First Person Plural: EI & Beyond
First Person Plural: EI & Beyond
Sasha Dingle: Lessons from the Start Gate
Athlete and entrepreneur, Sasha Dingle joins Liz Solomon to discuss her experience learning to live in harmony with her drive to excel.
Dingle is a high achiever in many facets of her life. She is the Founder and Director of Mountain Mind Project. She is a qualified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher by the UCSD School of Medicine MBPTI. As a meditation teacher she facilitates mindfulness programs to an international client audience in the areas of leadership development, healthcare, education, and sports mental fitness.
Daniel Goleman talks about his Emotional Intelligence Courses, available at danielgolemanemotionalintelligence.com
What is something you're good at? Jumping? Do you want to get better at something? Yes? What? fortnight? Why do you want to get better at it have itself on that plane? How does it feel to get better at something? Is this yours?
Hanuman Goleman:Hello, this is Hanuman Goleman.
Elizabeth Solomon:Hi out there is Elizabeth Solomon.
Hanuman Goleman:Hello everyone. This is Daniel Goleman. You're listening to first person plural emotional intelligence and beyond this episode, we'll look at achievement and what it means as an individual. We're talking to Sasha Dingell, who is, among other things, fantastic athlete.
Elizabeth Solomon:Dan, I'm actually the first question I'm curious about is how when When did achievement become a part of your model of emotional intelligence? And was it always called achievement? Or did you call it by a different name in the early years,
Daniel Goleman:you know, when I started to look at the competencies that distinguish outstanding performers in the workplace, the best leaders achievement kept coming up as one of the abilities that distinguishes outstanding performers. And so I incorporated it into my model of emotional intelligence. When I wrote the book, working with emotional intelligence around 98, when we're when we're looking at in the context of sports, or individual sports versus team sports,
Hanuman Goleman:there's an aspect to the individual sport where if you are a biker, a mountain biker, you have to get out on the trails, and practice, practice, practice busting your ass, just learning all of the, all of the bikie things I don't know, not a particularly high achieving mountain biker. Although I love it, it's just not my achievement orientation. And but then, there are also the systems that support that individual, there are the the sponsors that can give you the equipment that makes you hire person performing athlete, and there are the personal supports that have that support your you emotionally, the love and the reassurance, and you can do this, you know, and and then there's a coach that can help you with that drive and help keep your eye on the goal. These are all external systems, even for that individual sport.
Elizabeth Solomon:I mean, yeah, I think about that, too, of like how much motivation we get through the cultural icons that are available to us, right. And there's so much around this. I mean, if we don't see ourselves represented in certain roles, it's really hard for us to visualize ourselves, achieving a level of success that we don't see people like us achieving, you know, and I think Sasha talks really beautifully about that, in her interview, just you know, growing up as a woman of color, and doing competitive skiing, in an industry that's predominantly white, predominantly male, and certainly caters to a certain socio economic bracket.
Hanuman Goleman:Yeah, and you can look at any, any area, whether it's politics, or business, or sports, and that's really pertinent. Having the models
Elizabeth Solomon:has been a beautiful part about the rise of social media, I think and the ability for the people to sort of take exposure and storytelling into their own hands if we think about how many more stories and role models are available to us and even think about just like, all of the fashion brands these days that are focused on inclusivity of different body types, let alone different races and gender identities. And I've been thinking about that a lot because it feels like especially raising a child especially raising a girl it feels so different from the world I grew up in where there was like just thinking about, you know, achievement of certain beauty standards, there was a very kind of one, one single sided definition of beauty and the 80s and 90s that I was exposed to and when I look into media now I see so much more diversity and I think it's such a signaling of hope for me.
Hanuman Goleman:I was reflecting a little bit about the pieces that need to that are there are of personal achievement in my mind. And for me there are these it's broken down into these three parts. There's the motivation for it, which is like our our vision or our mission personally And what what our goals are. And then that translates into influencing the conditions. However we might have for an athlete, it's, it's working hard to develop our skills. For an entrepreneur, it's, it's getting the resources and the processes in place and the systems set up to, to get our, you know, our product to market or whatever it might be, or get that venture capital or, and then, then there's that third part, which is the outcomes, and that, that may or may not work, and we can do the, we can have the best goal, and we can do the best job we can with getting the conditions to be there. And then it just might not work, how we want it to. And so there's this, this like, working hard, but also not being attached to the outcome. And that allows us to continue to work. I mean, when we think that what we're that our goal has failed, if we aren't attached to the outcome of it, then we can keep working for the next goal that that failure or those conditions just become the bedrock for the next thing that we do. It's not a failure. It's just a step. And, and we get to build the next step from there. This could be a whole podcast in itself.
Elizabeth Solomon:This episode is our third conversation in our three part series on achievement, one of four self management competencies, and Dan Goldman's framework of emotional intelligence, and award winning athlete and successful entrepreneur, Sasha is here to speak about her own experience of achievement. Sasha, welcome to the show. Thanks,
Sasha Dingle:Liz, I'm excited to talk with you today. Not only
Elizabeth Solomon:are you an athlete, something we kind of commonly associate with achievement, but you're also trained in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. It's something that you teach, through your business mountain mind project, you teach that to individuals, you bring that to organizations, and you're also trained in Dan's model of emotional intelligence. And when many of us were getting trained as coaches in this methodology, you were leading many of the mindfulness practices in our curriculum. And so I just want to name that because it was such a joy to sort of hear your voice every day, and be in your presence virtually, as I was getting trained as an AI coach,
Sasha Dingle:I appreciate that. Yeah, it's fun to merge, I think the world of mindfulness and performance and performance at work and performance sport, so
Elizabeth Solomon:we have our own definitions of what it means to achieve. And I would love to just give you the opportunity just to say, how do you define achievement? How do you think about achievement? How does that word even land with you?
Sasha Dingle:Honestly, I think it's been the driving force in my life. I'm very proud of the year I won the free scream world tour. And not just that, I won that series, but that it was a year of being on the podium to get there. So all the steps along the way, I'm proud of going to Vietnam at 23, to teach as a university professor straight out of college and turning back toward a place that had been a part of my heritage. But I didn't know if I had a connection to I'm proud of starting my own business at 27. And kind of training directors and managers in the hospital. At a young age, I was 27, when I was working in HR, the interim business partner, the hospital, I like that there are a lot of different pieces of me that I've pushed to see how far I can take them. So to me, it's about excellence. But also, I think, really, what it comes down to is it's about transformation and challenge. That's the part that feeds me that it is a means to it's sort of a pathway to constant growth and testing limits and maybe pushing them further.
Elizabeth Solomon:I love that because I always like to make the clarification that achievement isn't really just about getting things done for the sake of getting things done, but that there has to be a deeper motivation and sense of meaning there. And I would love to start to talk about achievement in the context of your athletic career and just have you tell us a little bit about your history as an athlete.
Sasha Dingle:Sure. So I started skiing with my family when I was two I started mountain biking when I was eight. And those eventually became The sports that I would do at an international level, skiing professionally, later in life. And so, by the time I was in high school, I was the only girl on my junior development mountain bike team. And simultaneously also competing in ski racing. So it's mountain bike racing and ski racing. Around the time I was 16, or 17, I was invited to travel and compete around the world with the national development system that is the recruitment feeder for the US Ski Team. While I was in college, I start ice kind of switched within the sport of skiing to compete in what's called Big Mountain freeride skiing. And so I was competing on the free Skiing World Tour for about three years, I eventually won that series and then qualified for the Freeride World Tour, dealt with some injuries, grabbed for sort of what was my offseason sport, mountain biking and qualified to compete on the Enduro World Series. So two sports, the highest level of competition for both of those sports. And I think athlete is just this identity that sort of endured with me for my whole life,
Elizabeth Solomon:I'd love to hear a little bit about any reflections or insights you have of you know, being a child and sort of experiencing that drive within you to not just accomplish something and not just compete, but also in sports, where not many women, let alone women of color are represented. For me,
Sasha Dingle:that was the place in my life where I felt most in alignment with myself. So for exactly those reasons that you pointed to, you know, I have a lot of different aspects of myself that are associated with identities that are termed minority. And there's sort of that suggestion of inferiority in that term. And that didn't fit my experience. And so, in my athlete life, that was the first place that I found that this identity of strength of resilience, and so when I stepped into my skis or on my bike, in those moments, the way the world experienced me externally actually fit, which was a rare thing in other areas of life, it fit with how I experienced myself internally. So that felt like me at my most natural self. And then once I had discovered that I could channel it into places like, you know, as a kid in school, or my professional life, how I teach how I lead now. But that was the first place, I actually felt that
Elizabeth Solomon:I'm hearing like a real sense of empowerment, and competence, and a sense of alignment. You know, thinking again, of you as a child, what were the images that you had around you, who are your role models,
Sasha Dingle:so I shared skiing with my family of four, so it's my parents and my brother. So, you know, I saw that in them. And he's very different Giles, I think, for my dad, I saw this, definitely the achievement piece, this, this constant wanting to improve oneself. And in my mom, I just saw this fearlessness. And so my mom's side of the family are all refugees from Vietnam, they have left like, right at the very end of the Vietnam War. And she became a chemical engineer in the US. She also had graduated college early. So she was she was modeling this way, in different places in her life, and would bring me along to women and engineering camp, so that, you know, her approach inspired me, and also this peace of recognizing to that, you know, you could lose everything. And it's still okay, that was also modeled in her and I think that allowed me to have the risk taking that was necessary in achievement. And these paths of, you know, trying to pursue something at a high level, failure is part of that and risk is a part of that. And so, I had a high tolerance for risk.
Elizabeth Solomon:I'm so curious about that, you know, that tolerance for risk and that sense with like, ultimately, even if I fail, I'll be okay. I mean, it sounds like as a kid you already pretty brave right to get up on a mountain bike and to get up on skis. But I realized that you know, it's one of the things that hinders a lot of us from achieving is a deep fear of failure.
Sasha Dingle:I was like a 15 year old ski racer in you know, we would wear these skin tight spandex suits to go faster, being told by my coach that if you you know, ski afraid, you're more likely to get hurt as we're being asked to go down a slope as fast as you drive down the interstate on your car. That was downhill ski racing. So, I was adapting strategies and I think I had to look to other areas of my life for what would work. I mean, no one taught me how to not feel afraid in the face of that. And so I think I always had a really strong relationship with the wisdom of my body, and a really strong relationship with the natural world. And those are actually where I look to as my sources for inspiration. So in the moments where it was like, you're about to go really fast on the scary, icy thing. Where could I put my attention that felt supportive, it was something I could feel in the movement of my body, or this beautiful view of the mountain. And there's nothing guaranteed when you're running your own operation. I, okay. performance anxiety, I think is a common experience to anyone who is speaking in front of a group of people. And so I've realized that this actually, for me, never goes away. And that's been the main place where I grabbed from sort of this start gate ritual I would do is before I have to speak in front of a group, because I'm still feeling that physiology of anxiety go through my system. And I would reframe in the start gate, Oh, this isn't nervousness as excitement and you actually really similar physiologically, you feel excited. And so some of these techniques to prepare myself, like pre speaking in front of a group of people, there's that similarity. I mean, I think people think that as you get better, at a sport, you're supposed to not be afraid anymore. It's not true. Fear is always there. Just figuring out how to manage it, I think the same thing goes for, for me speaking in front of people, which is like my bread and butter as a instructor who works with groups. That feeling of nervousness or anxiety, or maybe in it is excitement to that kind of racing energy through my physiology never goes away the very first time it's a new group. So I manage it with similar strategies. I think that there's this really interesting interaction and tension that we hold between goals, and a mindfulness practice. But what I found is that goals are kind of that Northstar, that I will continuously to move toward, even if, you know, I veer off track along the way, they orient me. But I need to also not hold them so tightly that they get in the way of the action that I need to take now because the only place I can move toward my goals is in the present moment. That's the sort of unit of possibilities it takes place in the present. That's why that is so important to a mindfulness practice, that present moment. But yeah, goals can get in the way of being present, if we're holding that in the center of attention. So it's this funny interplay of reminding myself of why I'm here doing what I'm doing. So
Elizabeth Solomon:I just really resonate with what you're saying, if you think of a business, how do I create a five year 10 year strategy, when the entire world feels like it just got turned upside down and could get turned upside down again, at any moment. And so this tension between being like, focused and emergent, I think, is something that people can relate to like both individually and like in an organizational sense, and just in how we're adapting our systems and thinking about direction,
Sasha Dingle:right? Completely Yeah, because if we hold on to the goal so tightly, that it doesn't allow us to be nimble, which is what's needed to actually get us there, then that goal is getting in the way instead of, you know, adding to them kind of drive. And I would think of things like I would actually do this in the start gate, I would remind myself to not get so lost in visions of me on the podium with metals around my neck, or so stuck in rumination of What didn't I do to prepare for this moment, it just had to come back to right now, still with the aim of heading toward the podium. But I couldn't focus on that we can't focus on that when we're actually trying to take the steps to, you know, living into what we want
Elizabeth Solomon:now being fully present in the process instead of to oriented on the outcome.
Sasha Dingle:Yeah, and we can cultivate it. 100%. So yeah, I might have had an affinity toward this. But absolutely, my mindfulness practice has has helped me to fine tune it or to apply it where it really supports me so my dad started bringing me to yoga class with him when I was eight. I think that I also had a contemplative approach to most sports because they are they take place outdoors. And that was where I felt like I belonged, and felt the most comfortable in these different arenas in my life. And so growing up in Vermont, there was always this strong sense of place in the natural world, I mean, I would get lost all the time in the woods and explore. And I think that is a contemplative life in child form. And so the way that I approached even competitive sports involves this, I mean, I remember even in high school, doing a lot of the same sort of like pre event rituals I do now or pull from before I go to public speak, or something like that. And they're actually the same practices. And so I was finding ways to ground my body, check in with my mind, notice, when fear was there, fine tune it, so it couldn't get in the way, look at the mountains, you know, because they inspired me and gave me sort of the sense of comfort that they were around me in the start gate, but also reminding myself to not get too lost and how beautiful they are, or too lost in visions of myself on the podium. And so this present moment focused, sort of functional approach. And the start gate was always a part of this for me. And then I was studying psychology in college, and I picked up these books that were at the intersection of psychiatry, and Buddhist psychology. And that's when I realized that you could really train and amplify and cultivate these qualities of mind.
Elizabeth Solomon:So curious, and you talk about kind of mitigating fear, if there are any strategies that you can share with our listeners about what happens for you when a fearful thought arises? And what are some of the simple tools that you draw on to coach yourself through that,
Sasha Dingle:I think the strategies I was using, you know, in high school, and through my early career as an athlete, were, in a way, disregarding my body. And so it worked. In that when fear showed up in my system, I could just put it aside and block it out and go. But as an older athlete, with a little more wisdom and injury and illness along the way, I realized that that is not a sustainable approach. And so it does work. And we also have to I have to look at sort of what is the intentionality behind this strategy? So more of like a middle point of the two now, it's almost this intimacy with fear, like really discerning, what is this emotion? Or what is this signal? For me, I really tend to notice the sensations in my body more than I noticed, like thought as like an inner critic or something like that. And so for me, these signals kind of show up as sensation. And so I'll use strategies to kind of ground find somewhere else in my body to place the tension if these sorts of physiology of fear is showing up. But it's, it's really important to notice the signal and then figure out what it means especially with fear because fear keeps us safe. And so it was looking at when fear showing up as I'm standing at the top of this, you know, narrow shoe, I can't see my landing or in the start gate, high stakes, you know, high risk situation, fear of showing up and trying to discern, does this mean that this just looks scary? And any normal human being would be feeling fear right now because of how it looks, but it's well within my ability, or is this fear here because this fear is going to keep me safe today, and today is not the day I need to back off. I need to walk away from this. That's sort of the process that I've adopted in being with fear. Hmm,
Elizabeth Solomon:really attuning to the sensations and then understanding do they fit for the context? Or is this kind of a primal or almost a rational response? I'm wondering, just to have you talk a little bit about that of that transition for you from dissociating as a as a technique to integrating and really being with your entire experience.
Sasha Dingle:Okay, so really, the realization came about when I was on my way to compete at the Enduro World Series over crank works week in Whistler, and this was sort of what I was calling my second career as an athlete. I had gone through post health issues I grabbed for mountain biking because it felt more freeing. It felt like there was a learning curve that was exciting. I was on my way to compete up at the Enduro World Series at Whistler, and I called my coach who was training me at the time and I told her I just realized for the very first time after 15 years competing at an international level that at the deepest level, I don't believe in myself. And so that was a moment that came out of this forced having to pull back from, you know, my career as an athlete. And that's actually probably the lesson for me of looking at achievement and what feeds me because because this place of competition or this this life of an athlete was where I had built my identity. In such a strong way, it was where I found my belonging, when I wasn't finding that in the human community or in other areas of my life, I held on to that so strongly, and, and yes, it was my strength of resilience. So that, you know, I could build my expectations so high and below past others expectations for me. But it was also there was a flip side to that, I had to look at what was feeding that drive, even feeding that resilience. And that sort of continuation of just keeping going forward no matter what. And when I really stopped and looked, it was these things like, I don't know, if I'm enough, I don't know if I belong here. But like I had pushed that inner critic so far down, I really didn't even hear it's been an exercise in noticing that there is a voice that can say these things, it was so shoved deep that for me, this inner critic showed up in the form of sensations in my body, what started to become my reality was that the accumulated load over time, I had kind of reached a breaking point. So and it was interesting that it took place right after probably the best competition season of my life. So I had straight out of college, I had got a Fulbright grant to go teach at a university in Vietnam. 23 year old baby bass professor had no idea what I was doing. But I had always simultaneously been I was competing on a freeskiing World Tour, you know, while going to college. This was the one year that I put competition on hold, went to Vietnam, and part of wanting to go was I had started to accumulate some losses in the sport, I had lost friends to the sport. And when I came back, I, you know, had a hunger for a new what I wanted was ready to come back to winter, with a very clear idea of wanting to qualify for the Freeride World Tour. And so had this season of being on the podium, every single event of the season, winning the final event winning the title, you know, getting this dream of competing, going to Europe competing kind of at the top of the sport. And I guess there was this peace of sort of arriving there in a way and realizing that nothing changes. I think my dad even told me, Don't forget to work as hard for this, as you've been working all along. It was like there was no relief in a way. But the health issues were so confronting that I mean, I lost like 20 pounds in the middle of ski season all this weight and muscle I've been building since I was 14 powerlifting as a young ski racer. So the drastic shift for me as someone who had always counted on my body, use it as my tool, and depended on it to suddenly not being able to, to depend on it. It was an identity loss, it sort of felt like a betrayal from my body. You know, it was these lessons learned that I think most of us don't need to learn until we're in our 80s. And so that was the gift in how it shaped my trajectory with these lessons. But it was really hard. It was really confronting, like the rug just got pulled out from under me. And it wasn't even a possibility to do the things that I loved at the level I wanted or really even have the energy to, you know, go out and be with friends, which I also love or give to my relationships.
Elizabeth Solomon:How would you talk about the shifting of goals in that moment. And, you know, the shifting of goal being from winning to focusing on your health,
Sasha Dingle:that is actually probably when I grabbed for my yoga and my meditation practice like a lifeline and, and deepened it. I've already been going on silent retreat for some years before. But that was when I really had to look at some of these strategies that were maybe leading to successes in these different areas of performance for me, but they weren't going to be able to lead to success forever, right? They weren't sustainable strategies. So that's when I really started to pay more attention to the signals of my body. Pain forces you to do that those signals are strong, those sensations grab your attention. But luckily, for me, even after the pain went away and the illness was manage, you know, I still had to pay attention to those signals of sensations. And so I use that to try Aren't my training plans and even the load on my nervous system kind of from there on. And it was a more integrated kind of holistic approach to even training like, even if because, you know, our stressors don't compartmentalize to pieces of our life, it's not like, if you're fighting fires at work all day, you can then just put that aside, in the sake of like a training plan. I mean, that was maybe when I started to see as well is, I was doing heart rate training. And I noticed that if I had a very stressful day at work, fighting fires, kind of constant change, I actually couldn't achieve my training goals, because the purpose of training as an athlete is to add a load stress load to your system. That's just enough that leads to adapting, but not so much that it leads to burnout or injury. And so, yeah, it led to just a more comprehensive look at what's the load that I'm carrying? And how do I integrate this,
Elizabeth Solomon:I'm wondering, you know, as you came to that realization, that underneath this desire to achieve right underneath all the applause, that you are getting for being resilient and winning awards, and being on the podium, that there was this other sort of quality of emptiness or questioning of self worth, what happened after that,
Sasha Dingle:for me, personally, it shaped my career as an athlete to be something that actually had me performing at a higher level. And for me, as a meditation teacher, it channeled this into the heart of what I teach. So I have really been gravitating toward the mindful performance enhancement kind of around resilience and focus and flow. And so I got to channel all these lessons into some of the teaching that I was doing. I've been really leaning on this idea of commitment to these things that are really important to me, I actually better slow down or take care of me along the way, so that I can always be doing this. So that's been the biggest shift in approach, I think, and the outcome, honestly, is the same or even strengthened, because it will allow these to continue.
Elizabeth Solomon:I know you have your entrepreneurial peers, you have your biking peers, you have your skiing peers. But I'm curious, how does the dialogue differ among those groups around this sense of understanding achievement, not just in the short term, but over the duration of one's life, understanding one's commitment to one's business or the sport, or to the outdoors and connecting to that in a way that is deep enough to say, Okay, I'm going to take care of myself, despite this burning urge, I have to kind of push it to the edge, because I hear you talking about this. But I'm wondering is that a conversation that's is held elsewhere.
Sasha Dingle:At a high level, I think that, interestingly enough, if we can sort of like foster the wisdom from this, I think athletes, in some ways have an advantage, or like maybe one step closer toward understanding the process that's needed in a mindfulness practice and meditation practice, because they're already familiar with training. And that's the same thing. It's this daily or ongoing exercise to build these capacities of mind. And so in a way, it's like if I'm working with a leader, or a doctor, and they, you know, love to climb, or they used to play soccer, when they were a kid, like we have a language there that I think actually really serves the training itself. Because there's so much similarity, it's more abstract, in a way these concepts around training the mind,
Elizabeth Solomon:I'm interested in just talking a little bit about balancing that individual need to achieve with supporting a team knowing that the team's achievement also matters and having to depend on other people as well.
Sasha Dingle:I've found that this played out for me in my ski life, and that I kind of got used to doing it alone. You know, being in these male dominated spaces is one of the only females in both sport and work. I really just got used to depending on my self, but I think that earlier in my ski career, if I had seen the value of even having, you know, a woman, or I have Vietnamese or a brown woman, I'm at the top of the podium and the top of the sport and the value of that for kids and others that actually might have been a larger motivation that could have carried me through some of these challenging moments and depths in the sport. So that has been In a big piece in me coming back and just realizing I am part of something that felt very individual and what I was pushing for, and pushing forward but has a lot of impact. And that actually feeds me to keep going.
Elizabeth Solomon:I'm wondering how has that informed how you model achievement, who you feel like you are even modeling achievement for right? There's a whole other pocket of society, you know, namely women of color, for whom your achievements model something that helps them raise to their own desires and goals?
Sasha Dingle:Yeah, I've started to see that anyone who really excels at their craft provides an inspiration for someone else to find, what is that thing that I really care about? Or want to take to that same level? Like, what is the thing that I made for? And so I'm in working with athletes, I think that's a reminder to them of the value of an athlete, it actually is a contribution to society, I think in this way that it models this drive and this commitment, and this understanding around failure and challenge along the way that I think can ignite some really good motivations and, and wisdom applied anywhere. And so in working with clients, and especially with working with teenagers, I'm really looking for like, what is that place in your life that really lights you up that there's a lot of energy around, it could be knitting, it could be cooking, it could be managing teams, it could be your sport life, and wherever we can find that place, that those are not teenage examples that I wouldn't do adults, but we can find that place, especially important to foster early, then we can amplify that into these other areas of life, where maybe it's not showing up as much, or these skills are not translating.
Elizabeth Solomon:I'm curious to hear a little bit about the teenagers you work with and their relationship to achievement and how that might be similar or different from your own relationship to achievement as a team.
Sasha Dingle:Yeah, man, I think the pressures that teens are under and even working in college students are more than when we were young, even just in, you know, the structure of academics and the pathway to college. The one difference that I think is important is that, you know, my drive to excel came from within, and my parents were this very hands off support in that they were basically like, you can go and do whatever it is you want to do, and we've got your back. But I think the winding path, is really key to get to that place of of what is it that I meant to do? What is it that is going to be sort of me in my flow, because you have to discover that we don't know that instantly. As a kid, we might have an idea. But there's a lot that needs to emerge there. So I think that feels different in that and that also, my cousin is also a professional skier. And we've talked about this approach, because a lot of the skiers that I grew up competing with just don't ski anymore, it's very common for burnout to have happened young in that sport. And so I think a piece of this is like, is the motivation from within? Or is it because someone else is telling me that this is the thing I need to do in order to be successful in order to make it in order to get into college. So yeah, I think fostering that winding path able to get lost. I mean, literally my parents didn't always know where we were, we had this these woods to explore in and we could just kind of at some point hit a dirt road and walk back home and orient walk back home. And so that process of getting lost and being comfortable with getting lost because I knew I could orient and find my way back at some point was something that I think is is unique and different. And so that's maybe some of what we get to explore in a meditation practice. We explore we get lost we don't know why something is showing up. And then we have a conversation and maybe we start to inquire and piece the threads together.
Elizabeth Solomon:I love that actually want to hear you say a little bit more about that.
Sasha Dingle:Yeah, I mean, I think I'll lose my credibility with any team clients to say this but yeah, I mean, I think for me social media is something that I have to manage and keep some distance with and some parameters around because I think that I mean I grew up with like, not really even TV I've as an adult I don't own my own TV. You know I'll have it when my house I share with my partner has it or a roommate has it but I've never really gone and bought my own TV. We had for two And I was on a good day melee three growing up. And so that was actually really functional, I think in my ability to keep pushing forward in my professional and my athlete life, because people didn't look like me in the places I was going, or didn't share my experience as a multiracial woman. And I think had I seen the reality of how uncommon that was, or infrequent it was that I was seeing someone who looked like me represented, maybe that would have sunk in. But because I wasn't even seeing that I could keep just being me moving forward in these places, where it was uncommon to be at the time. So I do really think I mean, I even see myself to it. Now I really try to curate what I'm consuming in the form of social media and media in general. And what is the impact?
Elizabeth Solomon:Yeah, and I'm also hearing that it keeps you oriented to an inner experience, right? So you get, you're getting to sort of meander and discover and explore and live with those sensations of like, what actually lights me up? What actually motivates me? Versus what am I seeing in the external environment that is both like defining who I can and can't be. But it's also sort of setting these kind of arbitrary goals, right of what I'm supposed to want? What's valuable in our society?
Sasha Dingle:Yeah, I mean, we need those role models and those relationships that we can gain for social media and media in general, for inspiration and creativity. But I think, if we notice that it's actually constraining what we think we're capable of, or what we're allowing ourselves to do, that's when, for me, I need to block it out.
Elizabeth Solomon:How do you understand where your sense of faith and hope and competence come from?
Sasha Dingle:How Yeah, that's a great point that faith and hope and confidence are necessary in tandem with achievement. Because when we're really pushing for things that are new, when we've never done before, me maybe something that no one has ever done before. We need hope and faith and confidence from somewhere. I think that, for me, it came from this desire to get to feel like me, to have these places where I could actually, like I explained before, just kind of tap into some of these things that I knew I was capable of. But society perhaps was not agreeing. I think hope and faith also came from just like the value of the constant path of transformation, that is this quest for achievement. I mean, we, I really found the value of competition to be how frequently I had to come up against challenges. And we know that, you know, challenges are those the moments that transform us in our life, or make us have to grab for these capabilities that we might have not even known were possible in us or learn new skills, or pivot and head off in a completely different trajectory. And the reality of an athlete life is you are facing challenges every day. That's what a training plan is. That's what competition is, it's a purposeful load of challenge. That's just enough that you can transform and adapt. Yeah, so there's just like that. That feeling of transformation to me feels like a source of life. Like it's just there's so much vitality there. A lot of purpose there. It's like I'm living as long as I'm continuing to pivot and stretch and strengthen and rest and heal. I mean, because that is a part of that process is well, the athletes know, while it's like you are rest days are built into our training plans. That's one thing that's different from my professional life, or most professional lives. You know, a lot of us as professionals, it's like we are having to achieve at the highest level all year long, the all day long all year long. And athletes actually have rest months, or you do a big push in a workout. And then you have a rest day built in. And so I try to remember that as well, in my professional life, to build in those moments for renewal and rest.
Elizabeth Solomon:Sasha tell us what you're working on now.
Sasha Dingle:Yeah, so I just came back from 10 days of a film project. So a weather window for a ski film called Nexus. It's an all women's ski film. And I have a segment with my cousin Kristen Norman, and we're telling the story of our moms both coming to the US as Vietnam war refugees falling in love with skiing and then passing it on to us and how we're taking that gift of that Love of skiing, kind of to pay it forward and the different ways that we're shaping the ski industry and greater impacts as well.
Elizabeth Solomon:When will people be able to see that film? When is that due for release?
Sasha Dingle:So that'll be premiering in fall of 2022.
Elizabeth Solomon:Looking forward to seeing that. Thank you so much, Sasha. This has been such a wonderful conversation. There's so much incredible wisdom in here. And I just want to thank you for joining us today and speaking so beautifully and eloquently to your first person experience of being an achiever.
Sasha Dingle:Absolutely, thanks for giving me the opportunity to do it.
Kerry Seed:Thanks for listening to first person plural EI and beyond. Remember, the Dan Goleman wants to hear your questions at Keystone media.com/ask Dan. That's Keystep media.com/ask Dan. While you're there, follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter. And be sure to tune in next time when Daniel Goleman talks conflict management with psychologist best selling author and professor George coal reserves. George has an interesting background. And I've been held hostage four times myself. Join us to hear what he learned from those experiences. We care about supporting you on your ei journey and helping you to bridge the gap between theory and application that starts by better understanding you and the resources you're looking for. If this resonates with you, please take our audience and emotional intelligence insights survey. You can find it at Keystep media.com/e I survey. That's Keystep media.com/t eyes survey. We promise to take your insights to heart you'll make the show better. You'll have our deep gratitude and give you a free copy of the leading with empathy eBook, a collective guide that explores different applications and facets of empathy. This show is brought to you by our CO hosts Daniel Goleman, Hanuman Goleman and Elizabeth Solomon. It's sponsored by Keystep media, your source for personal and professional development materials focused on mindfulness, leadership and emotional intelligence. Special thanks go out to Matteo whose voice you heard at the top of the show, and today's guest Sasha dig. For guest BIOS transcripts and resources mentioned in today's episode, check out our episode notes on our website first person plural.com This episode was written and produced by Elizabeth Solomon and me Carrie seed audio production by Michelle Zipkin. Episode art and production support by Brian Johnson. Our theme music is by Amber O'Hara until next time, be well
