Meet Mary Barron. She is passionate about life and she’s involved bringing on a competitive nature. She is down-to-earth, welcoming and loves connecting with people.Her career as an occupational therapist can be difficult to bring enough comfort and confidence to truly impact, but she brings herself to the job as she works in home health and special needs. There are many opportunities where she can connect. There are some things she can’t fix and those situations can keep her up at night and make her cry in the shower. She wants to advocate and be their hero, but at the same time it has taught her to find boundaries.We talk about being a person who can set boundaries and where Mary wants to be sure that she doesn’t over-correct and become icy and jaded. In her overall life she’s found that she gets comfortable fast and fails to see warning signs…a work in progress, she calls it. Listening to her explain how she functions in life and in her chosen career, sport, and life with so much blending and working together one could say that everything combines to make her the person she is today.We talk about her jiujitsu path that began in 2018…a month before she turned 30. She says that the sports brought her back to who she was in organized sports. She is a life long athlete and the aspects she was missing included the need to compete. Experiencing competition in a new way brings joy and satisfaction…Mary use to punish herself in a very unhealthy ways, sometimes physically hurting herself and with a mindset of intensity of perfectionism. She tells us some of those instances. Mary has always demanded from herself and appreciated pats on the back, but her own expectations were higher than anyone else could possibly set for her. That approach was across the board in her life and not just athletics. Now, she competes and is controlling how it affects her and applies tools she’s learned from the mat and in therapy — like giving grace and learning to accept defeat and not let it define her person. You will lean into this episode because Mary is open and vulnerable in her conversation as we talk about the process of the sport and how it applies to her life and how she talks to herself. She realizes her limitations and where she actively manages her thought patterns — that in itself is newfound strength.We talk about her process to compete and manage her energy levels. She is in tuned to herself and has done a lot of work to get there. We zero in on a discussion about therapy and the idea to embrace mental wellbeing and growing in areas to improve from the talking points to not drop the ball. Mary talks so easily about the process of the idea to have freedom and we talk about simply observing thoughts that gave her freedom to reach a goal and to apply what she has learned to excite and fuel what she can apply to her sport and to her life. It is refreshing to hear Mary’s openness and to know that she is willing to share so much of who she is and address what so many may indeed be feeling. "If you don’t set goals, then you can’t meet them and that can be a pattern of self sabotage. Accept and revel in your accomplishments." Tune in!Music "STOMP" used by persmission of Donica Knight Holdman and Jim Huff
Music "STOMP" used by permission of artist Donica Knight Holdman and Jim Huff
