The Origins of Better Than Fine
My journey from survive to thrive, to honor the 200th episode of Better Than Fine.
What does it mean to be “better than fine”?
Today at 3p ET I’ll be livestreaming the 200th episode of the 4 year labor of love that is the Better Than Fine podcast (catch the livestream here!) Four years of signing on weekly to share evidence and experience based strategies to help others live fuller, healthier, happier, “better” lives.
In honor of this milestone, I’m sharing a bit about my journey, the origins of the show, and why I feel so passionate about wellbeing science.
For starters, I wasn’t always into this whole wellbeing thing. I used to be an actor.
As a kid acting, singing, and performing in general felt woven into my identity. I can remember being a small child watching Sesame Street and thinking “Some day I’ll move to New York City and be on television”. It was my dream and my passion.
Unfortunately, in my early 20s I was a bit of a comic acting cliche. Drinking, smoking, and not sleeping very much, very well, or very often. My mental health was a garbage fire, the product of a healthy dash of childhood trauma. Healthwise, I was known to “accidentally” eat beef for lunch and dinner every day for a week at a time (oops). At 23 my blood pressure and cholesterol were both already elevated and I did not feel good in my body.
Not long after the above picture was taken I was diagnosed with a genetic condition that threw my budding health issues into both perspective and overdrive. One of the care team told me to prepare myself for a sedentary life. That I would be lucky if I could pick my maybe-someday kids up off the floor.
That didn’t sound like a life I was willing to tolerate. I decided I’d rather break myself than succumb to that prognosis. Two intuitions hit me:
Effects have causes - so if I can get to the root of the problems I was having and provide the “right” stimulus, I could at least curb the trend
I felt better when I was stronger - the root of my condition was joint instability, so wouldn’t it make sense that if I were stronger, I’d do better?
The goal was to function. To have a good enough baseline that I could show up in the world. To be “fine”. At the time of my diagnosis I couldn’t walk barefoot to the bathroom at night, carry anything in my left arm (my shoulder would painfully slide in the socket), and my hands went numb at work each day. I wanted so badly to be normal. To wake up and function the way other people got to.
Over the next 5 years and through an incredible amount of trial and error I did get better. I did so many of the things they told me I couldn’t do. I was running 5ks and rock climbing and hiking the Grand Canyon. I began to wonder: What if I could help other people like me? So I became a personal trainer specializing in helping people live with and around their injuries and medical conditions. For the next 8 years I helped other “people with stuff” figure out how to be well.
Then the next big challenge presented itself.
My partner of 15 years and I decided to end our relationship.
So many of the old mental health demons reared their ugly head. I went back to that same mindset: effects have causes. I was in therapy (again) and we were working on many of the old, root problems… but I was struggling with the shifts of identity, all our lost dreams, and where to go from there.
Through the middle of 2018, the hardest year of my life, I would chant to myself
I’m fine, I’m fine, everything is fine.
I’m fine, I’m fine, everything is fine.
Over and over. Just to get to the next moment.
I’m fine, I’m fine, everything is fine.
I’m fine, I’m fine, everything is fine.
But along the way a few big, magical things happened. A couple big “right place, right time, and I was ready” moments. They’re part of the reason I believe that the universe (or God or whatever you want to call it) sometimes puts you exactly where you need to be, when you need to be there. One of those things was a friend introduced me to a free course in Positive Psychology - the science of wellbeing.
That 6 week course completely changed the direction of my life.
“Fine” was no longer the goalpost.
There’s a foundational axiom in wellbeing science:
The absence of the bad isn’t the same as the presence of the good.
I’d spent the first 36 years of my life trying to mitigate all the bad so I could function. Now I wanted to know what it was like to revel in the good.
I ate Positive Psychology like I was trying to swallow the world whole. Each practice not only built my wellbeing, but I immediately used them with my clients. I started teaching the tools and skills in workshops to other personal trainers and managers where I worked. That next winter I applied to get my Masters in wellbeing and could not believe it when I got in (seriously…. I didn’t actually think I would…)
In November of 2019 one of my advisors, Mika Opp, told me to start a podcast.
I immediately knew what to call it: Better Than Fine.
Sometimes “fine” is a baseline. A resting place we need to get to on the long journey from surviving to thriving. I didn’t know it was a resting place. I thought it was my destination. Wellbeing science showed me there was more I could look for.
I’ve spend the last 6 years studying human wellbeing & making it my life - obtaining a Master’s in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, writing a wellness coaching certification with NASM, being a Teaching Assistant to Martin Seligman earlier this year, and this fall I’ll be teaching Positive Psychology at Nova Southeastern University.
Recently I heard that someone in my family doesn’t like when I talk about growing up poor and in trauma. That it makes them embarrassed and feels bad. They even went so far as to claim some of it wasn’t true (they were corrected).
I don’t tell stories like this for sympathy or even compassion.
I share these stories so you know that you can come from painful and difficult beginnings and do incredible things. You can heal and grow and find out things about yourself you never believed were possible. You can help yourself and get help and use what you learn to help other people.
You can - WE can - make the world better.
We can make it better than fine.
Need support in your own pivot from survive to thrive? I’m available for long term coaching and consultations are always free.
Here’s the link to my calendar so you can book a call.