't need college. My parents are like, What do you mean you don't need college? And I'm glad that I graduated from college. There were a couple moments along the way where I did some things for me, and I think I really agree for them. One of them was I went to Mexico with the National Outdoor Leadership School. It's a college program. And I lived in Mexico for a month and I kayaked and was off the grid. No phone, no computer, no nothing for a whole month. And the premise of the program is like really learning like leadership skills. And so I think for me that was like the start of realizing you have to do things for you. And so anyway, I was in grad school and I was really just miserable. I think one of the things that I was really having a hard time with was I was really successful. Like I was a great student. I was really good at research. I was publishing papers. I was publishing papers in really good journals. I was going to conferences. I had all this success. Like on paper, it was like, wow, this person has their name on 14 or 15 publications within their first two years of grad school. This person is really doing well in school. And so underneath it all, like I was really struggling to get out of bed. Like I just didn't find the purpose in what I was doing. And where I did find a lot of purpose was was in fitness. I was like always leaving and go somewhere to run or to go to a group class or to, I just was like planning my entire schoolwork around, okay, I'm going to take this group class and I'm going to take this group class. And after a while, I just started saying to myself, I'm going to get this PhD from my parents, and then I'm going to become a fitness instructor. And then one day I was in an event, a workout event, and an instructor from Equinox approached me and was like, What do you do for a living? And I I literally don't know why I said this, but I said, I'm a fitness instructor. And they go, Great, we want to offer you a job. And I was like, oh shit. Okay, let me figure this out. And I went in for an audition, they offered me a job. And here I am, like trying to get this PhD. And I was in my at the stage of getting my master's at the time, and I just dropped out. My parents were very not understanding of it at the time. I think looking back on it now, they see my success and they see it a little bit better. They understand the road and trajectory. Sometimes they worry about like the longevity of the career, but now that they see just the way that I've held myself. But I think transitions are necessary. I think that the feeling that I've had is you're hitting your head on the ceiling. Like you have no room to grow. And I think that it's really scary to transition. I think that a lot of us stay complacent in life because the uncertainty of the unknown on the other side uh hinders us. And I remember when I dropped out of grad school, I called my dad and said, This could be a huge mistake. I was like, I fully acknowledge that. This could be the biggest mistake I make in my entire life, but it's my mistake to make. And I think that uh those kind of words have always just helped me through transitions of you really don't know what you don't know. Like you're sitting on the other side of a transition, and yes, absolutely, it could be the biggest mistake you make in the entire world, but it also could be the best decision that you've ever made. But it's your choice to make. And so I always tell clients, like, there's this scale inside of you, right? And it's your level of happiness of where you are and your desire to change. And you could be really unhappy, but you have a low desire to change, and you're gonna stay in the same place. And you could be really unhappy, but you have a strong desire to change, and that's gonna give you the courage to take the next step forward. And I think that it's hard. It's hard to start over, it's hard to like shift your identity. And the biggest piece is the identity shift. I see a lot of clients that I work with fail in achieving their goals because they don't shift their identity.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

And what I mean by that is in that moment when I was presented with this job, right? If I had said, oh hey, I'm a grad student, but I'm really interested in fitness and I think I want to be a fitness instructor, I would have never been offered that job. They would have been like, Whoa, this person doesn't even understand who they are. You have to like adopt that new identity, like from the start. And it's that identity shift is like critical to the transition.

Intuition, Signs, And Slowing Down

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Oh, wow. Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly. A lot of what you just were sharing resonates because I feel like the idea of doing what either society or your family, your parents, authority, things you're supposed to do in life. And the path you chose to follow really required you to choose to do what made you happy. And you equated it, you use that great scale metaphor of unhappiness to really up the desire to change part of the scale versus a low desire and will keep you where you are, even if you're unhappy. And for me, it requires a bit of suffering in order for a lot of people to get motivated to change. I know that's what worked for me. Whenever I had to pivot in my life because of circumstances, whether it was my divorce or uh losing a family member or becoming a mother and all this stuff, I still had this need to be true to myself. And I think that was always navigating me and motivating me, which is like what you're saying your desire to be happier, to be true to yourself is an ultimate motivator that can guide you through a lot of the transitions in your life.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think that we all Have a certain level of like rock bottom. I think in my most recent transition, my level of rock bottom was feeling like I wasn't growing. For me in my career, if I feel like I've been stagnant for a certain amount of time, I think that's my cue. Okay, it's time to change when it comes to my career. But I think, and this is like a piece of like intuition, I think that there are signs in the universe that that kind of point and shift us in the directions that we're supposed to go. And I say that because like I've experienced them in my life. With this most recent transition, there was like a lot of things that were pushing me outside of Miami. I just moved to California, to the Bay Area. But I'm in a relationship with someone in California. My building in Miami is getting torn down. I asked for more opportunity at work, and that was turned down. There's just all these things that are happening. And and I think like at some point, you just have to be more aware of these things happening in your life. Like the coincidence of like all these things happening, like one right after the other, like mathematically just doesn't make sense. Yeah. It's like, how does this happen? And I do think that there are these like cues from the universe. I remember on one trip out to California, my partner and I were at brunch and we're like sitting there waiting for a table. And there's a couple, and one of them has a hat on that said Maine. And I went to college in Maine. And so I talked to everyone and I just went up and was like, Are you from Maine? And he was like, No, I went to school there. And I was like, No way, so did I. We went to the same college. Wow. And then his partner and I went to the same university for study abroad, both a year apart. And I just remember being in that moment, like, maybe this is like my sign that I'm supposed to be here. Because what are the odds? Two strangers on the street. Yeah. And they both have some connection to a past part of my life. You can't do that, math. It just doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Yeah. I think it's great because you talk about intuition as being your superpower. Now I tend to think it's one of mine as well. How do you cultivate your intuition, your connection with it?

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Yeah, I think it's just awareness and understanding. I think that I've always been able to like really feel what other people are feeling without them saying it. I think that I use a lot of my coaching when I'm working with clients one-on-one, in a sense of I'm gonna be able to pick up on like those context clues of us as humans, we can say one thing and mean something completely different. And I think that a lot of us have a lack of understanding in like how we feel and how we feel should guide a lot of what we do. And so you need to cultivate intuition by just being more aware of like your own feeling. It's so cliche, but like we say a gut reaction, but there's some truth behind that.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

So was this like a practice that you did in terms of either meditating or pausing and feeling or writing?

Put Yourself In The Game

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Yeah, a lot of it's pausing. A lot of it for sure is pausing. I think that we live in this society where like we feel like we have to say yes right away, or we have to make the decision right away. And I think for me, I have just always been in tune to like picking up on someone else's energy or the energy of a situation or an environment. And I remember in this most recent job that I'm in now at a gym in the Bay Area, just walking into the building, being like, this feels like a good environment. It's it starts from like that moment of stepping into the space. Does this feel like a good environment? Does this environment feel safe? Does it feel welcoming? Does it feel inviting? Does it feel inclusive? These are questions like I'm asking myself while I'm in it. Because I think that sometimes we just live in such like a self-absorbed world that we're not even like tuning into that aspect. And I've gotten better about slowing down and seeing how I feel in certain situations. I think part of it was I muscled through a lot of my life. I was like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to do. It doesn't feel right. I'm just gonna keep pushing through. Okay. This is what I'm this is what I'm meant to do. So I'm just, even though it doesn't feel right, I'm just gonna keep like grinding the axe and I'll get there eventually. It'll feel right at some point. But I think in through all of that, I started to learn, wait a second, this isn't what life is supposed to feel like. Your entire day shouldn't feel like you have this axe to grind, and you're like pushing through and you're like forcing it. It should really feel like, and I don't mean it that my life is easy by any means. I work really hard, I'm really exhausted some days, but I wake up every day like excited to do the things that I get to do. And I don't feel like it's it. I have to do these things. It's okay, wow, like I get to train these clients and I get to have these this impact on these people, and I get to work with these clients one-on-one. Is it exhausting? Yeah, I'm probably working harder than I've ever worked in my entire life right now. But the passion for it outweighs the exhaustion that I feel.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

But it sounds like you you're able to remain connected to your own feelings and the energy around you in whatever space. Absolutely. So when you're working with your clients, it affords you this ability to see the context, as you said, of what they're saying versus what they're the words they may be using.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Yeah, that's a great, that is definitely a superpower. My life, I I pushed through a lot as well. And I cultivated a high tolerance for pain. And I always associated that with being an athlete. Like I was a tough girl, right? I could handle it. And ultimately what that ended up doing for me was really detaching from my feelings, like the real feeling versus what my mind was telling me was my experience. And so I'm wondering to what extent do you is the slowing down helping you to become more embodied or connected to your feelings versus pushing through?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

I think for me it's slowing down and really being intentional. And I think that this gets back to this idea of like rock bottom. I remember being in grad school and being like, man, there's gotta be more to life than this. Like, this isn't what life is. And I was having a conversation with a coworker the other day, and I was saying that I think really people come when they've hit rock bottom. And it usually means that they've had some sort of like sobering life event, like they've lost someone young, and they go, Oh my gosh, if so-and-so is gone, like that could happen to me. I gotta turn my life around. Yeah, it makes them realize like how short life truly is, and or they feel like they can't do certain things because of the circumstances that they're in. And I think that a lot of what I've experienced in in it is like this feeling of being trapped, of being like, I can't do certain things that I want to do because of the situation that I'm in. And for me, that's when I go, okay, something has to change because this isn't how living life should be. But I think it's like those sobering moments that that's to me like the universe being like, hey, I'm trying to show you this is what your intuition is. Right. These moments where you have like this, I call it like an oh shit moment. You're like, oh shit, like the what is happening? And they happen periodically, but the question is, are you listening to them?

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Yeah. Yeah. I I've heard from various coaches in my life that everything in life is either a medical, a metaphor, a symbol, or a mirror. And that if you're not paying attention to the clues, right, you can get lost or you can feel stuck, which is ultimately what no one wants to do. We want to always expand and grow. That's just a natural human need. And and so, yeah, being able to see those repetitive things going on in your life. Those, like you said, it's the math that you can't really define or add. It's really you just have to be paying attention to it so that you can be led in a new direction.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

If you're open to it. So open mind is important. So let's talk about putting yourself in the game. This is a phrase that I know that you have embodied, and you said that it's a theme in your life right now. So tell me what that means in terms of a mindset and how do you teach that as a coach?

Aging, Desire, And Starting Late

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Yeah, I think for me, it means taking action of your own life and putting yourself in the position to win. It's very counterintuitive, though, to like how I was raised. I think I was raised to be very humble and very you wait for things, you wait for your turn and you do the best that you can and you hope it gets noticed. And I think what I was seeing in my life is these situations in which maybe I wanted a certain outcome and someone else was getting it. And I'm like, oh, how the heck did you know so-and-so get to that place? Like, why not me? And you sit and you watch these people move up into spaces that you want to be in. And at some point you have to realize you have to advocate for yourself. You have to be the one that's like asking for the things that you want in life. And I and I think it's for a couple of reasons. I think I remember this time when I was wanting to live in New York City, and I felt this like deep burn to want to be living in New York City after college. And my dad was like, You can live in New York City, but you have to have a job. And I emailed so many people. I was just cold emailing so many people, probably like over 150 people, to try to get this to get a job. And I kept saying, You have nothing to lose, you only have something to gain. The worst thing that happens is they read this email and they don't respond. And I could have easily just applied to jobs that were posted, and I could have just waited to hear back from people, and that wouldn't have gotten me the job in New York. I was really grateful to work for an incredible woman who was a head researcher at a lab. Her name's BJ Casey. She's like a pioneer in her field. She was just an incredible mentor. And I emailed her and she responded back. There was no job that she wasn't even hiring, but she was just like, wow, this senior in college has a lot of balls emailing me right now. And I lost that a little bit, I think, that kind of like gusto. And I again, in like feeling a little trapped in my previous job before stepping into this new personal training role, a lot of like mindset coaching and private training, just realized you can't wait for the opportunity. You have to find the opportunity, you have to create the space. If you feel like you don't have space in your life, then it's probably not gonna come. And that's a hard truth to accept. But I maybe I become a little pessimistic in my through my life, but I think what I've learned is like if you're in a situation and you keep saying to yourself, like, oh, it's gonna get better, it's gonna get better. Probably isn't. If you've said it like four or five times and it hasn't gotten better, it's probably not gonna get better on the sixth or seventh time. It's time for you to like really evaluate what is it that you want. And that goes for any relationship, career, space that you want to be in. What is it that you want? Okay, now put yourself in that space.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

And that's a bit of a visual, right? A visual the languaging of it a hundred percent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Yeah. It's amazing when I work with clients how many people just aren't even clear on what it is that they want. What does your ideal job look like? What does your ideal partner look like? What does your ideal home look like? Where is it? What's the color? How many days are you working? Are you working in an office? Are you working at home? Do you have coworkers? Like, where do you sit within the company?

SPEAKER_01 33:54

The more specific you are and clear about those specifics, then how you'd get yourself in the game.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Absolutely. Where's that next step that I need to take? I think what we don't realize is anyone in your life that you're sitting at and you go, man, I wish I could be like them. Guess what? There's an entire blueprint that they created through their life that all you have to do is follow, right? Oh, wow, at this gym and I want to be like them. Okay, where'd they work before then? Okay, they worked here. Okay, who did they connect with to get to there? Okay, I have to connect with this person. How do I connect with that person? Okay, I'm gonna if you start to view it that way and you look at the fact that nine times out of ten, the road that you want to take has probably been paved by someone else. You just have to find it.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Right. Yeah. So there's a map out there, you just have to be able to do that. 100% ask enough questions, you can get there.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Yeah. There's too many people in the world for there to not be a map for the life that you want to live, or at least a parallel map. Maybe it's not the exact same one, but there's enough pieces from someone else's puzzle that you can replicate that. But I think as women in particular, it's against nature to be assertive, to go for these things. And I think that you have to be so aware of the way that we talk to ourselves. I think that we have this high threshold for suffering. And if you catch yourself saying things like, it's gonna get better. And you've been saying that for a year, two years, three years, you have to then pause and be like, wait, what's the probability now? What's the logical probability now that it's actually gonna get better?

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Yeah. There's a longer conversation we can have about this in terms of what really lies beneath someone's mindset, right? But let's just talk about the aging part because that's something I could definitely relate to being an aging athlete myself and woman. Yeah. One of the things I know you're really passionate about is helping people understand that what they really want still matters, regardless of where they are at chronologically in life, in other areas. So no matter how old we are, there's a version of us that can still do what we might want to do. So talk a little bit about that and how you help people work towards what they really want.

Making Wellness Truly Accessible

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Yeah, I think for me, when I'm working with a client who's older and this idea of it's too late for me to do these things. What I really try to focus in on is like the piece of your life that you're viewing, right? What you're viewing is, oh my God, I should have started this earlier. You're viewing this part of your life, right? Oh my God, if I had done this in my 40s, if I had done this in my 30s, I would have been here. I would have already been here. But what you're missing is that you still have time. And again, this comes back to a scale. What is more meaningful to you? Living the unknown amount of time that you have in the state, in the feelings that you're feeling, or taking that chance, making the change, still not knowing how much time you have, but potentially stepping into the best years of your life.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Yeah, so it's not the destination, it's the process of getting there.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Yeah. My parents are in their 70s, and I look at the way that they're living their life, and it is not my ideal life to be living. I will tell you, there's a massive disconnect. They wake up, they do the same thing, they like go on a walk, they like garden, they they don't really do much. They don't travel, they don't like explore, they do a little bit of traveling, but they don't necessarily live the life that like I would want to live in my 70s. So sometimes I'm like, don't you want to go to Africa? Don't you want to go to Thailand? Don't you want to go like here? And they're like, no. And then I I just ask them, like, are you happy? And they're the happiest that they've ever been with the simplest life. And so I think what you need to get clear with is you have to accept that you're gonna have missed opportunities in life. Even in my 30s, there's moments in my life where I'm like, oh I messed that one up. I probably should have done this instead of done that. We're gonna have missed opportunities. You just have to accept that and let them live in the past. But I think what you have to really look at is what were those miss opportunities that I missed out on? And what can I do? There's this great book that I was listening to the other day about mindset, and it was saying, like, as humans, we always focus on what we didn't do, what we can't do, what we should have done. But make a list of all the things that you can do. Make a list of all the things that you can still do in this life, right? What are all the things that you can still go do, can still chase after the adventures that you can still have?

SPEAKER_02 39:04

Love that.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

And focus your attention onto that. And again, there's so many examples of like people out there that find a passion later in life. They find something new later in life. I think part of the reason why I I've been able to like have a little bit of this mindset was like I remember when I was probably in third grade, my dad got his PhD. So it was later in life that he stepped into that next step in his career. And now he's a professor of Johns Hopkins. And he didn't have a PhD right out of college, he took a little bit of time to get there. I think he probably got his PhD when he was in his late 40s, almost 50. And so that's the kind of thing of realizing hey, it's not too late to start. And the only limitations that we're putting. On ourselves is the ones that we put on us. A lot of the times I ask people when they tell me, like, oh, I can't do that. Like, who says that? Go find me the thing in life that says you're too old to do this, and then I'll believe you. Yeah. Yeah. Go find me the job application that says you're too old to do this. It doesn't exist. Go find me the thing that says you're too old to start this. It doesn't, it doesn't exist. Like why we put that on ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

I agree. So that to me, those are known as limiting beliefs. And those really do tend to put ourselves in boxes that are hard to get out of. And I I, for one, have been one who's challenged all the limiting beliefs that I used to carry. And I've defied some age brackets. I was a young mom and always an athlete, though. And so I got into semi-procycling, but yet not until my late 20s or early 30s, which was really late for that sport. I ran marathons in my 40s and triathlons also at the same decade. And it's like I've always was chasing the thing that I knew I always wanted to do and found a way to do it. And here I am now in my 60s, and I'm about to do this 29029 Everesting thing next fall. It's really challenging me physically, and yet I know like I've got a strong mindset. And I'm looking forward to it because it's really exciting to me. That's what I love doing is living a life that keeps me excited about what can happen. So let's talk about accessible wellness because I know that's a topic that's near and dear to you. And making wellness accessible, not intimidating, not elite. So what does accessible wellness mean to you and how do you use that in your coaching?

SPEAKER_00 41:53

I think for me, a lot of it is that the barrier to entry into a wellness or a life of wellness is very daunting to someone who's never done it. For anyone who grew up an athlete, it's almost like a no-brainer at this point, right? It's just it's routine for me to not work out would actually feel very weird. It's just I grew up with it. And it wasn't until I started really working with clients one-on-one that I started realizing that people were afraid of the gym. That there was this like intimidation of the gym. For me, I was like, what do you mean you're afraid? Like, what do you it just didn't compute for me because I'd been going into gym since I was 10 years old. And I think what's really important is having coaches that again, this comes back to like intuition. You can pick up on that. If I'm working with a client and I know that this wellness journey that they're in is new. And I'm seeing that maybe there's that wall between us saying, Hey, are you feeling like a little intimidated right now? Okay, let's like let's bring it back to things that you know how to do. Do you know how to sit and stand from a chair? Well, that's a squat. Do you know how to bend down on the ground and pick something up? That's like really similar to a deadlift. Do you know how to open a door? That's a row. Do you know how to like close the car door? That's a push. I think what we don't realize is that so many things that we do day to day are actually pretty physical. And really, we're doing these movement patterns on a day-to-day basis. I think the other thing that's like really important for me is that I had a client literally yesterday say this to me, and she said, Danny, it was so inexpensive for me to get out of shape and gain weight, and it's so expensive for me to get back in shape. And I think that a huge kind of problem that that we run running into is that we have this group of people that are realizing that it's so important for them to get in shape, but then they start to do the math of everything that that involves a gym membership, coach, buying healthy food, you know, buying different supplements, buying workout gear, and you go, holy crap. And I think the argument can be made, you can pay now or you can pay later when you're unhealthy, but we oftentimes our brains don't work that way. We're not really good at having that understanding. We're very much like in the moment kind of people. So for me, I really want to make intimidating spaces feel less intimidating. I want to meet clients where they're at and their understanding of like where they feel comfortable. And I want to do the best that I can to make sure that there's something for everyone when it comes to what can you afford when it comes to fitness, you know? One of the things that like when I'm working with a new client who's maybe really intimidating about the gym, it's okay, where in the gym do you feel safest? Is it the treadmill? Because you're maybe used to that, or the scare master. Then all I want you to do is go to that place routinely for like 30 days.

unknown 45:16

Right?

Mindset Before Miles And Muscles

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Go to where you feel safe in the gym and build up that routine of just going because it is intimidating if you've never done it before, right? Intimidating because you can't do it, it's intimidating because it's new. And I think I work with a lot of clients and I tell them it's like abandoned, you gotta rip off, right? All your fear and anxiety that's there is gonna be there for a short period of time. And then like before you know it, you're gonna feel fine in that space. But I think it is a huge problem. I think that there needs to be more of a push from the industry in understanding that I think wellness and fitness needs to be a basic human right.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

I think really not only about expense, it sounds like it's also about just the how welcoming or how connected people can feel in a space.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

Yeah. And my my partner, she goes to a gym in the Bay Area that's called Empowerment, and it's a female-only gym. It's a women's only gym. And I think that there needs to be more spaces like that, or maybe a bigger gym having a women's only hour. And if you look at swimming pools, they have adult swim, right? Where kids aren't in the pool. Why don't we have spaces like this in other places? Like it exists. Why don't we have a women's only hour? Why don't we have some gyms have a women's only section and that's a great start? But I really think that it's something that the industry needs to explore and understand because many of the people working in the industry are working in the industry because they're so passionate about it, and it's probably been a huge part of their life from a young age. So, again, that barrier to entry. So people are having a tough time connecting with the people in the industry.

unknown 47:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Until you've been in those shoes of someone else, you don't get it. There are things with the clients that I work with that I will never understand. I will never understand what it's like to gain 50 pounds and have to lose it because I've never experienced that in my life. I will never understand what it's like to feel uncomfortable in a gym because I grew up in one, because I was an athlete from such a young age. And I remember being 10 years old in a gym. I did get injured and I had to learn how to run again. So I can understand that aspect when I work with a client. But there are just certain things that I won't be able to understand. I do know people who work in the industry that they lost 100 pounds, 200 pounds, and that's why they're working in the industry now. They have a greater understanding of it. But that's not the case for everyone. And I think that it's really important for us in the industry to make sure we're providing spaces where people feel supported. I think that health and wellness should be a basic human right. I think that it shouldn't be this thing that's only available for people that had a previous fitness career or sports career or can afford it. I think that really good access and quality to things is important. I really do the best that I can on my social media to share things that I think are important. There's so much noise out there. That's another really big thing that I get from clients is like this overload of information on the internet. Like, how do you know what to follow? How do you know? What do you listen to? And so I always try to share things that like I read and I'm like, okay, this is actually really good information. Like, I'm gonna share this. Follow this account. This account is a good account to follow. This is the thing that you should be doing. If you can only afford like one supplement, like this is the supplement that you should be taking. I really work with people to understand that, hey, what is it that you can invest in fitness? And I think for me, it was like a realization of doing my taxes for my first time. And I was like looking at how much money I was spending on like races and workout care and supplements. And I'm like, oh my God, like it is so expensive to live the life that I live in this like fit way. And I think that we live in this epidemic now where you have a lot of people that want to get fit, right? It's a huge thing right now. People really want to get fit, but it almost feels like there's so many cards stacked against you. And I really feel for those individuals that constantly run into those barriers. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

Sounds like you have a lot of compassion for the people who are struggling to find their way through to wellness. Yeah. Yeah. And that must be a great gift that you bring to your coaching. But talk about embodying. You blend mindset performance coaching with physical training. Why is that combination so powerful? And especially for women in midlife.

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Yeah, I think that you have to unlock your mindset before you can really unlock your body. I get a lot of people that come up to me and they say, I want to run a half marathon. And I think a normal kind of coach's response would be like, awesome, let's do it. And I go, Why? Why do you want to do this? You gotta, you gotta explain to me why you want to do this. I need to understand your why before we even start. Because it's not easy. It's not easy. And if you tell me I just wanna lose weight, there's a million one ways to lose weight. Why are you picking this route? It's so important to understand why you're doing something, why you care. Like, why do you care? Because if you don't understand that, I guarantee you'll give up. I would put money on it. I'd put money on it. When the first time that it gets hard or you have to make a decision between this and that, you're in a fold because you don't even understand why you're doing it. You don't even understand why this matters to you.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

So why this cares for the clarity, right? It's important to be clear about what is behind this choice, this project. Yeah.

Reclaiming Identity Beyond Brands

SPEAKER_00 51:50

And I think that there's like a superficial reason, there's a surface level reason why we do the things we do, and then there's a deeper understanding. And really, it's that level. You have to go deep into why you're doing this. People ask me, oh, why do you run marathons? And from the surface level, I'll always say I have this deep curiosity to explore the limits of my body. And I do. That's true. It's a very true statement. But on this deeper level, I have a lot of like guilt and resentment from when I was an athlete, that there were a lot of times in my life where I wish I had applied myself more. Like that I let off the throttle a bit. And I had teammates go to the Olympics. I had teammates go on to play D1. And there's this level of me looking back on my life saying, if I had just applied myself a little bit more, if I had trained a little bit harder, cared a little bit more about what I put in my body, man, like how good could I have been? And I feel like that kind of is like my deeper level of like why I commit myself so hard right now, why I take it so seriously. I know I'm not gonna be in the Olympics for running. I know that. I understand that. But what I am trying to reconcile within myself is this idea of I didn't care when I was younger. And I want to know what happens when I care, and I want to know what happens when I really push myself. And all those feelings of being mediocre or less than, or I wasn't as good as this teammate, or I wasn't as good as this teammate. That healing is occurring right now through my life, and that's the deeper reason. And I think that's mindset, right? You don't learn that through the physical aspect, you have to reconcile that going in.

SPEAKER_01 53:52

Yeah. Wow. That is definitely a healing process that I can relate to because I feel like I too, for reasons that are part of a discipline-related thing as well as a life challenges thing that I couldn't quite get to what I thought I was capable of. And then I even have other life experiences where things didn't work out the way I had hoped. And I think it's really a beautiful thought to think, okay, so now I can heal by attending to that version of me that had such great potential, and I can embody that and even help other people find a way to that. That's great. That's really great. So for 2026, as we're in the beginning of it, you're really pouring into your coaching journey, both your mindset and your physical training. What feels most alive for you about coming up next?

SPEAKER_00 54:49

I think for me, it's just like I want to share more of the journey and the aspect of it. I think that I want to humanize some of the thoughts and feelings. I think, in part, now I have more freedom in what I can share, the brands that I can work with, the spaces that I can step into. I'm working as a personal trainer in a gym here in Walnut Creek, California with Lifetime. I'm doing virtual personal training through an incredible digital platform through Jamie Filer. It's a it's really a digital personal training platform geared towards queer women with anxiety that want to lose weight. It's a really supportive network. And I think for me, it's really just wanting to step into like my own identity. I think that a huge part of my past in the fitness industry was I was really consumed by brands. My identity was so consumed by brands that I worked with in the past. And in part, I think it was I was new in the industry. I was young, and I was allowing myself to just let my identity be absorbed by past brands that I've worked with. And I'm really excited to step into these spaces now where I'm still part of these different brands. I'm gonna be working with Brooks this year, I'm gonna be working with a supplement sports kind of website called The Feed this year. Both of those are providing me with support and races and things like that. But I'm really excited to have this understanding of I let my identity be so consumed by past brands that it was so intertwined that people just associated me with these brands. And I really want to have my own identity again.

SPEAKER_01 56:49

Did you feel respect or controlled by that?

Clarity, Coaching, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 56:52

It's just that I've heard celebrities say this like when they're out and they'll get called the name of the character that they played and not their actual name. So I would be maybe out and they'd be like, oh, you're this person, but it wasn't my name, it was the brand that I was associated with.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

I see.

SPEAKER_00 57:12

And I think I started to realize, wow, like I've lost a little bit of a sense of who I was. And I think in 2026, I really want to ask myself the question of like, how is the choice that I'm making impacting like my story? Okay. In my growth, in my development, I think a big initiative that I have for myself is like education this year, like really pouring into my own education and pouring into my own growth and development, whether that be through like certifications and courses and things like that. But it was this realization that my identity was so intertwined with previous brands. And in part, it's because I was with these brands for six, seven years. So it's a long time, but I think that was a very like sobering realization to me.

SPEAKER_01 58:11

Yeah, how you can get lost behind them.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

You can get lost, and it can consume you in ways. And I am really excited to just be Danny. I say that to my partner a lot. I was like, I'm excited to be like a nobody in this city, like no one really knows who I am. Like, I'm just Danny. They don't know this whole side of me that existed in Miami, they don't know this whole like thing that I had prior to this. And it almost feels like refreshing that these people have no idea like who I am.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

As you are becoming Danny on her own, or at least in this new setting, what kind of women are finding you right now to work with you?

SPEAKER_00 58:53

Yeah, I think that the kind of clientele that I step into or that I I guess that I'm trying to work with are people that feel like stuck, lost. It sounds authentic. Yeah, I think that a lot of the narrative that I'm putting out on the internet is if you feel like you've been working your butt off and you're still in the same place, then we should talk. If you feel like, and I see that a lot, I see a lot of people like really push themselves and dedicate themselves, and yet two years from now, they're still in the same place that they were. Is that where you want to be? If that's where you want to be, great. But if that's not where you want to be, then we need to figure out what piece of the puzzle is missing.

SPEAKER_01 59:38

Yeah, that's really great suggestion or idea because I think you're right, it goes back to clarity. If we're not clear on where we're headed, we're gonna end up right where we were.

SPEAKER_00 59:49

Exactly. I think when clients work with me sometimes, they have this expectation that maybe I'm gonna push them into one way or the other. I I don't want my clients to do anything other than what they want. The people that I work with, I don't need you to run a marathon. I don't need you to lift heavy if that doesn't align with you. I want you to be really clear on what are your goals? Where how do you want to live your life? What makes you happy? What feels sustainable for you? What feels aligned with you. And then let's get there together. And so I feel very grateful and fortunate that I was I had the courage to take a risk on myself in the past and take a risk on myself again. And I want to work with women that maybe need that extra support to take that risk or take that job.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:39

I think that you're perfect for that. So if we could leave our listeners with one reminder about their worth of their desires, the worth of their desires, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:49

I think that it's truly that you have nothing to lose, you only have something to gain. Go for it. Because even if you fail, aren't you in the same spot that you're in now? I think we don't realize that. If you apply for the job and you don't get it, guess what? You're still exactly where you were today. But like maybe there's that chance that you do get it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:13

Yeah. Nothing to lose. Something like that.

Final Reminder And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 1:01:15

You have nothing to lose. Like, literally, you have nothing to lose by going for it. And we forget that sometimes. I was talking with a client recently who really doesn't like her job and like she wasn't applying for jobs. And I was like, why aren't you applying for jobs? And she was like, I'm so afraid that I'm not going to get them. And I was like, if you apply and you don't get them, is someone gonna tell you that you can't apply for more jobs? I was like, you should absolutely be like throwing out as many applications as you can and seeing what sticks. I was like, who cares if you feel like you're not a perfect match? Like, you have no idea what they're looking for. Just send it out. Send it out in the universe. And I was like, because you have nothing to lose. No one's gonna come and be like, hey, you applied for this job that you weren't a perfect candidate for, so we're gonna penalize you and not allow you to apply for the next three jobs that you want to apply for. That doesn't exist. That's just some stupid narrative in your head that you're creating.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:12

Right, yeah. We have to help these women rewrite their narratives, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

Yeah, yeah, you have nothing to lose. You have nothing to lose. The only thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna learn. You're gonna learn something about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:23

That's great. That's great. Now, for all the listeners that I know are gonna want to get in touch with you or learn more about you, how can they find you, Danny?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:32

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram. I have two Instagram accounts. I have DannyDelarco and then Built by Danny. So I have one that's like more geared towards like personal training and client wins and things like that. And then I have my own personal one where I post a lot of more mindset, more running kind of specific content. And then I have a website, Danydelarco.com. On that website, there's a form where if you want to get in touch with me, you can shoot me an email right away, and we can get started on helping you become the best version of you.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

That's great. Thank you so much, Danny. This is a great conversation, and we covered a lot of areas where I know you are helping people just reach the next level in their life, which is what we're all about here on She Ask. You've been listening to She Ask, where healing meets practical hope. And I'm your host, Anna McBride. I'm so glad you're here. And until soon, be well.