In this episode of Surfing Your Edge, Kristine explores the invisible emotional barriers that keep us from choosing ourselves and creating the life we truly want. From believing you're "not ready" or "too late," to waiting for the perfect plan or the perfect time, she unpacks the limiting beliefs that quietly keep us stuck. Kristine shares why overwhelm is often a form of self-protection, how societal expectations shape our decisions, and why growth requires embracing uncertainty rather than avoiding it. If you've been waiting for permission to pursue what's calling you, this episode will inspire you to take the next small step and trust that your path is created by walking it.

Free Gift

Surf Your Edge: From Fear to Freedom - This complete chapter from Confident You: The Raw Conversations traces two adventures, twenty years apart, and explores fear, identity, and why the real work of a life-changing experience begins after you come home. https://tinyurl.com/SYEgift

The Shift Beneath the Words:

• Internal narratives can keep us stuck.
• Growth often happens at the edge of your comfort zone
• Question the beliefs you've inherited
• You don't need the whole plan before you begin
• Overwhelm is often a form of self-protection

Drawing on the phrase "A path is made by walking," Kristine encourages listeners to take one small step at a time instead of waiting until every detail is figured out.

About the Host:

Kristine Goad is endlessly curious about the moment when “I could never” becomes “What if I tried?” As the Surfing Your Edge Coach, her work centers on transforming our relationship with fear, trusting ourselves more deeply, and creating lives that feel bigger, bolder, and more fully our own. Her approach blends coaching, mental fitness, adventure, experimentation, and wonder—shaped by a life that has included bicycling across America, writing a memoir, building a business, and taking surf lessons to overcome her fear of open water in her late 40s. She is less interested in fearless living than in what becomes possible when we get curious about the things that scare us.

Connect with Kristine:

Substack: kristine.substack.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/kristinegoad

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kristinegoad

Instagram: www.instagram.com/kristine.goad

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@KristineGoad

Website: kristinegoad.com

Download your free gift:

Surf Your Edge: From Fear to Freedom

This complete chapter from Confident You: The Raw Conversations traces two adventures, twenty years apart, and explores fear, identity, and why the real work of a life-changing experience begins after you come home.

Link: https://tinyurl.com/SYEgift

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Your travels have brought you to the Surfing Your Edge podcast, where we explore what it

takes to create the bigger, bolder, badass life you know you were born for.

Not a life that simply looks good on paper, and not another spin on the self-help hamster

wheel.

If you're ready for more joy, more peace, and more contribution, you're in the right

place.

I'm Kristine Goad, the Surfing Your Edge coach.

Let's get surfing.

Welcome to episode three of the Surfing Your Edge podcast.

I am so glad you're here today.

We are going to talk not only about what Surfing Your Edge is and why it's important, but also

about all of the ways we get in our own way and keep ourselves from really leaning into

the life we feel like we were born for, right?

There's something out there.

I'm pretty sure you feel it.

There's something more out there for you.

And yet, you're having a hard time giving yourself permission to believe that it's there

for you, to believe that you deserve it, to go for it, to believe that it's possible.

So we're going to talk about that today.

And if you're feeling that, if you're feeling like there's something more, but you don't

feel like you have permission to go for it, by the end of this episode, I hope you will

feel like you have the permission to go for it.

And we'll know that you're not alone.

This happens to all of us.

And it's not the kind of thing that you solve once and it goes away, and you're good to

go and you're out there surfing forever.

It's a skill, right?

It's something we all have to remind ourselves of and practice.

So first of all, we're talking about Surfing Your Edge.

What is that?

In my mind, it is being out on the edge of your comfort zone and doing new things regularly,

which means not only will you grow, but you will also fail.

And a lot of times we're not comfortable failing, especially if you're a woman, you've been

told that you're not allowed to fail.

You're supposed to get it right.

And, you know, research has shown that girls won't raise their hand to speak in class unless

they're pretty certain they have the answer, whereas boys will raise their hands and say

whatever comes to their minds, right?

So we have a long history of wanting to not fail in public.

So fear of failure in public is one of those things that might keep you stuck.

You might also be stuck feeling like, I'm not ready, right?

There's this thing I've wanted to do for a while.

I've kind of looked into it.

I've played around the edges of it, but I don't feel like I'm ready yet.

But maybe one day I will be, right?

So I'm not ready yet.

Then there's also the little voice that says, Oh, don't even go there.

You should have done that.

If that's what you want to do, you should have started it 20 years ago, 10 years ago.

You know, it's way too late for you, honey.

We hear that a lot, right?

And there's this dancer online, I can't remember her name, but she had a professional dance

career until her mid-20s and then she gave it up and she moved from New York to LA.

And then in her 50s, she decided, Hey, I'm going back to New York and I'm picking that

back up, right?

And she could have easily given into all of the voices saying, Oh, it's too late for you.

But instead she picked up, she took her time figuring out how to get back from LA to New

York, but she's back in New York dancing on Broadway at 57.

And so we all get told we're too old, it's too late.

And you can be caught in the place where you're feeling like it's both too late and you're

not ready, right?

You can be caught right there in both places.

And you can spend a long, long time there.

And maybe at the end of this, I'll tell you a little bit about my story of how long I

stayed there.

But let me just tell you, I was there for at least 10 years, getting ready to get ready

to use a Suzanne Evans quote.

The other thing is, Oh, this is a new one.

This is a new-ish one.

I would say, I'll do it when the world gets back to normal, right?

I'll do the thing I want to do when I can kind of rely on everything else to be settled.

So that when I do this thing that unsettles me, at least I can count on everything else

to look the way I expect.

But I think for the last six years, at least, the world has been showing us that things

change rapidly, and they're out of our control, largely, you know, big things can change quickly

and they can be out of our control.

And we can't wait for them to get back to normal because I think this is the new normal.

I think that the constant shifting and the constant re-imagining, and that's actually

the exciting part.

When you surf your edge, you're part of the re-imagining, right?

You're part of figuring out what the world could look like.

It's your response to, Oh, not for you, honey, right?

It's like, well, why not for me, right?

The world doesn't, and it's your, you get to, you get to respond to what's going on

around you in whatever way works for you.

And waiting is not the right, probably not the right response.

The wise person who helped encourage me to get this podcast off the ground, reminded

me that you never feel ready and that if you do feel ready, you've waited too long.

So we can't wait for the world to go back to normal.

The world is in a state of flux and it's going to be fluxing probably for the rest of our

lifetimes.

So we just have to dig in and be our unapologetically, you know, human self and move forward.

There are a couple more things I want to remember to tell you before I move on from this episode.

But one of the things that I feel like stops a lot of people is this internalized, again,

coming back to, you know, you shouldn't speak unless you know what you're, what you're speaking

about.

Right.

We have an internalized picture of how we're supposed to show up in the world and a picture

of how things are done.

And we've got lots and lots and lots of people out in the world who want to reinforce that.

Right.

Tell you what box you belong in and tell you this is how things are done.

This is the way things have always been done.

Who are you to question it?

Right.

And a lot of times when you hear it out in the world, you can push back.

But what you may not realize is that you've already internalized a lot of that.

And so you have to actually question where does my belief that this is the way the world

works comes from?

Right. Like that starving artist thing.

Right. Everybody tells young artists and writers that, oh, you better have something to fall

back on. Right.

Because you'll never make it as an artist or as an actor or as a musician.

Right. And it's like, well, who says?

But you can start to internalize that and think that that's good advice.

Right. That that makes sense that you do need to have something to fall back on.

And as somebody who's done that in the past, you can I know what it feels like to shrink.

Right. To to give up something that you really love because you don't think you're good

enough or because the world is telling you that, oh, you can't make a living that way.

So that was one of the things I wanted to remember to tell you.

Another thing I wanted to remind you is that a lot of times we wait until we feel like we

have the full plan.

And again, if you're waiting until you feel ready, you're waiting too long and.

The most it's going to this will be talking about this a lot in the in future episodes,

but the best way to manage is to only look at the first step.

Right. Step or two.

You you're if you try to wait until you figure out exactly where you're going and how

you're going to get there, you will be stuck for years and years and years.

But if you take the smallest step you can possibly imagine and then stop and look around

and see what's changed and then look at your next step, you can get into action.

And actually, the only thing that got me moving after about 10 years of constant rehearsal

for the life that I wanted.

The only thing that got me into motion was the I heard the phrase a path is made by

walking and.

It made so much sense, right, you don't see the path and then walk it, because if you

see the path and then try to walk it, you're walking somebody else's path.

Right. So the only way to walk your own path is to take a step and then take another step.

You don't necessarily know where it's going to end up, but that's part of the fun.

Right. And that's part of you experimenting and you really learning about who you are

and what you're here to do.

So don't wait until you have a full plan.

And the last thing I want to talk about is overwhelm.

This one took me years to figure out, but when you feel overwhelmed and you feel like

you're all spinny and you've just got too much, you're thinking about too many things,

you can't even figure out where that first step would come from.

That's actually a form of hiding.

Overwhelm is a way of keeping yourself stuck and safe, and it seems again to be, what is

the word? It feels like it's justifiable, right?

I can't possibly move because I'm overwhelmed.

There's just too much.

I've got to get some clarity.

I've got to put things in boxes and columns and lists and figure things out, and then I

can move. And what I realized after years of this constant overwhelm is that it's a

choice. Overwhelm is a choice and it keeps you safe.

It's a way to slow yourself down.

So when you feel that overwhelm, again, I'm going to encourage you to come back to what

is one little step I can take.

It doesn't have to be the right step.

It doesn't have to be the step that's going to get you to it just needs to be a step,

right? A step today, a step tomorrow, one step at a time, we build our path.