Surfing Life’s Waves: The Power of Recovery and Growth with Joe Jacobi
Ever feel like you’re stuck despite past successes?
In this episode of Bold Moves, Confident Choices, Olympic gold medalist Joe Jacobi opens up about how he faced his toughest moments and emerged stronger than ever.
Joe shares how he transitioned from elite athlete to CEO, how he lost himself along the way, and the powerful shift that brought him back to health and happiness. He reveals how small, intentional steps—like journaling—can create massive transformation and help you get unstuck.
If you're ready to break through your own barriers and take control of your life, Joe’s story will inspire you to stop waiting for the perfect moment and start making bold moves today.
Must-Hear Insights and Key Moments
Joe Jacobi’s transition from Olympic athlete to CEO of USA Canoe/Kayak.
The toll his leadership role took on his mental and physical health.
How journaling became a key part of Joe’s transformation.
The concept of Thinking in Waves and how it can guide life decisions.
The importance of small steps in overcoming life’s challenges.
Insights on the power of reflection and personal growth.
Joe’s experience of moving to Spain and finding a new purpose.
How journaling can disrupt bad habits and improve mental health.
Words of Wisdom: Standout Quotes from This Episode
"The most important coach we’re going to carry with us in our entire life is our inner voice." - Joe Jacobi
"The thing is, we make a big choice, like a house, a job, a spouse, or a dog. We think about the thing itself, but the choice has so many cascading consequences." - Joe Jacobi
”Surfing the little waves leads to surfing bigger waves.” - Joe Jacobi
“ We can start to make change with just five minutes.” - Joe Jacobi
"What you do in recovery, when you're not in stress, has everything to do with how you’re going to handle stress when it comes." - Joe Jacobi
“Everybody is coachable” - Courtney Turich
”People like to complicate the process and reality. It can be very simple.” - Courtney Turich
“ We do forget that recovery is so critical for us getting ourselves back in the right frame of mind and the right frame of place.” - Courtney Turich
About Joe Jacobi
Joe Jacobi is an Olympic Gold Medalist and Performance Coach who specializes in Midlife Peak Performance. After his success as an Olympic athlete, Joe found himself stuck in an unhealthy and unfulfilled phase as CEO of a major sports organization.
Overweight and unhappy, he recognized that his previous success as an athlete was actually exacerbating his situation. Joe turned this crisis around by developing a performance framework and mental models that guided him through one of the most transformative midlife transitions imaginable.
Today, Joe combines his high-performance athletic experience with the values and lifestyle he embraces in Catalunya, Spain, to help senior executives, medical professionals, business owners, and sales leaders overcome the challenges of midlife and unlock their hidden potential.
Through his unique approach, Joe focuses on the art of course correction, the power of small daily steps, and rediscovering joy through movement in nature.
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A Team Dklutr Production
BLOG TRANSCRIPT
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Courtney Turich: Hey everyone. It's your host, Courtney Turich with Bold Moves, Confident Choices. We're here to talk with leaders and entrepreneurs about making fearless decisions and taking charge of your own path.
Let's get real, get bold, and take charge of our future. So today we have a very special guest. His name is Jacobi and believe it or not, he's an Olympic gold medalist to top it off.
He's a performance coach who positions the art of surfing waves as a process for deep reflection and meaningful life transitions. A process he calls thinking in waves, his beautiful life at home and the Spanish state of Catalonia and daily movement in nature, anchor, how he guided others to navigate challenges and ride their best life waves and clarity and purpose.
I know his story and approach to life will inspire you to think differently about navigating challenges and transitions. So without further ado, I am going to welcome Joe Jacobi to the stage.
Joe Jacobi: Joe! Bon dia, bon dia, Meva, my friend.
Courtney Turich: Oh, well, hello. So I have to ask you, do I say Bondia back?
Joe Jacobi: You can say Bondia is perfectly good. So that was a good day. Good morning, Catalan. So I mentioned, I live in the Spanish, you mentioned, I live in the Spanish state of, Catalonia. I don't speak a lot of Spanish, but Catalan is a different language. I love to share the spirit of Catalonia with people.
Bon dia is a great way to do that. So bon dia.
Courtney Turich: Bon dia. So everyone, of course, Joe is several hours ahead of us right now, but I am super grateful, Joe, to have you with us because. I had the opportunity to meet Joe at a retreat where he was a guest speaker and he brought just so much wisdom to us all.
I can't wait for him to share his thoughts with us and really give us some great pearls of wisdom as we walk away together today. So Joe. I'm going to ask you the question I ask everyone, and that is, before we dive into the big questions, we'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about yourself.
From Gold Medalist to Life Transformation: Joe Jacobi's Journey
Joe Jacobi: Thank you so much, Courtney.
I guess, the biggest thing I would say is that, you know, I've made this big life move over to a different part of the world, and I've been living in Catalonia for seven years now. But, I would say, I like to sort of say that this journey started, in 2009 when I became the chief executive officer.
Of the USA canoe kayak. And that's the same Olympic sports organization for whom I won a gold medal as an athlete, in 1992 at the Olympic games. But of course, being a leader, and being a chief executive officer of an organization is really, really different from being an athlete. And, that didn't always go so well.
There were a lot of good parts to it, but it didn't go very well. I really kind of. Lost myself in the process. I like to tell people, I am really good at taking care of others. I was really, really bad at taking care of myself. Yeah. I mean, that took a big toll on me. I mean, especially on my health, in my sort of disposition for.
Collaborating with people like I was just, you know, I was always a lot more on edge and always carried a lot of tension. I had a very hard time making good choices about health. I weighed about 60 pounds more than I do today. And, yeah, that's been a journey, but, uh, it was a good experience overall.
It was a learning experience, even if I didn't enjoy every minute of that. But, I started to improve my life while I was in that job. And, I got more curious about what I was doing. Like I thought about helping America's Olympic athletes. When I got more gold medals, it was like a good thing. But as I started to get healthier and kind of started to take care of myself before taking care of others, kind of putting the mask over me before others.
I began to ask myself, you know, I wonder what it might be like to get more curious about other people's stories and how they got unstuck and how, you know, Some of the things that I'm learning and working through might also be interesting, not to Olympic athletes, but just to people that are trying to do better in life.
And this is really what began the journey of health and wellness and creativity yeah, and led to some pretty significant life changes, that none of them happened is like know, when I was growing up and I was through like big jumps or big leaps, there were always like really small progressive steps, one leading to I think even by the time, it came around to leave in the United States and becoming a resident of Spain, like that didn't even feel like a big move. It just sort of felt like the next logical, small step, just small step, small step, small step, and like that, I will say that thinking has served me really well in my life and the way I sort of enjoy life today, which I enjoy a lot today.
Courtney Turich: I can attest he does. He's always on the water with him and his wife, Maria, who is also equally as beautiful as Joe is as a person. So, Joe, you said so much just with what you shared with us. And I find it fascinating being an Olympic athlete. You are very accomplished. And here you are telling us that you were stuck and in a bad place mentally and physically health and so much more.
So did you become self-aware? That's where you were. Did you have other people tell you what that process was for you?
Breaking Free from Bad Habits
Joe Jacobi: Courtney, such a great observation, because I think one of the things that I always ran into, especially when I was like, kind of heavily wearing the Olympic identity, which, you know, me, like I don't do that.
Like, I'm much more comfortable. Love is just something that happened in my life. Like, I'm really glad I had the experience. It was great. But I used to wear that identity really heavily. But to your question, like when I wasn't in a good place, what would happen is like, we all have like an inner voice and we all have like a personal story that we tell ourselves about the circumstances around us when things aren't going well.
And so when it came to sort of the negotiations I was having with myself about whether to get healthy or not. There would just always be this inner voice that says, Oh, Joe, you're an Olympic champion. You know how to get out of this hole. You know how to get out of this dark place. Like you've done it before.
And then there'd be this other voice inside of me that would be like, well, then why aren't you doing anything about it? Like you say that, but then you never do it. And like, that's what I always thought was so interesting and I don't really have the best answer for it, but that's what was coming up for me.
Like, there was this voice that was saying, oh, you've done great things in your life before. Like, you want a gold medal. You've done these big things. Like, you know what doing hard things looks like. And that would usually be enough to kind of win the argument for now. And it'd be like, okay, I have another cookie.
Okay, I'll check out, you know, and not take this meeting too seriously today or, you know, it just kind of gave me permission not to take action to sort of improve myself or do a little bit better or try to get curious about, what really might move the needle. So in a lot of ways, what you're asking about sort of became sort of the winning excuse for me. Okay.
Courtney Turich: That's really interesting. So really you just, you just gave yourself permission telling yourself, you'd figure it out in the end.
Joe Jacobi: Yeah. You're like, Oh, I can get out of this. I've gotten out of hard things before, but then the voice that starts to pick up speed, the one that picks up momentum is the other voice that says, great.
Well, why aren't you doing anything? I remember just sort of at the time thinking, like, I'd look around me and I'd see all these people that were living the life I wanted to live or seem to have it all figured out. And I was so convinced Courtney that, like, I needed, like, A big change. Like I needed a big wave to come in that I could ride and like, take me in a new direction.
It was not quite desperate, but really close to desperate. That's kind of what it felt like. And in the end, and I don't know where this came from, but the change that ended up like, there were two things that happened that made a really big difference for me. Number one, I was working in Oklahoma City at the time, and we were collaborating with a group called the Oklahoma City Boathouse Foundation, a wonderful health and wellness center on the Oklahoma River and a really nice team that works there.
They started an employee wellness program and I didn't go into it thinking, Oh, I got to lose a lot of weight. I just went into it thinking like, I needed something to interrupt the bad habits, the bad habits being like, would do okay with my day until about lunchtime. And then it just became like, is it going to be the all-you-can-eat Chinese food buffet or the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet?
Which one is it? And the lunchtime workout with my colleagues at the boathouse district. That was enough to interrupt the all-you-can-eat food buffet. And like, I wasn't trying to lose weight. I was just trying to interrupt something that wasn't working. The other thing that was really easy to start. And when I was an athlete, I kept a training log.
I would write down all my workouts and I had a structure for writing, and logging, all of my workouts, and how I did that. So it was consistent. Like a structure I would use in my training log. And I said, look, I was the voice, the conversation I was having with myself, Courtney, I said, I don't want to live like an Olympic gold medalist again.
I don't want that life, but what can I take away from that life that might serve me today? So I created a very short, easy journaling framework out of that training log routine that would serve my life for where it is today. So when I woke up instead of turning on the TV. Instead of checking my messages, instead of turning on the computer, I would drink a glass of water and I would answer three questions in my journal.
Again, something so small. Like, you don't need the miracle morning with an hour or two of doing activities to get your energy back or to listen to your own voice.
If you can just get five minutes, like, we can start to make changes with just five minutes.
Courtney Turich: That is so impactful right there, Joe, because I look at you and I'm sure everyone listening is this guy's an Olympic athlete.
You have all the resources you need to take action. And in my mind, it's so easy. And for many of us, when we're ready to make a change, we try to go all in a hundred percent, and guess what? We fail.
Joe Jacobi: Yeah. That leap is so big and that we need to be operating at, like, it just becomes really hard to do.
And I think just, and that's why I always ask people before even giving them this advice. It's like, Courtney, can you wake up five minutes earlier tomorrow than you did today? And that's just the first question. If the answer is no, I cannot, no problem. Another time I'll ask you again in a week, you know, but if you do, the answer is yes.
I'm going to say, cool, if you're up for it, like just take out a paper pencil, better that than a screen, and answer three questions. You know, the 1st question is, what's my outlook for the day? And these are like, very thematic questions. Like, what's that overarching theme for the day?
You know, it could be 2 or 3 things. The 2nd question is. What's my focus on relationships for the day? And that's not just a checklist of the people I'm going to talk to, but that's a way of giving them intention early in the morning. Like, I wrote your name down in my journal under that question this morning, knowing that, like, you're still asleep, but I'm, like, giving intention to this relationship.
So that it might help me show up as a better version of myself in this interview, which is great because it'll hopefully give more value to the people who are watching us. And then the third question is for what am I grateful? Three simple questions. I guarantee you, this whole thing takes no more than five minutes.
And if you do that practice without trying, don't try to score it like, Oh, do I feel better for doing it? Okay. Just do it and trust the process of doing it for like a few weeks and more than likely you'll be. You're just going to notice something's different. I'm feeling a little better.
Like, what would happen if I woke up 10 minutes earlier instead of 5, that's how these things sort of build momentum in the world of surfing waves. We always like to say the little waves. Surfing the little waves leads to surfing bigger waves.
Courtney Turich: Yes. Joe, I feel like you just gave me a coaching class right now because you shared your journal exercise with me and I will tell you, I really was trying to add journaling into my life and everyone I'm going to say I failed, but listening to Joe.
Small Steps, Big Changes
Tell me how to implement it, implement this really simple into my day, because I really believe Joe, when I tried to do it, I made it more complex.
Joe Jacobi: Yeah, it just, I said about as simple as it can be. There's no scorecard. There's no point. Listen, at the end of the, you know what journaling is really about overtime done consistently over time, whether you answer those three questions, or I even write in that journaling framework.
If you just open the notebook and write today, I'm feeling dot dot dot and write for five minutes. That's fine too. The most important coach we're going to carry with us our entire life is our inner voice. And if you can wake up and just have that little conversation with that inner voice day by day, and there are a lot of ways to have a conversation, you can do it with meditation.
You can do it with journaling. You can do it with prayer. There are a lot of ways to work with it. But in the absence of, the moment you turn on your phone, the moment you turn on the TV, you know, The message you've just sent to yourself is like their voice is more important than my voice. Wow. Yeah. And, during that low point in my life, I was the one who was turning on the sports center, turning on the news, turning, and checking my email.
And it was like, I just thought it was like, Oh yeah, I'm getting informed. I'm getting into my rhythm for the day, but all I'm really doing is teaching myself how to tune into other people's voices. Which is that there's only so much energy in a day that's taking away from tuning into my own voice. So I would just say, try it for five minutes and then go about the normal day that you would normally do.
If you like to turn on the news, turn on the news. If you like to check email, do that. My sense is that if you do something that is just tuning into your own voice for the first five minutes, Over time, it's going to expand out a little bit and that will give you that strengthening of not just strengthening, but just a better connection between who you are in your heart and that inner voice.
It's going to be with you and. is the messaging that's happening? tThere'ssome bigger topics to get into with the development of that inner voice. But, for me, it is just a way of saying that's the most important relationship that I have first thing in the morning.
Courtney Turich: So everyone. I'm going to challenge you and I'm going to challenge myself. I know we all have five minutes before we start our day. Joe, I am one of those people who the first thing I do is open my computer and check my email. And to your point, I am now giving my day to someone else versus really grounding myself and who I am.
So you providing that context, Was really helpful. I know for me and I guarantee you for so many others.
Joe Jacobi: would just say Courtney, give it a try. Don't be hard on yourself if you don't get it all the time. We've built habits. We built routines, you know, that are inside of us. You know, it takes a little while to disrupt that.
One of the things that I do that also can be helpful in doing this is that like when you wake up. You know, if you can sort of, I like to go running in the morning, and I'm really good. I'm really good about getting out the door, but my running clothes are always out on the chair next to the bed.
I cannot walk out of the room without making eye contact with my running clothes. Like, I'm coming back for you, you know, kind of thing. And it's like, I sort of do the same thing with my little, you know, Area here around me, like, when I walk upstairs my home, like, I don't see a computer. I don't see a phone.
My journals are out on the table. The yoga mats are already on the floor. The sitting pillow for doing a little mindfulness meditation. So, my morning routine has a little bit of a few different things that I do. But if all it takes is a clear tabletop and a journal and a pen, and that's all you see, you're going to decrease the resistance between you and writing in that journal.
First thing in the morning. So it's also like setting better conditions. To create the likelihood that the action you want is going to happen.
Courtney Turich: Right. It makes so much sense. So much sense. It's the first thing you see when you get up and you'll gravitate towards it, make it happen. And Joe, I'm on it. I'm going to give you my commitment and I'm going to report back to you at the end of January.
Joe Jacobi: Ah, perfect. Yeah, I love it. We can even have a little quick, like a LinkedIn live or a video to sort of check in on this.
Courtney Turich: I would love it because if we can help somebody else to start incorporating it, then we've both done a great job here today.
Joe Jacobi: Yeah.
The Bold Move to Spain
Courtney Turich: So, okay. I want to go back to, so really when we first started out, you were telling me that your big bold move was when you decided to move to Spain because of everything that built up to that.
Am I understanding that correctly?
Joe Jacobi: Yeah. And a little bit, one little bit of context on this, Courtney, is that, the sport. That I did for 19 years as an athlete in the U. S. National program. It was a long time. That sport is anchored very heavily here in Europe. So, I had a lot of friends here.
I was very, I have spent a lot of time. Here's an athlete. Wasn't trying to relive. Something that I did as an athlete, but I did have a level of familiarity and comfort with the culture, and I knew it was an opportunity to sort of keep some of the friendships, some of the relationships that I had made with athletes and coaches from other countries intact by living here.
So. There was a little bit of context in the movie. I really liked the time that I spent here as an athlete. And, so coming back in this context was also really interesting.
Courtney Turich: It's almost like you were going home in many ways.
Joe Jacobi: Actually, you could almost bring me to tears by saying that, but, you do know, my girlfriend, Maria, we had a very emotional moment in, just, we were visiting a church down on the Costa Brava in Catalonia's Costa Brava near the time that we first met and, like she picked up on that and she said that to me, you know, and I like, I don't know where that came from, but, a lot of people in the United States had family that came from Europe one point.
And yeah, I don't know if it's completely true, but it feels like it's definitely a part of the journey. Part of the family is back.
Courtney Turich: Wow.
Joe Jacobi: Yeah.
Courtney Turich: And so this bold move that you had, and we jumped to everyone, we jumped right into the bold move. I am so sorry because there's so much more that we can talk about with Joe.
He has so much to share with us on back to your bold move. So you're back in the U S you're understanding, you're starting to sense that you're not yourself physically, mentally, you start these small steps to get back to yourself. So journaling was the key part or the key start of it all.
Right?
Joe Jacobi: Yeah. Yeah. Which also, again, went back to the very beginning of my athletic career. Like, mean, I had world champions and legendary coaches teach me how to keep a training log starting at about age 12. So like, I mean, the idea of writing on paper in that framework was something that was instilled in me, but I lost it for a while.
I did lose it for a while.
Courtney Turich: Okay. And so that's how you got yourself back to where you are today.
Joe Jacobi: Yes.
Courtney Turich: So I want to go into what you do today, and that is thinking in waves and how you help others to think in waves. Can you share a little bit about yourself, and how you help others? Joe?
Joe Jacobi: Yeah, I love sharing this story.
So, Courtney, you live in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is, I think you're familiar with the U. S. National Whitewater Center. This amazing whitewater canoeing facility in Charlotte. It's an Olympic training center and that was my sport for so long. I paddle on rivers and I still do.
For those of you who are watching the video, you can see the paddles behind me. Those short paddles are what Maria and I use on the river. The tall paddles are the kayak paddles we use in the sea, but that's the thing. Like, I've transitioned a lot into paddling in the sea, and I paddle a very specialized kayak called the surf ski, which is designed for surfing offshore ocean waves.
And, it's amazing. I work with a coach. Down in Southern Spain, who I see once or twice a year named Boyan. The story about this that I think plays into it is that I first started working with Boyan two years ago. I went into this idea of surfing waves as Dude, you know, it's just like a creative expression.
Like, don't ruin my vibe. Like, I just want to like, have fun and surf waves. Right. And Boyan had this step-by-step process for surfing a wave. He's very scientific and very systematic about it. And I'm like, I said, at one point, the first time I'm like, Boyan, you're. Like ruining my vibe, like I didn't know him very well.
And I was like, this is like an insane process and system, for surfing away. And he's like, Joe, I'm not trying to ruin your vibe. I'm trying to give you some structure, some framework so that when you fall off the wave, like, you know, where you are and you know how to get any, a system that gets you back on more efficiently.
And I was like, Oh, and I had this kind of epiphany Courtney, like that at that moment, like, Oh, like inside of us. All of us have an inner artist and an inner scientist. And we're always like wrestling these two inner artists and inner scientists out. And some people lean heavier, more heavily towards one than the other.
I lean heavier towards artists, but I've been working on becoming a scientist because of Boyan, it became very clear to me after working with Boyan was like, Oh, I can apply this process of surfing waves to sort of riding spectacular life waves. And I think the wave is really more than a metaphor. And so when you ask how I help people, it's really under the auspices of first things first, I don't really care what you want to do.
You want to improve at work. You want to improve your relationships. You want to deepen your faith, whatever that is. I'm always thinking, great. How do I help set Courtney up with a better disposition? To be more successful in whatever she wants to do to make that happen. So it's not like I'm being motivated by words or a goal or a mindset, but no, there's an actual framework that helps Courtney show up as a better version of Courtney tomorrow than she was today.
And that is the thinking process. And yeah, so there are steps to that. And. I sort of use that as an idea of a way to help people more deeply reflect and ultimately work through a higher level of personal transformation. And it's lovely. I like my own best experiment on this. Like I'm a practitioner of it, but now that I've been doing it for two years, you've heard me speak about it.
I coach around it. Now we're at a point where we're starting to see more people incorporating those ideas and they, the language of surfing, of thinking in waves is starting to kind of take on its own metaphor. I'm really excited about where it's going and how it can help people.
Courtney Turich: So Joe, for everyone, again, I want to highlight number one, you are a gold Olympic athlete.
Who hired a coach for himself.
Joe Jacobi: Yes.
Courtney Turich: So everybody is coachable is what I gather from that.
Joe Jacobi: By the way, this was a hilarious story about even hiring Boyan. I had never paid for a canoeing coach in my life. As you said, I was an Olympic gold medalist. I always had coaching that came to me in different ways. I never had to pay for it.
And then Maria finds this place with surf skis down in Southern Spain. And she says, but you can't just rent the surf skis. Boy on comes with the deal. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, like I'm 53 years old and for the first time in my life, I'm paying for paddle sports coaching, and Courtney, here's the kicker.
It's the best coaching I've ever had in my life. I mean, he's amazing. And it's like, yeah. So, I'm making more decisions because. Surfing in waves doesn't just help me become better at surfing waves in the sea. It has literally become this framework for enjoying my life with more engagement and more flourishing.
And I love that. Like, I know like it's, I'll never reach the destination, but I love the process of getting better at it.
Courtney Turich: So the fact is you have a coach, which is number one, he's taught you to look at life in various ways. Your thinking and waves, what you're bringing to everyone has been, it sounds very impactful because it actually puts a process in place for us.
It's manageable to start making those changes or transitions in olives.
Joe Jacobi: That's it. Like, I mean, I think so many people feel like. Oh, if I could just improve this one level of my work, like I'll do better and then I'll be happy,
Courtney Turich: right?
Joe Jacobi: It's like, even if that were, you got that skill, like, if that's the belief system like that's going to be problematic.
Like if you believe happiness lies in front of you, this always comes up in leadership. Like I want to lead others better. And that always prompts me to look at that person and say, well, tell me about how leading yourself is going, or people who say like, I want to have a better relationship.
That's like a prompt for me to ask. Well, tell me about how loving yourself is going. Like, I want to know those kinds of things first. Like, so it's always like, I'm always looking at what the first things first can be. Then we will help you, figure out how to show up. In a slightly better version of yourself, day by day to increase the likelihood that you do get those things you do improve on the things you want, but the process which thinking in waves does helps you get good about what you are and what you have and what you're doing right now, even when some of those things are hard and difficult.
Again, it's just an awareness piece, and it helps to put the first things first. And I just think that's what we're not good at doing because I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. It's an amazing platform, but it's like everyone says, Oh, you need to do this first. Oh, you need to do that first.
Oh, you need to do everything that looks like something I need to do. And it's like, where's the discernment and it all like, how do you, I don't doubt they're all really good things. I'm sure they are, but I think the discernment process is getting harder and harder for us. I think for people that are in sales, you know, that is really, I think my experience in coaching.
It's getting really hard for people who want to do well in sales. Everyone's the same. Oh, you got to do this. I got to do that. I got to do this. Got to do that. And it's like, there's a ch a lack of kind of first things first,
Courtney Turich: right? People like to complicate the process and reality. It can be very simple.
Joe Jacobi: Yeah, I mean, you probably forget more about that part of it than I'll ever know, because I've never worked in that. But coach in that space a bit. But, yeah, that's it, and I love doing it because I learned so much from it. But, Yeah, it's interesting for sure.
My brain always goes and people will tell me what they want to work on and what they need. And like my brain intuitively goes to the other, place, by the way, here's another experience that you and I shared in Rhode Island when we were watching Mace Curran, the fighter jet pilot, When she was showing us the video of the G force training where there was a machine that was like spinning her around at like nine G's.
Just put a video up about this on LinkedIn as well. And that machine would spin up to nine G's for like 15 seconds. And then it would slow down. For 15 seconds, and then it would speed up and they do these cycles. And of course, our human brain goes and looks at her and says, Oh, my gosh, look at all that energy.
She's withstanding my silly counterintuitive brain. Gets all excited about like, not what she's doing when there are nine G nine Gs, but what she's doing when there are zero Gs I'm fascinated with like what she's doing in recovery, not when what she's doing under stress, because what you do in recovery, you're not in stress has everything to do with how you're going to handle stress when it comes like that was just a fascinating part of her presentation to us.
Courtney Turich: We do forget that recovery is so critical for us to get ourselves back in the right frame of mind, right the t frame of place. It's essential.
Joe Jacobi: Yeah. I mean, if you could imagine spinning at nine G's and then you add, well, let's say you could for one cycle. But then, like, you just the stress of doing that the stress level never went down.
So when it starts going up again, your stress is already at a high level. That's not going to look good. The next time you start spinning at nine G's, you have to figure out how to bring it down so that you have the ability for it to go back up naturally. That was the magic that may, to me, be what she brought in that test, but that's where my silly counterintuitive brain goes when I see that kind of thing.
Courtney Turich: Which can help us all Joe? And I can't imagine the value you bring to so many people. I really want to just keep talking, but this time has flown by with you. And there's one question I want to ask before I have to let you go today. And hopefully, maybe we can do this again because I still want you to share more with me.
What would Joe tell his 18-year-old self?
But what would you tell your 18-year-old self today?
Joe Jacobi: All right. I have to say, I knew this question was coming. So here's the thing that actually prepared something to share with you about a little thing to read. So I have this thought, Courtney, that first of all, 18 years old was, mostly a really good year for me.
You know, a lot of good things happened that year. A lot of good learning experiences happened, but the thing is, they're off like anyone else, you know, there have been a lot of hard things that have happened from decisions that I made when I was younger. 18, 19, 22 winning the Olympics. A lot of, I don't want to say good or bad.
They were just decisions that led to things that became challenging later on. But here's the thing that makes answering that question. So, so hard for me. The last five years of my life have been amazing. And to think that maybe I would have changed something at 18 that would have caused me not to have the last five years that I've had scares the freaking bejeezus out of me.
And, you know, everything from just, the health and wellness, my relationship, the creativity, It's been a really, really good five years. And of course, like, we have no guarantees on what's going to happen next. But what happened is I knew I was going to get this question. I read something from Derek Sivers, a well-known author who founded CD Baby back in the day.
Posted an article recently called, One Big Choice Shapes 100 More and he was writing and this is what I wanted to share with you. And it's what he was talking about when he was younger. Almost bought a house and then he had this sort of epiphany of I bought this house and I have this place.
I'm going to live for a long time and I'm going to have a relationship like, you know. That's going to sort of determine a lot of things for the next 50 years. And so then he started thinking like, Oh, what if we move around the world to a different place? Like, what would that look like? And so I started to sort of think about these choices that we make at different stages of our lives.
And I just wanted to sort of read you like the end of this. In a blog post, he says, you know, we make big choices like a house, a job, a spouse, or a dog. We think about the thing itself, the look of the house, what the job pays, what a sweet dog, but the choice has so many cascading consequences.
One big choice shapes a hundred others. I try to imagine the ripple effects later, the details in the day-to-day difference. Then I think in reverse. Knowing the consequences I want, what are the choices that would create them? What is a big choice that would nudge a hundred others that way?
And, this idea, atomic habits, decision fatigue, one big choice decides a hundred others. So it helps to think of implications and daydream backwards. And I was thinking about that in our conversation today and sharing that with you. Like, I love that. And it's like, I don't know.
I can talk to other 18-year-olds and hope that their starting point is better than mine. That would be different. But for me, it scares me so much to think that anything changed, anything that would have made my life better than might have led to me not having what I have now.
Courtney Turich: What a great point, Joe, and way to end today because that was, that had me pause and it had me really think and reflect.
So thank you.
Joe Jacobi: We can share a link to that blog post in the description below. It's really a good one because I love the question. And then I think that it's a really good question for us to reflect upon. Like we can always imagine like, Oh, if I'd done that, but, you know, it's also good to think, yeah, but if I had done that, you know,
Courtney Turich: right.
Of course. Well, Joe, I can't thank you enough for being here today. And I do want to ask where's the best place for people to find you or to reach out to you if they want to start thinking in waves with Joe Jacobi?
Joe Jacobi: Well, one other thing that we'll do is write a very short weekly essay called Thinking in Waves that is just about thinking about how you think I put a lot of work into it.
It's really good. It's growing like crazy. It gets a great response rate. Ultimately, I am just trying to give people this a more clear model for thinking about how we think and the choices that we make. So we'll put a link to how to subscribe to that. I'm on Linked In. And of course, Joe Jacobi.com isn't a bad place to find me either.
Courtney Turich: Awesome. And I can attest to The newsletter, it's super simple, and very well written, Joe. I am a huge fan of it, and also a follower. So again, thank you for being here today, Joe. I look forward to sharing more with you soon. And thanks.
Joe Jacobi: Thank you, Courtney.
Courtney Turich: thank you so much for being here today. I am so honored to have you part of bold moves, and confident choices, and to everyone out there be bold, be confident, and be you.
Thanks.
