Gabrielle Reece (@GabbyReece) has been a volleyball player, a model, an actress, a television personality, a mom, a community servant, author of My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life, and now a podcaster on The Truth Barrel with Gabrielle Reece and Neil Strauss.
“Do you want to cry that you have low cards, or do you want to play your high cards and get on with it?” -Gabrielle Reece
The Cheat Sheet:
- How is becoming a mother like “flipping a switch?”
- Gabrielle is tough. But did you know she’s cooking chili for Owen Wilson while in the early stages of labor tough?
- After two decades of (not always perfect) marriage to big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, what advice does Gabrielle have for people with big personalities in relationships with other big personalities?
- Understand what Gabrielle means when she says there’s “great strength in yielding.”
- What does Gabrielle consider her most selfish indulgence?
- And so much more…
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Some people get an awful lot done in a day. And then there’s Gabrielle Reece.
As a professional athlete, model, mother, author, fitness leader, television personality (with big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, her husband of twenty years), and podcaster (with our friend Neil Strauss), Gabrielle’s done a lot with her life — and shows no signs of slowing down.
Sure, it can be hectic commuting frequently between New York, Malibu, and Hawaii while taking care of a family. But as a lifelong freelancer, she wouldn’t have it any other way. Listen, learn, and enjoy!
More About This Show
Some of us are cut out to work in an office. We clock in, take lunch, clock out, and leave the job behind us when it’s time to go home for the night. So many of us find that separation between business and personal life to be crucial to our sense of well-being. It’s a balancing act, but a predictable one, and that suits plenty of people just fine.
And then there’s Gabrielle Reece, who embraces freelancing — as an author, fitness leader, TV personality, podcaster, and whatever other interesting projects might come her way — as an extension of her history as a competitive professional athlete.
“I need a certain amount of linear activity — consistency in my training and my food to kind of keep me tethered to something — but then beyond that, [I] sort of feel like it’s maybe what [I] liked about competition and training,” says Gabrielle. “It’s a little bit unknown. And so to put [myself] in an unknown situation on a regular basis feels good because [I] feel like [I’m] sort of testing [myself].”
It’s rising to an occasion — an uncomfortable and sometimes scary experience — that’s conducive to teaching her more about herself and growing as a person every day.
Those of us who don’t feel like we’re getting out of our comfort zone enough to grow in areas where we’d like to experience improvement might be encouraged to know that even Gabrielle — a lifelong athlete more physically fit than most teenagers — only feels like working out about fifty percent of the time.
As someone who trains others, she feels it’s important to include this as part of her message. “It’s just about creating that system and that infrastructure for success. It’s not about feeling like you want to all the time…I’m going to acknowledge that some days I feel crappy. I feel vulnerable and not my best self, but I’m going to work around it.”
The way Gabrielle sees it, we’re all dealt high cards and low cards; we make choices with the materials at hand. It’s the person who plays their high cards rather than whining about their low cards who is going to succeed.
For example, Gabrielle was six feet three inches tall at age fifteen, which naturally influenced her direction toward athletics. She considers that a high card. But she also has a knee injury that’s been giving her grief for years — that’s obviously a low card, but it’s something she’s found ways to work around rather than using it as an excuse to live a more sedentary lifestyle.
Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm in its entirety to learn more about how Gabrielle focuses on the problems she doesn’t have in order to work around the problems she does have, what she learned from growing up between laid-back Caribbean island culture and the more in-your-face style of New York, how she fit in as the only “unsaved” student at a conservative Christian school, how parenting is more about setting an example than trying to advise, how she made chili for Owen Wilson in spite of being in labor with her third daughter, what her twenty years of marriage to big wave surfer Laird Hamilton have taught her about being a big personality in a relationship with a big personality (and how they’ve helped each other grow over that time), and lots more.
THANKS, GABRIELLE REECE!
If you enjoyed this session with Gabrielle Reece, let her know by clicking on the link below and sending her a quick shout out at Twitter:
Click here to thank Gabrielle Reece at Twitter!
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Resources from This Episode:
- Transcript for Gabrielle Reece | Less Than Perfect (Episode 619)
- My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life by Gabrielle Reece and Karen Karbo
- The Truth Barrel with Gabrielle Reece and Neil Strauss
- XPT — An Outside TV Original Series
- Gabrielle Reece’s website
- Gabrielle Reece at Instagram
- Gabrielle Reece at Twitter
- Can You Still Hang 10 When You’re Pushing 40? Gabby Reece and Laird Hamilton, TEDMED
- Laird Hamilton’s website
- Neil Strauss | The Truth (Episode 452)
- Natural Born Heroes: Mastering the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance by Christopher McDougall
You’ll Also Like:
- The Art of Charm Challenge (click here or text 38470 in the US)
- The Art of Charm Bootcamps
- Best of The Art of Charm Podcast
- The Art of Charm Toolbox
- The Art of Charm Toolbox for Women
- Find out more about the team who makes The Art of Charm podcast here!
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