Lauren Fleshman on Good For a Girl

Lauren Fleshman is best known for running fast. But she’s also an entrepreneur, coach, teacher, facilitator, and a heck of a writer. She has an amazing blog which has gained a lot of traction and popularity over the years, and she’s just finished her book, Good for a Girl. That book is really at the core and the center of today’s conversation. In the middle of our conversation today, I actually introduce her bio to her because I was curious to get her perspective on it.

If you’re in the running community, you’re probably familiar with Lauren’s work. She’s one of the most decorated American distance runners of all time. She also is a brand strategy advisory for Oiselle, which is a fitness apparel company for women. She was sponsored by Nike for many years, which she talks about at length in the book. She’s also the co-founder (with her husband) of Picky Bars, which is a natural food company. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Runner’s World, and many other places. She currently lives in Bend, Oregon and is a mother. She is someone who has multiple identities, like many of us. And yet, a lot of her life has been focused on her identity as a runner.

This is a wide-ranging conversation that gets into mental health, depression, suicidal thoughts, and more. It’s a heavy conversation, but you’ll find Lauren to be engaging, open, vulnerable, and someone that I am grateful that I got to learn with.

Lauren had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“The price that you have to pay to make it work for you can sometimes be a very high cost” (7:00).

“Even though I was winning in that system, it made me uncomfortable that so many people in that system were losing and experiencing harm” (7:15).

“I don’t assume that things are the way they are for any good reason” (7:30).

“Brilliant perspectives can come from outside the scientific community” (7:50).

“A lot of the contributions of women in society [are invisible]” (9:00).

“There are ways to be successful that minimize harm” (15:25).

“It’s okay to want to succeed. It’s not okay to put the blinders on and not look at the harm caused” (15:35).

“Being on the same team is how you survive” (19:10).

“I want to make something useful out of things I’ve learned that could be picked up by other people and create shifts inside them” (21:10).

“I never underestimate the power of a subtle shift in someone” (21:20).

“You write for the reader and you write for yourself” (22:20).

“Move your body no matter what, and lower the bar of what that means, when you’re having a bad time” (34:30).

“Make sure you have people who are available to you who you can be vulnerable with” (34:50).

“It’s a hard time to start being vulnerable with someone when you’re feeling super blue. Let people in” (35:10).

“Accept that {anxiety} is part of hard things” (37:10).

“Lower the stakes. It’s a game” (38:45).

“Our ignorance is so collectively great on the female athlete experience, the female body experience, that we are making young people make conclusions about their future in sport or what they’re capable of based on a very short window of their life when their body is changing, and we’re making them afraid of those changes” (43:30).

“I’m a very present-focused person” (54:15).

“I think [loyalty] is overrated” (55:55).

“Agitation is the opposite of calmness” (1:00:00).

“Mantras were a way to ground myself in running with predetermined sayings and sentences” (1:00:20).

“People call it a mid-life crisis. I call it a mid-life opportunity” (1:07:30).

“We’ve got to show our mistakes and our vulnerability in order to encourage other people to look at their own” (1:10:50).

Additionally, you can check out Lauren’s website here. You can also follow Lauren on Instagram.

Thank you so much to Lauren for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.