Transcript
00:00:04
Speaker 1: This constant fear of like what other people think. There's no audience, Like who do you think is watching?
00:00:10
Speaker 2: If you really want to oversimplified, it's like we're not hearing that long for real. Therese like just let's roll even when it gets hard and bad. I agree with you, and it's like, hey, listen, this is hard and bad. And by the way, that's okay too, Like that's part.
00:00:25
Speaker 1: One hundred percent and it's going to pass like everything else, like including our lives.
00:00:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, hello, I'm mini driver.
00:00:33
Speaker 1: I've always loved Proust's questionnaire. It was originally in nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appear to be universal.
00:00:52
Speaker 3: And it made me wonder, what if these questions were just a jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters. So I adapted Pru's questionnai and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think are pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster?
00:01:31
Speaker 1: And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with.
00:01:39
Speaker 3: You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience, or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect. My guest today is the athlete, podcaster, and wellness oracle Gabrielle Reese. Gabby is an Olympian, which tells you right away a lot of what she is made of. We live in the same small beach community in California where she has these legendary workout sessions that leave people stronger, fitter, having physically achieved things they never.
00:02:14
Speaker 1: Thought they could. I've never run into her and been met with anything less than her wonderfully direct gaze, her warmth and her presence. There aren't many people who I really believe one hundred percent about health, wellness and fitness, because there always seems to be some kind of Hollywood snake oil attached to it. But Gabby Reese and her husband Led Hamilton are the real deal. Gabby's been living what she talks about on her podcast, The Gabby Reese Show since she was a kid training for the Olympics. This was such a great conversation where someone I'm deeply inspired by and admire so greatly. So my first question is where and when were you happiest?
00:02:58
Speaker 2: Where and when was I happiest? I think for me, you know, I always joke about in a way there's a part of me, a lot of me that's very very simple, and this has happened multiple times when I'm in bed and sort of the immediate circle everybody's okay. I know that feeling right before I go to bed of sort of feeling really good. You know, no girls in an urgency, they're healthy, I sort of, they're tucked in. Larry and I were in a dance like we're not stepping on each other's toes. So I think for me, that feeling of happiness that you talk about has really shown up for me in that moment right before I go to bed. And I would say, I'm a person who doesn't really look at the past too much, so I don't think it occurs to me. Oh, I was really happy when I was playing volleyball, or of course I enjoyed when my kids were babies. But I think it's this idea of I also kind of look forward often.
00:04:00
Speaker 1: It's a function of also being like, quite literally and figuratively, you guys lead an action packed life, and then there is a huge amount of movement, both kind of where you are geographically and like the things that make up yours and lad's life, and I'm assuming you're girls too, Like, do you think that that the notion of action is kind of the stasis and then that piece calm, everybody's quiet, everybody's tucked in, that the space for that is where you can really sort of rest and feel centered.
00:04:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that really supports that mentality. I think, you know, Lared heard a quote many years ago, never let your accomplishments be greater than your dreams. And I think both of us are sort of hardwired to go like, hey, what's around the corner and listen. It's it's great. You know this from your own experience to have had some semblance of hey, good job, well done. I could figure it out. I don't know how to I'm, you know, approaching something I don't know how to do. I have a body of evidence that I could probably try to figure something out. Those things are nice that give you that kind of confidence, but the hardwiring of that's not in my control. I can't spend a lot of time there, So why not create new experiences or fun or challenges or things that will bring me satisfaction and purpose. I feel like that's something that is hardwired in lair Night individually. And then the fact that we're in this coupleton makes it maybe a little easier.
00:05:32
Speaker 1: How long have you guys been together?
00:05:33
Speaker 2: We have been together for almost twenty nine years. We've been married for almost twenty seven years. Wow, I know I am way too young, way.
00:05:44
Speaker 1: Too young to have been lit.
00:05:49
Speaker 2: I just kid, you know, listen, And having said that, that sounds like a grand number. I always joke laired and I really almost got divorced to different times. You know, it's been a really good last fifteen years layered you know, stop drinking alcohol sixteen years ago. That really was really good for the relationships. So I never want to sell a bill of goods and like, yeah, it's just easy street. But I also think in some ways we are we have some things that make it easier to be together.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: So interesting. I think when your happiness is wrapped up with another human of how the parameters of that change and the stuff that becomes non negotiable about Yes, we always go I have to look to myself to kind of change to evolve in a relationship, but there are certain hard and fast things that you go, this is no longer working, and it's kind of like evolve or die. And I think it's amazing to be able to stay in that version of happiness with someone that accommodates sort of radical evolution and radical self knowledge to support kind of the organism of a family. Like it's it's a proper commitment.
00:06:58
Speaker 2: It is. And maybe one thing I do buy into coming from sports is there is good hard and I don't believe in making myself my life unnecessarily hard. I don't like to do that. I like to actually make things easy, but I do seek out good, hard, hard that I know goes to another level and not shying away from it. But at the end end of the day, it is still on each of us as individuals, like there's just no way around it. Like I could have the greatest partner who pushes me, you know, maybe I get some courage from laired to be kind of certain parts of my personality that I wouldn't, you know, even for my children. It's like it's on me to figure out what's going to make me feel good. And Byron Katie said to me once something one time years ago. She said, you know, if you want to change your environment, change yourself, And I thought, yeah, it's such a such a constant truth. And it's so hard because.
00:08:03
Speaker 1: You think I can visit them, I know, because it's so much that I need to see somebody else's shit than it is to see you or to offer up advice on how for them to fix it. The exo stuff is so much easier than the internal journey. And yet that's why we've got to do it. What is the quality you like least about yourself?
00:08:28
Speaker 2: Jeez, I think I'm not looking for fun and that sort of that's not great. I know, Lair looks at me on the side of his head so many days because he really is looking for fun, like the real fun. They'll like out in nature, you know, be in the moment, have the wind blowing, just like the good fun. And I'm sort of like, yeah, I'm looking for work and order, and maybe that's my version of trying to have some kind of control. I get a deep sense of fulfillment from Oh, okay, goal task completion. I love all that. Like, if you want to visit with me and talk, I can be funny and fun, but I'm not personally looking for like big fun, and I think that's a really important part of being human being.
00:09:17
Speaker 1: I really like that observation. No one's ever answered that, but it's sort of I think it makes for quite a good compliment with someone like Lad who is essentially Puck in the Shakespearean sense of just the mischief maker, the seeker of the fun and the naughtiness and the loves to get in trouble just to see how he can get out of it, Like Puck kind of needs to be with Eel. Yeah, someone who's taking it a little bit more seriously.
00:09:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's funny because obviously at my age, I have really learned like it's hard to get me to react. I don't get aggravated. But as far as like, you know, do you want to go get you know, in trouble, I'm sort of like, yeah, I'll be ready at like seven, you guys when to get back. And maybe I intuitively chose Lair because I enjoy it through him. I know it's important, so I have a splash of it in my life, even if it's not all coming through me. I'll give you an example. I went to this gentleman named Peter Evans, and he said, you know you don't have wonder, and you know you have to get back to your bliss right, And I thought, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about. Like when he said that word bliss, when I see people that are like freely floating and like in my bliss, I thought, I don't know that I've ever experienced that. And I am very open minded. But when you talked about wonder, when you see a small child and everything is in wonder, I'm assessing, who's that, what's this? What does that mean? Versus wonder? And so that would be another kind of bolt on adjunct to this fun component that I really think I could do better.
00:10:57
Speaker 1: Have you ever actively gone and created your version of wonder and fun and what does that look like?
00:11:03
Speaker 2: No, because I don't think it's something you can fake, right, It's the way that the world hits you. So my version of that is I'm just gonna see, I'm gonna look, I'm not going to think, I know, I'm just gonna take it in. And so that has been the practice for me that has come out of that.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: That sounds incredibly fun to be actively present. What question would you most like answered?
00:11:41
Speaker 2: I guess it's not unique. You know, you go through this life, and especially during this time when it's really wild and contentious, it's like when you see the lopsidedness of all the beauty and the injustice, I guess I would like to understand why that has to coexist. And I know bright light dark shadow, and you can't have light without dark, but I guess sometimes when you see such extreme I would love to understand is that the only way is that the only way that the one beauty and the magic can exist is with the sort of other side. I always look at that and think, man, that's a lot of suffering for some of this other stuff.
00:12:25
Speaker 1: I often wonder if it is I mean, I use the word God just some other force. Is that God made, force made? Or is that man made? Like I think about that often, Like you sort of see it in nature. You see the ostensible rawness, but there doesn't seem to be a rage behind it. You see that it's balanced the light and dark in nature, which is what makes me feel that we have a hand and just test savage.
00:12:51
Speaker 2: But is that our lesson? Right? Is that we have to go through that to tame the beast within ourselves? I don't It's so complex, right, you go, man, what is the real lesson? What is the real purpose of that? Because, like you said, in nature, it feels very straightforward. It doesn't feel personal, and it's freaking brutal at the same time.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe that's it. It doesn't feel personal. It feels like it's part of a rhythm that has always existed, whereas ours feels a lot more manufactured. And you're right, it's like, could we ever evolve from that? I wonder, like, is it possible for us to evolve beyond the savagery? I suppose of the way in which we whether it's treat each other or treat ourselves. I don't know. That's a good one. That's actually a really good one. I think about AI as well, and going is that part of the lure of that is this idea that you could fashion and create a program that doesn't have the kind of awfulness that is part of being human.
00:13:56
Speaker 2: I asked this gentleman who runs the Harvard study once it's a happiness study, right, and it's gone on for I think seventy five years, And I said, you know, listen, we've written books about it, and there's poems and movies and songs, like we know the answers. What is it about us that we just can't figure it out? And he looked at me and he was like, oh, Gabby, that's how we gained wisdom. And I thought, fair enough. And so the AI think will be interesting because some of the lessons that's what's so great about experience. You can't hack it, you can't shortcut it. Right, It is yours to possess, to own.
00:14:32
Speaker 1: It's certainly going to speed stuff up.
00:14:33
Speaker 2: Oh hell yes, it is.
00:14:36
Speaker 1: Thinking about what the gentleman at Harvard said of the idea of getting wiser Is it just that we can't see our evolution because for us, it's it's generational, Like if you could look at it in a thousand years, would you be able to see this bell curve that we don't know that we're part of because we can't see it yet.
00:14:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the transitions are really really uncomfortable, and we obviously clearly in a wild transition because you know, is it a transition away from a biological into a hybrid. It's so funny, I said the laird. Today. I vacillate between I want to check out and just go live, you know. But we're of the age that we're supposed to be here and we're supposed to help, and we're supposed to usher in the next group. We're supposed to act like the adults. But then it's like, is the information or wisdom we have almost useless because is it moving away from biology towards a mashup with technology? So that is sort of an interesting question. I still think, because we're in our biology at this moment, that it's really nice to consider it because I feel like when we have a relationship with it, you feel better.
00:15:48
Speaker 1: I agree. I do think a lot about our carbon based NICs becoming potentially obsolete, or as you said, a hybrids. It just goes back to be what you said about just be present. It's forward moving. It is always forward moving, so we might as well be that way as well. Yeah, what person, place, or experience most altered your life.
00:16:17
Speaker 2: I've had a few. I lived with a couple from the age of two to seven. They recently, I actually both passed away. They were a couple from Long Island, New York, and they took care of me. And my mother was a young mother in her early twenties. She had sort of a far out. She was training dolphins at a circus in Mexico and she met my father, who's from Trinidad. I did not live with my parents, so they were really pivotal, and I grew up in the Caribbean. After that, I had some families that would take me in even though I was living with my mother at the time. I had a coach in college that was really really instrumental and sort of talking about personal accountability and help me. So I'd say I sort of had these outside people, And what I learned from all that was we think our parents, like, oh my mom did or didn't do this, my dad did or didn't do that. But sometimes we have people that didn't have to step in and they do, and so we got bonus even though we felt like we got chinched on this one side. And so I think when I got a little older, I was like, man, I had some pretty stellar people who stepped in and really helped me navigate and create a really wonderful life.
00:17:27
Speaker 1: Do you think that by being able to acknowledge that these people were incredibly generous and wonderful to step into your life when perhaps they didn't necessarily have to in the way that we think parents should, did that help you let go of the hard things? So it became a bonus. It became something that was actually light filled as opposed to something that was dark and sad. And the idea of living with someone other than your parents at two to seven might like when you say that to me, it sounds sad. But did you just manage to reframe that later because there was a lot of light in it.
00:18:01
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it's also maybe surrendering to maybe it was better for me. Maybe my life has turned out better even though there was a great deal of unknown and my hypervigilance comes from not living with my parents. My lack of fun, my lack of wonder comes from really being bounced from the nest very early. But what I came to a relationship with is Listen, I was out of my house at seventeen and totally independent at eighteen. I'm going to adult a lot longer than I was a kid. So let's take a few hard, shitty years for the opportunity to go like, oh wait, I have tools that I can build a life. I don't like stuff, I know how to change it. I have discipline, I can plan, I can navigate, and that came from that childhood. So it certainly took time. And I would also say today I have the best relationship with my mother. I completely accept and love and have no problem with her. But I only seek out the relationship with her that works for me. So I also have a brutality with that being able to reframe. So I can reframe it and I honor myself, and sometimes that's brutal.
00:19:16
Speaker 1: Well, you have extraordinary clarity around the tenets of your story, which perhaps is part of like again, what makes us the most human is our ability to really examine what our narratives are and to not ignore them or just seek out the bits that we like and ignore the other, but rather see the whole and then holistically move forward. It's really hard to do. I think it requires a kind of brutality, not brutal in the way that what I see in the world right now, but I mean clarified rather than brutal.
00:19:48
Speaker 2: Well, because with that you can't blame anyone. You're not a victim of your own story. And really, the more people you meet, everybody's had a thing like I am not a victim. But having said that, but I also know how to ask for and put myself in situations that work and make me feel good, and so those can go part and parcel well.
00:20:08
Speaker 1: I mean also because you've clearly became an advocate for yourself, really yeah, or maybe we're encouraged you as well by your coach, like nobody can advocate for you better than you. I don't know. I think a lot of people want to be told what to do, and I mean that in the nicest way. Like I set up an art thing with a boyfriend when I was like nineteen, and the art piece was just the folding table in Portobello Market in London, and we just had a tent card that said advice. We just put up a chair and then we sat on two chairs and I was like, I'm nineteen. I barely know how to tie my shoelaces. I was like, how am I going to answer any questions? And he was like, you just do the best you can, because really most people want you to listen and offer a little bit of advice. And that's exactly what happened. Like we answer questions on infidelity and the people's mortgage rates, whether or not they should move in with someone. It was crazy. People really want someone else to tell them what to do. So I think those moments of being able to believe that you are your own advocate and that you actually can give yourself good advice, I think it's pretty rare, gabby to be able to do that, and kind of amazing to have cultivated that.
00:21:16
Speaker 2: But you have to question yourself also at every moment. Again, there lies another duality, which is if you're going to be a good steward of your story, you better pay attention and not think you're right. So it's this weird fine line of leaning into this is the way to go and keep paying attention keep questioning yourself, where is this decision coming from? So I think it's also staying awake the whole time. So you are steering the ship at least hopefully more times than not, towards the light or the right direction.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, to be aware of what it is to be the captain of your ship. Yeah, what relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
00:22:22
Speaker 2: That's an interesting question. I know this is probably not great. I like to be surprised, but I don't want to be surprised, so like I'm great with oh I didn't see that coming, but I always sort of feel like with love for me, and I really hope to be this for somebody. Is I'm not really gonna surprise you. It's not going to be like oh I thought she was this, but.
00:22:46
Speaker 1: Wow, she's that un steadiness yes, but not fixed right and with allowance and movements.
00:22:54
Speaker 2: So it's sort of like this big bubble that kind of bounces around and it won't break, but it can kind of motion bend, But the inside of it is there's something sort of like there's sort of a volume that you understand and know. It's not a lot more or less. So I try to be that and really I don't need for it to be great or perfect and I'm not looking for someone to save me. And you're not gonna tell me anything where I'm gonna be like ooh, that's bad. Just be congruent and I'm cool with it. And I really want to be that and no, no, tit for tat and one for one. If I do it, I'm going to do it because I want you and you owe me nothing. And if you do that for me too, I would hope that that's the same.
00:23:41
Speaker 1: Wow, it's very stoic. I really like that. It speaks to like proper ancient stoicism, that notion of I will do what I say. I will say what I do, and that's what you can expect from me, and that is what I would most appreciate from you. Would you say that's probably having very clear boundaries around what it is that you your expectation of a person or the expectation of yourself.
00:24:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I'm much harder on myself than I am on others. I think that I have learned, especially through parenting and being in a long relationship. I can barely control myself. But that's going to be the person I'm the hardest on and I'm not going to be that hard on you. That's on you, but just show me the truth. Tell me the truth. And also I'm going to keep moving. So the hope would be if we're going to be in this relationship, whatever relationship that is, with the exception of my children, you want to have forward motion in your own version, and then we will know each other. I'm not going to hang back because I can't. Right, So, even if you're a movement side to side or up and down, it's cool. That is sort of like maybe we'll meet kind of thing. I always tell my girlfriends it's perfectly healthy to ask yourself, what do I get from this relationship, even if it's Hey, Minnie is really bright and I like the way she lives her life and with Laird, obviously, I'm trying to to show up in service, but you can bet I do some inventory being like, also when am I getting because otherwise I don't know that that's honest.
00:25:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I do. I agree in that inventory particularly, and I think that that does really help to find love for me as well, is that everybody is sort of taking responsibility for their own personal inventory within a relationship.
00:25:22
Speaker 2: My kids are the only ones. Like I always say, there's only one group that I never go like, what am I getting out of this? It's like, I'm your mom, I'm going to be your mom. I'm going to be here.
00:25:37
Speaker 1: In your life. Can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster.
00:25:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of my daughters went through something when she was thirteen. It's like the stuff you hope never occurs, and you think, I'm going to have a peaceful house, I'm going to be there, and sometimes you realize your kids have a journey. And I really got flipped upside down on it. You think, are we going to get through this? Is she going to get through this? And what came out of that was a real opportunity not only for her and I to grow closer together, but for me to change as a person, which was so wildly uncomfortable. I mean, I wasn't that young. I was in my forties. Anything could happen to me, and it was not great. Even as a young kid. For me, the hardest would be when something happens to one of your kids. And so I could say that that certainly was not only a wake up call, but I have the opportunity to be a better or different person from something that was excrucinatingly painful for her and for me.
00:26:38
Speaker 1: And were you conscious of taking those things that you learned with you on and did she also do you feel like take those lessons on with her?
00:26:47
Speaker 2: She absolutely did what I have learned as a parent, and I know you can. Really you're not really telling them anything, you're modeling. Nobody really tells you. We go like this, oh okay, and we do exactly what we think. That's what we do. And my girls are strong willed, imagine. So I thought, I'm uncomfortable and I resent the fact that I'm having to make a change because the tendency is to be like, hey, I'm going to drop my kid off, fix them, and I'll pick them back up when they're fixed. And it's like yeah, no, no, no, the whole group gets to make a change. I think your kids really appreciate that you go, I don't know, I'm fumbling through, but I'm going to try. That is powerful for them. Not that you weren't.
00:27:29
Speaker 1: Perfect, absolutely, not that you weren't perfect exactly, and amazing to see that behavior like that will always be with not only her, but I think probably with everyone else in your family of going we went through this thing and now we are on the other side of that, and this is how it shaped us. And I think it's amazing to be able to look back positively on things that were extraordinarily hard.
00:27:52
Speaker 2: I remember clear as day going up into the bathroom in my bedroom and I literally stood six inches from the mirror and looked into one of my eyeballs and I was like, you're gonna have to keep your shit together right now, because the impulse was to go, Oh my god, like I'm gonna follow apart and it was like, oh, yeah, no. And I had a friend say to me, and I know people can relate to this. We all get our turn and our time in the chamber, and sometimes we're gonna have to be there longer than when we want cool. And I was like, oh shit, And that's the thing. Sometimes we can't just fix it and solve it right you. We're gonna have to go all the way through it and we think we're out of it and then all of a sudden you get pulled back in. So just if anyone is going through anything like that, just keep asking for the answers, and remember this, whatever we're going through, if everyone's here, like you know, Layedi says, if there's air going in and out of the nose in the face, we can work it all out. Whatever it is, we can work it out.
00:28:55
Speaker 1: And on that brilliant note, I just l's philosophy is their going in and out of the pace. It's not over. It's true.
00:29:06
Speaker 2: My oldest daughter, who is almost twenty nine, was like going through something at nineteen and he's like, oh my god, just make it to twenty five. And I thought, oh, yeah, that's right.
00:29:17
Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing, it's really amazing. Is she ready twenty nine?
00:29:23
Speaker 2: I don't think you know that one. You know the middle who's twenty and.
00:29:27
Speaker 1: Okay, I didn't know you had an older daughter.
00:29:30
Speaker 2: Laird came with a He came with a four month old.
00:29:34
Speaker 1: That's right.
00:29:35
Speaker 2: So I became a step parent at twenty five. But see, my experience with living with my aunt Or and uncle Joe when I was little reminded me that love is love, and so I didn't have to be her mom to be another source of love, so that I had that lesson early.
00:29:50
Speaker 1: That's exactly how it is for my son and my partner. His name's Addison, and he we call him Daddison. They have their own separate relationship that is amazing and a source of great joy. It's funny that the notion of convention can keep us shackled to things having to look a certain way. And I think clearly empirically, so in your own life, things didn't look the way that the in quote should have looked. But you grew and you got some incredible thing from those people.
00:30:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you don't get on each other's genetic nerves. Imagine that. Yeah, my daughter is so much like me. I'm like, oh my god. So there's so many bonuses.
00:30:32
Speaker 1: Oh, Gaby, thank you so much with all my heart.
00:30:35
Speaker 2: Thanks.
00:30:36
Speaker 1: Mini Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, Executive produced by me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support from Jennifer Bassett, Zoey Denkler, and Ali Perry. That theme music is also by Me and additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Addison, Henry Driver, Lisa Castella, Anick Oppenheim, a, Nick Muller, and Annette Wolfe, a w kPr, Will Pearson, Nikki Ittor Morgan Lavoy and mangesh A ticke Adore
