WHOA That's Good Podcast - Follow Your Heart While Being 100% You

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

Sadie welcomes Amy Purdy to the podcast. They discuss how to follow your heart, while being 100% you, and of course sharing the best piece of advice they have ever received! Amy is an actress, model, para-snowboarder, motivational speaker, clothing designer and author. amypurdy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey fam welcome back to the world that's good podcast. I am so excited about today because this girl has inspired me in so many different aspects of life. And so I'm really excited to get to know her more and get to know her best piece of advice. But for those of you who haven't already seen in the title of this podcast, it is Amy Perty here with us today. Hello, Amy, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Sadie, I'm so excited.

Yes, we are excited. I know a lot of people are too. So here it is, the famous question that seems to be so daunting, but really you can firt anything out. What is the best piece of advice that you've ever been given? Oh my gosh, we're starting right from the beginning. Okay, we're jumping in. Best piece of advice. You know, I think it's just to follow your heart and to be 100% you. And when I look back in my life and I look at the different things that I've done and

like kind of the different accomplishments and the things that I consider to be, I guess, successes in my life, it's all come down to me like fully following my heart, and not trying to be anybody else, and certainly not hiding who I really am by being me and like sharing all of me, and that even means all the vulnerabilities, all the failures, all the mistakes, like everything that I've gone through, that has led me to be the best version of myself that I can be. That's so good. That's like so good because people always ask like, are you over afraid like something's gonna come out about you or whatever?

And I'm like, well, if you're actually just being you and you're being authentic to who you are, then you don't have to fear because you're not hiding. And like that's exactly what you're saying, and that's beautiful. And I'm sure that's brought a lot of peace over the last few years of just being in the public guy and stuff like that. I'm sure. Yeah.

And for me, so for those of the viewers who don't know my story, but I have two prosthetic legs. I lost my legs when I was 19 to something called meningococcal meningitis, which was this blood infection that came out of nowhere and I almost died within 24 hours of just feeling like I had the flu. I was in the hospital on life support. I was given less than a 2% chance of living. My heart stopped multiple times. I was in a coma for weeks, my thought for my life. And I ended up leaving the hospital 19 years old, 83 pounds,

inner wheelchair, no legs, no kidneys, lost my spleen, lost the hearing of my left ear. My whole life had changed. So of course there was all types of fear with, you know, not just from me, but even my family, of like, what's my life going to be like and what am I going to be able to go on to do? And would I ever get married again? And, you know, would people treat me different? And how would I fit into the world? And it was just this process for me of realizing that it's not about fitting into the world. It's about standing out. And the way that you stand out is just by being you completely you and and for me it was showing my legs and sharing who I am and saying this is me and and every time I was able to do

that and become even more confident with who I was and what made me unique and kind of my unique contribution to the world, then more opportunities came from that. So that's what led to doing the speaking that I do, and that's what's led to doing the answer with the stars, and you know, all these different amazing campaigns and projects. I mean, it all came from fully like embracing who I am and what makes me different and what I have to contribute to the world. Well, that is absolutely beautiful. Thank you for like going right in and sharing your story. And also, I think that's something that everybody can learn from that to embrace like who they actually are and their own story and where they are in life.

And you see how the world takes to that because there, I don't know, we live in this world which seems like everybody is trying to conform to the same image but in the conformance of the same image it's like well who's like you said standing out and standing up for the right things and so thank you like seriously from somebody who's 21 to just say thank you for how you've stood out and how you've made an impact and being honest and being vulnerable and showing your legs and not being ashamed of the things that have happened but owning it. Like that is beautiful and it's truly a gift to our world. It really is.

I know a lot of other girls are really inspired by you and all of the things that you do. But I also love how you make it a message for everybody that everybody can relate to and that everybody can step into no matter what their story looks like, no matter what they're where their journey's taken them. But that's really beautiful. I want to ask you like up to the point where you were 19. What is you kind of had as like maybe a plan for your life where you kind of thinking you're going to go one direction and then it kind of shifted? So you know, it's interesting. So Okay, so I grew up in Las Vegas and that's where I was born and raised and I actually grew up skiing because there's there's skewers or it's around Vegas, which people don't usually realize, but I was never very good at skiing, but I fell in love with snowboarding when I was 15 and at that time in my life too, like I didn't know where I fit in really

because my sister, who was two years older than me, she was just absolutely drop dead gorgeous long blonde hair. She was like that homecoming queen, student body president, head of the cheer squad, dated the head of the football team. Like she was kind of this, you know, somebody that everybody kind of looked at, like, oh, this girl's so perfect. And so I had to follow that up.

Like all the sudden I was in high school and I was trying to figure out where I fit. And I tried out for cheerleading and I totally failed. And I tried out for the dance team and I totally failed. And I tried out for other sports teams. And once again, I didn't make it, I totally failed. And I tried out for other sports teams. And once again, I didn't make it. I totally failed. And it wasn't until I went snowboarding with my friends. I actually, I followed once again my heart, which was I loved art. And I loved painting.

So I filled up all of my elective classes with painting and art. And through that, I met a group of skateboarders and snowboarders who took me snowboarding for the first time and I absolutely fell in love with it. So I knew that snowboarding from that point forward, snowboarding would be a part of my life one way or another forever. I just loved I loved being outside with my friends. I loved being in nature. I loved that with snowboarding there weren't any rules. Like you could just go out and create a trick and practice it and tell you do it. And so it's this very kind of independent type of sport that you feel really confident about because you just are kind of creating, you're turning it into whatever you want. And and so I knew that

snowboarding would be a part of my life forever. And so I had this vision for myself that I didn't know what I wanted to do yet for college. I didn't even, so I didn't want to go to college right after school because I didn't really even know what direction I wanted to go into. But I also knew that I didn't want to just, you know, get a job in Las Vegas either. and kind of, you know, I knew that I wanted to travel, see the world, snowboard. And so I decided to become a massage therapist. You had to change the day after I graduated high school. I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah where they, yeah, where they had this amazing massage school. And I became a massage therapist,

and I ended up moving back to Las Vegas because I got hired at this world-class spa. And I was the youngest massage therapist hired there. They hired 60 massage therapists. I was only 19 years old. Everybody else was like 40 years old plus. So I was so honored to be hired at this spa. And my plan was that I was going to save money

and then travel the world snowboard and just be able to live life for a bit while I kind of figured out what my next step was. And what's interesting is so I ended up working out the spa and then I ended up working out the spa and then that's when I got hit with this meningitis and my life changed forever. What's interesting to me is I'm doing exactly today. I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do then, just in a completely different way than I ever imagined. So like I wanted to travel the world, I wanted a snowboard, I wanted to somehow help other people.

And now I traveled the world and I'm a motivational speaker. And I'm a professional snowboarder. But I'm a paralympic snowboarder now. So I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do in a completely different way. And in a way, how to take this crazy detour to even get here in the first place. Well, that is so cool. That's amazing. Yeah, and whenever you said that just a minute ago,

it stuck out to me because I was like, wait, that's everything you're doing. Yeah. And then you went to the massage, and you were like, wait, what? Oh, wow, we got there. That is so cool. And I think, too, my mom told me this quote once,

which really rings true to me. So if I can say it, right, it's put your, okay, so put your goals in concrete, but place your plans in sand. Wow. So that's when I look back, I think that's exactly what I did. My goals were to help other people and travel the world and snowboard, but my plans had to completely change because my life took this detour.

And so you have to be flexible to life because you don't know what direction it's going to take you. But if you know what your passions are and you know what your purpose is, then that remains true and you'll always find your way. Well, that's so good. Thanks for sharing that. It's funny. There's this Bible verse and you know,

if faith is a huge driving point for my life and it says, God takes all the things that go to the bad and he works them together for good. And my friend and I were talking about this verse the other day and we were like, it's crazy because you hear that verse when you're young and it's one that you just like to be like, he takes all these again the bad. It's made every good. And he's like, when you go young and it's one that you just like to be like, he takes all things, again the bad, it's never good. He's like when you go up,

you start to look back on your life and you're like, wow, man, that was not as expecting and there are so many turns and there are so many hard things but look how good it turned out to be. And that's just really inspiring. So I also wanted to talk to you about dancing with the stars because of something we share in common which is so awesome. So you were Derek's partner right? Yes. Oh my gosh. How is your experience? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Amazing. I mean, you know, and so surreal. Right. Like you just don't even know what to expect. Like you go on expecting to learn how to salsa and it ends up being so much deeper than that. So much deeper.

This like like crazy, challenging, overwhelming journey where you feel so out of place and you know failure is so real and you're facing it every single day and then you have to dig so deep to get through every week. It teaches you so much. It doesn't it like, you not only have to dig deep to like believe in yourself and get through each dance but you have to also learn to like get over your mistakes quickly and move forward because the next day is a new dance and a new style and whatever you You know fail that today you start fresh tomorrow. You can't even think about it It's like you have to learn how to yeah like reframe your thinking Every week and yeah, so it was so amazing and for me

Really I was really scared to do it. I I almost didn't do it. I was really scared to do it. I, I almost didn't do it. I really, I agreed to do it. But, um, but then I questioned right away, like what the heck did I just agree to? Because I've got two prosthetic legs. I don't know if anyone's ever done this before with two prosthetics where you're dancing eight hours a day, seven days a week for three months straight. If you make it to the end, you know. I don't know if that's even possible. I didn't know if my legs would move the way I needed them to move.

I had no idea what to expect. I had zero dance experience. Like I said a few minutes ago, I actually tried out for my high school dance team and failed. That's when I had legs. So now, what was going to happen with two prosthetic legs? And I thought, the world's watching. And am I going to make a full out of myself? And what if I can't do this? And I put so much pressure on myself

because I knew people would be watching me to look at what is possible, what is possible with a? Like what is possible with a disability? What's possible with two prosthetic legs? And there was just so much focus on my legs too, like before before I even did the show, but once it announced that I was on the show, there was already like just so much online banter and conversation about can she do it and is she going to get sympathy votes and people will just vote her through because she has a disability and there was just this whole thing happening that I was like, first of all, I was competing in the Paralympic games, it overlapped for me.

So I thought that I was going to, yeah. So like most of the dancers get like a couple weeks to prepare for their first dance I prepared in three half days. I learned my dance in three half days My guys in Russia while I was competing in the Paralympic games and Wow, so I would snowboard for four hours each morning and then I would take two gondolas down and a taxi cab over to the next town and meet Derek and you dance for four hours each morning, and then I would take two gondolas down and a taxi cab over to the next town and meet Derek and we would dance for four hours each night. That is insane. It was insane.

So I was like, first of all, learning how to compartmentalize. Like, okay, like when I was dancing with him, I was only thinking about dancing, but then the next morning I'd wake up and I'd compete and I'd only have to think about snowboarding. I had to put this whole dance with the stars thing in the back of my mind and just compete. And then once again dance with him at night and then compete. And then he left and 72 hours after my Paralympic race where I won bronze, I was live on CBS and LA. Oh my gosh. That was crazy. And so all those things were such big fears though, right?

Like now looking back I'm like, oh my gosh, that was so amazing and what an incredible journey and I did it. But of course at the time, I was like, is this possible? Am I going to make a full out of myself? And I don't even know this dance, and I'm going live in five minutes. Oh my gosh. Like, there was so much fear involved. But it really forced me to just have fun. Like, first of all, I'm here to have fun and just enjoy the ride

and enjoy every second. Because you don't know how long you're going to be here. And do the best I can with what I have and I was just so grateful to make it all the way to the end you know we came in second place and it ended up being one of the most like amazing journeys of my life. Wow that is absolutely amazing. I'm sitting here like literally tall wide open because I'm thinking about Mia Des tall, wide open. I was thinking about me, I'm doing some stars,

and I had nothing near the pressure you had or what's going on. And like that is a true inspiration. And one point out something that you said, I think it's so cool is that you were afraid to do it, but you did it and you had so much fun. And it was like the best experience. And like I feel like some people like fear is the reason why they don't do so many things.

And if you can just do it, even if you're going into it afraid, like the fun will kick in. Like you're gonna have fun. You're gonna learn a lot. All the things that seemed so impossible, you're all of a sudden, you did it. You're like, wow. Yeah.

And that is so cool. It's amazing. You know, and you're right right. Fear, I realize I'm actually writing a new speech today all about fear. And I realize that there's two different types of people. There's people who say if you succeed or if you fail, and the difference is, is what do you do in the face of fear?

What action do you take? Are you stepping up or are you stepping down? And the thing is fear, like you have to be willing to fail. Whatever it is, you're doing even what you do, you know, speaking in front of stadiums that people and what I do, speaking in front of people as well and even, you know, snowboarding in the Paralympic Games. And it's like, you have to be willing to fail, because that's the only way you can grow. Like you actually have to fail to grow. And that's the only way you can learn.

And so, the only way you build confidence is by the experience of doing all of this. So it's like some people step down and avoid everything that scares them and then that determines what direction their life will go. And then there's some people who use that fear as fuel and to move forward. For me, my fears have been huge, like more than just at Dancing know, at dance with the stars TV show, like, what is my life going to be like with two prosthetic legs?

Like, what, I have, I've had all types of, you know, really like worst case scenarios happen, like, at one point, you know, here I lost my legs and it was so big and so real, and I had to wrap my head around that idea. And then all the sudden, I was faced with potentially having a kidney transplant at the age of 21, which totally scared me, because I thought I just lost my legs. Like, that's huge enough.

And now I have to wrap up my head around the fact that I'm having a kidney transplant as well. And the rest of my life going to be like on medication, and am I going to be in and of the hospital? hospital and you know What does that look like and but but by just kind of sucking it up and like attacking it straight on and like you know I'm gonna figure it out like just having that faith that I'm going to figure this out I'm not alone. There's a reason I'm here and I'm going to use every single thing I have to be able to give back in a positive way.

It's allowed me to go on a path where I've gone on to do things that I never could have imagined. Wow, incredible. Girl, you're absolutely amazing and I feel like I can't wait to listen to this and write down notes and like actually apply this to my life Because there's so many things that you said that I'm like, wow man If this if we could just take heart in this not just our generation, but literally every age should just take heart man It would be a huge acceleration for where we'd all go in life And so thank you for sharing and also I just want to say it's it's just so beautiful that you share with us that

You know there was like so much attention on on your legs want to say it's just so beautiful that you share with us that you know there was like so much attention on your legs and stuff and it's just so crazy is just knowing you for the brief short time I've known you and just in the little windows and pockets we get here and there it's like that is like the last thing I really noticed because your heart oh my gosh it shines so bright your words are so inspirational you You carry like a radiance. And so thank you again for being on the podcast, ensuring your story, and your heart, and just thank you for being who you are. You're truly amazing. Well thank you so much for having me, Sadie. This is awesome. I'm so proud of you as well.

Oh thanks girl. Alright y'all, you know what time it is? Time to call mama. So we're going to call mama with our best piece of advice and our worst piece of advice. Let's see what she has to say. Hey girl. Hey yo. Are you ready for a world that's good, world that's bad test.

I'm ready. Okay, I gotta say I'm like dying at these and I really don't know if you're gonna say what it's gonna wear as a spat on any of these. I know. Okay, are you ready? Alright, lay it on me. Grandpa once said, act your age, not your underwear size? What?

What is that? I don't even know. No. Okay, wait, underwear size. Small, medium, or large? I don't even know what that means. I don't either. I do not.

For some reason, it was under-well, that's good. Okay, I feel like that's good advice, but even though I don't really know what it means, but you should perhaps, well, but I don't know that it's always good to act or age. Like, if that's when you get old. Yeah. But what are your own words? You should add large. Yeah, at large. I'm dying. Okay, okay. Nice piece of advice. Okay. I think we're gonna have agreed to disagree on this one. Eat the $5 sushi. No, that's bad. I would say yes.

What? People it's just stereotype. You think it's bad until you try it. Remember that sushi place we went to with soup up today? That was bad. Okay. Cheap sushi. We did have crickets in our Chinese food one time. Although, like brochures, our grocery store

has really good sushi. See? I'm telling you, it's those three stories. Yeah. I think you can really never know. It's not about the price on sushi. It's the place. Oh, wow.

Yeah, that was a pre-tune moment. It's not about the price. It's about the place. Somebody give me 18 seconds of price. She's not. Oh, okay, last one. Blowing out someone's candle will not make your shine brighter. Oh, that is good advice.

That's actually really good. Totally true, really good. Two Pupp always says it like this, all ships rise. So it's like when you're helping someone else to rise, you rise as well. Two Puppes, it's not about his good. He is good. We, I like to say like we live in a place of plenty. God's, there's plenty. God is a God of abundance and plenty. And so, but us pulling someone

else down does not help to bring us up. So that is good advice. So good. So good. These are three awesome good pieces and bad pieces of advice. Thank good. So good. These are three awesome good pieces and best advice. Thank you for sending them in on our World That's Good Instagram page. It's actually a World That's Good podcast. So if anybody out there has any good advice or terrible advice, go make sure you put it in the comments and it will be featured in Modernized phone call.

Also for reference, two papa is my mom's dad. And papa is my mom's mom. And papa is my mom's mom. Two mama and two papa. Well, thanks mom for answering our, what's good, what's bad, if I... I love it anytime. Bye. Bye.

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Thanks so much for listening to The WoT, that's good podcast. We got a lot of good nuggets today. Don't forget to follow me on all the social media platforms I'm on. Instagram, I'm at Legit, Sadie Rob, Twitter, Sadie Rob, and follow our live original Instagram. Also, I'm Sad Legit City Rob, Twitter, Sadie Rob, and follow our live original Instagram. Also, I'm Sadie Robertson on Facebook. Head over to liveoriginal.com and subscribe to this podcast.

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