Embracing The Creative Self With Katie Arnold

 

Artistic expression is a powerful language that transcends words. In this episode, Adam Markel welcomes Katie Arnold, an award-winning journalist, a longtime contributor to Outside Magazine, and the acclaimed author of Running Home and Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World. Katie explores the connection between art and athletics, revealing how embracing her artist identity fosters authenticity, resilience, and creativity. Drawing on Zen philosophy, she emphasizes embracing triumphs and setbacks as integral to the creative process. Tune in as she discusses embracing challenges, accepting imperfection, finding joy in the journey, and discovering that the true artist resides within us all.

 

Show Notes:

• 07:49 – Failure And Forgiveness
• 18:39 – Humor
• 26:53 – Scarcity Mindset
• 41:27 – Resilience
• 49:23 – Takeaways

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Embracing The Creative Self With Katie Arnold

Introduction

I’ve got a great guest. You’re absolutely going to fall in love with her. She’s amazing, Katie Arnold. She is an award-winning journalist, long-time contributor to Outside Magazine, and the author of the acclaimed 2019 memoir Running Home. A Zen practitioner and champion ultra runner, Katie teaches writing and running retreats, exploring the link between movement and creativity, wilderness and stillness.

Her writing has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN The Magazine, The Runner’s World, and Elle, among others. Her new book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, Zen and the Art of Running Free, is a spiritual guide, a classic adventure tale, and a philosophical quest into the ultra-marathon of life. Much more than a guide to how to run, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World is an exploration of how to be. You’re going to love my conversation with Katie Arnold. Sit back or stand up or move your body because you’re going to bliss out. Enjoy.

—

Katie, I’ve read your bio. I shared a little bit about your history, your CV, and all that great stuff. We want people to know about us on one level. It feels a little like ego at times to hear all these accomplishments, etc. I’m curious, what’s one thing that isn’t in that bio, that isn’t a part of how people will introduce you and all the work that you’ve done, etc., that you would love our community to know about you at the very beginning of our conversation?

I think, more than anything, I’m an artist. As a writer and an athlete, both of those fall into the larger umbrella of artist. Sport and endurance have always been a creative expression for me as well as my writing. I think of myself more and more as an artist, which is the overarching word that contains these multifaceted parts of myself that seem very different. A writer, an author, and a competitive athlete, but they’re not very different at all. This identity falls under this umbrella, which I feel increasingly strongly as an artist.

That resonates with me. I hear that and I think to myself, maybe not everybody’s a writer and not everybody’s an athlete, not everybody’s a speaker or a presenter or what have you, but where is it that the work that we do in the world or whatever we do in the world is an art form? Where do we see it or where can it be that way? Does anything come up for you?

Yeah. I think that we are all artists because we all have this very unique form of personal expression that in this age of imitation and idolizing and seeing everything projected on a large screen for us to want to imitate, we lose sight of that, that we’re all like uniquely ourselves and have our own artistic and true expression. Our job in the world is to put that forth. Social media is so much about what other people are doing and so much about comparing yourself and comparisons.

I think the deepest work that any of us can do is to put our true selves forward through whatever expression we have, whether we’re artists, entrepreneurs, athletes, or all of the above. Only we can do what we do individually and no one can do it quite like you. I think that message gets lost when we’re looking at everyone and wishing we were them. Flip it and be like, “What do I have to offer?” I think that every single one of us as an artist, even if we’re paint to paper.

This is what my kids would have said when they were little or they did say when they were little. They can be messy. To be a messy painter. To be an artist doesn’t mean that you are superhuman. In fact, you’re just human, and that doesn’t mean that you’re perfect. You’re quite imperfect. Maybe there’s some sense that when you’re doing what you might think of as non-artistic work, the stuff of daily living, that somehow or another, you think that you’ve got to do it in a different way. When I think about art, I think about impeccability. I don’t think about perfection but impeccability. What comes up for you when I create that or make that distinction?

I certainly don’t think about perfection because in my work, both as a creative person and as an athlete, perfection is never the goal. Rather, I’m striving for the truth and an honest expression of who I am. Some days, like as a writer and a runner, that’s hard. The body hurts and the mind is sluggish. Rather than chalk that up to a failure or a bad day, I guess that’s the Zen part of me meeting myself where I am, and that’s part of the process. You’re here today, it feels hard. Tomorrow might feel easy. I did a long bike ride. I felt like I had a tailwind in both directions.

Those days are great when we have those, but just because we have a bad day or string of bad days or messy or forgetful or irresponsible to the humdrum stuff we have to take care of, and instead we’re pulled more into our art. All of that is the creative process. Nothing is left out of that. The creative process includes the good days, the bad days, the messy days, every day, everything. I think that’s because I’m a writer too, I see it this way.

The creative process includes the good days, the bad days, and the messy days. Share on X

Everything is material. Even a terrible day or a bad outcome, I don’t even think of sport in terms of failing or loss, but a challenging day is material. It moves the mark for yourself. You learn more about yourself. You learn more about your process from those hard days. I don’t ever even think of failure as a thing, if that makes sense. Everything is growth.

In that artistic process, people are probably, whether they lean into themselves as artists or they are artists or they can’t yet see themselves that way or feel that way about themselves, I think we get the fact that there’s a process involved in accomplishing something. Whether it’s to run a mile, run a mile at a certain time, or run against other people. Succeed in that competition, whatever the thing might be, or to conclude a book to start one and actually finish one, whether it’s to start reading one and finish the one you’re reading, or it’s to start writing one, etc.

There’s a process. We can get that. I think it’s maybe not readily as accessible to see your daily life, where the things you do at work or the things you do in taking care of your family or in other pursuits as a process. I’m curious if we’re going to ask people to maybe build that bridge between those things, to be able to see themselves as artists and the world as a canvas for their expression. I so love the way you put that out there, and paraphrasing your art is a form of honest expression to put your true self forward. I love that language. If somebody were to say, “I’d love to do that,” not just in a figurative sense, but literally to be able to adopt that mindset.

Failure And Forgiveness

I want to ask you about failure and forgiveness because I think a lot of people have difficulty letting go, not doing it perfectly or making actual mistakes, errors in judgment, poor decisions, or things not working out or somebody besting them for a job or for something. How do you forgive yourself as an artist when you have a day when you’re a little foggy like you’re a little sluggish? You just wake up, and maybe you’re in a pissed-off mood, which translates into a lack of creative flow. How do you forgive yourself, move on, and get to that next spot, a better place?

A couple of things. Literally, I move my body. Most days, I start with some physical practice and it’s always in every possible circumstance it will be outside. I’m out in nature in fresh air, moving, whether that’s running, riding my bike, walking the dog, or cruising around on my town bike. It’s not always training. Also, I don’t think of my movement and my preparation for ultra marathons and the like as training. I think of it as like being alive and living. If I do wake up in a funk or I do something or procrastinate on something that makes me feel badly about myself, oftentimes, I’ll start the day by moving and getting into my body. When I’m in my body, I’m much closer to a state of forgiveness because our body is always calling the shots.

We like to think we can override what our body’s capable of with our minds. Our minds are incredibly strong, but our bodies are the truth-tellers. On any given day, you could feel great, have tight Achilles, you could have heavy legs, whatnot. Being in your body, you have to come to it with a state of compassion and be willing to have forgiveness because the body’s not always at its best, even when we’re elite athletes in training or preparing with rigor and commitment. I think being in our bodies, that’s a natural way to tap into our inner compassion. That takes practice.

Honestly, it is like a daily practice instead of being like bodies suck, “Why are you so slow today?” We all have that dialogue but then are able to catch ourselves in it and say, “I must be tired or I didn’t get enough to eat yesterday.” I was mentioning that ride I did with the tailwind in both directions. That sounds magical thinking, but actually, when I thought about it, I was like, “That’s because I took the day before off. I had a full rest day.” Our body needs that. Being in our body puts us closer to that state of compassion, I think, because we’re not overthinking and criticizing ourselves all the time. We’re actually living in human bodies that have vulnerabilities.

That’s one way I think. The other way is as a writer, I think, which is that the mistakes and errors in judgment as a writer, are good parts of the story. I’ve been a journalist for many years and those are what make the story. If everything were smooth sailing and this inward-up progression, that wouldn’t be that great of a story. I think I’m naturally receptive to that because I know a good story when I see one and they always have the dips.

 

It means like you know a good story when you’re living one and by that, like when you’re caught up in your own drama as opposed to it becoming this spiraling thing, because we know what it’s like when we do get sucked up in that vortex of feeling shitty or whatever, we don’t feel good. We’re angry. We’re feeling like, “I can’t get something I want or get something done or whatever it might and then perpetuates more of the same.

This is a good drama right now. I set out to do acts, like for you, it’s 500 words. Let’s say you didn’t get your 500 words written, and you had said to me before we even started the recording, it’s not like you to set a commitment not arbitrarily but to say, “I’m going to write 500 words one day, tomorrow and the next day.” Talk to me a little bit about that because if you set that commitment and you don’t meet that commitment, how do you speak to yourself?

It’s great for people to hear like the be kind to yourself stuff. My wife and I have 4 kids, 3 daughters and a son. If I said one of my daughters, you wouldn’t know which one. Now, I’ve already called out my son when I say this, but he has a hard time being kind to himself. He said that to me. He says he can be compassionate with other people. He can be forgiving and give other people the benefit of the doubt. When it comes to himself, he’s pretty harsh. I love the fact that he shared that with me.

That’s great awareness but I do think it’s true. I think he’s probably much more the norm, and we all have periods of time when we speak to ourselves harshly. I’m definitely included in that, but I think what comes to mind when I hear you talking about your son is that it’s not like, there’s not a point you get to, and all of a sudden, you only say kind words to yourself. It’s a daily practice. It’s a continuum. Maybe ten years ago, I was at the very beginning of the spectrum of speaking kindly and being the champion I needed for myself.

Now I’m a little bit farther down the path, but it’s ongoing and certain things will come up that sting a little bit more than others. You can get caught in that negative self-talk spiral. However, if I can step away and by stepping away, either going and doing something in my body or writing in my journal, having a little bit of distance between me and the disappointing event, I can start to see with more nuance that maybe this is actually an opportunity. Maybe this is an inflection point in a story I’m writing. Maybe this is an opportunity to see something from a different perspective.

Usually, when I feel that sticky shame, now I’m enough along in my practice to know that’s usually a signal that I can take a different view and I could see something a little bit. I can be not so stuck in my fixed thinking that I’ll wallow in the shame cyclone for many days, which I used to do. It could be days or a matter of hours or less where it’s like, “That’s my cue.” I feel terrible. I’m like, “How could I see this differently? What else might be true?” I’ll ask myself those things.

The idea that it’s not that it won’t show up again, it’s that the cycle is shorter. I’m speaking from my side.

The cycle is shorter. It will repeat itself. It will show itself again in some forms, but hopefully, the space between the times it shows up and then the duration of how long it lasts, the space between gets longer and the duration gets shorter. You are more nimble and less likely to get swallowed up in this longer pattern of getting down on yourself.

Of course, we all know when we’re down on ourselves, like our energy goes through the floor, it’s harder to take initiative and then it’s harder to say kind things to ourselves. It’s a negative feedback loop, whereas when we are talking kindly and seeing mistakes and missteps as opportunities, as inflection points, as springboards into growth, we are much more able to receive them and say, “What can I learn?” and then move on.

Even like we were saying earlier, perhaps, like the drama of our own lives. I’m right in the middle of my own little shit story, what you call the shame cyclone. I’m caught up in my own shame cyclone right now and to be able to have that self-awareness to see it. In the book I wrote called Change Proof, we talk about the power of a pause, the pause-esque, but on the pause side of things. The pause to be able to actually see it objectively, even in the midst of it, is like, “I am caught in this now,” as opposed to something that’s outside of ourselves. It’s within.

The solution is always within, and the control is always within. I am a control freak. There’s so little that we actually do control. That is something we have absolute control over. In that moment, it doesn’t change the thing. It doesn’t necessarily change our energy, although I can feel a shift in energy when I laugh when I can laugh, or I can see something from that more objective viewpoint, more truthful viewpoint even, that I’m having a bad day. This is the drama of my life at this moment, but it’s not the end of the story. This is a paragraph or whatever.

Humor

This is maybe like a funny one. I will say, too, that humor is so important. As I write in my book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, humor is one of the things that got my husband and me through this trauma. We had this terrible wilderness accident and my body was broken, my spirit, our marriage was very much, pun intended, on the rocks. For us to be able to return to that humor, I knew that we would always be able to keep going because we had that.

Humor does create that wedge in the story where it’s like it suddenly separates us from the thing. We are not failures. We act like we’re characters in a bigger play. We’re coming home from this river trip in Idaho where I had a bad accident and I can’t walk. We stopped at a gas station in the Navajo Nation and my husband has to help me in because I can’t walk. I’ve been in the wilderness on the river for six days with a broken leg without actually knowing it’s broken, but I’m badly injured. He’s carrying me in and I catch sight of our reflection in the Coke fridge, the reflection of that.

We look absolutely disheveled. We haven’t brushed our hair in days. I’m still in my wet bathing suit. We’re in our river clothes. In that moment, I saw us as these characters and I was like, “This is funny. This is the moment I’m going to remember.” Even with all the trauma and the physical and emotional pain of the accident, I was able to separate from it in that moment. I filed it away and I was like, “I know this is what I’m going to remember, seeing ourselves as separate.” That was a beautiful moment that I have always remembered.

That’s so funny. For me, with that story, I have a broken leg. It’s like that you and I have that in common. It’s interesting as a looking back at it moment. There are a lot of options when something goes sideways in your life, whether it’s a physical thing like we’re talking about, or it’s something else. For me, I was in Mexico. I was with my wife and it was the last day of our vacation. I was doing what I’ve been known to do in the past, which is the push the limits, meaning trying to suck the marrow out of the day, leaving nothing undone.

I got slammed, and I’m a waterman. My whole life, I’ve been in the water. I was a lifeguard and whatever, but I love the water. The water, the ocean, is my friend and I respect the ocean. I have deep respect for the dangers as well as the beauty, etc., but at this particular moment, the ocean reared up. It was literally a rogue wave. I’m not even making that up.

It was like, “We love you, you love us, but let’s have a reality check for a moment. We’re in charge.”

Exactly, picked up, slammed down and snapped my leg back. I knew it was all messed up. At that moment, my wife is dragging me out of the surf so I don’t get drowned by the next giant thing. I was lying there on the sand as she went to go get help. I consciously remember that, to having that moment to pause, to ask, “How do I want to experience this?” I know this sounds weird, and that’s why when you were walking with your husband’s assistance, there was a moment for you to ask, if not consciously, but some inside going, “How do I want to actually experience this moment in my life? Is it a tragedy? What is it?”

What story do I want to tell of it? Believe me, it was a tragedy for many months. I came home, I had been on a river and our accident happened on the first day of a six-day trip. We decided we would not evacuate. I didn’t know it was broken. I knew I was very badly injured, but we were in the remote wilderness. We decided to stay on the river. That became this Zen practice, deep concentration, and being exactly where I was in each moment because it was too frightening to think about all the rapids that lay downstream that we would have to get through in order to get to safety.

I’m in this hyper-meditative state, a state of shock. To come off the river is, yes, is to come into safety, but it’s also, I have this realization as we’re finally getting off the river safely that actually, the river, though it had been hard on us and challenged us in ways we couldn’t have imagined, it was also as all rivers and water is like a safety. It had sheltered us as canyons do. You spend a lot of time on the ocean. It sounds like I’m very much a river in the canyons. Canyons do provide the shelter.

I had this feeling as we were coming out that the river had been a safe place and now we are coming into the hardest part. It was true. With that awareness, I had to get surgery and there was commenced a long healing period where not only did I have to heal my body, but I had to heal emotionally because I’d been told that I should never run again. I was a competitive, elite-level ultra runner. That moment in the gas station did not make everything better because it was difficult times following, but it was something I could stick in my back pocket and pull out.

From a little rock that you pull out from time to time, you touch and you’re like, “I think there will be someday when I can look back and remember that moment in the gas station and how like messed up.” We looked and how messed up we were and be able to remember that with even maybe some compassion and fondness. It was something to hold in the back as part of my mind.

Definitely not be a truthful telling. I will say, for me, a lot of unpleasant things occurred as a result of that, including missing a trip to Great Britain to visit our youngest daughter, who’s at college and her professor wanted me to come in and do a book reading and thing with the class. I was looking for that. I didn’t get to make that trip because of this thing happening. You said there was a shit show that followed. In that moment, for me, it wasn’t the humor. I was struck by the fact that for you, it was like when you walk into the carnival and it’s like that weird mirror thing and you go, “Who is that?” It’s the mangled version.

Yes, like the grubbiest versions of us. It’s also the truest version. We’re outdoors people. We’re always coming off rivers. It’s not usually so broken.

Scarcity Mindset

I’m getting a bunch of things I want to circle into a few areas while we have time. For me, it was gratitude. At that moment, when I was lying on the beach, I’ll close the loop on that. I wasn’t finding humor at that moment because, frankly, it didn’t feel humorous. What struck me immediately was this is the actual fact of it. When my wife went and ran to get help, I said to myself, “How do I want to experience this right now?” I felt grateful that the ocean had been kind enough not to kill me or paralyze me, which easily could have happened based on the fact that there were rocks, this wave was enormous and got thrown.

I had my glasses on. I had no intention of swimming. I went in to cool off as we would take this final walk before going to our room. I got slapped. It was a moment that nature, that the universe said, “I’m going to get your attention now for a good reason.” I was grateful for it. I literally decided that how I wanted to experience this moment was that I was grateful for the mercy, honestly, and for the lessons that were about to be imparted to me.

As all injuries do.

As they do. I’m like, “Here we go again,” even, because it’s not the first time I’ve needed to learn a lesson about not pushing or having a less of an exacting.

It’s like a striving, less of a pushing. I relate to that.

Shracked and sucked everything out of something.

That’s like a scarcity mindset too, of like, “I’ve got to get it all.” I only say that because I am like you. I’m like a doer. I’m an experiencer. I love to go full send. I’m a curious human. I want to experience it all. I think for me, the benefit of this accident was a wake-up call, like you were saying, like all accidents are, to stop consuming so much of that and to be more receiving. Stop grabbing it and needing it, like striving, and be more open to letting it unfold. For me, in the wake of my accident and my healing, I turned more deeply toward Zen practice.

I’ve been dabbling in it since the death of my father. I was drawn to Zen, not as a religion, formal doctrine, or dogma, but as a way of being. It always resonated with me. After my accident was when I began to study it. That is too rigid a word, but absorbing it and letting it penetrate me and the lessons. One of which is like no gaining idea. We’re not sitting in meditation or doing X or Y to gain something. That’s that mindset I think we both have, like, “I’m going to get it. I’m going to gain and I’m going to change. I’m going to take.”

I think that is like an overarching, obviously, structure in a lot of how we live both in business and in sport and outdoors. It’s like we want to take stuff. Zen has transformed not only the way I run but the way I live. It’s not a passive way of being. People think Zen is so laid back. It’s actually the opposite. It’s quite rigorous to live this way, which is hyper-present, and to make a full, true effort with your complete spirit in each moment.

It doesn’t mean wishy-washy through life. It’s showing up each moment as your true self. It will take you where you want to go. If you lead from that end result, you’re always well ahead of yourself into the future, into this area that none of us can control. The only thing we can control is this moment. I’m going to show up fully right now with you. I’m going to then whatever the next thing I do , I’m going to show up fully. That’s a rigorous practice.

To me, the word impeccability started by talking about the distinction between impeccability and perfectionism; you just defined it.

I think of it as meticulous. It’s never perfect, but it’s granular. It’s like making a true, honest effort in each moment.

This is what you said a moment ago, full, true effort with your complete spirit. That’s what being impeccable is. It’s not about being perfect. When you think about where it is that you fall off, that we fall off in our pursuits of things or in our living, how we live, whether it’s how we speak to people or think about people or how we interact with the world around us, with nature, with animals, again, in our work and our pursuits at work, etc. If we’re to be anything, at least I would continue to, like you say, vigilantly. I don’t want to use the word strive, but to practice.

Endeavor, practice.

In a consistent way, it’s what you said. It’s being able to provide true effort from your complete spirit without regard for the outcome. We know that when you try to think about, think your way through a basketball, like a shot at the free throw line, or a tennis shot, or anything, you botch it. You can’t be an artist and be in your head at the same time and be effective.

It comes from your body. I totally agree. It isn’t to say you don’t prepare. It’s not like you show up like whatever. For me, when I am most likely to be in a flow state, and I write about this in Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World about when I ran the Leadville 100, I had done the work. Most likely to be in a flow state, you have to come prepared. It’s like you show up daily with great determination to express yourself to the best you can. You do that every day and that’s preparation. You show up feeling like you have prepared, which also reflects a deep humility, which is so important. I’m humble in the face of mountains like you are with the ocean.

The mountain calls the shots. I am not more powerful than the mountains. I’m actually far less powerful, but if I can come with that humility, I can tap into the mountain’s energy and ride that energy. I’m sure that’s how it feels surfing. The third point is gratitude, like you expressed on the beach. Knowing that you have come with humility and preparation, you can feel enormous gratitude for the path you’ve taken and for this pure expression you’ve made. In a world that’s unlike anyone else’s, even someone who does exactly what you do, no one can do it quite like you. That meant showing up at the start of this 100-mile race, overwhelmed with gratitude, humbled, and yet feeling like it was my time. I was ready.

I didn’t know for what because I had not been holding tightly to any results at all. That’s what freed me, I think, to have this absolutely magical day where the outcome far exceeded what I could have ever imagined. Our minds and our imaginations, thank goodness they’re wild. As a writer, I need my big imagination, but still, what the universe is capable of delivering is far bigger and vaster than our imaginations can imagine. Thank goodness because then things can happen that we never thought possible. That’s those three pillars, for sure. Preparation.

When I come into something prepared, whether it’s like an interview as a journalist that I’m doing or a race or whatever, if I’m prepared, then when I get to the starting line or to the beginning of the endeavor, it’s like I can magically switch this button. I feel like it’s on my arm, which is to receive. I switched the button to receive and now I’m like, “Show me. Whatever happens, I’m receiving.” No good, no bad. That’s why I don’t ever use the word failure because no matter what, even if you’re “failing,” you’re still receiving. You’re receiving information, lessons, teachings. Being in that state of receiving is incredibly open and powerful. Nothing can go wrong from that place because everything is material and everything is a teacher.

Nothing can go wrong from being in a state of receiving because everything is material and everything is a teacher. Share on X

It’s feedback. What you do with feedback, again, becomes your choice. There’s nobody that gets to choose what you do with feedback.

It’s how you write that story of your feedback. I had a radically different race after Leadville where I had the exact opposite result, if you can call it that. I finished dead last in a 100-mile race. I’d had to walk the last 50 miles because I had this. I pulled something at the back of my knee and I kept going. That’s an interesting story in and of itself. I was the last runner in this faster elite wave of runners, dead last. When I finished, the next morning, I woke up with this incredible sense of euphoria, fatigue, disbelief that I had done it, and gratitude for everyone who had helped me along the way.

I realized I was like, “I recognize this feeling,” and then I was like, “This is the exact feeling I had after winning the biggest ultra-marathon in the country.” There was no difference. Results are totally independent of the results. One was the biggest win, and the other was literally dead last. It was the same. It was like one was no better than the other. Someone could tell me, “There’s no difference between winning and losing.” It’s so trite. You’re like, “That is such a cliché and such BS.” It’s true. I have learned so much from that race that I “lost” and it will never, in my mind, chalk it up to a loss or a failure. It was such a gift.

You were able to be neutral.

I just received it. I was like, “This is not the race I wanted or expected,” and yet I wouldn’t trade it because it’s an experience I’d never had before. That’s what we were a little bit talking about Zen and letting go of gaining ideas. Another big idea in Zen is this idea of a beginner’s mind coming at something fresh as a beginner, letting go of our concept that we know what we’re doing or the sense of mastery, which is so valued in this country and in our culture. We all have to be experts on this hack or that hack. Have the ten tips for X or Y, and actually in Zen, not knowing is a higher state of consciousness. Being able to be in that state of not knowing and open to all possibilities. When you’re open to all possibilities, there are so many more possibilities that can happen.

It’s two parts to that because the not knowing piece is troublesome for people who can’t also be open to what they will learn as a result of not knowing. The humility is missing. Our company does a lot of work with organizations at their culture and how they create and manifest culture. Often, the humility doesn’t get a seat at the table because people are paid to know or figure out.

They think they can’t show this not knowing or uncertainty, but actually, there’s such power in uncertainty because, as the quote goes, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.” Wouldn’t you rather live in a world with many possibilities? Especially now in the climate we’re in, literally the climate and metaphorically the climate, it’s easy to go down that doom cycle into that spiral like, “This is the only thing that will happen.” The truth is none of us know. It’s scary. It’s not we’re not taught to embrace that. That itself is also a practice of remembering that the only constant in life is incessant change. We’re energy moving and it’s always changing. We don’t know what’s coming, but we think we do. We like to think we do.

The book is called Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World: Zen and the Art of Running Free. I’m going to certainly recommend folks to get to the digital bookstore or the actual physical bookstore.

Physical bookstore. Support your local bookstore.

Resilience

I want to ask you 1 or 2 quick questions as we’re going to wrap things up here. I want to understand your take on resilience and what it is that you do to create greater resiliency in the face of, as you said, constant and never-ending uncertainty. That’s, to me, the one constant, and it is a riddle, like so many paradoxes, that we live within the natural world, that the only constant, the greatest constant is change. That being the case, people living in this constant state of what’s going to happen next, whether it’s environmentally, politically, socially, at work, or wherever, how do you do work on your resiliency in the face of that changing environment?

Resiliency to me means exactly that. It’s keeping going in the face of uncertainty despite the outcome being unknown. For me, it’s a practice of showing up every day and enduring things that are discomfort, that are uncomfortable, enduring uncertainty, and putting myself in positions where those things I’m regularly practicing. That’s why I think ultra-endurance sports are a great place to practice because when you go out for a 100-mile run or race or a 50-mile bike ride, you can control for certain scenarios, but there’s always going to be something, especially when you’re in the mountains or in terrain, that you cannot predict.

 

I would say ultra running has been my greatest teacher in resilience because you get knocked down, as I did in the river, and you get up and keep going. In that practice, people are always like, “Why are you training for another 100-mile race?” It’s because I need more and more lessons and to build my tolerance for uncertainty and discomfort evermore. It doesn’t mean going to extremes every day. We find that parenting, I’m sure, teaches you about how to be resilient in the face of uncertainty and constant change.

My kids are teenagers. They’re constantly changing. It’s a beautiful journey and you have to have a lot of resilience because you get knocked down a lot and you keep going and it’s not always going to feel good and I think that’s raising my children that way as we have outside in nature because I’m trying to give them the biggest opportunities to learn this themselves. There’s always a low point. In every trip or expedition or hike we do, every long outing, I say there’s a low point and it might be below the summit and it gets windy or they’re tired.

When there is a low point, and all your readers can do this too, check in with yourself. “Am I safe?” In the case of the mountain, it’s like, “Is the weather clear? Is the storm coming in? If not, we can keep going. Do I have what I need to take care of myself? Do I have food? Do I have a jacket? Is my body okay? Am I physically strong enough to keep going?” If all the answers line up, we keep going. We know that the low point will pass and then sure enough, it’ll bring us to a high point. It’s a never-ending cycle. To be able to understand that the low points are that and that if you do keep going, you will get through them.

That presence that you spoke about. I think this is where the value lies, whether it’s meditation or Zen practice or simply being able to be self-aware of the way my son was saying something truthful about himself. That self-awareness creates a world of possibilities that exists. They always exist parallel to the lack of possibilities simultaneously that our minds create for ourselves, that we box ourselves into thinking things have to be one way.

It’s like that trick mirror you were talking about in the gas station. Behind that mirror, actually, there were endless possibilities. Oftentimes, we only see the one reflected back that we think is us. It’s like, what is behind that mirror? There’s a whole unlimited world of possibility. It seems like a more fruitful place and hopeful place to live in that world. I don’t think it’s delusional. I don’t think that it’s like a head in the sand. It’s very real. It’s meeting the world as it is at this moment. That’s what Zen is. It’s like, “I’m facing it now and it doesn’t look pretty, but I’m going to stick with it.”

There are a lot of ways to oversimplify things for sure, so I might be guilty of that when I say this, but I think you can look at the world as an outside in endeavor or framework, or you can see it as an inside out one. To me, I think in any spiritual teaching regardless of the arena, the teacher, there’s one common denominator in all of it, in every religion. That is, we change things in our lives. We experience life from the inside out.

We try to change outer conditions as a means to get what we want. We’re doing what I did in the surf. We’re setting ourselves up for a fall and for some tough lessons. I was truly grateful because the lesson I got to learn was pretty light as it turned out. I wore a brace on my knee for a couple of months. I went to my talks with the brace. I got to tell the story of it. It could have gone otherwise. If we don’t heed some of those important life lessons and not from our own lives, but the lives of so many people around us have lived before. If we understand, we create from the inside out.

Our minds are so powerful. That’s what I learned in the wake of my accident. I could see it this way or I could see it as a chance to reinvent and deepen my relationship with running. By extension, it extended to everything, life, marriage, my writing. Everything got deeper as a result. It’s pretty powerful, but it doesn’t make it easier at the moment. It gives you a little bit of separation to see that like everything, this too shall pass. I’m going to decide how I want the narrative to go. What story am I going to tell about this?

Katie, I have so loved the time we’ve had together. I know you had to get a little change of location and get proper internet, and it’s raining on your island.

I’m on an island in Canada. It’s great. I’m in a happy, simple place where the daily rhythms are very simple, and this is my happiest place. We live by the weather, the wind, the water. I paddle or run or ride my bike, and then I write and parent my children. Simplicity is something that I think we’re losing at the cost of our imaginations and our spirits. We’re all so busy. These days, it’s go, go, go.

Takeaways

As we sign off from this episode, I want to go back to something you said at the very beginning as a way to get to a place of action, a point of what can we do with this. You were talking about being an artist, and we had a conversation at the start about how life can be an art form. We choose to be artists, whether we’re writers or we’re anything. No matter what you do, you can do it in a way that is artistic.

I think if you approach it, if a person says, “Where can I apply this intentionality and this presence?” This full true effort with your complete spirit with anything you do, again, whether it’s spending time with your kid, or it’s with a person that you meet in the grocery store, wherever it is you’re interacting with the world outside of you, if you can be there with your full true spirit, your presence, it’s art.

No one else can be you. Honestly, when you asked me that word earlier, I’ve always thought of what I do as creative expression, as true expression, running and writing and all the things, but I’ve never like outwardly used the word artist, but It is that. It boils down to this very simple thing of just be real in every moment. That is your expression. When you’re in the grocery store, if you’re distracted by your phone, or if you are talking to your kid, there’s something between you and the experience and that person, but when you can show up and be real in that moment, that is magic.

 

The title of my book is called Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World. That’s a flashing, when you’re your true self. Even with someone you’ll never see again over something completely mundane, like a loaf of bread, you lead an interaction like that, I would guess you’d feel the same way like a little bit more alive than when you went in. That is your artist. That is your artistic expression. It doesn’t at all have to do with art. I’m one of those people who’ve like, “I carried some art shame.”

Let’s not be so literal in the use of that word because it’s a concept.

It’s an expression. When I’m being real in each moment, I feel completely like my truest self. Honestly, when you lead from that place, there’s nothing more in the world you actually need to know or do.

When I'm being real in each moment, I feel completely like my truest self. Share on X

What a perfect place to conclude. Thank you, Katie. Thank you for your expression and your presence.

Thank you, Adam. That was great. I enjoyed it. I love your shirt too.

Thank you for that, ciao.

Take care.

—

Outstanding. What a wonderful human being. What a beautiful soul, Katie Arnold. I absolutely love her story. I have not read her book, but I’m going to get Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, Zen and the Art of Running Free. A spiritual guide. It’s a wonderful book for me, the place I’m at in my life. I imagine many of you are going to think the same and feel the same. There are so many teachers that come to us in our lives, water, the mountain, the river, and Katie herself. There are so many ways that we can learn, assuming we have that beginner’s mind.

I love that she pointed to the fact that Zen is not a passive pursuit, that Zen practice is exacting. It requires vigilance. It’s about being committed in many ways, living in a place of presence, being present, to being humble. From that beginner’s mindset, that humble mindset, all the possibilities are open to us. Whereas from a knowing mindset and all-knowing “expert,” that mindset we are more limited in our possibilities. It’s how we approach each moment of the day and each interaction where we get to express ourselves rather than being a taker or looking to exact or extract something from that situation, that person, or that opportunity to rather be open to receiving. It’s different, it’s slight.

The distinction isn’t massive, but I think it’s all important, whether we’re coming from a place of arrogance or we’re coming from a place of humility, whether we’re coming from a place of wanting to take something as opposed to being open to receiving something and willing to give as well. That’s what our presence is. Our presence is a gift to the world, whoever, whatever we interact with in our full expression, when we are in that place where we are providing that true effort. Our true effort with our complete spirit, we are being impeccable in the world. That was one of the things that Katie and I talked about. It was the distinction between being impeccable, the opportunity for impeccability versus perfection or perfectionism.

It’s a nuanced distinction, but I think powerful and important because it’s a guide to us in how we approach a moment. There’s not a whole lot else for us but to live not just in the moment, but from moment to moment. If we can get this moment right, I don’t know that there’s another responsibility that’s greater than that for us. I don’t know that there’s another responsibility that’s more impactful to us mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually speaking than putting our full selves into the moment and getting the moment right. We can do that. We do that in the midst of the chaos of the world and everything that’s going on outside of us so that we can focus on what is going on inside and what is going on within us.

That is the answer that leads us to some beautiful experiences and feelings. That is the sum total of our lives or the experiences we have, the way we feel from moment to moment. What else could there possibly be at the end, looking back, but a calculus of that? I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Katie and I, we did, when we turned off the recording, we’re truly grateful for the time we got to spend together and the kinds of things we got to talk about that aren’t necessarily everyday business conversations or conversations about performance or achievement or any of that, but felt truly truthful, felt real, and that felt great. We enjoyed ourselves.

I hope you’ve enjoyed us enjoying ourselves and that you enjoyed it because you are part of it. This show doesn’t exist without you. There’s no there there without you being there. Thank you for being there. Thank you for sharing. If somebody would enjoy this conversation and vibe on it, please share it with them. It helps us, of course, with the algorithms that determine where these show up and who gets to consume them. Please share it. Please rate it. If you can take that moment to provide that five-star, whatever stars rating, and your feedback.

If you’ve got comments, questions, or anything that you want to share with us, you can always go to AdamMarkel.com/Podcast and leave your comment or question for myself or any guests that I’ve had, including Katie, in that spot. Also, if you’d love to check out where are you now, how are you feeling at this moment? How resiliently are you interacting with your world, work world, your non-work world? All you need to do is go to RankRankMyResilience.com and three minutes is all it takes for you to get your own personalized assessment. Mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually speaking, how resilient are you? Those around you, of course, can share that link with them, members of your team, family members, etc.

It’s confidential. Your report will be for you. Nobody else gets access to it. It’s a great snapshot, a great moment of awareness that you can use to build upon to take that next step forward with presence, with truth, and hopefully in a way where you’re continuing to be open to learning. That’s that place of humility, that beginner’s mindset that Katie was talking about. For now, anyway, I’ll say again, once more, you are so important to us. Thank you for being a part of our community. Thank you. Ciao for now.

 

Important Links

• Katie Arnold
• Running Home
• Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, Zen and the Art of Running Free
• Rank Rank My Resilience
• Katie Arnold – Instagram
• Raising Rippers – Twitter
• Katie Arnold Author – Facebook

 

About Katie Arnold

Katie Arnold is an award-winning journalist, longtime contributor to Outside Magazine, and author of the acclaimed 2019 memoir Running Home. A Zen practitioner and champion ultrarunner, Katie teaches writing and running retreats exploring the link between movement and creativity, wilderness and stillness. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN The Magazine, Runner’s World, and Elle, among others. Her new book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World: Zen and the Art of Running Free (Parallax Press, April 16, 2024), is a spiritual guide, a classic adventure tale, and a philosophical quest into the ultramarathon of life. Much more than a guide to how to run, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World is an exploration of how to be. Learn more at katiearnold.net