Timothy Tate: Lessons From A Psychotherapist To Elite Performers
About this episode:
In this week’s episode, coach Hillary talks with Timothy Tate, a Bozeman based psychotherapist and consultant to The North Face elite athlete team, about what calls athletes to reach beyond their limits, dealing with the pressure to perform, and developing a daily practice that can foster wellness.
Episode Highlights:
- Balancing ambition and risks
- Dealing with the pressure to perform
- The dark side of ambition
- What drives athletes to become exceptional
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform
Episode Transcription:
Hillary Allen:
Hi guys and welcome to the TrainRight Podcast. Today’s guest, we’re speaking with Timothy Tate. Now, Timothy Tate is a psychotherapist. We’ll get into this more in the podcast, exactly what that is. He has over 10 years of experience in teaching psychology at various universities from California to also Bozeman, Montana, where he actually has his own private practice for the past 20 years, 30 years. My goodness. So he’s got a lot of experience. I met Timothy through The North Face where he’s also a consultant for The North Face team. Why do athletes need a psychotherapist as a consultant?
Hillary Allen:
Well, especially in most recent years and throughout history of athletics, especially in mountain sports, there’s been a history of people dying either due to avalanches, climbing accidents and in my case, a nearly fatal fall during a running race back in 2017. Timothy and I will speak to the importance of catering to your mental wellness, not only your physical health and how these two can compliment each other, and both are absolutely necessary to maintaining optimal performance, but also wellness and health. I really hope you guys enjoy this. He’s a pleasure to speak to. Here we go. So, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for [inaudible 00:01:51].
Timothy Tate:
Hello? Hello, Hillary. Thank you for having me on your podcast. Yep.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. I’ve already introduced a guess of who you are. I got to know you through Conrad Anker and through the work you do with The North Face, but I’d like to just start by, can you summarize what your practice is about based out of Bozeman, Montana, and generally speaking what you do?
Timothy Tate:
Yeah, gladly. I’ve been in practice here in Bozeman, Montana since 1983, so it’s been awhile. I have established a psychotherapy practice and have named it as such for that entire run of time, because I believe that psychotherapy is more to the causes of our concerns than management of symptoms, which counseling or psychology might address more as a priority. By causes, I mean what it means for us as individuals to live a meaningful, authentic life and find our own calling rather than if you’re feeling good or bad or having trouble at home or worried about this, that, or the other thing. So psychotherapy in my mind is a depth look at our character and how we are called to be ourselves and the troubles that come in way of doing that.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah, this is something. When I met you, I’ve been to a counselor before, talk therapy, I think it’s really, really important in my work as a coach. I think oftentimes when I’m coaching athletes, I’m mostly [inaudible 00:03:53] their feelings and how they’re feeling or navigating the general world as opposed to just prescribing them workouts to prepare for a race. How is that similar to what you do? Because you specifically, you work with someone like Conrad Anker, he’s a major member of The North Face team and alpinist, someone who, he has to manage fear and all of these things, the mountains, to pursue his goals. But how do you see that also relevant for just the general population of athletes in general?
Timothy Tate:
Yeah. Well, I think that when we talk about the risk taking or the endurance or what it takes to rise to the top in your particular discipline, there is a mind full or brain concentration or orientation that is exceptional. In my work with such people as yourself or Conrad or others on the team, I am intrigued by what calls them to reach beyond what is normal limits. So there are a couple of ways that you can be motivated to do that. One is to somehow egotistically prove that you’re better than others, and that usually doesn’t get you to the top. It’s usually some form of compensation, just because you feel inadequate in some way, you overcompensate and strive to be the best of something or another. That usually is a neurotic way to do this. Then there’s another way that I think you embody and the people that I’ve met in The North Face [inaudible 00:05:49] team, and that is that there’s this curious call to excel, to be the best person, to be best athlete. It’s not about making up for something or compensating, it’s for something you can’t help but doing.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah, that sounds-
Timothy Tate:
And that’s of interest to me.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. That is really interesting to me because I feel like a lot people that I work with are athletes in general, it’s like this lifestyle. So it really is this life that you can embody. But I also see where this community can be an empowering thing. It can be a place where you can, like you said, explore ways to be the best version of yourself, but there’s also this darker side to it where, I’ve experienced it too, and it can be at a professional level if you’re competing, but it can be, I think at any level where this darkness also creeps in, where your passion, it’s a flame that burns so brightly that it can ignite the way, but it can also threaten to consume you.
Timothy Tate:
Yeah. Well, you’re introducing the main course of my practice and that is facing or encountering our personal shadows, our personal dark sides. We don’t perhaps want to get too philosophical here, but at the same time, unless we have the tools or the courage to face our own shadow, we tend to act it out in the world. And that usually works out pretty badly because it’s being driven by forces we don’t understand. In the experience I’ve had with athletes, you’d think there’d be tremendous egos. I’m the best, I’m always the one that you want to know about, like selfies on steroids. But the people I’ve met in North Face are not that way. They are actually simply doing what they are called to do. The shadow we’re part of it is the competition to stay in the limelight or stay on top or stay sponsored or be noticed. And that’s tough stuff.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. And I think-
Timothy Tate:
Meaning that… Yeah, go on.
Hillary Allen:
No, sorry. You go for it.
Timothy Tate:
Meaning that the pressure on the athlete to perform is something we can’t just dismiss. That is a huge part of each athlete’s psyche and what they are consumed by.
Hillary Allen:
I think that this can be applied to someone at any level, because like you mentioned, it’s like getting out of your way or getting out of your “ego,” your ego’s way. It’s like what it means to not have, of course, people want to have the best performance of their life. Part of the reasons of this podcast is to inform the masses of like, okay, what are the best coaches out there doing? What are the best athletes out there doing to improve performance? But a big part that we miss out on is the mental side of wellness and how we can get in our own way. I think that’s applicable to anyone, whether you’re trying to win a race or just set a personal best.
Timothy Tate:
Yeah, I think so. When you say, get in your own way, part of what I do with individuals is help them understand the difference between persona and character. Without going too deep in that, what we mean by persona is often confused with the word ego. So let me just talk here for a second about these three zones. Okay?
Hillary Allen:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Timothy Tate:
So anyone who is going to accomplish their calling in life has to have a strong ego. That’s the foundation of everything else, and that ego comes into place and to shape in our first years of life. Then upon that ego, we build a persona, which is a response to the demands of our society and family of origin. That’s where the neurotic element is introduced into our experience because we’re just trying to be loved, we’re just trying to be seen, we’re just trying to be secure. So we do strange things to accomplish that goal in our family of origin and in our society trying to chase after some norm.
Timothy Tate:
I think one of the more neurotic questions is I just want to be normal or what does that mean? It’s an endless chase. Then sometime into the twenties, early thirties, that persona starts to run out of gas. And often earlier in people who are exceptional like yourself and other athletes who they don’t really care about satisfying others as much as they care about fulfilling a drive within themselves. That’s what I call calling. In many ways, I’m a midwife, helping people be born out of their persona into their character, and exceptional people don’t have a choice. They’ve been that way their whole life. Does that make some sense?
Hillary Allen:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It reminds you of something that we talked about of, and you already touched on it a little bit, people, they can’t help but do what they’re made to do. I think one of the conversations that we had when I was out in Bozeman was that, Oh, it was like, I’m afraid if I stop this negative self talk, then I’m not going to do well. I have to tell myself this story that, Oh, Hillary, you’re not very good at running or you need to be faster.
Hillary Allen:
I was afraid that if I stopped that then I would stop trying as hard, but really it’s part of me that I’m going to try my best to meet [inaudible 00:12:37]. It’s like, I had to just get out of my own way. Maybe I possess that, but it’s harder to, I don’t know, to let other people who don’t have that to practice it. It is, it’s a continued practice every single day. Just like someone’s training schedule, if they like to go outside and run or bike or ski or whatever, it is active work, but not in the way that I think athletes are used to. But I think it’s just as important.
Timothy Tate:
Yeah, I would agree. Especially when you talk about the daily practice, Hillary, the times that I’ve spent in the back country, up in the mountains with Conrad Anker, as an example, he cannot help himself push the edge and have a level of activity and engagement in doing things and trying things and risking things that other people would just go, are you crazy? That would be a phrase. Yet in his psyche and in my way of witnessing over the last 15 years of our friendship, his behavior is like, come on, come to the edge, join me here. It’s completely safe as long as you are in touch with your limits and what each step means. Most people get so caught up in either trying to do something or pushing themselves because they feel they have to push in order to excel, they make mistakes and get hurt.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah.
Timothy Tate:
So there is an energy within the individual who is exceptional, like you athletes, that could be described as neurotic. But in my experience, it’s actually not, it is simply an agitation and ambition, a drive that those who succeed in your sports except about themselves and no longer fight themselves.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s taken me a lot of work to realize all these things, and I don’t know what your, I think we talked about this a little bit, but what your opinion is on if someone wants to incorporate this into a daily practice. I know for me in particular, sometimes it’s really hard to sit in silence and meditation. But, what are you laughing? [crosstalk 00:15:45]. What are you laughing? But I’d like to get your opinion on the importance of, because I think meditation can be a pretty simple thing that everyone can incorporate into their day, but what is your opinion on this? Do you think it’s beneficial? I think it can be, it’s like almost a fad now, but what do you think that are real benefits to meditation and mental work?
Timothy Tate:
Yeah. No, I giggled only because the energy level in the people that you’re talking to and coaching and yourself is so intense that the idea of sitting quietly is like, sure, uh-huh. It’s a bit of a challenge and you’re right.
Hillary Allen:
Well, it can terrifying. I’m just like, what? I’ve got all these things to do. I can’t just sit here.
Timothy Tate:
Yeah, right. Exactly. That hits the heart of what you’re really talking about, Hillary, thanks for being vulnerable in this way. I don’t know that there is a prescription for meditation or certainly all manner of options that have been brought into popular awareness over the last 30 years from the yoga surge of practicing yoga to the new age and to self-help and then to the interest in Buddhism and Zen and dollars and all the things that we have now access to, and those traditions are time tested and so valuable. But I think we have to find our own way on how to be quiet. So for me, I have a walking meditation, a walking contemplation that I do each day between my sessions, where I walk around my neighborhood in Bozeman for five to eight minutes and pay attention to my breath.
Timothy Tate:
I listen to the birds. I watch people go about their lives. I’m across from an elementary school, so I watch the kids play and listen to the laughter. In other words, I’m engaged in the contemplative way with what, otherwise I would just be scurrying through to get through something or get to something. So a walking contemplation is one way. The other way, and several athletes have started to do that since they’ve worked with me, is to have a discipline sitting practice where they begin each day with at least a half an hour of sitting quietly. For me, that all comes back to how you are mindfully breathing. So being able to sit quietly, I have what’s called a zafu, a sitting pillow in my office. I sit on it from time to time, where you simply allow yourself to breathe consciously because breath is the key to consciousness. Without conscious breath, you will not be able to develop your awareness.
Hillary Allen:
And why is that?
Timothy Tate:
Well, without getting too esoteric, the Sanskrit word for that is [Prawna 00:19:33], so the idea and you runners certainly experience the high from deep breathing, the endorphin rush that comes with that. We know that, or anybody who does hard, aerobic exercise feels better. That’s because when we oxygenate, we start to access more of our brain and what I call our mind. You can’t access the mind without mindful breathing, conscious breathing, otherwise you’re trapped in your brain.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah.
Timothy Tate:
This is the difference that some people don’t understand that we have both the brain and the mind. The mind is where consciousness sits, the brain is where our complexes and repetition and thoughts sit. So breath is the access to the mind.
Hillary Allen:
I love this because I am… Okay. If you would have asked me this maybe five years ago, I would have been like, okay, I’m not sure I believe all of this stuff because I’m a scientist by training. I like the hard evidence and I want, show me the studies and show me the numbers and blah, blah, blah. But in fact, I have a master’s in neuroscience and in graduate school, I realized just the sheer complexity of what human consciousness is. And we can’t even explain it scientifically. We know some parts that contribute to it. Some of the molecules and some are the chemistry, but what you just described is like the merging of those two things. I think regardless of how scientifically driven you are and how scientifically driven I am, you can’t ignore the magical, it’s basically, it’s a magical mystery of what it is when the human thinks or gets lost in their thoughts. I can’t explain that in terms of chemistry. But it doesn’t make it any less important and… Yeah, you can go ahead.
Timothy Tate:
Yeah, I think that’s very important to address. I am grounded in rational logic perspectives and am not interested in some esoteric fanciful thinking. But at the same time, let me put it this into perspective. When I was doing my postgraduate work at UCLA, I ran into two scientists who changed my life. Barbara Brown, who founded what we now call Biofeedback, and John Lilly who developed what is called the Sensory Deprivation Tank or isolation tack. Those two people had a profound effect on me because they were coming from pure science. Yet they ran into this X factor, which I’m calling the mind, that they couldn’t explain a way. So with biofeedback, she realized that if we employ a dimension of our mind and see something on a screen or a tone or a sensation stimuli feedback, we can alter the neurological pathway. Huh, that’s of interest.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah.
Timothy Tate:
Then John Lilly used the isolation tank or sensory deprivation to go into a state where there was no stimuli where the brain was put out of a job, and then what happens? He’s written about that in a number of books. So when he said to the class, either the brain is a closed system or it’s an open system, and then went on to discuss the pros and cons of it being a closed system. I.e. we are simply an artifact of our brain’s activity and our experiences in our heredity, or as you call it, the leaky mind or the leaky brain, there’s an opening, there is an access to something else. That’s how I began thinking about this.
Hillary Allen:
This is so interesting to me because I always think about a runner’s high, it’s something that I can explain chemically, for instance, it’s your cerebellum, it’s like reenacting rapid eye movement. You’re scanning the ground from side to side, as well as up and down. That’s why you feel this flow state or rhythm, and then that’s chemically where this idea of a runner’s high comes from. But also people in the community of running and cycling and doing sports in general, and sports and the outdoor world in general, they share this unspeakable bond. This thing where, it’s like you can’t explain it. It’s not tangible but it’s there. And it’s what draws people together, and it’s what draws people out by themselves to do big lines to the mountains. But it’s also, you have that bond. What I’m wondering is if that’s there and that’s tangible, why isn’t it something that more people are paying attention to or nurturing on on a daily basis? Because I think it’s just as important as what drives us to train or physically prepare for something.
Timothy Tate:
That bond you’re talking about among your fellow athletes is somewhat of an unspoken bond that comes with a shared sense of experiences at the edge of capacity? Tell me more.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. It’s that shared feeling of everyone, if you go out for a group run, people have this runner’s high. So they can form friendships. But also there’s something that I think is liberating when you’re out. Like some of my best friends have been made, you’re sharing miles in the mountains. I don’t know, I think things fade away. You are a little bit more open and you can just maybe more vulnerable, but yeah, there’s this shared experience what brings us together. When I was injured, that was taken away because I couldn’t share the physical activity with other people. It was something I had to work on cultivating how I could feel that sense of community and connectedness to myself and other people, but separate from a physical act. Yeah, that’s more what I’m getting at.
Timothy Tate:
Yeah. Well, I’m intrigued with clans or tribes or individuals who band together or are drawn together because of mutual shared interests or passions. I think the human psyche longs for fellowship and intimacy and companionship, and yeah, you can get that at the bar watching TV, but that’s a little lower energy than what we’re talking about. Because those of us who go out into the world, and I live, the world meaning into nature, or push ourselves physically through some activity that often involves being in nature, that’s why, of course I live in Bozeman because we have such access to walking in the mountains or being in the mountains.
Timothy Tate:
I think that access to nature and the wild plays an interesting role in what we’re talking about. Yeah, you can get that running in an urban seeing, like when I would visit New York and watch the runners do laps in Central Park. They were full of life, they were excited, they were talking with themselves as they ran around. So I think there’s two things going on here, Hillary. One is, the companionship of individuals who are pushing themselves beyond the normal limits of the sedentary life and what comes from that shared experience. Then the other piece is that the more this is done in the wilderness or in the mountains, the more that nature is access, which to me is the best healing medicine of all.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Timothy Tate:
You can share the vistas, you can share are the smells, you can share the sense of what you’ve experienced. If I run around the block, that’s one thing. But if I just take a left and go up the trail into the mountains, that’s a whole nother thing.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. Then there was also something that I wanted to talk to you about. It was from a recent article that you wrote. Well, I’m going to link it to the end of this episode so more people can read it. But you talked about this balance, or if there is a balance of people with ambition and what ambition is. Because I think it’s a general theme that we’ve been talking about is what drives us to be better, what drives us to keep going, search out those vistas. But there’s also like dark side of ambition. Can you tell us a little bit about this article that you wrote?
Timothy Tate:
Yeah. I addressed what we’re talking about because it seems so critical to the common experience I’ve had with the folks that I’ve been introduced to The North Face and also just my peer group in town. There’s a growth, or not a growth. There is a demand within the human psyche to achieve something others haven’t achieved to excel. In mythology, it’s called the hero’s journey. In the framework of uni and philosophy and archetypal studies, which is my context for my work, the hero’s journey implies that either the heroine or the hero is able to go past where their father or mother or peers have not been able to tread. So there’s this longing for adventure that takes us beyond what others know. I called that ambition. A sentence that I wrote says, “Ambition brings us to a world beyond the common reminding us that without effort and risk-taking, reality gets high centered on the bog of the common.”
Hillary Allen:
Oh man. Yeah.
Timothy Tate:
Right. I rest my case.
Hillary Allen:
That’s in a nutshell of what I keep dreaming or having adventures or next races and things to do. But I think in that, another piece, I think that’s important with this ambition and even not wanting to get complacent basically is, I’ve fallen in love with the process of achieving without attaining it. This was something that I was really liking that you talked to me about, is what comes with ambition is this constant need for wanting to achieve something. To go into that unknown. But in that quest for achievement, you can’t actually really attain anything. That can be a little bit of a crux. How can I relate this basically to running? If someone crosses the finish line and they do well, they set a personal best in a race. Well, really that’s an achievement, but really there’s nothing to hold onto.
Hillary Allen:
You can’t hold on tight to that moment because it’s already gone, but that’s what’s made it beautiful is the fact that it’s fleeting. But then the next question, if someone is like, Oh man, I have to keep attaining this, they immediately set their sights on another race. Maybe not giving themselves enough time to recover or reflect or celebrate the thing that they just achieved. Yeah, I think that that can be, I don’t know, a darker side to this coin of ambition that we’re talking about. I don’t know, I think that’s where the practices for coaching and for whether it’s psychotherapy or coaching athletes is maybe having them fall in love with this process of achievement, but without attaining it.
Timothy Tate:
Yeah, that’s very important, Hillary. For me, it goes back to a story and that story has to do with the philosopher whose name is Alan Watts. Who’s become more accessible in the last 10 years than he has been for a while. I don’t know if you know that name, Alan Watts, he’s a philosopher. Anyway, he brought the notion of Zen to America back in the sixties. I had an opportunity to meet and engage and work with him in the early seventies, in Europe and Germany. When I was taking him to the airport in Frankfurt for him to return to the West Coast, he lived in Mount Tamalpais in San Francisco area, he took out a sheath for the, what do we call the chopsticks that we’re using at a sushi restaurant? Which was all new to me in 1972. What the hell is this? We’re eating raw fish? But he was a devotee of that as well as Saki, maybe a little too much on his side.
Timothy Tate:
But anyway, on the sheath of the chopsticks he wrote in Sanskrit is a riddle. And I said, “That’s beautiful, but what the hell does that mean?” And he goes, “You can attain it, you can not achieve it.” That riddle has sat with me for, I don’t know, all my years. And check this out, until this fall, Conrad and I were taking a walk with his retrievers, with Jenny and his retrievers, that we do regularly, almost weekly in a particular place in the mountains here. I was talking about this riddle that you have introduced, the difference between achievement and attainment, and suddenly it clicked and I was able to understand the deeper meaning of it, which you have to discover on your own. I’m not going to tell you a secret because it’s mine and it doesn’t matter. It’s not yours. But the point of the riddle is what you’re talking about. If you’re attached to achievement, you’re going to be successful at a certain level. But until you understand the attainment that you cannot achieve, you’re going to have a neurotic relationship with your personal activities, life, sports accomplishments.
Hillary Allen:
Oh, man, I love this. Also drives me crazy. I remember the first time you said this riddle to me and I was like, wait, what? I think I was physically [inaudible 00:37:53].
Timothy Tate:
Say that again.
Hillary Allen:
No, I said I remember the first time you told me this riddle and I was physically [inaudible 00:38:03]. I didn’t understand. I think it’s a continued, obviously it is something you continue to sit with and chew on and try to figure it out. But yeah.
Timothy Tate:
Well, see, that’s the point, let’s just underscore that for a second, Hillary. That’s the point or the point of the practice of the Zen meditation, is there is a master or a discipline person who gives the student a riddle to sit with, not just like, Oh, but rather you can attain it, you can not achieve it, sit with it. The whole idea in that form of meditation is to bear the tension of something that seems irreconcilable until it pops into something harmonious. That practice is very important. As I probably mentioned to you, that’s what [Yong 00:39:20] said was the heart or the essence of maturity. I’ll just run it by you again, that maturity is the capacity to bear the tension of irreconcilable paradox.
Hillary Allen:
Oh man. Then hopefully I’m getting more mature.
Timothy Tate:
Yes, you are, Hillary.
Hillary Allen:
I really think I am. Although some days-
Timothy Tate:
You know you are.
Hillary Allen:
… some days I can’t. Some days all the unknown is just a little bit too unbearable, but that’s okay. That’s part of it.
Timothy Tate:
That’s all right. Yeah. I call the wind, Hillary, if I can make it from my house to my office, it’s a roaring six minute commute without flipping off one of these new people who’ve moved to town who are so aggressive drivers, so I understand that.
Hillary Allen:
Oh my goodness. Okay, great. So even the master has to work on things too. [inaudible 00:40:26].
Timothy Tate:
Yeah. Come on.
Hillary Allen:
Oh, that’s good. Well, we’ve talked about so much, but I have a few questions just to wrap things up. It’s hard to even summarize or to put something into digestible tips, but I think one of the main takeaways that I hope people have from listening to this is just the importance of wellness and that means, not only from a physical perspective, but also mental one. In your opinion, what is wellness?
Timothy Tate:
Yeah. I think it’s a trifecta. I think we have to address the physical body, the mental body and the soulful body. The mental body and wellness is the capacity to delve into some of the material we talked about today. So each day in my experience, it’s important to balance all three of those domains. In our society, the physical gets most emphasis. When we think about the mental, it’s so attached to strange ideas like, Oh, he’s so mental or mental illness or mental being you’re too cognitive, you’re too intellectual. So it’s got its own challenges, but by mental, in this conversation when we’re talking about wellness, what I mean is using the brain for something that’s really good at. And that is reflecting on and following through with reading and analysis and writing and journaling and introspection, a theme or an idea. That’s what I mean by mental.
Timothy Tate:
Then when we get to the soulful piece, I didn’t use spirit, spirit is the shadow of soul and that’s a whole nother conversation. But soulfulness to me is respecting your unique character and learning how to listen to the call of the character within your own psyche. That’s that contemplative walk or meditation or breathing exercises that allow us to access what we were talking about earlier, where we talked about the mind.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. Well, that’s wonderful. I’d like to end it right there because I think you summarized it in three wonderful ways and where people can start to think about how they can incorporate this into their daily lives aside from, or with the physical part of being human and what it means to be an athlete.
Timothy Tate:
Yeah, I think so. I think what you say is the daily practice and that’s the key. It doesn’t have to be all structured. It doesn’t have to be timed, but it has to be deliberate. It has to be intentional. It has to be mindful. In addition to that, it’s not like we live on islands, we also have our relationship to the other. So let me just add that on, that other can be a relationship with a loved one or a partner or siblings or family, or in my worldview as importantly to your community. Without that part, that would be maybe the fourth part and the daily practice, is have some community engagement. Now, I’m not talking necessarily volunteering at the food bank as an example. That’d be great, but I mean engaging people in your community, kids on the street, old people, whomever, some engagement in the community, because if we’re not careful, all of this can be self absorbed.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really good point. I talked to a good friend of mine in a previous episode, Allen [Lim 00:45:06], and he talked about one of the main things about loneliness is, I think he used the word killer, but feeling this thing of being alone and not interacting with your community can be so simple or it can be as simple as sharing a meal with someone.
Timothy Tate:
Yeah. Each day I make it a point of walking downtown to our community food co-op where it’s a gathering for people at lunch. It’s good food, it’s not that expensive. I interact with maybe a dozen people during that time. I could just take lunch in my office. But no, I make myself visible in community and that’s what we’re meaning here, doesn’t mean that you have to do anything in particular, but you have to show up in community and get outside your own brain and idea of yourself.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. I love that. That’s such a good reminder. But thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Timothy Tate:
Well, Hillary, I respect you and your people that you run with and the athlete community. So I’m glad to be of some service.
Hillary Allen:
Thank you so much.