Embracing Imperfection: Marissa on Ambition, Burnout & Redefining Success

Content Warning: This episode includes a brief mention of suicidal ideation and mental health struggles. 

Beyond achievements, Marissa describes herself as ambitious, empathetic, and resilient. Marissa unpacks how women are often punished for ambition, how perfectionism created a “go and crash” cycle, and how learning to create her own box has been both scary and liberating. She shares practices that keep her grounded, especially a daily gratitude list and meditation, and argues that empathy is a powerful leadership strength that drives team performance. Marissa recounts leaving a 15-year corporate career after the pandemic triggered depression and a spiritual awakening, leading to travel, yoga teacher training in Sri Lanka, and eventually Columbia’s Spirit Mind Body Psychology Master’s program as a bridge into entrepreneurship. She also clarifies yoga concepts like asana and prana and shares where to find her work on Instagram and Substack.

Instagram: @marissatheyogini

Substack: https://substack.com/@marissatheyogini?r=44ed60&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=stories&shareImageVariant=blur 

Transcript

Rachel & Marissa 0:00

Hello, Everyone, welcome back to "Unmasked." So glad that you're here listening. Really excited to introduce a good friend and our guest today. Before that happens, we're gonna take a second and ground into this moment. Wherever you are, just pause And take three intentional breaths However You're showing up today is perfectly okay And once again, thank you to those listening Marissa Hi. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm so happy that you are in the studio with me today. I'm thrilled to be here. It's gonna be a really fun convo. Yeah. I have been waiting patiently for this one. How does it feel to be Marissa today? I feel energetic today. I feel happy. I feel like I've got Monday energy, and I'm trying to bring all of that energy into, like, focus and do and go. Um, feels exciting to be here. I've been looking forward to this date on my calendar for a long time. And yeah, I just feel ready. I feel ready to chat it up, chop it up. Good stuff. Let's do it. Let's do it. Marissa would describe herself in three words as ambitious, empathetic- and resilient Let's start with ambitious. Mm-hmm. Will you tell us more about that? So I think that the A word is a dirty word among, you know, people who talk about women and women's ambitions and what that means in today's day and age. I think that a lot of times women get punished for even saying that they're ambitious, and I like to kind of wear it as a badge of honor. I've always known inside me that I'm, I've got go-for-it energy. I wanna, learn. I'm a sponge. I wanna do my very best. I wanna be the best. I wanna ascend to high heights. I wanna see all there is to see, and I just want to go and experience and climb and do and achieve. And somewhere along the way, I learned culturally that I had to minimize that or I had to not allow for that part of me to be seen and celebrated unless it was in the confines of, like, the honor roll or the varsity softball player or, insert X role here. it had to be in a way that made other people feel super comfortable and in a way that could place me in a well-defined box. And as I started my career in New York and as I collected more accolades and started to know myself better, I was like, "Why does it have to be limited to these tiers or, this prescribed path? What about if I could take my ambition in," you know, I started in corporate America, so I had a very structured path ahead of me, "and take who I was becoming in my late 20s and my early 30s and morph it into something of my own?" And so this ambition today is realized in my own entrepreneurial spirit, where I kind of have always felt like I've got something in me that needs to be shared, but I can't find that bucket that other people wanna put me in. don't put me in a box. Please don't put me in a box because what I have is bigger than that and it's more expansive than that. But I didn't know what it was, and I transparently am still refining and chipping away and trying to define what that is. But at the core of it, ambition is true for me. I really love being among the smartest minds here at Columbia University. I really love studying yoga. I really love traveling. I really love being good at things. And so ambition for me is like the fuel in my jet pack. It's not the end. It's not the end point. It's the means to that end. Ambitious. I see it. I feel it- Yeah in you. Just sitting across from you- Yeah hearing you describe all of that. You mentioned being in this box. Mm-hmm. Were you in a box- I think so for a phase of your life? Yeah, I think so. I learned how to be really good at things really early in life, so it was easier for me, I think, to learn what a teacher wanted from me and then be able to spit that back on a test and get a really good grade. I knew the mechanics of a swing in softball, so I knew how to hit and lay down a bunt and get on first base. I was a competitive gymnast, so I learned perfection early, and I knew how to give people back what they expected. And so, in that pursuit, I necessarily was in a sandbox of other people's expectations, and in my primary sport, which was gymnastics, evaluated against perfection. that had an imprint on my psyche from a very young age, and I think that I learned how to check boxes and check as many boxes as possible to be as well-rounded as possible, to give myself as many opportunities as possible. But it wasn't until fairly recently that I learned that I was playing somebody else's game, and that actually I could just create my own box. Oh, wow. One thing with ambition- Mm-hmm and some of the words you mentioned in there are checking boxes, achievement, go mode. With having this sense of internal fire and ambition, what has it felt like for you to experience failure or missteps along the way? How have you navigated that? failure's is frightening when you're not really used to it, you know? and I think when you're walking a tightrope, which is what perfection feels like in my body, then you're playing in the energy of fear. I think that perfection is fear-based, and you're afraid of not being perfect because what would the outcome of imperfection be? imperfection be? What would the outcome of being seen and held for who you are that might not necessarily be a perfect 10 on a scorecard be? Um, so... Sorry, what was your question? So I guess how has it been navigating- Mm Mm-hmm any challenges or missteps when an achievement goes wrong, or when you're in go mode, you crash and burn? Yeah. I love what you said about crashing and burning because I really, for a long time in my body, felt that I had two modes, go and crash, and there really was no in between, and I think that's because of the tightrope of perfection that I had walked on for so long. it feels scary to be imperfect. It feels scary, I think, to wear your humanity as your face card, as your forward-facing self to the world, because so many of us are walking around presenting who we hope to be seen as, and that facade is built on perfectionist ideals, right? So when you take off the mask and when you have the courage to be seen for who you are, you know, courage and bravery are interesting, right? Because it's doing the scary thing in spite of your fear, not because you don't have any fear. So it's showing up and being imperfect, and that feels scary. So I think it's about acknowledging that you're afraid and doing it anyway, and just showing up as you are anyway, because I'm creating the box. So my box is whatever I need it to be. My box is whatever is perfect for me. And it can be scary, but I feel like with a flip of perspective, it can also be very re- very liberating. Do you have any personal practices or routines that keep you grounded and confident through imperfection and still being able to courageously move forward? I do, and this may not be what one immediately thinks of, but I have a daily gratitude practice. And I instituted this practice on my own about a year ago, and then now I, practice it with my partner, where we, every single morning, start with three things that we're grateful for. And it could be, like the other day I said to him, "I'm so thankful I'm a woman. Like, my God, thank you, God, for making me a woman in all of our glory and in all of our virtue and all of our empathy and connection and just spirit and grace and wisdom and intuition and power. thank you, God, for making me a woman." And then some days I'm like, "Oh, I just, I'm really cherishing this coffee, like the taste of this coffee on my lips." Other times it's being grateful for classmates or professors or family members or pets. But what happens in a gratitude practice is that you start to seek the good, you start to notice the good, you start to amplify the good, you start to share the good. And the more that you practice doing that, the more you're opening your brain to finding more good. The more that you name, the more that you find, and the more that you find, the more that there is. And so It's become this filter through which I see the world. I see the world in goodness because I'm constantly looking for things that can make my gratitude list. And so in reciting those things that make me grateful and in having a document of all those things, it allows me to feel expansive, and it expands me in a way that makes me feel greater than the things that bring me down or the things that constrict me. And so it's like, here I am showing up to a world which is troubled and full of strife and problems and conflict and divisiveness and you name it, but like I've got me, my womanhood, and my gratitude list That is like a one-woman show. Heck yes. You know what I mean? yes. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I would say the gratitude list is, an unsung hero, and gratitude, of course, is the queen of all virtues. and then I'm really trying for a daily meditation practice, That's great. Gratitude changed my life. I'm so glad you brought it up- Yeah because when I was experiencing difficulties in life, I remember reading all the personal growth books and self-help, and so often something would say, "Write down what you're grateful for." And I'd be like, "That's not gonna help. Like, flip to the next page." Right. And then when I actually started doing it daily- Mm-hmm I could walk around in the world- Mm-hmm and be grateful, and that brings joy in itself. One of the things that you said you were really grateful for was being a woman- and thanking God for empathy, which empathetic is another one of your words- that I'd love to dive into. Yeah. Tell us about being a woman and being empathetic as Marissa. Yeah. This, uh, it's such a fantastic question because, you know, earlier we talked about fitting into a box, and in my personal experience, producing what others had expected of me, and this took shape in my corporate career where I worked almost 15 years in advertising agencies and at Google and other places, which had a very well-defined role and description and objective and outcome that's expected of someone in that space and in that position. And often when we speak about women in leadership, I think sometimes we get trapped into these binaries of, well, this is the way a woman would do the job, or this is the way a man would do the job, or it's a man's job, or you have to play with the, hard skills in a corporate space versus the soft skills. And I'm here to say, like, why do we have to label those skills as hard or soft? Why do they have to be necessarily one or the other? I think that there's a world in which a person who is self-reflective and rooted in values and growth and true authentic leadership has integrated both parts of their masculine and their feminine and can show up as a whole being and find their unique way of leading. And this is based on what I believe is a unique blueprint, a fingerprint of one's individual character strengths. And so as I learn more about myself through meditation, yoga, self-help books, journaling, even academia, I've got to reflect and go, "What are my unique strengths?" And empathy always rises to the top. And so in a space where empathy is not necessarily celebrated or it's seen as soft, how can one be an empathetic leader and still be ambitious and still be impactful and still be effective? And I believe that empathy is the core human trait that drives the best business impact, and I've seen it time and again. I've lived it. I've led teams that have advertised on the Super Bowl. I've led teams that have advertised on the Olympics. I've worked with $100 million budgets. budgets. I've worked with the brightest minds in tech and in marketing, and it's always those human-led teams who care about each other on a human level, on a person-to-person level, who are showing up brave, messy, imperfect, but committed. Those are always the teams that perform the best. And it's always a leader who can sit down and go, I don't know what's going on with you, but something feels a little bit off. I just wanna acknowledge that and see how that feels and let you know that I can be a space for you if you need some extra help today or if you need some support that hasn't been communicated yet. How can I help you?" That's very different than, Well, we're one family here, and we're all racing towards the same KPI, and, you've gotta..." You know. I just feel like women do it differently, and should be celebrated. Another example I'll give is you think about an executive conference room with all the seats around the table, and you walk in and everybody knows what the objective of the meeting is. And a man will come in and sit down and open his book and go straight to the agenda, and here's what we're doing, and I'm leading, and these are the goals, and da, da, da. A woman will walk in and know someone skipped a chair. Something feels weird here. There might've been a conversation that just happened in the hallway that has this person feeling funky. This person looks dejected. That person's dehydrated. And care for the table in a different space, in a different way. That person can intuit that something needs to be addressed before we even go into the agenda topic. That person can intuit that there's a lag here, that there's an energy deficit, that maybe someone's unclear as to why we're here in the first place. Also, I feel like women just go, "Does everybody know everybody?" Yes. Like, can we just connect? And why is that soft? Why is that not being seen as leading with grace and leading with clarity, and a real trait of leadership in and of itself to just see every single person in the room? Being seen. Being seen. One- One- There's so much power in being seen. Oh, massively. One thing I would also add while you were talking there that I thought about was the ability to admit when someone is wrong. When someone is in a leadership role, in my experience, a boss, even someone that I admire or look up to, they're always someone who has the capacity to admit, "Hey, I was wrong." Totally. "I'm sorry." And I see that as so courageous and human- Mm-hmm which I think is another addition to all those things interwoven together that women can bring forward into leadership. Well, you just told me, you've mentioned your corporate career. Mm-hmm. And now you're in this spirit, mind, body program at Columbia. Mm-hmm. W- what happened in between those two things? That might be a big question, but- how much time do we have? one thing I'll say before we move on from the leadership topic is I think that oftentimes we don't talk about the burden of leadership, which is that a true leader will give credit to the team, Mm but will also shoulder the blame and the responsibility when things go wrong, right? So how do you lead from the back and how do you lead from the center? And this is what I find women do, because yeah, we might be aware obviously that there's roles and that there's a hierarchy and that there is a president and, name whatever subordinate underneath. But in a matriarchal society or in women-led teams, I have found that women will put the most vulnerable at the center and go, "How do we support?" It's not a race to the top. It's a jungle gym where everyone's trying to figure out how to support the next person on their climb and how to all get to the top together. it's about giving away success freely, giving away, praise freely, and then also shouldering all the responsibility that comes with failure. So, uh, how did I get from corporate to SMBI? Um, so do you remember in 2020 there was a pandemic? No. Wait, what, what was that? Tell me more. So there was a pandemic, and I was living in my beautiful one-bedroom condo in Brooklyn, working an advertising job and just humming about. But I was in account management, which meant that, you know, essentially I was an interlocutor. To the client, I represent the agency, and to the agency, I represented the client. So part of my job was to, manage clients on shoots and to travel and to, take out to nice dinners and be the social teammate, you know, and the, the business lead, so to speak. And when the world shut down, those possibilities weren't available to me anymore. It was like the fun parts of my job just left, and I was behind spreadsheets for 15 hours a day and trying to figure out remote production, and it got really bad, like really quickly for me. Things became dark. I had already started feeling rumblings in my heart of hearts that, like, maybe this position wasn't as fulfilling as it once had been, that I was working for the sake of external validation, that I was chasing the dollar on a paycheck, my inner growth was outpacing my external look, but I was stuck. I was so stuck. And Essentially, I fell into a massive depression. Someone very close to me at the time was suicidal, and so I started talking to my therapist about what is suicide. And I just got really curious with the topic, and because I was suffering from acute depression, I kinda took it as far possible. I stretched the concept as far as possible to think about what it would be like if I didn't live. And when you wake up every day thinking about not living your life, a lot of questions surface for you, and there's a lot of tension. Whereas once I was all the things that people expected me to be, and I followed the path. I graduated from college. I got the job in the city. I excelled at that job. I was running around New York City. I was traveling the world. I was working on the best briefs. I was working with big budgets and big brands and big people and big celebrities. But inside I I was like, "I don't want this life." Like, I don't wanna wake up in my life. And it was scary. it was really scary. So I was not a quiet quitter, I was a loud quitter. Like I, I quit my job, I broke my lease, I broke up with my boyfriend, I put everything I own in storage, and I left. I just got out of New York City after a decade, after around 10 years of being here, and immediately put myself into nature. So with my best friend in the whole wide world, I walked the Camino de Santiago. So we walked 75 miles in six days. And then we, went to a surf camp and I learned how to surf in Portugal. Never been on a surfboard in my life. And I kept traveling and I kept going east. And I found a yoga teacher training in Sri Lanka. And during the pandemic, I had been fumbling around on a yoga mat just, learning through YouTube 'cause the whole world was shut down. So when I got to Sri Lanka, I really wanted to understand, what is this practice that I've been doing, on the free YouTube channel? What's the history here? What's the philosophy? What is the spiritual system? And after spending three weeks in a downward dog, I was like, "I'm hooked." I love this. So I accidentally became a yoga teacher. I did not set out to become a yoga teacher, but I set out to know more about yoga in general. And so then I just started devouring books, Rachel. Like everything from the Bhagavad Gita to the Sutras to the Hatha Pradipika to, Eckhart Tolle, Osho, like anything I could get my hands on, and got really deep into the soul, the soul's journey, ego formation, ego death, spiritual practices, Buddhism, Hinduism, and had a spiritual awakening. So at this time, I'm now in San Francisco, and I had gotten a job at Google as, chief of staff to the global brand marketing team, which was like another huge, shiny title, but my new self was emerging too. So now I find myself in San Francisco, which is like one of the most geographically gifted places on Earth, and I just kept getting pulled into nature as one might do in the Bay Area, right? Mm-hmm. I wanted to go to sleep earlier so I could get up earlier for a hike. I felt the drive to, like, eat cleaner. I wanted to catch sunsets at the Presidio. I was practicing yoga every single day, and I had a work-life balance that was never achievable for me in New York City. So that was the start of me integrating everything together, where like at first I had the mastery and then I was knee-deep in the mystery. Wow. So a series of events happened where I found myself, uh, separated from company again and thinking about, "Well, what do I do next?" And Columbia came as like, "Oh, maybe I'll just do this as like a stopover, like a flyover year." How arrogant, right? Like, "Oh, I'll just go to an Ivy League as like a stopover." But I didn't know what I was doing, and I thought, "I'll just do this because it's interesting to me, and this is the most beautiful gift I can give myself," which is like following what's interesting and continuing an intellectual pursuit with what was happening inside me, like my soul change. Mm-hmm. Um, and it wasn't until like quite recently that I have discovered like, "Oh, this is a career change." Like, I'm becoming an entrepreneur. Yes. So that's what this all has been. It's like a series of winding roads and red doors, and finding myself here and going, "Oh my God, I'm sitting across from Rachel Peck, who also is a spiritual seeker, who can talk to me about her own journey of perfectionism and accomplishment, Mm-hmm and your unique story here." But we're the same. We're the same in that there's something we know is going on. There's something different. There's something else beyond the material that is demanding that we show up and that we talk about this, and that we explore and we seek and we investigate and we like spiritually scramble our molecules so that we can find what it is and emerge from that fire and bring water to the people who are still in it. What would you say to someone who has that similar feeling you had? Something wasn't right, waking up not wanting to live a day in this life anymore. Mm-hmm. Had an inkling that there's something else out there. Mm-hmm. What would you say? I would say follow that inkling. Yeah. I think the first step in becoming the next version of who you are is trusting the knock at the door, the whisper in the soul, and the invitation to something greater. And that voice is persistent. It will not go away. So you can get better at stuffing it down or at silencing it or drinking it away or smoking it away or doing hookups so it goes away or whatever you're doing, but it will always come back and ask for your attention, your wholehearted attention. And so everyone will have their unique journey, but if I could give advice, it would be listen the first time. Because I had a series of knocks on my door, and then after a while it hit me, like I would be a cold pressed dummy if I didn't understand that God wants me to be an entrepreneur, that I should just create my own sandbox and invite people to play in my box, and that I have the opportunity to do it only the way I can. And how do I wanna use my time and talent? What is uniquely mine to give? And I think the first step is trusting that this voice, whether you call it God, source, universe, angel, spirit guide, whatever it is for you, it's benevolent and it's wise, and it is rooting for your absolute success in the material world and more importantly, in the spiritual world. And it wasn't until I really started to believe the words that I had been devouring in all these pages that I have come to know like, "Oh, that's available to me, too." It's not just that I read about Michael Singer's journey. it's not just that I read about Marianne Williamson's journey. It's not somebody else outside of there. I can take inspiration from their stories, but also I have a story, and my story is waiting for me to show up as the main character. Incredible. What does yoga mean to you, and what are you trying to bring to yoga communities? It's such a huge question. What does yoga mean to me? yoga is so vast and so expansive. I have a very unique position, if you wanna call it, in the yoga industry. I hate using that term 'cause it is a spiritual practice. But like I said, I had never taken a single yoga class before going to a yoga teacher training. When I turned up there, they were like: "Wait, what? you don't own a mat?" And I'm like: "No. I don't." That's really hard to believe knowing you now. Yeah. and so I learned in the East. I learned in Sri Lanka, and then I started reading all these books from the source. So you can imagine my surprise when I come to the West and come to a hot yoga class and, see the Instagram profiles where girls are, overly sexualized or we've whitewashed this culture and there's a colonizing aspect to it. And What I want so desperately for my followers and for people on social media and the interwebs to know is that there's so much more than physical asana. This is a deep spiritual that has been passed down for millennia, and that so much is available to us when we learn how to harness our prana, like the actual life force within us, how to use our breath, how to focus our attention, how to train the body so that it may be obedient to the mind. And this I have come to know through the study of yoga and then through academia, studying psychology, philosophy, and world religions, that it's all the same. So the container may look different, but what I just said about train the body so that it may be obedient to the mind, that's Seneca. So that's stoicism right there. And asana is only one of the eight limbs of yoga. There's so much philosophy baked into this practice that I think Westerners would be blown away to know that what happens in a 60-minute yoga class is just a speck on the broad spectrum of what yoga is. For those who may not know yoga terminology, will you tell us what asana and prana means briefly? Asana is the physical practice. So this is what we think of when we think of postural yoga, the downward dog, the happy baby, the child's pose. It's putting your body in a specific shape. And the reason that we practice asana is literally to train ourselves to be comfortable with uncomfortability. So in that regard, asana becomes a metaphor for life. How can I train myself to be twisted and folded and small while remaining vast and open and in control of my breath? So you use the physical body to experience the sensation, and then you master your breath in order to keep your composure and in order to ensure that your life force is moving as you intend it to. And then Prana translates into life force. So the brute, straight over the plate explanation is your breath. So how do you control pranayama is your breath work. so yogis train through breath retention, exhalation, all different kinds of modalities so that you can, learn to build heat or to find coolness or to slow your heart's rhythm or to speed it up, to find concentration, to bring yourself into relaxation, to elongate your meditation. So the idea is that you learn to master the breath so that you might breathe fewer breaths per minute so that you might live longer. Hmm. Hmm. I love yoga. Just Just gonna put that in there. Yes. I recommend for anyone who doesn't do yoga- Yes try something. It's incredible. Mm-hmm. What is one thing since coming to Columbia, starting SMB, that you have discovered about yourself that you did not know prior? Wow. Um I think that I have always felt like, again, you give me the parameters, I will give you an excellent output. You give me the input, I'll give you an A on the exam. You know, it was this reciprocal relationship of input and production. I think what I've learned is that I can take skills from corporate America and I can take My raw ambition and my childhood experiences and all the things that I've learned up until now, and find a way to make that work with my new self. Like bringing in the parts of me that I think are gonna help grow the next version of me, while leaving parts behind that maybe don't serve anymore. And so I have always been responsible and, you know, responsible for myself, but responsibility takes a new term now, where when you set out on an entrepreneur's journey, there is no other spiritual climb. You know, like this will reveal who you are and where your blocks are and what needs to be overcome and what is the core of your being and your purpose. And so it's revealing. You're standing naked in front of yourself trying to solve these questions, and you're no longer doing it for a report card or for a pay rise or for a manager or for a professor or mentor or teacher or anybody else. You're doing it for yourself. And so Columbia, to me, has been really fertile training ground for me to experience, experiment with that next future self, and particularly in SMB, doing it with lovely human beings who are all they themselves trying to figure out who they are and growing into the next version of themselves. And I feel hopefully that I've been able to contribute to this container in a way that feels loving and kind and supportive, but I feel so supported by teachers and faculty and staff here, and of course my fellow students who are helping me experiment with lots of really big ideas in the world and lots of really big feelings within. You know what I mean? It's like- Yeah let's just all hold that space and be able to turn up to conversations like this and be like, "Yeah, I-- This is what I found in my depression." "This is what I'm experimenting with now." And- So real So real and just get really real. Two things that I just noticed in the last minute or two while you were answering that question and throughout the podcast is I love how you compare yourself to your future self. Mm. You're not comparing to anyone else. You're respecting individuals around you in this program, and you've mentioned a few times your future self. Mm-hmm. And I think that's really beautiful. The second thing The way in which you answered that question I asked you of what's something you're discovering in this phase of life- Mm-hmm really brings home this message about labels, because you've been living these different lives your entire life, corporate, academic, yoga instructor, all these things that are labels of yours. Mm-hmm. And the intertwining of everything that you have gained and learned from each of those aspects of your life is so much of the essence of what the message is, is like we can take all these things and take all of these life endeavors- Mm-hmm and be on a spiritual path with them. Totally. So I really appreciate that. Totally. And that tension that I experienced prior, I didn't know there was another option. So let me explain. I feel like I've always been who I am inside, but it was like, "Oh, I can't let my spiritual panties show- 'cause I'm on Wall Street right now." Like, I can't be the woman leader who's gonna ask how everybody feels before we start a meeting. I can't hold space for someone's bad day or if they're feeling imperfect and bringing that energy to work. I've always felt those things, and I have always loved being a leader of people. I've loved working with-- I- in fact, I like headed up the internship program, and I did the junior level training programs, and I loved being a manager of people because I've always felt connected to people. And so much of our roles in very sterile corporate environments ask of us that we deprioritize the people in order to prioritize the profit. And it felt so uncomfortable to me where I couldn't be fully who I am in those spaces, and no amount of ambition in the world could help me overcome that challenge, because ambition without purpose is just sophisticated suffering. that's what it was. And so for me, that led to an absolute breakdown and dark night of the soul and depression and a burnout. So you take a high achiever and you take someone who's really ambitious, they don't quit because it's hard. They quit because it's not right. And it's clear that based on everything you've shared with us today, your resilience is shining through. We could go on about resilience. I wanna make sure that I ask you one question- Yeah while we have time. Maybe I'll have to have you back and we'll talk about resilience. I would love to. When I was walking to TC today and thinking about our conversation, one question kept coming to mind for you, what do you think 10-year-old Marissa would say to you right now? Oh my God. I hope she thinks I'm a badass. I hope she thinks that I am so badass. I think she would just say, like: "Wow, keep going. That's awesome." I never imagined. I grew up in a small town on the border of Mexico in South Texas, and I grew up behind boys. and so I was the tomboy who was, like, climbing trees and hanging around the baseball park and, kinda always trying to do what my brothers were doing and be a little bit ahead and catch up in a way. And we grew up in a big sports family, so we learned the power of competition and how, competition and sports really can teach you so many life lessons. And so that was the frame. And then, of course, I was a competitive gymnast, so I was always striving. There was always a next level. There was always something to perfect and work on. And it's so funny when you think of your 10-year-old self being like, "Oh, I'm, I'm, like, preparing for the next gymnastic meet," or "I'm preparing to be on the honor roll next semester. I'm preparing for..." And it's such a short-term goal because you're little- and you need to set short-term goals. And I never imagined that I would be in New York City. I never had that desire or that dream. I've been very fortunate to be in the right places at the right times and have the right conversations and, quite frankly, just take big swings at the plate, get really brave. I moved to New York City when I was 22 with two suitcases and my graduation money. Oh my gosh. So I walked the stage at my college graduation, packed up my little car, and nine days later I was in New York City. So when you talk about resilience- it's like, how do you be the 10-year-old that's, gonna try and hit, get a hit off of her brothers pitching? How do you take a 22-year-old who's trying to get to New York City? How do you take a 34-year-old who's trying to find herself and leave corporate America? And like now, how do you find a 37-year-old who's trying to figure out who she is now and who she's becoming? And so- It's a beautiful question because I think a lot of people never think about their 10-year-old selves and reflect on the journey and what values were instilled, what beliefs shaped your view, what beliefs no longer serve, how you've expanded, what do you actually think, who are you actually, and how do you want to choose to show up in the world? And in, in that exercise, that's what comes up for me. I wanna be someone who 10-year-olds go, "That's it." "That's what a woman can be. That's what a leader looks like. That's what I hope to be someday. That's where I hope to go. That's what I hope to see and look like." Because I think you have to see it to be it. You know, we talked about women in leadership positions, and I've been so fortunate to have amazing female leaders who I go, "That's it. That's who I think I should be. That's who I wanna emulate." And yeah, I think always keeping her near me is my secret weapon, because that little girl is cheerleading. I could see- Yeah your face light up thinking about 10-year-old Marissa. Yeah. So it was really sweet. And those questions that you ended with, I hope people listening will take the courage to answer, 'cause they're really important. And in spirit of gratitude- Yes and your practice, I am so beyond grateful for how you showed up today and for this conversation. With a minute left- Oh my gosh I would love to just give you the opportunity to share about your platform- Hmm where people can find you on Instagram, Substack. Marissa's everywhere. She's amazing. So go find her, and whatever else you might wanna end with. Yeah, thanks. I can't even believe an hour flew by, so I hope to get invited back. Um- Please you can find me on Instagram at Marissa the Yogini, and I also have a Substack called Love and Leadership. And I have a lot of amazing things planned for the summer and Q3 of next year. I'm gonna be offering a whole bunch of digital learning and more yoga philosophy and taking... rather putting into practice all the things that I've learned at Columbia and sharing them with the masses. So I'm very excited to connect with y'all on Instagram and Substack. Okay. Thank you so much, Marissa. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. My name's Rachel Peck, and you've been listening to "Unmasked".