You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.

Mama Meyer acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on.

Hello Courtney here, one of the podcast producers at Mama Mia.

I'm coming into your ears to share a new podcast we've launched called Pivot Club, which is all about unpacking professional plot twists.

This time of year is often filled with reflections, so if you've been thinking about how to make your own pivot happen, this is the ideal podcast to give you some inspo on how to make it your reality.

And if you like the episode, the good news is there's a whole series for you to dive into over the summer holidays.

You can find all ten episodes in the Pivot Club feed.

Will pop a link in the show notes.

Enjoy.

Have you found yourself on the path everyone expects you to take, only to realize it doesn't lead to where.

You want to go anymore?

That feeling when you realize you're climbing a ladder that's leaning up against the wrong wall.

This is Pivot Club, and I'm your host.

Sarah Davidson, a fellow member of the Pivot Club.

My past life was as an em and a lawyer.

I'd done everything I'd mapped out and was supposed to do before I completely pivoted to launch my own business, matcha Maiden.

But today isn't about my story.

It's about someone who didn't just question their path, but had the courage to step off and build their own.

Here where I'm.

Packing professional plot twists and finding out what it takes to define success on your own terms.

So let's dive into their story of intuition, bravery and what happens when you decide to join the Pivot Club.

You'll recognize today's guest as one of Australia's most famous athletes.

Jana Pittman, the world champion hurdler whose singular goal of Olympic gold was repeatedly torn away by devastating injuries and gut wrenching losses until her time on the track came to an end.

You might think her biggest pivot was swapping the running track for the bobslid, becoming one of the very few athletes in history to compete in both the summer and Winter Olympics.

But that wasn't it.

Her real pivot was walking away from that identity entirely to become a doctor all while raising six children.

And that's the pivot we're talking about today.

How do you cope with failure when your mindset is silver is the first loser?

And how do you go from being one of the best in the world to a complete beginner at the bottom of the ladder surrounded by people half your age.

This is an incredibly candid conversation about how that massive career change was born on her darkest days, through divorce, miscarriages, failed exams, and the financial lows of moving back into her own garage to.

Make ends meet.

This is a raw lesson in resilience, that unseen, messy middle and how your lowest moments can be fuel for your greatest chapter yet.

Yanna, Welcome to Pivot Club.

Thank you, Sarah.

It's so nice to see you, and it's interesting with obviously we've had for many.

Many years.

I didn't even know what was going to be you, but I'm very excited.

To be Oh, my god, of course it was.

I'm really happy for you.

I'm so excited to have you, guys, and it's so so lovely to have you because not only are you possibly the person who has made the most incredible impressive and diverse range of pivots, but that I feel very lucky to have been there for a lot of them.

That's right.

I mean your husband, now, yeah, was my training partner almost twenty years ago.

So yeah, so we knew each other twenty years ago, and that it was leading into the Athens and the Beijing Olympics, that we were all in training together.

And so yes, you have you walked down that road with me through the tears and the gut ranging changes and decisions and the indecisions and the false starts and the backfires and now we're here, oh my gosh.

But above all, I think the overarching theme has been you just are irrepressible.

You will just find a way.

I wasn't going to do this, but I have to.

You will leap over the herd, no matter what it is.

But that has kind of been my motto for life.

And I mean it does work heard or obviously, but I've learned so many times that the days you think you're at your worst and your lowest tend to be the days you pivot into something so much more special.

You just got to be present and aware of it.

And I wasn't at the time.

Don't get me wrong.

I feel like a lot of my pivots and my changes have happened thankfully to an incredible support system around me, of which you were a part of that for a long time, which allowed me to take on new challenge.

But I've also not been afraid of that failure, so probably because of sport.

You know it does you fail so often.

You know there's one winner in a race and seven to eight losers, let's be real, So you learn that eight losers from very early on, oh gosh, things don't go to plan, and that you pick yourself up and you keep going.

And so that is a real blessing out of kids doing sport and building that resilience early.

Gosh.

I mean you must have such a thick skinned.

I mean we all kind of.

Have this attitude of certificate of participation, Like when you're trying and then the athletes come into the room and they're like, silver is the first loser.

It's different, is it?

Do you know?

It's so funny you say that, and you know me well enough that it's quite interesting that we're going straight into this.

But I have definitely got a thick skin when it comes to failure.

But an incredibly thin one when it comes to public perception.

And it's something that I've battled, that imposter syndrome all the time, and I'm now, you know, I do a lot of public speaking these days.

And I got actually asked an amazing question yesterday by someone in the audience.

He sort of said, what drove you as a young person, because you've taken on medicine, and you've taken on multiple children, and you know, one Summer Olympics and then Winter Olympics and all those changes.

And it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I started to really reflect that a lot of it was me trying to prove to myself that I was good enough and that I was okay, and that I was worthy.

And there was a lot of underlying guilt there, trying to impress myself rather than others.

And I thought it was an external I thought it was that extrinsic drive to be liked, but it was actually that I hadn't actually come to terms with who I was as a person and like who I was in the mirror.

And so it's not like that anymore.

I definitely have a much better sense of self.

I think So many of us feel that way in life, in that we look at our why and we're always asked to what is our wife?

Why are you doing something?

What's going to get you out of bed to take on a new challenge?

And why do you do things?

And it's okay for that to be different throughout different periods of life, and I wouldn't change it, don't get me wrong.

Having that insecurity as a young person has given me this resume that I'm incredibly proud of and as you should be, and built that resilience, yeah, you know, because I wasn't prepared to fail because I was trying to prove to myself and so I failed over and over again, and then that resilience just organically built.

So trying to bottle that now and then teach other people to work with it, like my own kids.

That is such a profound reflection to have after so many chapters that you have had.

And I want to start actually by going back to your past life or your very first chapter that propelled you onto the scene, particularly because that's when a lot of Australia met you.

So I mean, your identity to so many of us was Yana Pimen the athlete or Yana Pitman the Olympian, and we know what it looks like from the outside.

But the reason you hadn't had these revelations yet is because you were a teenager young So what did it look like on the inside when you were first grappling with your why look?

I think there was a couple of things.

I mean, it helped that I loved to run, okay, so that was a very functional reason to do something.

I loved how it made you feel.

I was very lucky as a young person to have quite good mental health, so I was quite just just a happy, go lucky kind of kid, very good support system in my parents, and so therefore I just did it because I loved it and afterwards felt great.

You know, you push hard, dispue, you feel crap, and then you feel great afterwards.

You do though, and there'll be lots of gym junkies that listen to this, and you do.

You have that like, oh gosh, this is going to hurt so much, But that revelation afterwards of how great you feel, and that's typical of the four hundred meters, which is the event that I ran.

So that part of it was a big driver there was all also that identity space.

So I've always been quirky, always been a little different.

I would definitely say I have quite a lot of neurodiversity.

I haven't been diagnosed, but I'm a doctor after all, so I can a self diagnose those space and I wouldn't be too hard to get it done straight line to get it's pretty obvious.

But I always struggled to make friends as a young girl, and so in school i'd say the wrong things or do you know it, make a silly statement and someone would sort of give, you know, pick on you a little bef for it.

I'm still a bit vulnerable about that.

And sport wasn't like that because I'd go on the track and I was just good.

I mean, most of the thing when I was a young girl was like I had infected mosquito bites for boobs and was I less billy?

And all these constant labels that I was getting.

I still have at school even after breastfeeding.

I'm like, wow, you can pay for them and they're fine.

You know, I remember those.

Yeah, that's true, that's true.

There is a solution.

But it was just a time in life where I felt great about myself, So sport for me was an elevator.

It was, and certainly the first ten to fifteen years of my early career, so sort of you know, age twelve and up to about twenty three, twenty four, it was nothing but wonderful.

Just an incredible opportunity to get out and explore the world, making wonderful friends who are like minded, and just feel really solid and good in yourself.

And what an incredibly unique experience to be so driven by joy and not by societal expectations.

You were gravitating towards something because you loved doing it and it felt good.

And that is so pure.

It was lovely and that you actually happened to be really good at it.

Yeah, I was very lucky.

It was like I said, it was incredibly pure, and I do have that memory of it.

I remember just feeling sheer enjoyment, don't mean Ronald's nervous.

And yeah, I've done many eRASS where I almost didn't raise because of fear.

In fact, one time, the first time I ever would have run against Kathy Free when I cracked myself and hit in the call room and didn't go and then blamed an injury that wasn't there, so I had I had that fear and anxiety already, but again that came down to I've got to look like an idiot and that whole perception thing.

But ninety nine percent of the time I got on that track and just loved it.

Oh wow.

Well, speaking of the perception thing, I think what's really hard when you do love something so much and when it's such a public pursuit, is that not only do you come to know yourself through your sport, but everyone else then that's the lay that.

They attached to you.

And so should you dare want to be known for something else in your life, you know, it's really hard for other people to peel that back, but also for you.

So back then, how much of your identity was around being an elite athlete.

It's a great question, and I think it becomes that.

Yeah, it becomes your identity, which is why you know so many athletes struggle in retirement because that identity is shifted so and often it's abruptly where you go from top of the world to injured out Yeah you know, yesterday's news kind of thing, and that can be a bit of a challenge.

It has the added complexity of you stopped training as well, and that endorphin and adrenalin rush that you get with the training and the highs of competition is removed, and that is tricky and it can really bottom out some people.

For sure, it did for me for at least a couple of months to a year.

They think it was just a chapter that we had to go through to make that change down the track, and it worked for me.

Yeah, what about.

The day to day of it?

Like, I think we also saw you in Sydney and we'd see the big runs that were like the one person and of all your actual life was strike.

But don't really understand unless you were also an athlete what it took.

For you to live that life, Like what was your training?

Like?

You were at school?

Right?

I never found that hard seah.

Well, it was also all I even knew, which I kind of comes to that identity question again.

But you know, I started running.

I went to my first Olympic Games and I was only so I qualified at sixteen and went at seventeen.

So yes, that was during the school years.

And you know in my final high school year in year twelve, I only went to school for I can't even remember now, but something like thirty days or so.

So it was a pretty much homeschool, which wasn't really done as much back then.

Yeah, and my mother did all my academic stuff and whatnot.

I did my exams and an embassy in Chile for example for the HSC.

So it was at two o'clock in the morning.

I might have had in the middle in between the heats and the semi finals of the World Junior Championship, So it was it was just that was normal.

Like people say, that's nuts, like what But for me, I'm like, well, what option did I have.

I can't miss my HSC because I wanted to be a doctor, and I'm not missing the World Championship, so we make it happen.

Yeah, it's the beginning of you that was realizing.

I just have to do it.

I've got to do it, by the way.

So yeah, so I think that that was part of that journey.

And it's great as long as you have outlets as well.

Whereas because you're right, it was a seven day a week, I didn't have my social life.

I trained and I studied, and I trained and then I studied, and there wasn't much else in my life outside of that, and that's okay for me, but it's absolutely not okay for other people.

I'd say I'm abnormal, not the norm, and don't get me wrong with others who will be hearing and feeling, oh yeah, I'm like that too.

We are a different, different breed and some of us survive on that, and others then have big falls.

And I've had those big falls too, and so it does take a toll eventually, and you've just got to kind of work out where you sit and what I guess weapons or avenues you have to get out when things don't go to plan well.

Speaking of I think another thing that has really plagued you from very early is, I mean people often take a lifetime to reach their dreams, but at a very young age, you had got to the pinnacle of your bought and you know, having all kinds of successes, but then also facing devastating injuries.

It was constant.

And yeah, and I know how constant that was.

And Nick has spoken about how it is identity crushing for an athlete to have your physicality removed from you.

How did you get through when you suddenly just couldn't run not well?

And that's the human side of me, you know, so like I definitely broke hard, thankfully, I break very hard for twenty four hours usually, and it's been a skill I've had even in medicine.

Now.

So I am an explosion and then it's gone.

I have a process and look, it's funny.

And I think that's what happened too early, like twenty five years ago, exploding on a state that was just bad, right, And it's all about being humble and being a quiet athlete and letting your performance speak for it.

And I was a little too like now you know, the Kardashians and everyone's all over there with all these emotions that are huge, and we think it's great.

People are authentic.

But that initially was why so I got some of the negative media when I was a young person because I was so emotive.

That was actually my coping mechanism and I didn't realize it at the time, but that's what made me good, so good at what yeah, because I was able to go home process it quickly and I was never mean to anybody publicly.

It was always like you sucked to myself and I did a really deep dive of this is so painful, This hurts so much, have a really good cry, go for a really hard run, eat three blocks of chocolate and it was over.

Yeah, you get it out.

It worked.

And look, I'm in a career now, which I know we'll get to where there's lots of good and bad outcomes.

Yeah, all the time.

And look, I'm a lot more placid now.

I'll go for a very hard run and need half a block of chocolate, but it still works.

You've scouted at that.

I scouted back.

But I'm a huge believer when stuff doesn't go to plan.

I know we come from a country which we hold onto our emotions well, and you know, I grew up with a dad who's like he's a cup of concrete.

Suck it up, princess, get over yourself.

You know there's other people that are in the world.

You know, I come from all that exactly stoicism.

It's perfect, But I think there's a time and place where that actually backfires on you really badly.

Yeah, until you're unable to face your fears because you're so afraid of things happening again because you haven't actually processed the last time something went wrong.

Whereas I'm a processor.

Yeah, all too publicly at times.

But it's incredible that now you can actually put a label on that and see that it's a repeat mechanism that actually helps you get the emotions out rather than sitting on them.

You get them out.

But then you've passed it.

And passed it.

And my mum has been my placid.

She was a careers adviser as a teacher in a school, and she was my person, my leveler, my mirror holder, you know, in other words, Yanna, back off, you're buggering this all the time, but also my greatest advocate.

You know, she was the one who always picked things up when it wasn't going to well.

You know that the amount of times you be like Jackie, you come on, she's on the floor again.

But I think what's nice is that we can listen to how each of us deals with disappointment and change and see if something that you do might work for me.

And I am definitely better at being the slowest burner now because I want to be more considerate with my decisions and I still got it.

Well.

It's so interesting though, that that is your method and people around you have learned that well, because I think that in a strength context, that's what's a would you to be such a great pivot A One day you wake up and you're like, I want to try the Winter Olympics instead of the Summer Olympics, And then most people sit on it for like five hourears and then go, that's a silly idea.

I don't do that.

And you're like, I'm going to just become a Bob's letter, like, don't know anything about it, gonna learn it.

I mean the fact that's not even your biggest pivot.

That's a small semi pivot before we get to the big chapter, before we get there.

How did that happen?

I lost three Olympic Games in a row with injury, so I should have won gold and at least two of them, probably not the third.

But I was odds on favorite and should have won at least been double Olympic champion, and I'm not.

I haven't even won a medal at the Olympics because of injuries.

So I was raining world champion, not no, which is not pole.

Don't realize that because you're a well known.

But I was reigning world champion, reigning Comics champion going into two separate Olympic Games and got injured within weeks of both of them, and so overtraining definitely some of my own you know, issues in that in that space, but there was a lot of regret and a lot of disappointment, and I had what I would say was a pretty crappy relationship with the Olympics.

Ultimately, the Ompiics about representing your country and doing something amazing on the you know, the greatest scale in the world.

So I started thinking, Okay, I want to go to another in another sport and have a crack and realize how lucky I was to actually have gone in the first place, Like, stop harpering on all is.

You know, you came fourth because you got injured, and you you know, yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly, that's true.

It's the worst place in the world to come by fourth.

You don't even get a bronze.

It's really really, it really sucks.

So anyway, I think I actually came fifth, and then someone tested positive.

Actually, but the point being, yeah, I was out of the medals, and I was devastated because I was there for gold and gold only and I hadn't lost a race for ever, one hundred races at that point, so wow, it was devastating for my coach, for myself, for my family.

So you felt like a like a failure.

Now I think it fail in a different way than others, but because I said it as a learning point.

But you felt like you let so many people down.

And so I wanted to go to a games and it'd just be this is so lucky, I am so lucky.

Let's try.

So I tried boxing, I tried rowing, I tried cycling.

And then the call from a friend of mine who used to I would you believe train with as a sixteen year old.

She was a veterinary surgeon who were two dorks in a sled at that point because I had already started medical school.

So she called me up and said, hey, would you give this a crack?

And I really liked her.

She was an incredible, incredible athlete, and we just got along so well as youngsters.

And to be really honest with you, I didn't have to wait four years at least the weird reallypics were two years away.

So I thought I'd give it a go, and it just sounded fun.

I mean, wh wouldn't want to give Bob's let to go?

Oh my gosh.

She took me over to Germany, popped me in a sled, crashed me on the first run.

Nice.

So I cracked myself, but realized it was okay because I think that's what a lot of people worry about, is you're going to get really hurt in something that's so scary.

And then that was it.

I was absolutely hooked, so much fun.

Even though you've done it many times, I'm sure you can see that objectively, people aren't as comfortable with completely changing the direction or completely swapping pursuits sort of as effortlessly as you seem to do it.

What do you think it is about your mindset that allows you to act so quickly when you decide I'm going to try something new.

Is it that you don't have fear?

No, I have a lot of fear.

I look at fear.

I think quite differently from average.

Yeah, okay.

I have my little analogy that I say, which is fear equals false evidence appearing real.

So that's where fear is spelled out.

I love it, love, Yeah, because I really believe you need to look at the worst case scenario.

Yeah.

And I know people, especially you know, in our line of work, we're all talking about positivity and you know, I love your CZA, and like we're all trying to find these ways to inspire each other and ourselves, and looking at the negative is not seen as something to do.

I don't fully agree with that.

I think sometimes you need to get down and dirty with what could go wrong.

And so it's a process I've done for many years where I sit down with it with a potential idea, and I look at what is the worst case scenario that's going to come out of this, and can I live with the outcomes?

Can I truly and utterly live with this deep and dark disappointment?

Nine to nine percent of the time, it's false evidence.

It's stuff telling you that this could happen and that could happen, and that is never going to And so once you sit there with that, you then less with a couple of things that could go wrong that you can work on and prioritize, rather than that fear consuming you of this is going to be so embarrassing publicly, or this is going to ruin me financially, or this is going to you know, take me back ten years in my career.

And so it's just being brave, but then truly being aware that if it bugers up, you take a step backwards, as to me, and you'll learn something so great about yourself.

And I've failed so many more times than I've succeeded, and I feel and every time I fail and that I'm like, oh, that's a mistake, wonderful, what's the next one?

And so if there's something you want to chase to me, you give it a crack.

If it doesn't work, you find a different avenue and you'll something will come through that journey that will help guide you on the next chapter that you're going to have a go at.

And I even thought that now, and I know we're going to get there.

But my biggest fear is mother guilt and the how do you fit in your life with these beautiful six little people running behind?

I know it's nahas.

And I remember my best friend who you know, Brad Foster, who was my massage therapist at the Olympics.

I rang him said I can't do this distrat thing becoming a subspecialty, like you know, doing some specialty training in women's health that has gone to college.

This is ridiculous.

How am I going to do it?

And he's like, but you haven't tried yet, so how do you know?

Yeah, it's a really good point.

Yeah, so you don't know what you don't know.

That's so true.

And I think having that attitude of either you win or you learn, like you never really lose, because even if you lose what you thought was going to happen, you gain something else and something better, and you are stronger and you come back with perspective you didn't have before, and kind of the ability to recover from a setback really quickly is so much more valuable than the ability to get it right the first time.

I think you couldn't say it better.

Yeah, I mean, it's taken me a really long time to get there.

But I mean one of the most extraordinary things that I've had the privilege of witnessing is Jana Pittman, who is known as now a summer and winter Olympian at this point just lives and breathe sport and you know, has had children through it.

And then you become a doctor.

Most people would be quite bold over by even the thought of pivoting that dramatically.

It was a big pivot, and very few people when they change career paths go it's going to be medicine of all things, and not just medicine.

I'm then going to specialize.

So was there a pivot point for you?

Was there like a singular sliding doors moment or was it a slow burn of like something's coming.

No, it was a very big pivot point, but it was a slow burn in that it had been something I wanted to do since I was a kid.

So I fell into sport, but it was always medicine.

So as a young person, I always wanted to be a doctor.

And then I thought I was too old because like people be nodding along here thinking I got to thirty and I thought that's it.

Life's over.

You know, I can't change careers and it's too late to start medical school and you know, go to university and no, thank you.

I don't want to feel like an idiot and the impostor in the room.

I just lost my third Olympic Games with in six months.

I'd actually just had my third miscarriage actually as well, and I was sitting there thinking, I don't know what more you can throw at me, and then my divorce.

So then my marriage fell apart as well.

And then he met someone else very quickly, and that just ripped me to pieces, and I was so low and I just had a phoenix tatoo knowld me, which is ironic, but it was a phoenix moment.

It was like I was so low and so crushed and so burned and so down and so vulnerable that Mum walked in the door and put her career has had on and said, you need something so big to burn yourself back out of this.

And so she said, you've always wanted to be a doctor, give it a crack.

And I'm like, oh god, no, You're like, Yana, this is what you need to get out of this.

You need something that you love so much and that you have wanted for so long to wipe away some of the extraordinary pain you're feeling right now.

And she was right.

So of course I sat the exam the first time and, as you remember, failed it miserably and got seven rejection letters.

In fact, you and Nick took me out and got I have been drug three times in my whole life, and we went out, Yeah, because I rocked off on your door.

I was like that, Yeah, I didn't pass the first time.

That's always been my life.

I've always needed a couple of goes, and then Mum would bring me up about twelve months later because the exam only happened once a year and said, well, you failed the Olympics three times, so you got two shots.

Left on even I'm like, thanks Mom, reality jack, I mean third times a chartob.

So thankfully it didn't take three and I got in after the second year.

And I can wholeheartedly say though that the day I got in, I cried harder than any loss that I'd had in any track and field.

With that she I have a new chapter coming, and it was beyond I can't explain to you how it felt.

And then the day I walked into the new university and I was like, I'm a medical student, and the day a nurse passed me and said, excuse me, doctors and asked me to move away, and.

I was like a doctor.

And so it was such a healing experience to achieve something that had been a life long dream.

And it don't get me wrong, I still missed the Olympics, but I wholeheartedly know if I had have won the Olympic Games, I would not have even sat that exam once, let alone twice, and I wouldn't be a doctor.

Now she's just sport, remember, and his characters were pretty hard.

But out of those darkest days and gave me my career in medicine.

And more than that, you know, the natural move would have become a sports doctor.

But then the miscarriages, and then I had a really scary cervical cancer scare that thankfully wasn't but there was discussions around, you know, having hysterectomy, and and then obviously you know, I've wet myself on national television.

So I've got pretty significant in continents from having babies.

I've got into metriosis, and I've had heavy menstrually and like I've had every woman's health being thrown at me and now I'm about to go through metapause.

That's fun next chapter.

But it felt like it was a little flag waving in front of my face, going women's health, women's health, going to women's health.

Yeah, but yet again, it was the dark days that gave me the light in my life.

And so I think that's where the pivots have happened, is that my only goal is when something is really going badly, is find find your breath out of there.

And because you can only sort of save yourself at the darkest at the darkest moment, and I know people can't sometimes, but it's also taken.

It's taken incredibly difficult moments to pull yourself out of them like those.

You need those to know you can do it again.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think you need.

And this is why we call this part the messy middle, because any really worthy transformative pivot involves a degree of discomfort, whether it's extreme or less.

So very rarely is it cruzy.

And I love that your mum.

Used the words you need something to burn your way out of this.

The burning it's.

Like it has to light a fire in you, and it has.

It's going to be worth the drone journey, but it's going to be a rough, bumpy road on the way.

Yeah.

And I think for anyone listening, it's quite reassuring to hear that even though now you know, like I truly believe you are such an extraordinary contributor to the medical space and have so much more to give, But to think that the world might have missed out on that version of you, but that you had to go through a really shitty time to get there, and it didn't make sense to you going forward it's only looking at night so that you can put the dots together.

If anyone listening is going through a really shitty time, try and remember that someday in the future this might make sense.

Yeah, and this will be the pivot point.

Yeah, this is what you're going to learn who you are and what you need to be in the future.

And I think it's an interesting point, but one that we need to make at this point as well is that everybody's journey is going to be different, and some people will go through significant heartache and others will not.

And that is also okay, because we can't we're constantly comparing ourselves to each other.

So I remember when I was going through this down day and I've lost the Olympics and I'd lost a couple of babies.

A friend of mine died from cancer at the same time, and I thought, I can't even possibly be sad because she's just lost her life, and so straight away I was trying to downplay my own pain because she went through worse.

We've got to stop doing that, you know, even if your pain is not as significant to someone else's, it's all you know, and so that you have to acknowledge that and we've got to stop that comparison of well, they've got it worse than us.

They've got you know, they've got a more disappointing life, they've been through more, they've had a more tragic past.

You don't need true tragedy to build a new phoenix.

You just need to look at your own reaction to that space and know that that's all you need.

But it is sometimes useful to know the logistics of how people do manage the things that they manage, because, particularly for you, you do have six incredible children on top of one of the most demanding careers that you could possibly go into, and then again you're always getting qualified for other things on the side and doing public speaking.

There's a lot of logistics involved financially in a pivot in having your children taken care of in like you said, the mum gilt and managing that.

How have you sorted out your ability to go back to study, because that's a big barrier for a lot of people thinking I want to go back and requalify in something, but logistically I don't know how that would work.

And look, that's a tricky one and I backfired it.

I failed pretty miserably at a time, so I moved to Sydney to be closer to family.

So I think that is something you need to think about, is who's your network and who do you need to support you through that space and also hold you up and be accountable if you need it.

I bought a house right in my parents three quarters the way through my degree.

I had a baby by myself with a sperm downer, so that was a new chapter, and I hadn't calculated my mortgage prayments correctly.

Got to a point where I was like, oh my god, I'm out and done, and we tried to sell the house.

It wouldn't sell.

I ended up moving into the garage, which please tax it at man, don't come running after me.

But I basically rented the rooms out in my house to pay for the food for my children and to pay for a no pair because I was a single mum to help me with the kids.

And I was so lucky that my wonderful second mother owns a daycare center and so she let my kids come practically nothing, which was extraordinary.

So again it's those people around you.

And eventually I had to go cap in hand and ask my parents to help me out, and so I am lucky because not everyone has a mum and dad that can bil them out when it came to that financial But I really bugged it up.

So what's the answer there?

Get your finances in order, soon, work out what you can afford to do, take out and loan if you need to scale back on the holidays if you need to, you will find a way, like I literally did in our garage for nine months and rented the rooms.

You'll find a way.

But I tried to do it the hard way.

Luck I did, like some forward planning is a really good idea.

We got there, but and I learned a lot.

But what we also learned from there is that we could live in a caravan if we needed to, which we're doing next year, because you don't need as much as you think you do.

And what would have been the worst case scenariout of that, I could have stopped medical school and gone and worked for a year.

So there's always there's going to be a way.

You've just got to think about where your backfires are and also look for what your flaws are going to be.

I am financially terrible and I do need someone to help me, so sausage.

I'm not great with a diary, and so I tried to have no personal assistant for years and years and years, and fitting speaking gigs in now and a lot of the corporate stuff that I do as well for the government and stuff, and then my children and my medicine, and I needed someone to write to do my diary.

And a year ago I started finally doing it, and it's the best thing I've ever doesn't change your life, change my life.

So it's okay to ask, Who's what I'm saying here, It's okay to ask for help.

But planning, I think is key.

And then again, be brave and if you need to make a decision halfway through that it's not for you.

At least you've given it a try and there's no regret.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I feel like the best decision making tool that I have employed over the past couple of years has been a future regret management matrix.

And all I ask is what will future me regret more?

And because that's the way that I decide things, even if it doesn't turn out how I hoped, at least I won't regret the decision because I'm like, well, I couldn't have decided any other way.

Yes, regret is it's one emotion.

I think it is probably the hardest one to ever live with, the guilty of the regret of not doing something, So at least don't have that.

And so you've come through the messy.

Middle and waded your way through by.

Extraordinary hard work.

I mean, honestly, I just don't think there are many people who work as hard as you, but also who just get on with it.

What were you saying before you needed to get your car seat fitted because you kept adding children to the mix, you were so annoyed at having to pay for it that you got qualified and how to install it yourself.

Yeah, I've always been you don't rest, Laurels.

I have been lucky with that.

I'm resourceful.

Probably my mum and my dad taught me that lesson.

But I also just think I've excited by learning, and I hate not being able to do something, so there's plenty of things I can't do.

Actually, that was one of the hardest things about pivoting into medicine, was actually going from being very good at something to being god awful at something, as in not having the skills to do stuff and being and having people half my age.

So if you are thinking about it, about the big change, it is worth calculating this in your thought process of someone half your age telling you you suck and that you've got to work harder and don't worry, you're really junior.

You'll be better in a few years time.

You're like, oh my gosh, this is when?

When is so going back to being beginner.

Yeah, there's the hardest thing about change, genuinely, which was going back to the bottom of the ladder again and having to read it and you know, with respect I see especially you know, things like medicine.

It's someone's life on the line.

But that's the biggest trick and challenge that I've had to overcome.

And what about the identity piece of having spent so much of your life being known for one thing and now introducing yourself differently, perceiving yourself differently, Like how do you.

Describe to people what you do?

I now actually describe myself as a doctor, so I rarely even put athlete in there.

Now, yea, I'm a doctor.

I've got six kids, so that's my main identity.

Oh, I used to play with sport or I used to be just a little it's just a little lot inside.

That's how I do it in my dating profile these days.

But likes to run casually casually.

No, So look, I have completely and wholeheartedly pivoted into that medical space, especially because I have a voice in women's health so much.

I do a lot of advocacy and lots of different in continents and civical cancer awareness groups and things like that.

So I feel like I'm going to been in it for twelve years now, Sarah, It's not like it's stop.

Yeah.

So I started medicine when i was twenty nine and I'm forty two now.

I had two years off with the kids obviously when I had the little ones.

But I've been in it now for longer really than I competed at the Olympics.

So wow, yeah, it's my life.

Yeah.

And so when anyone listening is feeling the fear that you mentioned, like it is really scary to go back to the beginning.

There's a lot of ego.

That you have to remove, Ah, your melody, but it can be, as you said, incredibly rewarding, and it could be the thing that becomes your defining moment.

Yeah, moment and the passion of your life.

What advice would you give to anyone who might be on the cusp of that change at the beginning, And what advice would you give yourself back at the start when you would failed the exam the first time?

Hoof, there's good ones.

Look, I really think you need to be pragmatic about it and write down what your goal is and then work out what your fears and what the things could be that are holding you back and cross off all the ones that you know is just your past experience is trying to crap your mindset off and say you can't do it.

So really just right it down and rule out what is really going to hold you back and what's not and doing so, also write down your strengths, as in it's just sit there and write down, well, what part of me is going to make this work and what part of this is going to make it good, and then share it with a close group of friends so that they've got your support when you're making that change.

You've already said as well, surround yourself by people that are going to advocate you in that space.

Plenty of people they're going to tell you can't possibly because they feel like they can't, and therefore they project that onto you.

And then always remember that you don't have to go through with it.

If you make a decision and it's not right, what comes out of that will be so much more of a learning than the success that you'll eventually, you know, have if you do finish that goal.

So I think, if you've got nothing to lose, once you've worked out what the truth things to lose are, you've got nothing to lose by giving it a go.

And what I say to myself, You know, I had to say this literally yesterday because right now I'm in the middle of registrar training and I'm it's big hours and I'm so useless, like having to call your boss in it two in the morning because you're just not sure if you can get this baby out safely, and you're like, please come in.

I'm really sorry.

I'm almost good enough to deliver this baby, but I'm really scared I'm not going to be able to And then they stand next to you deliver it beautifully and they look at you and you go, oh great, you called me in for nothing, and just but you have to because it's a safety it's a safety thing.

And it's the right thing to do.

But knowing and I think, I can't do this anymon, I'm gonna quit.

I can't do this anymore.

I can't do this.

And then you look think, well, my five years ago, five years ago, Yanna would give anything to be in the shit that I'm in right now.

Like absolutely, I'd given an arm.

Couldn't operate with that a numb but I'd give an arm to.

Be You'd find a way, a way, you know what I mean.

Like it's when you're grappling with challenging parts of your journey, there is a part of you that knows that you're so lucky to be there.

And sometimes it's just taking a step back and going, oh, no, you're right, you're right.

Five years ago, I would have been so stoked with being where I am now.

And that's what you've got to focus on, is that you always wanted to be here, and now you're here to suck it up a little bit and keep going.

That perspective is so easy to lose or forget, but so important to remind yourself of.

And then you did mention that there have been so many times where things didn't necessarily go your way.

But they've always taught you something for the future, and I think it's one thing that you can go on up skill at any time, you can go back to study.

But then there's also all the random skills you acquire in your earlier experiences that don't seem like they're relevant to anything else.

What are some of the things that from those early athletics days have really stuck with you through Radicle's call, through becoming a doctor.

Look, I think the persistence was always going to be there because you're always tasting something that seems a little bit aloof because you know that are you going to win?

Are you not?

Are you going to make it?

Are you not?

Are you going to pass an exam?

Who knows?

And that persistent work ethic ultimately gets you your goal.

Do you remember My old coach was Phil King and he had the five p's perfect preparation, events, piss poor performance.

So I like his quote though, because it is right.

If you perfect the way you perform and then you consistently show up for yourself every day, things are going to work.

And it's a matter of just hanging in there and hanging in there and hanging in there and sport presents that opportunity to learn that at an early age.

So which is why I think it's important for kids to do sport.

You don't have to be good at it, It just teaches you those lessons of failure, resilience, keep going, camaraderie, friendship, support, and I think that really does hold you in any job you choose.

After you know your teenage years in sport.

What would you say, along the way has been your biggest hurdle?

And have the bigger that God has that made the previous ones pale in comparison.

You have no idea how accurate that is.

And funnily enough, and again I come back to you, you only know what you know.

So I remember in my sports career, losing the Olympics felt like I was everything you know was dying around me and my whole world was collapsing.

And then the miscarriages certainly felt like they took the Olympic disappointment away a little bit because they felt so much more significant.

And then you know, now working in medicine, I have you know, most of the time ninety nine point nine percent of the time, it's phenomenal and it is the most extraordinary job where you get to be that person who you know helps birth that baby and give it to that mom, or help that woman with a prolapse have changed in her symptoms.

It's extraordinary.

But I work at a very high level tertiary hospital, and horrible things happen, and birth is scary.

People underestimate how dangerous birth can be and how outcomes can go badly, very quickly, and I've already been present for some of them.

And I had an event last year where I could barely walk into the hospital afterwards because I found it so soul shat afterwards that I did not think I could ever be a doctor again.

And it paled every loss I've ever had into utter insignificance, like even the two divorces, which I'm still so embarrassed about.

And so I just want to ask it to me.

I have a wife.

I don't care anyone who wants me, but it's just it's getting to that point.

But the reality is that when you're as busy as me, that men partners don't want They don't want to be forth fiddle in someone's life.

They want to you know, So it's really hard.

You're often afraid of the success, and I am quirky and different, but I would love that.

It's something I would still really hope happens.

So yeah, so when horrible things happen, they will adjust your focus and they will shed a light on different disappointments and take that pain away.

And that's how you have to see them.

So, if you are in the middle of something truly shocking right now, a light will come, that day will pass.

You wake up the next day, and at that time it feels like you won't, but if you just give it breath and time and space, you will heal slowly, and again, something else will happen later in life that'll pale that one back into insignificause.

And I think that's part of the blessing of being human and alive, because one day you won't be one day that chapter and that light will go off, and you'll have all these experiences that you've been through in life, and hopefully you'll look back at them and think, Wow, what a life I've lived.

It's actually unfathomable, I think to anyone outside of the field of medicine that you would have to face something like that in the working day and then go home.

So how do you compartmentalize when work is unfathomably devastating.

Oh, that's a good question.

Look, there's two flip sides for that, because it happens most weeks.

That's something a little bit.

You know, I'm going to be honest and I probab shouldn't say, but shitty happens.

He'say, oh gosh, I wish that outcome had been a bit different.

And most of the time, it's those kids that run at you at the door, smiling at you like they don't know anything that's happened.

They don't care who you are.

They just love you, which makes it all better and it allows me to completely s off and change.

And I know, you know, not everyone has the privilege of being your parent and or may not want to.

So that's definitely not everybody's solution, but for me, it's a huge part of my strength, of my resilience is that my kids are just my backbone and weapon in this space.

But there are definitely times, and like that last year where I was I came in and I couldn't even face them and found even looking at them made me feel guilty because you just feel like you're like, oh god, I'm so lucky, but people out there aren't, and you have to find a way.

And it might be that you say to your little guys, you sit down and say mummy needs half an hour and you go to your room and you cry your eyes out again that you know, for me, flashing the pan, anger or whatever it is you need to do, go for a really hard run, get it out of your system, give yourself the time to break because if you don't, you'll explode at the kids, or you exploit it your husband, or you'll smash something in because you don't mean to, but because you're completely and utterly overwhelmed.

That's I think the second time now that you've mentioned go for a really hard run as like a shakeout.

So obviously, I think.

Some people walk away from sport and have to walk away from it altogether if they can't do it at the level that they used to.

But it sounds like sport is still quite an outlet for you.

Oh, running is my drug of choice, Like I just love it.

And it's so funny, Sarah, because after I stopped sport, I didn't want to run because you know, you just think a k and a lot of us do that.

It took me ten goes.

To get back into running, I had to cash to five K and I thought, this is pretty funny.

Is this Olympia five cad?

I had to do something to change it?

And so I think it's important to hear that you need help, Like I really struggled, but once you got into it and I recognized again how good I felt, and now it is I love it.

Wow.

It's funny that I think a lot of us our threshold for giving up on something is like attempt three, maybe attempt four.

And there's been so many times in this episode where you've said.

Oh, I got to the tenth try.

I'm like, that's actually, in itself a really good lesson that just because you don't get something in the first couple of times, it doesn't mean stop.

No, I agree.

The people who make it are the people who just keep going.

One more time than you exactly exactly well.

I mean, if anyone listening didn't already know how extraordinary Yana is, you.

Will certainly appreciate it now.

And I mean nothing short of an hour will do you, Jess, But thank you so much for sharing such valuable insights and sharing so generously to anyone else who is on.

Their pathway to a pivot my pleasure.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Pivot Club.

We've got another brand new episode coming your way next week, so be sure to hit that follow button so it lands right in your feed.

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This episode of Pivot Club was produced by Sally Best.

The executive producer.

Is Courtney Ammenhauser.

Catch you next time,