Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Abby Wambach On: Grief, Addiction, And Moving From External To Internal Validation

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Plus her definition of the oft-dismissed yet game-changing notion of self-love.We caught up with Abby Wambach at a really interesting time. She’s experiencing grief, for reasons we’ll let her explain. And for the first time in her life, she’s grieving while sober—which, in itself, is an interesting story, which she will also tell.As you know, we only talk to famous people on this show if they’re willing to really go deep. And it’s why we call this recurring series Boldface. And Abby is bolder than most.We also talk about: moving from external to internal validation, her definition of self-love (a concept in which Dan have a lot of interest, because it’s both cheesy and life-changing), the one question that changed her life, how every experience can turn into something positive, and on a related note, why getting arrested for drunk driving was one of the best things that ever happened to her.Abby Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup Champion, and six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wolfpack. And, together with her wife Glennon Doyle and sister Amanda Doyle, co-hosts the award-winning, critically acclaimed We Can Do Hard Things podcast. Related Episodes:Doing "The Work," Byron KatieGlennon Doyle is Rethinking Her Relationship to Social Media, Hustle Culture, Intuition, Her Body, and Her ParentsSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/abby-wambachSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? We caught up with Abby Wambach at a very interesting time for her. She is experiencing grief, for reasons that I will let her explain. And for the first time in her life, she says, she is grieving while sober,

which in itself is an interesting story, which she will also tell. As you know, or at least I hope you know, we only really talk to famous people on this show if they're willing to go deep. And it's why we call this recurring series Boldface. Abby Wambach is bolder than most. We also talk in this interview about moving from external to internal validation, her definition of self-love, a concept in which I have a lot of interest

because it's simultaneously cheesy and life-changing. The one question that changed her life, how every experience can be turned into something positive, and on a related note, why getting arrested for drunk driving was one of the best things that ever happened to her. Abby Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup champion, and six-time winner of the US Soccer Athlete of the Year Award.

She's the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Wolf Pack and together with her wife, Glennon Doyle, a previous guest on this show, and Glennon's sister, Amanda Doyle, Abby co-hosts the award-winning, critically acclaimed We Can Do Hard Things podcast. Just to say before we dive in, we're doing a little bit of an experiment this week. We're going to drop three celebrity interviews as part of the aforementioned Boldface series. This is, like I said, an experiment to drop three in a row, but we thought it would be fun to do during the summer, so let us know how it goes.

Abby Wambach coming up right after this. But first some BSP. As you've heard me say before, the hardest part of personal growth, self-improvement, spiritual development, whatever you want to call it, the hardest part is forgetting. You listen to a great podcast, you read a great book, you go to a great talk, whatever it is, and the message is electrifying. But then you get sucked back into your daily routines, your habitual patterns, and you forget.

So this is the problem for which I have designed my new newsletter, which we just started a few months ago, and we're just really hitting our stride. So I'd love it if you sign up. Every week I list one quote that I'm pondering right now, and then I give you two of the top takeaways from the podcast this week. It's really for both me and for you to get these messages into our molecules. I'm just kind of mainlining the practical aspects

of the episodes from the week and listing it out for you. And then I also list three cultural recommendations, books, movies, TV shows that I'm into right now. You can sign up. It's free. It's at danharris.com. That's my new website, danharris.com. Sign up for the newsletter. Also want to tell you about a course that we're highlighting over on the 10% Happier app. It's called Healthy Habits. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal and the meditation teacher Alexis Santos. It's great stuff. To access it,

just download the 10% Happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% dot com, that's one word all spelled out. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Listening can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits, and ultimately your overall wellbeing.

Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception, along with popular podcasts and exclusive Audible originals, all in one easy app. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. Abby Wambach, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I have listened to so many episodes and I'm such a huge fan of yours and I just, I love how you do your life and work. Thank you. I appreciate that right back at you. And the last time you did make it an appearance, but nobody would have known about it because you were doing the tech for your wife, Glennon Doyle, when she showed up on this podcast several months ago.

And I remember there was somebody like kind of at the base of her chair, like toggling with some knobs or something. I was like, is that Abby Wambach doing tech for Glennon Doyle? And yes, it was. It was, it was, and it always is. The tech part of Glennon's brain.

We all have certain strengths, and that's just not one of Glennon's, but it's one of mine, so. It gives me some worthiness. I have a place in this family. I think you have a place that goes well beyond tech, but I'm sure we'll get to that. Let me start at a bit of a sensitive spot. You and I were chatting right before we started rolling

and I was just kind of asking you what was on your mind of late. And you said grief. Are you comfortable talking a little bit about why that is such a salient emotion for you now? Yeah. Well, my brother passed away at the end of last year, at the end of 2023, and it was a tragic death.

He was 51 years old and leaves behind three children. And it just was, it's the first big tragic death in my immediate family, my birth family. And so kind of wading through the muck of that. You know, early days you go into like survival, right? Like what needs to be done, planning all the services and getting home and calling your family and talking to them and really processing it one step at a time. And then what inevitably happens is you step back into your real life

and you wrestle with this whole thing. A lot for me has been done privately because I live so far from my birth family. They're in upstate New York and I live in California. And so there was like a loneliness to it. There's the athlete part of me that's like, oh, well, you know, this is just life and I can just work my way. I can just keep on keeping on and it's all going to be fine.

Well, you know, grief knocked on my door. Actually, grief broke through my door about four weeks ago and forced itself into my house and into my life. and it's just totally floored me. I've gotten sick, which I very rarely get sick. I think my immune system kind of shut down. I'm a very regimented person for various reasons, but talking with my therapist and stuff, I've really learned so much about the things that I never really wanted to think about through this process of grief. She explained to me that it's like this portal that opens up when some sort of tragedy happens in a person's life, whether it's a death or even a near-death experience or a diagnosis. There's this portal that opens up to what matters most. Like you get to like leave all the BS behind.

And it's like, what really matters? And though it's really hard, it's like staring at the sun, it hurts and it's scary and it's confusing and nothing really makes sense. But because that portal is open, you have the ability to kind of go towards and face some of these fears. So I have always had an extraordinary fear of death. Like what is actually happening there? What is the experience? And this portal opening has given me a little bit of breath and time to work into it.

I'm not sitting here saying I figured it all out. But man, grief is really something. It has kind of brought me to my knees. This is actually the first time I've experienced real grief sober. I'm almost eight years sober early April. What I've noticed is that grief has this train of all the cars of grief that you've ever experienced. And it's like carrying all of the history of the trauma or the grief of losing your childhood or heartbreaks. It's just this long train. And so that kind of

just like flowed right into my home many weeks ago. And it totally floored me. I've been like kind of sad and the word I've been using is I've been filled with sorrow and done quite a bit of work around it. A lot of bargaining, trying to understand it, trying to figure it out, a lot of negotiating, like how could this happen and all of these questions. And I've landed today, because tomorrow could be different, that I, along with everybody else on the planet, have no freaking clue what is happening

or what happens when we die. And I will never know. And I am learning to start to think about accepting that as my reality. Now, I don't know how long it will take for me to actually accept it, but that's where I'm at. So yeah, that's a little bit about my story. First of all, I'm very sorry about your loss.

That sucks. Thank you. Second is eight years sober is a massive achievement. And so congratulations on that. Thank you. That's a really big deal. The question I have, or I guess it's more of an observation or a commiseration

is this delayed reaction piece of it. I just came from a funeral this past weekend, not a member of my immediate family. It was a very close college friend of mine and spent quite a bit of time with his wife and children. And I can see it with them. It's been two months since Ed died and they've been in disco go mode of sorting out the finances, setting up this incredible, incredibly beautiful memorial that I went to over the weekend. And it reminds me of when I was a journalist, I used to interview people in the aftermath of terrible tragedies, you know,

parents who'd lost children, people in war zones after earthquakes or tornadoes. And there was this almost like a giddiness sometimes, you know, like it wasn't real for them yet. And my fear for my friend Ed's wife and children is, and they were able to articulate it, so I think they see what's coming, is that once the motion stops, the emotion is gonna come in.

And anyway, so I just said a lot of words. Does that all sound familiar given what you're going through? So familiar. I mean, death is dramatic, right? And I'm sure that there's probably some science, I don't know it, but I'm sure that there's some sort of physiological science and response that's happening in our bodies, whether it's promoting more adrenaline or dopamine during these times so that we can actually survive, probably survival mechanisms in place when real trauma hits and real grief hits. And that can't be forever lasting, right?

And so when those settle down, I know that feels like it was the case for me. I was like kind of riding this high, so to speak, the grief train. And there's just so much to manage around somebody's life, especially when somebody tragically passes away, whom happens to be your brother and whom happens to have three children and dealing with all of the stuff around his assets and stuff going through and talking to his children and figuring out, you know, what their situation is. And the problem is, is they have, I'm sure state attorneys and lawyers and doctors and stuff and morticians have a checklist of all the things that you need to get through. And that's great. And every person who dies is very individual and different

and have, and their needs are going to be different. And so trying to manage all of that takes a certain amount of energy. So I felt this way because I had to deliver his eulogy. I was like kind of mind over mattering so much of my personal experience in those weeks after he passed away so that I could get through it, knowing kind of in the back of my head, like I'm just going to have to deal with this later. And then, you know, luckily the later wasn't too far down the road. I've been, you know, it's just hard. It's hard to understand that somebody was here and then they're not. And they never will be. You know, death is so permanent.

It's just such a permanent endeavor. And then you have to kind of rewrite the story that you had of yourself. You have to reclaim or say things different. Like, you know, I have six brothers and sisters and five are still living. Like, that never occurred to me before that I would have to maybe do some math when it relates to like telling the story of my life. And so, it's just, it's so sad. We miss him so much and he was such an important person in all of our lives. And yeah, I get it. Because I think for me, in my alcoholic prescription pill days, I was more keen on just drinking away my sorrow or pretending to drink away my sorrow than actually ever dealing with it. And so I feel grateful for my sobriety to kind of wholeheartedly experience grief,

completely conscious and awake and aware. And it sucks. Like there is a good reason why so many alcoholics out there drink, because it is hard and it is painful. And I definitely use alcoholism as a survival mechanism, as a self-soothing and a self-medicating deal with the problems and issues I wasn't capable of emotionally handling. And so it feels really good that I'm capable of doing it sober and completely awake. And when this grief shows up, it's like, it just has totally floored me. And I'm a very like, optimistic and positive person. And even my wife, she's like, Hey, like, are you doing okay?

Like, it's disconcerting when you see somebody who's for the most part chooses to live happy and positively. And then that person is a little bit more not that. I wouldn't even say negative because it's just like, I'm just sad a lot. And trying to manage feeling sad a lot is tough for somebody like me for sure. Has it been a challenge to your sobriety? No not at all. God that ship is so long-sailed thank goodness. It makes me feel super grateful like even more it's like this doubling down because even though it's hard, like I feel deeply that I'm living in it, I'm like among it and that knowing how almost flippant and short

life can be, I will be able to feel like I've lived so fully in these last eight years of my sobriety. lived so fully in these last eight years of my sobriety. It's one of the things that I feel like most proud of in terms of my life's achievements. Coming up, Abby Wambach talks about her definition of the often misunderstood concept of self-love, how every experience, even the terrible ones, or at least seemingly terrible ones, can be an opportunity.

And along those lines, how her arrest for drunk driving was the best thing that ever could have happened to her in her opinion. From Wondry, this is Black History for Real. I'm Francesca Ramsey. And I'm Conscious Lee. And every week we're gonna be chronicling a lot of trials and triumphs from Black folks who ain't never heard about,

even though we've been doing the damn thing since forever. Together we'll weave Black history's most overlooked figures back into the rightful place in American culture and all over the world. Because on this show, you're gonna hear a little less. In August 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And a little bit more. Sam looks to his fellow students.

They're just as mad as he is. He can't stop thinking about the tragic war in Vietnam and the violent backlash to the Civil Rights Movement. It's like the whole world falling apart. And ain't nobody ready to make it right. The school board could do something to change it, but they'd have to listen first. Follow Black History for Real on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. Divorced beheaded died, divorced beheaded survived.

We know the six wives of Henry VIII as pawns in his hunt for a son, but their lives were so much more than just being the king's wives. I'm Arisha Skidmore Williams. And I'm Brooke Zifrin. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Royals. In each episode, we'll pull back the curtain on royal families, past and present, from all over the world, to show you the darker side of what it means to be royalty. We rarely see Henry VIII's wives in their own light, as women who used the tools available to them to hold on to power. Some women won the game, others lost.

But they were all unexpected agents in their own stories. Being a part of a royal family might seem enticing, but more often than not, it comes at the expense of everything else, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Follow even the Royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Go deeper and get more of the story with Wondery's top history podcasts, including American Scandal, Legacy, and Black History for Real. Before we get back to the show, just a reminder about the Healthy Habits course over on the 10% Happier app

taught by Kelly McGonigal and Alexis Santos. To access it, just download the 10% Happier app wherever you get your apps. Am I hearing you correctly that in wrestling with this radical subtraction, like the death of somebody you love so much, your brother, as much as it sucks sucks to use your word, that it might actually be like an opportunity for growth?

Yeah, well, yes. And I also, I might be a little bit woo-woo about this stuff because I think that there is growth opportunity in everything that we do. And truly, like, I'm not like, oh, yay, grief, my brother died, I'm gonna learn something about it. It just felt like such an obvious thing that I had been and have been avoiding my whole life.

This is why my therapist said that this portal opens up because it's happening to you. You have lost somebody, you can't not know that this thing happens. And the rest of us, you know, before my brother died, I was just walking around the world pretending like we weren't all just gonna die one day. Like it's this common, and P.S.,

I think that we need to live that way at times because it's a hard truth to carry at the front of your mind all the time. And all the greatest spiritual teachers in the world, they keep death at the forefront. They keep it at their fingertips so that they can live as present and fully in the here and in the now.

Because the truth is we just don't know when death will show up at our door and come knocking. And so to me it's like this balance of trying not to become so obsessed with it because I'm not going to be a spiritual guru, but it's this balance of keeping it at the forefront and at least for right now as my portal of this is open to really work through some of the fear around death because I don't want to get to the end of my life and experience real fear. I want to experience real acceptance and a surrendering and that I

think will take some time for me but I get a pit in my stomach when I think about that moment that I know I'm dying. I still to this day like it's something that I am working through and you know my brother has just experienced this transition to whatever might be on the other side. I'm not a religious person by any means. I grew up in the Catholic Church and I don't know. I will never know what happens when we die, but I feel a little bit more comforted knowing

that my brother went through it and I knew him for so long and that maybe he's like getting it ready for the rest of us. I don't know. I don't know. It's something that I like to think that maybe he's just over there setting up the house for the rest of us for when it's our time. I am definitely not unafraid of death. Interestingly, my friend Ed, who just died recently, I had a couple of long phone conversations

with him as he was dying and he was unafraid. Like totally unafraid. In fact, the last conversation he had with his wife, they were in the hospital for what was gonna be just like a regular checkup and he started to throw up and they were taking him to the ICU and she said, Ed, I'm really nervous. And Ed said, I'm not nervous at all. And he just, he was not afraid of dying. But I'm not anywhere close to Ed. I'm way closer to your camp. But it is comforting to think billions of people have had the experience.

We will not be the first. And I find that reasonably comforting, actually. Yeah, it's good to think about. I've actually never thought of it like that. I only think about the billions who will experience it, not the billions who have. That's smart. That's really good, Dan. I will not claim that as my own.

You made a few references, Abby, to your past experiences with substance. You're in good company or bad company, given that I have plenty of experiences with substance abuse myself. You said a thing after you were arrested for DUI in 2016 and you said something that I wrote down here that I wanted to ask you about. You said the number one thing I could do for myself was start loving myself again. The choice to do that saved my life. Now, self-love can be a bit of a, like a, you know,

just like the type of shit that the spin instructor yells at you from the front of the, you know, exercise class. What do you mean by it and how did it save you? This is actually kind of interesting because I knew that was my way. like sobriety was the beginning, like choosing to no longer bring substances into my life to cover up the pain that I was internally feeling or numb. Those first days was like the first step toward loving myself. And the truth is, I'm almost eight years sober. And all this time, I've kind of been like looking around at all these other people, my wife who's 20 years plus sober. And I'm like looking to see how they love themselves.

Like I don't get it. Like I don't understand the concept. I intellectually understand the concept, but I don't understand the practical way in which somebody then just goes about loving themselves. And the reason why is because there are so many parts of my personality that have reached outside of myself, whether it be soccer, whether it be soccer,

whether it be drugs or alcohol, for pleasure, for worthiness, and that was how I thought love felt, like self-love felt. I thought going out there for affirmation, for accolades, for awards, for certificates, whatever, for degrees. I thought that was how I showed love to myself. And I was very wrong. I didn't understand that it's an inside job.

And the way that I love, the way that I actually feel love for my wife and my children, the way that feels on the inside of my body feels like this expression out. And I was never able to like put my finger on that exact feeling for myself. So what is myself? Like, what is my consciousness?

What are all of these, you know, the rungs of the ladder that I've climbed so that I could be worthy or have some power or fame or whatever it is? Like, what is it all for? And I do think, at least for me, my journey is the exploration of love, both learning how to find it inside of myself and also the expression of love, because I love that.

Like it's a thing that I really value about myself is my ability to express love and show the love that I have for the people that I love in my life. But this self-love concept, like an idea, always kind of felt like something that other people had access to that I didn't. And it's literally not until the seventh year of my sobriety, and I don't know why that number

is important to me, or even is important, but it feels kind of important, that I started to ask Glennon, like, do you love yourself? She's like, yeah, of course I love myself. And I'm like, but how? Like, how does that work? And honestly, the more therapy, because I started doing therapy for this reason,

about six, seven months ago, to literally learn how to love myself. to literally learn how to love myself. And to me, like real love, even the way that I express my love for Glennon is like, it's like an acceptance of that person fully and totally. And that is something that I didn't understand. I didn't understand that love, the way that I define love is just like accepting fully somebody's full humanity.

And I think that I had to get far enough away from the parts of myself that needed to feel the protector parts of myself that needed to feel safe. And so that those parts use drugs and alcohol to feel safe. I needed to get far enough away so that I didn't feel any more shame around those times of my life. So that I could fully accept even the parts of myself that on paper look like fucked up, look a little less attractive, right? The irony is like, I feel so proud of my sobriety.

Like the amount of pride that I feel for myself and love I have for myself for my sobriety is directly linked to how fucked up I was during the time in which I was abusing it. Do you know what I mean? So like, you can't have one without the other. And so coming to that understanding has been really helpful for me.

And I tell this to a lot of newly sober folks, the pride that you will feel from overcoming is so important. And also the amount and the depth of your use and abuse is often related to the increase in pride that you have, like the bigger the mountain that you have to climb. And so there's no shame in the depths that you've dug yourself, right? Like there isn't. We're all just kind of like walking around here like, what is going on?

I don't understand. And then emotions come up. I don't understand. And we are all born and raised in different families and in different cities and in different states and maybe even in different countries. And so we all have like different understandings of the way things are.

And sometimes the way things are don't match with the way things are, insides need them to be. So yeah, I've done a lot of therapy around it and my gosh, like that, that DUI in 2016 was at the time, God, I, I felt so certain that my life was over, that I would never be able to survive this, that my public image was now forever scarred and wouldn't you know, it was the very best thing that ever could happen to me. And I don't condone my behavior because I don't believe that it's ever good to drink and drive.

And I was super sick. And I needed that to happen. And I needed it to be so public. I needed my mugshot to be on the bottom of the ESPN ticker for a week. I needed that. It was so important for me and the kind of person that I am and it woke me up.

It was the thing that woke me up out of the trance. And it was like this beautiful opportunity that was like, come back to life. Here we are. You can do this. And so, yeah. I really like so many of the things you just said, but specifically about self-love that it is the same thing as loving anybody else. It has at least in my mind, two component parts. One you listed, which is acceptance. And acceptance doesn't mean you're necessarily

psyched about it, but you do accept it. And the second is, like wanting the best for that person or for yourself. It's actually not as cheesy as all the Instagram, latte, foam art, hashtag blessed versions of it. It's actually pretty down to earth. And the how of it is, you know, kind of up to you, but there are meditation practices that are good for this.

There are therapies good for this, you know, having good friends or a good romantic partner is part of this. But yeah, the way you see it is, I think, kind of the way I've seen it. Totally. I love that. I like that second piece to this,

like accepting somebody for who they are, yourself included, and also wanting the best for them and yourself. Gosh, like, if we could all just operate more through and from that perspective with life, I think the world would definitely be a much nicer place. And for me, I think what's compelling is that that basic friendliness, you can call it love, I mean, friendliness, benevolence, he has a trainable skill. That's the radical part of this that, you know, I'm particularly interested in meditation, but as a way to train it, but I'm not a fundamentalist in this regard. I think there are lots of ways to do it.

But just because you happen, you might feel hatred on a daily basis doesn't mean that you're immune to this training. Like I feel it too, and I've done a lot of this training. And just because you hate yourself or other people doesn't mean you can't boost your warmth quotient, you can, and you're living proof of that, having gone from a pretty low in 2016 to where you're at now. Yeah. You know, I consider myself to be probably overly kind because that's a virtue of mine. It's a value of mine. I think that we all have a responsibility in every room we walk into.

We all affect it, right? And having been on team sports my whole life, I'm keenly aware of every energy that walks into a room. Now, I'm not an empath, which is really interesting because empath then takes on the energy as their own. I am somebody who's very observant and I can sense energy, but I don't let it come into affect me. And I think like, I don't know if this is true or not, but in my experience, it takes more energy to be cold than warm. And by the looks on the cold people's faces versus the warm people's faces, you will see somebody who feels open

versus somebody who feels a little bit more clenched. Somebody who is curious versus somebody who's judgmental. And I understand that sometimes we have these notions or we have these lives that for whatever reason force us into wanting to be more open and warm versus cold and judgmental. I get it. And like you said, it's something that we can learn, right?

It could be either through meditation, it could also be through journaling, it could be through gratitude journals, It could be through, for me, learning what actually builds my own self-esteem. I think that we in our culture of capitalism, of thinking that I will feel happy or better when I make this much money or when I have this many cars or if I have children who are going and I can pay for them to go to college. Like whatever these like stories that we tell of ourselves, we forget about the fundamental

need to feel good about ourselves first. Like what really makes me feel good about me? And so I've actually thought about this a lot since retiring, you know, eight, nine years ago, because I was a really confident soccer player and soccer brought me so much self-esteem. Playing on the best team in the world brought me so much self-esteem, right? And so when I retired, I was very concerned with how I was going to feel about myself. And this is actually what was the big indicator of

my substance abuse at the time is I was really nervous about my retirement. I didn't know what the hell I was going to be. So since sobriety has really taken a front seat in my retirement, I have learned the things in my life that bring me self-esteem or actually suck self-esteem away from me. suck self-esteem away from me. And I really try very hard to do the things in my life every day, even the stuff that I don't wanna do, like work out every day and sit down and do an hour of busy work or 30 minutes of busy work to make sure the family's organized or whatever it is,

like have to drive my kids and sit through another soccer practice or another soccer game, like in the parking lot, by the way, folks, don't go sit and watch your kids practices. Let them go out there on their own, sit your ass in the car. Do not go and watch their practice. Practices are for them. Yes, just a little tip, little parenting tip there. I have learned that self-esteem is like the most important fundamental thing for me at the basis of how I get to learn what my own process and feeling of self-love and self-acceptance looks like. Because I do want to feel like, not that I'm winning at life, but that like, I am doing the best that I possibly can right now.

And PS, like these last couple of weeks when grief hit, the best I possibly could do was like one hour of work. And then I would go lay down for the rest of the day. And I kept asking Glennon, like, are you okay? Like, I'm so sorry, because I'm a caretaker by nature and I have a role in my family and, you know, food needs to be cooked and fed to the family and the kids. And she just kept saying like, of course I'm okay. And I want you to rest and take this time because it's precious.

These moments where the world does get to slow down and almost come to a stop, we can think, oh, God, this is so uncomfortable as it has been. It's also precious because it's allowing me to fill up and to have faith that I can take care of myself, even when tragedy strikes. Faith that self-esteem and the way we build it in a normal day might look different when you're suffering or you're going through some sort of tragedy. You can't just get up and check a list every single day

because we're all such complicated beings. We have so many different things that we're always siphoning through. And so it's not like a one size fits all. Like, yeah, I do have a bunch of stuff that usually make me feel pretty good about myself that have not worked over the last three weeks, that have had no impact and no increased value in my life.

So I just, do I keep doing them or do I just like sit and do a proper, it's like my sitting shiva, the thing that Jewish folks do after death, it's the way, it's like, you just got to sit in it. You got to sit in it and let it move through you. But I'm still kind of in it too, so. It's like the first day that I felt like I'm a little bit more normal than I have felt

over the last three or four weeks. Tell me if I'm hearing this through line correctly. I'm hearing a number of through lines in your comments, but you've used the term self-esteem a lot, and I'm wondering if that's synonymous with worthiness, which you've also used quite a bit. Like even right from the jump, you were joking about how you're being good at the tech gives you a sense of worth within the family.

And then of course, when you retired, you wondered a lot about where am I going to get my worthiness from and ended up reaching reflexively for substances. Again, no judgment. That's a move I've personally made myself. Am I hearing this correctly? This seems to be a big theme in your mental, in your interior life. Yes, and I would say the first half of my life was dominated by worthiness and needing The first half of my life was dominated by worthiness and needing other people's approval. The last eight to nine years of my life has been dominated with self-esteem needing my own need for approval. Of course, I want my wife to approve and I want my children to approve of me.

I feel like those are supernatural ways to interact in a marriage and in relationship with your children and I have values that I live by. But rather than the outside in world being the way that I live, I'm trying to live inside out. And that has actually been a really hard thing for me to completely get my mind around because since the time I was a baby I have been reaching out there for my own sense of worthiness. Reaching out there so that somebody can say that's good enough. You know, it's like when you go, and I'm sure that this was the case for my parents, but I can remember countless games when I was a kid and I would score a goal and I'm sure that this was the case for my parents, but I can remember countless games when I was a kid

and I would score a goal and I would look over to make sure that my mom and dad, or my mom was there at least, and they were watching. And so it's like every single time, looking over to see if they're watching. And actually, in fact, one of our really good friends, her daughter is just starting to play soccer and she couldn't be at her game and her daughter happens to score in this game.

And I had to explain to her, this might be a hard experience right now and it might be a really interesting conversation to start having with your kid about why you're doing this. Why are you out there? Are you out there so that you can look on the sidelines and to make sure that your mom or parents are watching? Or are you out there because it's filling you up?

Like it's just, it's an important thing. So yeah, worthiness, self-esteem, they're very similar. I also think they're right on the edge of the opposite sides of the coin. One is more from the inside out and the other is the outside in. Coming up, Abby talks about moving from external validation to internal validation.

And the one very simple question that changed her life. Very practically, what have you done that has helped you move from external validation to internal validation? Yeah. Well, I failed at it at first for a pretty long while because I just kind of went to what I knew. So early on in my retirement, I decided to train and run in the New York City Marathon.

And that was great, but that was all for external, that was all so that it could be cool, look cool, so that my family thought I was cool, all that stuff. And I realized that there's this link also with professional athletes with suffering and self-esteem. The more you suffer, the more you feel better about yourself and like there's, that's just like a never, the more you feel better about yourself. And like that's just like a never ending game

that you're playing with yourself. So I wanted to go one full year without suffering, physically, because I was getting so much, I'd just go for a long run. And I would suffer through it, and I'd hate every second of it, but when it was done, I feel really good about myself. The dopamine would, and the adrenaline would spike and I'd be like pumped.

I didn't want that. Like it just, that doesn't feel like such a balanced way of living. It feels like I was like sobering up from professional sports. Because there is a trauma, there is an unraveling to that whole world, the way of thinking, the way of actually being. So I spend a whole year not suffering physically. And so I would go on walks. I would go to the gym down from where I live and live with other people for 50 minutes.

And it would be like super low key, nothing hardcore. There's no like maxing reps. It's just like getting your heart rate up a little bit. I'd go surfing. I'd go golfing. I like started to like trend to doing things that I enjoyed doing, like truly enjoyed doing, and I did not understand that that was an association most people make with their fitness regimens,

that they do things that they kind of enjoy. And that has totally changed my life. Showing up every day is a virtue of mine, regardless of whether I want to do it or not. Some people call it behavior activation. I just also subscribe to like the fact that motivation doesn't always come. And in fact, for me personally, as it relates to even fitness, anytime I have to do something fitness wise, I don't even want to do it. It's the thing that's hard to do, right?

And so I have learned that there's like this push to do certain things, like this excitement, this draw. And those are usually things that I love to do. And so like that excitement and the looking forward to it is its own joy. Then there's other things that I do that I am having so much enjoyment in it that I didn't even think about it beforehand. It's just happening. And then there's other things that I get so much fulfillment when I'm done with it.

And I give both all three of those things same values. I don't say, oh my gosh, I'm only going to participate in the things that I feel excited about doing because then I'll never work out and I'll never feel healthy. Because the truth is the value is true across all of that board, right? I really do love planning a good trip and looking forward to it for a few months. And then I also really love being in the middle on a surfboard waiting for a wave.

I also look forward to surfing. And then I really love feeling the way that I feel on my walk home from the gym every single weekday. Like I love that part of it. I don't like the 55 minutes before or the hour before or pressing the button on my app to have to like sign up for the class the night before. Like those are not times where I'm feeling

like I look forward to it, but I do appreciate that walk home and then the next couple of hours and the way that I feel about myself for the rest of the day. So yeah, I think I got off tangent there, but. Well, I think I hear something actually quite similar to my conversation with your wife a few months ago, which is that a key step in moving from an addiction to external validation to relying more on internal validation is just a tuning to what you actually like.

Now that sounds so basic, but most of us are not socialized to do this. And so it sounds like you've just tuned your dial much more finely to what do I actually want and like as opposed to what the world is expecting of me? That's right. Yeah. I think a lot of that has to do with patience. I was the most impulsive, impatient person.

I want what I want when I want it. That's how I used to think. And I never considered to ask myself this one question, which I think so many of us addicts don't even realize we have access to this one question. And the question is, is that so? Is it true that, you know, because I was married when I was in the height of my addiction, and honestly addiction totally ruined my first marriage. Mostly because I was an alcoholic, but also I didn't have the skill set to work through

the problems that I was having in my marriage, and so I just drank my problem away. And that felt easier, and in some ways was easier, than actually going after and attacking the problem at hand. But the truthiest truth, and this is what Glenn and I always talk about, like, is that true? Is that absolutely true, as Byron Katie would ask us to ask ourselves. Can you know with absolute certainty if that is true? And I didn't know we could ask ourselves these questions. I didn't know that I didn't need to have an answer. I didn't know that the world is very hard and confusing and I didn't know that you could live it without the need

or what I felt like the requirement of alcohol was. So the reason why I was using is because I was afraid and I didn't ask myself if it was true that there was another way. It just felt like the only option, the only way. And I was conditioned to believe, as we all are, in mainstream America, everybody's drinking and every TV show you watch and in every circle you even run in,

there's so many drinkers, some of which are perfectly fine. They have no alcoholism in them. But that wasn't me. That wasn't my experience. It's interesting, an observation from me here as we run up against the clock at the end of our time together. You earlier said something about how you're not a spiritual guru and sure But like that by using your fame To be totally unguarded about all aspects of your life. I mean that is a very powerful way to teach people so in Just a long way of saying I am both impressed by your personal

growth and grateful to you for being so open about it because I think that just doing that is is more helpful than you might even know. Yeah I remember when the DUI happened and I was so worried I was writing a book at the time because I had just retired and that's what athletes do. I mean honestly it's the only way I was going to make money that next year. So I agreed to write a book. And I was really trying to figure out if I was going to include this in my book, this DUI, this jail, like the whole thing.

And it's right when I met Glennon and she had said to me, we in the real world like real people. And the only way to go through this part of your story is to tell all of it. Because then you will have no skeletons in your closet. Because then you will have not to worry 10 years, 20 years down the road, if your children will find out that you, that this happened.

And she's like my rap sheet is long is as long as your arm. There's nothing to be ashamed of here. And the more you can tell your story, the more we can help heal each other because yeah, I understand that there are gurus in the world, but like we're all just people at the end of the day. And we're all just trying to figure this out. And I don't know if I'll ever figure it out,

but I do know that I'm not going to shy away from the hard feelings or the hard parts of life. I mean, that's why we have a podcast named We Can Do Hard Things. It's my vocation, it's what I do for my work now. It's my vocation. It's what I do for my work now. I feel difficult things and I work through them. We talk to an incredible amount of people

who are also doing the same kind of work. And to me, I used to stand in front of people wearing a jersey and I used to be so incredibly proud and I am proud of the time that I spent representing this country. I know for certain that the more I talk about my vulnerabilities, real vulnerabilities, the more people come up to me now and they thank me for doing that because yes, pro athletics is wonderful, entertaining, but nobody ever came up to me as an athlete and said you saved my life. Right. And now countless people come up to me in the work that I

do and say you've really helped me save my life and that to me is like so much more profound and powerful. Well said. Yeah, I just want to put in a plug for We Can Do Hard Things, the podcast that you co-host with your wife and your sister-in-law and also for your book Wolf Pack. And just thank you for coming on.

It's just such a pleasure to talk to you. Same. Thank you for having me. And you know, we got to get you on the podcast one of these days. Anytime. Although I may have the wrong chromosomal structure for your guest list. You know what? It's true. We not even on purpose. We didn't even have dudes on our podcast, at least straight white dudes. And we're opening up the aperture for folks such as yourself who could qualify and not be shunned by our listener.

No, I will step gingerly. Thank you again for doing this, really. Appreciate you. Appreciate you too. Thanks again to Abby Wambach. I've dropped some links to some related episodes in the show notes. So if you want to listen to, for example, Abby's wife, Glennon Doyle, I've got a link to an interview I did with her not long ago.

I also dropped a link to an interview I did with Byron Katie, who came up during this conversation. Just a reminder, this is part one of our Boldface series. We're going to do two separate weeks this summer where we drop a bunch of interviews from famous folks. This week it's Abbie Wambach, RuPaul, and Jada Pinkett Smith. And coming up in August, we've got another week with Goldie Hawn and the rapper Common. Don't forget my weekly newsletter where I wrap up my favorite learnings from the week and also drop a bunch of recommendations from books, TV shows,

viral videos that I am enjoying of late. And before I go, I just want to make sure I thank everybody who worked so incredibly hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. We get additional pre-production support from Wanbo Wu. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer.

DJ Cashmere is our managing producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Play us out, Nick. ["Wonderful Music"] If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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