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Dealing With The Tough Stuff – a conversation with author G Scott Graham-Stephens
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Sometimes the most difficult thing you can do is working out how to be you
G Scott Graham-Stephens is an author of more than 30 books, a career coach, business coach, and psychedelic support coach based in Boston, Massachusetts. Scott volunteers as an EMT instructor, firefighter, and Master Gardener in his community.
Scott also runs a farm animal rescue centre.
In this episode of Rest and Recreation, the work life balance podcast from Abeceder Scott and and host Michael Millward explore what the tough stuff in life really is. Scott describes his experience of doing tough physical stuff like Tough Mudders. But they agree that the real tough stuff is the psychological stuff.
Paramount amongst those psychological challenges is working out who you really are and how you need to live to be the real you.
They also discuss the role other people play in defining us as individuals and what it means to be authentic within a group, and the process of coming-out as ourselves.
You can find more information about Scott and Michael at ABECEDER.co.uk
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Transcript
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Speaker
Made on Zencastr.
Introduction to 'Rest and Recreation'
00:00:07
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Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abysseedah. I'm your host, Michael Millward, the managing director of Abysseedah.
Zencastr and Podcast Production
00:00:19
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Today, Scott Graham Stevens and I are going to be discussing how having a balanced life doesn't mean avoiding the hard things. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, rest and recreation is made on Zencastr because Zencastr makes every stage of the podcast production processes from recording to distribution so easy.
00:00:45
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i encourage every podcaster to try Zencastr. Use the link in the description to access discounted subscriptions. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one.
00:01:00
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
Podcast's Thought-Provoking Aim
00:01:06
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As with every episode of Rest and Recreation, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Meet Scott: A Multifaceted Guest
00:01:15
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to- Today's Rest and Recreation guest is G. Scott Graham Stevens. Scott is a Master Gardener, an EMT instructor, Tai Chi teacher and also runs a non-profit Farm Animal Rescue.
00:01:30
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in his free time. He's written over 30 books, including two about camping paddle boarding with his dogs. Scott is based in Massachusetts in the United States.
00:01:42
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Massachusetts is not one of those states that I have visited, but if I do ever get the opportunity to go to do so, i will make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club.
Benefits of Ultimate Travel Club
00:01:53
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Because as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club, I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays, and all sorts of other travel related purchases. You can also access trade prices on travel by joining the Ultimate Travel Club.
00:02:09
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There is a link in the description which has a built-in discount.
Scott's Active Lifestyle and Adventures
00:02:13
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Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of Rest and Recreation and say, hello, Scott. Hello, Michael. It's great to be here.
00:02:23
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I really appreciate you being here, to be honest, because of I thought this guy fits an awful lot into his day. I do fit an awful lot into my day. That is very true. Let's start off with you giving us the potted history of Scott and all the different things that you're involved in. So I started a farm animal rescue with my husband.
00:02:46
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and that has grown and continues to flourish. ah He passed away in an ah automobile accident in 2019, right near the start of the COVID epidemic when everything shut down, and I have kept our vision going with the Farm Animal Rescue.
00:03:04
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And I write books, like you said, I've written 30, everything from like you talked about paddleboarding with your dogs, which is very popular, to Buddhist psychotherapy books, to books on grief and loss, to books on psychedelics and psychedelic therapy.
00:03:23
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It runs the gamut. I'm a firefighter, EMT, Tai Chi instructor, i'm an and I run these adventure races, these tough mudders that you you climb under barbed wire and run through electrical wires and jump into water and stuff like that. i do that for fun also. Electrical wires and water probably shouldn't be mixed together, should they? Yeah. That's meant in the nicest possible way, Scott, a boat like me. You're no spring chicken.
00:03:54
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it's It's a big thing for someone of of our age to take on a Tough Mudder. It is. And Michael, the last Tough Mudder that I did, that was in July. and i ended up getting injured and life flighted in a helicopter to the hospital where I was in the hospital for two weeks.
00:04:12
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I am just really learning to walk again after having a triple femur fracture and dislocation. That sounds painful. It is it's it still is painful, but that's not stopping me. I'm already registered for another mud race on August 1st of this year. This is the first recording that I'm making of rest and recreation.
00:04:35
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in 2026 is like the first full working day back. at work and Scott is my first guest of 2026 so thank you very much for doing that but with your your work you were talking about the hard stuff and you certainly know well from a physical perspective you are not shy about taking on the hard stuff like the Tough Mudders and the firefighting and all those sorts of things but think when you talk about the hard stuff it's you're talking about much more of the psychological hard stuff
00:05:09
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Right. that's That's important to take on too. What would you say is the hard stuff from a psychological perspective?
Living in the Present: Psychological Insights
00:05:18
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I think the hard stuff on the psychological perspective really comes down to when you but whatever you think about it, whether you're thinking about grief or whether you're thinking about your career or your anxiety or depression.
00:05:33
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depression It really comes down to the acceptance of the life that we have in the present moment.
00:05:43
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Everything drills down to that. When we're grieving somebody, for example, we're missing that person. There's a piece of us that wishes they were still here. We're partially in the present moment when grief crops up initially, but then for a lot of us,
00:06:02
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it It goes away and we're lost in the past or lost in the future. The same thing happens with sadness or depression. you lose You lose your job and that is the truth. You're not working today.
00:06:16
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That's it. That's the truth. You're not working today. Instead of staying there in the present and working on it, we move to I'll never find a job. What am I going to do? Who's going to pay the mortgage at two months from now? What's going to happen? i don't know. How did I get in this mess? I should have picked a different career. You bounce all over the place when the only truth is you don't have a job today.
00:06:40
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I've heard people say things like, I used to be. I used to be this big, important person, and now I'm doing this mundane Right. think is that People live in the past rather than in the present moment. Right. It's not a an issue that can be solved or mitigated by position, money, fame, fortune, any of that. Because if it could...
00:07:10
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We wouldn't see movie stars, famous people, models. We wouldn't see those folks killing themselves. It'd be like, wow, you've made it. You're a millionaire.
00:07:22
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You sold a gazillion record albums. That's amazing. You have your own compound and you've made it. Well, you should be very happy. Wow. And we see people time and time again, not happy.
00:07:36
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Money doesn't make you happy. It just means you can be miserable in a bigger house. That is that is very wise, Michael. I have not heard that before. I'm going to steal that and use that Oh, I share it with everyone.
00:07:48
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It's one of the things that somebody said to me last week, I think it was like misery loves company. Well, if you go into a room where someone is miserable, it, can be a real challenge to keep your your happy head on. You get dragged down by other people. Oh, that that is so true.
00:08:07
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There's another kind of saying that goes along with that, and that is if you want to know what kind of life you're going to be living five years from now, look at people that you're hanging out with today. Because if you're hanging around with miserable people, negative people,
00:08:24
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guess Guess what kind of person you're going be. It's easiest if you think about it and from a physical fitness standpoint. If you want to if you want to run and you want to race and you want to stay fit and healthy, you don't want to be hanging around with people that are going off to the pub and hanging out and watching television and not exercising. yes You want to be hanging out with people that are doing yoga and running and and exercising and and are are active.
00:08:53
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And that's going to impact you. Or or it's just like trying somebody trying to stay sober. if you if You're not going to stay clean and sober from drugs and drugs or alcohol if you're hanging out at the pub. Because that's not a place where necessarily people are hanging out. Stay clean and sober.
Influence of Social Circles
00:09:12
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You become the people that you mix with. Yes, absolutely. yeah You pick up the ways in which they speak, their physical mannerisms, their behaviors, their hobbies. their activities, their view of the world. You pick it all up.
00:09:25
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And of course, when you are in that type of situation, i think that people can become habits. I know that I shouldn't be hanging out with them because they're not good for me, but they're all going off to the pub.
00:09:37
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I don't really want to, but if I don't go to the pub with them, what am I going to do? I'm going to end up sitting at home by myself. And because I don't think we very often have the courage to sort of go mixing with that group of people is not it's not only not good for me it's not really what i want to do but it takes an element of courage to actually pull the plug on that relationship that's that brilliantly well said we don't think about it that way we think about courage as facing something outside of yourself like we think of courage as oh you have to have courage to do a tough matter
00:10:18
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run it out of course, run through those electrical wires. And we think of courage as, you know, what do you have to do to, you know, ah deal with this catastrophe that's impacted you, this fire, your house caught fire, this automobile accident, you've been injured, and you have to go through that external piece.
00:10:39
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But the real courage, the real courage, Michael, happens when we have to face ourselves and the choices that we've Well, we are the person that we know best, but I suppose sometimes we don't know how to...
00:10:56
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actually change ourselves. And let also I suspect that most change comes out of a negative situation. You lose your job, you lose your partner, you get diagnosed with an illness or you have an accident.
00:11:10
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That's the sort of situation that prompts us to go, actually, I don't want the future to be like the past. I'm going to make some changes. Right. we have to We have to have something that kickstarts us in so many ways. Right.
00:11:24
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Are you familiar with the, there's a definition of insanity that gets thrown around a lot. Have you ever heard it before? Insanity means doing the same thing as you've always done, but expecting a different result. Exactly.
00:11:38
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How often do we do that? We do that. And the people around us. You know, it's funny. i did We were talking about the people around you. And they mean well. I did this tough mutter.
00:11:50
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I ended up with this triple femur fracture. And everybody and their brother turned to me, except to accept a few people, except a few people, said to me, you know, you're too old for this stuff.
00:12:06
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You need to stop this. This is crazy. What are you thinking? I decided that it was really important for me to do something.
00:12:16
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and my And I went to visit my family yeah you around Thanksgiving here in the U.S. That's the end of November. In many cities around the United States, on Thanksgiving Day, they have an event called the Turkey Trot or the Turkey Race or the Turkey Chase. And what it is, it's a walk, run, whatever you can do.
00:12:38
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It's meant to just get people out on Thanksgiving day. So you're not sitting around stuffing your face with food and liquor. And so I registered for 5k where my family is. They were in Pennsylvania, about a 10 hour drive from where I'm at.
00:12:54
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My brother-in-law registered to do this 5k with me. So many other people said to me, what's wrong with you? You've got stop doing this. This is too early.
00:13:05
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You just got injured in July. It's November. Why do you have to do this? The race organizers were great. My physical therapist was great. they can my race My physical therapist very pragmatic.
00:13:19
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Todd Holt said to me, you know, err on the side of caution. Take a wheelchair with you. So I took a wheelchair with me. And push the wheelchair. And that way, if I got in a problem, I could sit in the wheelchair.
00:13:32
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The race organizers were great because they were, I said, I don't know how long going to take me, but I'm going to do this. And they said, you know, why don't you just go out for like a half an hour and then like turn around and come back. And if you do half the 5K, that's great. If you do all the 5K, that's great too.
00:13:50
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And so in in the US, 5K translates to three miles or so. And I did two. So I did two thirds of the five k in the time limit. And have to tell you, I got back to my family's house and they asked how was.
00:14:05
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And I i started. It's hard for me to talk about this. I started weeping. And they were like, what's wrong? if You know, so often when we see somebody cry, we think something's wrong with them.
00:14:18
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Right? what do we have We have to fix that because they're sad. We should never cry. I said to them, I said,
Resisting Societal Pressures
00:14:24
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i'm not you're you're mistaking this. I'm not crying because there's something wrong. There's nothing to be fixed.
00:14:31
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I'm crying because, you know, I resisted world telling not to do this. And i I stayed true myself.
00:14:43
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And that's really powerful. Immensely powerful. I think sometimes the hard stuff, and it's not sometimes, it's most of the time the hard stuff is doing, like you said, what it is that you want to do in the face of opposition from other people.
00:15:02
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It's easier to be compliant, to fit in with the crowd, even when you know that the crowd is not the right crowd for you to mix with.
00:15:13
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It's easier to undertake the activity that you don't want to do just because everybody else is doing it. To wear clothes that you don't look good in just because it happens to be the fashion and everybody else is doing it.
00:15:25
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To do the sport you don't want to do because everybody else is doing it. Because the the real hard stuff is is facing to the fact that You don't fit into a particular environment or a particular group and actually say, I want to be somewhere else. I want to live a different sort of life to the people that I'm currently hanging out with.
00:15:44
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Well said. Well said. Yeah, we have to swim against the current sometimes. And that's the real courage to swim against the current. Yes. Over the last few years, we've had lots of people talking about being authentic.
00:15:59
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But still you see a lot of people being authentic within a group of people. It's not being an individual. It's about being authentic to the group, demonstrating that you are a good member of the group. and Or if you stop demonstrating that you're authentic to the group, people get quite vicious about you not fitting in. Oh, absolutely. It makes life very difficult.
00:16:23
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Yeah, in many ways, as we mature as ah an adult in in the LGBTQ plus community, they talk about coming out of the closet. It's not just gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender folks that are in the closet.
00:16:39
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Many people are in their own closets that they've built and they continue living and as As Henry David Thoreau wrote in in the 1800s, he wrote this, the mass of men lead lives of quiet misery.
00:16:55
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And they continue to do that. And it's like it's really difficult to come out of the closet and be like, you know, no, I'm going to run that tough mudder.
00:17:06
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even though everybody else says, not no, I'm doing it, or no, I'm going to start this business, or no, I'm going to write that book, or no, I'm going to adopt this choke this child, or no, I'm not going to adopt this child.
00:17:19
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All those decisions are so critical. And when you swim against the current, you really are coming out of the plot because there's so much pressure to conform.
00:17:30
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Yes, I agree with you. One of the things when I do a talk in schools about the transfer from education to employment, of things I do as an HR professional, is that people need to start thinking about not just work, but about friendship.
00:17:46
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And you can say, oh, yeah, these people are my school friends. But your school friends are the people who are in the same school as you. didn't have any choice.
00:17:57
Speaker
You did not make the decision about which school you would be going to. You did not make a decision about which form group that you were going to be in.
00:18:08
Speaker
Some people call them home groups or whatever. you Who you were going to sit next to in a particular class was not decided by you very often. And one of the challenges of going out into the world and being an employee, not a student, is that you then have that choice to decide how you're going to spend your free time. You have a choice.
00:18:32
Speaker
as to where you are going to work, the type of work you are going to do, the type of people that you are going to mix with. And that can become that first opportunity that people have.
00:18:44
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Say, actually, i want to be somewhat different to anyone else. I want to have different hobbies. I want to be the man who does a job that everyone expects a woman to do.
Individual Choices vs. Societal Expectations
00:18:56
Speaker
Whatever it is, you have this opportunity to really create yourself as an individual. and it might have been written in the 19th century, but i totally agree that too many people sort like live lives that aren't as happy as they could be because they spend most of their life trying to be what other people want them to be, to fulfil other people's expectations of the life that someone who was a straight-A student should be having, to fulfil the life of someone whose parents did this career, so therefore...
00:19:30
Speaker
you should have that type of career as well. You don't sir get a chance unless you stand up yourself to actually do the things that you really want to do. And like most of most people, unfortunately, hopefully people that that listen to this podcast aren't part of that group and and are in decide to make changes around stuff.
00:19:49
Speaker
But so many people I see don't come to that realization about their lives until the last tenth of it.
00:20:00
Speaker
They have like five years left and boom, they're like, I wish I'd, it's too late. It's too late then. Yes. That's when you hear people saying, oh I'm too old to care what other people think. Right. Yeah. We need to be too old to care what other people think when we're teenagers, right?
00:20:18
Speaker
Or at least a lot younger than we when we're retiring. We need to be looking for advice and opinions and guidance, but also independent enough to look at the person giving us that advice, that guidance, and thinking, from what standpoint are you giving me that information?
00:20:37
Speaker
Absolutely. Are you living the life that I want to live? Or are you telling me what not to do so I don't end up living like you do? Well said. It makes me think that your books must um must be full of all sorts of interesting information, and you've written 30 of them. What is the most recent book that you've written?
00:20:56
Speaker
I have written... Four books that are kind of poetic. They're they're all called the Tao which is T-A-O. I started writing a book called the Tao of Equanimity or the Tao of Equanimity.
Scott's Literary Works
00:21:12
Speaker
And I published that. And it was really it was really easy to write because I talk about this stuff like equanimity is living in the present and accepting what you have right there and now, not chasing things.
00:21:26
Speaker
And I felt like that needed to be communicated clearer to people because lots of people don't understand equanimity and say to me, what does that mean? And so i wrote a book to k with these kind of 100-word were poems to kind of explain equanimity.
00:21:47
Speaker
And I was so inspired after I did that that I wrote Tao of Grief. that was It was really easy because I'd written that five books on grief. I just took all the information from those five books and turned it into these, like, you know, 100 chapters, these little mini kind of pieces of poetry or wisdom. And then I did the Tao of psychedelics.
00:22:10
Speaker
And then finally, of course, with my two dogs, Groot and Rocket, I did the Tao of dogs. And that's my most recent one. And right now I'm wrapping up a book on the GR20, which is in Corsica. Lots of people from the UK and France shoot out to do the GR20. And this is a guide for Americans.
00:22:31
Speaker
I hiked the GR20 a couple of years ago. And I'm writing a book about co-piloting in relationships, the difference between collaboration and negotiation and how to have a more fulfilling, romantic, long romantic relationship with somebody. Cool.
00:22:49
Speaker
Where do you get the inspiration for the different books that you write? It's when something comes across my plate that I am interested in and I cannot find the information on.
00:23:00
Speaker
I start taking notes and i start thinking about it. The next thing I know, there's a book coming out. I write when the inspiration hits and when the inspiration's not there, I let it go. And go off and do a Tough Mudder.
00:23:14
Speaker
Go off and do a Tough Mudder.
Farm Animal Rescue Initiatives
00:23:15
Speaker
I'm intrigued as well about the Farm Animal Rescue. What type of farm animals need to be rescued? It's really the smaller farm farm animals. It's not horses or cows.
00:23:28
Speaker
So right now we have some pigs. We rescued five roosters a couple about six months ago and have rehomed all but two of them.
00:23:41
Speaker
We have five sheep that we rescued that are running around here now. And we're going to see about rehoming those, although they're they are really a match set.
00:23:52
Speaker
Those five sheep don't go, like not herds. They are with each other all the time. We have two donkeys and some ducks and a geese that are running around here and alpacas.
00:24:06
Speaker
There's a number of alpacas. Alpacas were really popular here in the United States at one point because somebody was very clever and wrote a huge tax benefit into law with the federal government for people that had alpaca farms.
00:24:23
Speaker
So all these rich people got alpacas because it was kind of cool and, you know, the shiny new thing. was like having a car, but they weren't really committed to alpacas. And they were doing it because it was cool and they got a big tax break on their income.
00:24:41
Speaker
and And then when they decided not to do it, know it was too old. They moved on something else. All these alpacas just, you know, were either on their way to the slaughterhouse or on under their way to just being abused. It was horrible.
00:24:56
Speaker
And so we've rescued, there's two alpacas here right now. We probably have rescued and rehomed probably about 20 or 22 different alpacas.
00:25:07
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. Nice. Well worth doing then. Well worth doing. yeah Scott, it's been really interesting and the last half hour has just flown by.
00:25:18
Speaker
But thank you very much. I really do appreciate your time. Michael, thanks again for
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:25:23
Speaker
inviting me. It's been a privilege to be here. Thank you very much. I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abbasida.
00:25:30
Speaker
In this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with G. Scott Graham Stevens. You can find out more about both of us by using the links in the description.
00:25:44
Speaker
Being healthy is a key element of enjoying life. Staying healthy is easier if you know the risks early. That is why we recommend the health tests available from York Test, especially the annual health test.
00:25:58
Speaker
York Test provides an assessment of 39 different health markers, including cholesterol, diabetes, vitamin levels, organ functions, deficiency, all sorts of various different things.
00:26:09
Speaker
The annual health test is conducted by an experienced phlebotomist who will complete a full blood draw at your home or workplace. Hospital standard tests are carried out in the UKAS accredited and CQC compliant laboratories.
00:26:24
Speaker
You can access your easy to understand results and guidance to help you make an effective lifestyle changes anytime by your secure personal wellness hub account. There is a link and a discount code in the description.
00:26:38
Speaker
I'm sure you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Rest and Recreation as much as Scott and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:26:50
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:27:03
Speaker
Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.