What Happened In Panama: The Adventure That Changed Who I Am-Part 2

Your travels have brought you to the Surfing

Your Edge podcast, where we explore what it

takes to create the bigger, bolder, badass life

you know you were born for.

Not a life that simply looks good on

paper, and not another spin on the self

-help hamster wheel.

If you're ready for more joy, more peace,

and more contribution, you're in the right place.

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

Let's get surfing.

Welcome back to the Surfing Your Edge podcast.

I am Kristine Goad, your Surfing Your Edge

coach, and I wanted to continue the story

I started a few in the last episode,

or in the beginning of this first episode,

or whatever.

We don't know yet how we're going to

structure this, but anyway, I started a story

about my cross-country bike trip, and then

we talked a little bit about how that

led into my learning to surf.

But I want to back up just a

tiny bit.

Okay, so it was 1998 when I did

the cross-country bike trip, and it was

the scariest thing I had ever done, and

the most adventurous, and the most me I

had ever felt.

And I loved it.

And when I came home, we already talked

about the fact that I was super depressed

and didn't know what to do with myself,

and was really looking for someone to help

me bring what I called bring myself home,

right?

The self that I found on that bike

ride, I could not figure out how to

bring her home and help her survive in

the everyday real world.

And I just...

She felt so close, and I just felt

like I could reach out and touch her,

and yet I couldn't bring her fully into

this world.

I didn't know how to be fully myself

in this world, and it was incredibly frustrating.

And yet, because you have to, I struggled

along, right?

And 20 years later, on the 20th anniversary,

I wanted to celebrate that.

And I talked to my colleague.

We already told this story.

I talked to my colleague about I wanted

to take people to do something scary, like

learning to surf, and then come home and

support them while they used what they learned

on that surfboard to actually change things that

mattered in their real life.

And once I realized that surfing was...

Once I realized that it was okay, that

I was scared in front of my people,

and that might actually be an ideal place

to lead from, then I was off and

running, and the Surfing Your Edge experience was

born.

And what it is, is it's an eight

-day retreat.

We go to Panama.

We do all kinds of things, but included

in the Panama retreat are four days of

learn to surf lessons on a baby beach,

black sand, baby beach, no scary coral to

get caught up on.

We don't go in over our heads, all

of that.

I mean, it's very, very basic.

But at the end of those eight days,

we come home together as a group.

We stay together as a group, and we

actually...

When you're there, when you're in another country,

and you're on vacation, and you're taking that

hour to just soak in the sounds of

the jungle, and the birds, and the waves,

and you're in a hammock, and nobody is

asking anything of you in moments like those,

and in moments where we're having amazing conversations

over dinner, or by the pool, whatever, you

start to get a different vision for what

your life can look like.

And so what a lot of times people

do is they go on an amazing trip,

and they think it's going to change their

lives.

They go home.

They show the pictures.

They share their phone with somebody, and the

person just flips through very fast, looks at

all the photos.

It's Monday morning.

You're back at work, and all of that

just kind of goes poof, right?

And again, it's just outside of your reach,

right?

She's right there, but can you get her

back?

And I didn't want that experience for my

people.

So when we come home from this eight

-day experience, all jazzed up and all newly

envisioned with this new life, this new direction

for our life, we don't have to change

everything, but new steps we want to take.

I want to make sure that people have

the support they need in order to make

those changes that they want to make, so

we stay together as a group and with

individual coaching for another six months.

So that is the Surfing Your Edge experience,

and I remember the day I created it.

I was sitting on the floor in my

living room with a notebook and a pen

and just writing down all of the things

and why it was important.

And when I got done, this realization hit

me that I had just created the program

that I needed at the end of the

cross-country bike trip.

This was what I had spent 20 years

figuring out how to support somebody who had

just done something big, how to support them

when they come home and want to become

the new person that they, I don't even

want to say new person.

That sounds like it's a lot of pressure,

right?

But you saw something and you want to

come home and you want to see what

that feels like in the real world.

And so that's what Surfing Your Edge does,

right?

I created the program that I needed in

1998 that I could not find.

And when I figured that out, that all

20 years, basically all of my 20 years

had been leading to this new place in

my life, this new creation.

I got really, really scared, right?

Like, oh my gosh, this is what I've

been building toward.

Here it is.

It's beautiful.

What if I share it in the world

and nobody gets it?

What if nobody wants it, right?

So then the work became, how do I

put this in the world in a way

where people can see it and I'm being

vulnerable?

And that took a lot of work because

basically I started putting little posts out on

Facebook about it, right?

And no response, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

And I was listening to Dana Wild one

day and she is a mindset coach.

And she was talking about how to help

somebody win.

They wanted to win the cruise in their

MLM business, right?

They had to sell so many products in

a certain amount of time and they wanted

to win this cruise.

And the way Dana said to do it

was to three times a day for three

minutes each, imagine that you had already won

the cruise and imagine what that felt like

and what you were going to do.

And I'm like, okay, I can adapt this.

So what I did was I imagined that

I was writing my list of attendees for

my retreat and I just filled the last

spot.

And I, you know, pictured myself jumping up

and down and calling my husband and running

over to the corner where I'd been, you

know, gathering all of this stuff for the

gift bags and, you know, getting all excited.

And so I did that every day, three

times a day for about six weeks before

I started to feel like the person who

could actually lead that retreat.

That was the big thing.

I had to be able to show up

in the world as the person who knew

she could lead this retreat, not as the

person who was hoping she could lead this

retreat, hoping somebody would see it and recognize

it and want to be part of it.

So for six weeks, I did daily visualization

and practiced feeling what it felt like to

be the person who knew that she could

do this.

And that's when the very first person finally

saw my post and said, oh, that looks

cool, but I don't have a passport.

It's like, okay, here we go.

And so within a couple of conversations, I

had, you know, this woman and I had

figured out that you can get an expedited

passport.

You can do all of these things.

And the most amazing thing started unfolding for

her.

She got her passport in like nine days.

It was insane.

Money that she did not expect just like

showed up to help her fund the trip.

When she asked her sister to watch her

son, she said yes.

You know, so basically she just, she said

yes.

And then the world said, okay, fine, here

you go.

All right.

So that is the backstory that I didn't

get to, didn't get to in the last

episode.

So I wanted to fill that in a

little bit before we get back to Panama.

All right.

So on the morning of the second day,

before we had gone out and done our

next surf lesson, I was in the shower

and I caught a whoosh.

What that means to me is that when

I, before, when I was still envisioning what

surfing your edge, the surfing your edge experience

might look and feel like, I was still

testing it out in the world.

Right.

I was still, like I said, I talked

to my coworker.

I had gone to a three-day in

-person event in San Diego with my very

first coach ever, Ryan Eliason.

And Ryan was an amazing coach.

He's off living his life now and isn't

coaching anymore.

But at the time he was phenomenal and

he had pulled together a group of us

from around the world that were some of

the most interesting, exciting, motivated, world-changing kinds

of people.

And he decided that he was going to

surf his edge and create his very first

live event.

And he called all of us together and

said, can you come?

And a lot of us wanted to come,

not only because we loved Ryan, but because

we loved, we wanted to meet each other.

Right.

So we all converged on this crazy packed

morning to night three-day event with Ryan

and watched him shake on stage because he

was trying to do all the things that

you do when you do a three-day

event and say all the right things.

And he did a beautiful job.

He did a gorgeous job, but he was

nervous and he was nervous in front of

us.

And we wanted to support and love him

for that.

So again, that was more support for the

idea that I should lead from a place

of vulnerability and that when you lead from

vulnerability, people rally around you.

Oh my gosh, I'm getting emotional here.

So we all went, we loved on each

other.

We loved on Ryan and he would ask

questions throughout the three-day event and you'd

raise your hand and he would, there were

multiple times when I raised my hand and

he looked right at me and then slid

right on by to the next person.

And he did not call on me.

When he finally called on me, it was

after we had just done an exercise where

it was a bucket list exercise.

And he had asked us, what was on

our bucket list?

What had we been putting off that we

didn't want to put off anymore?

He told a really touching story about a

cross country motorcycle trip with his dad before

his dad died.

And he wanted us to talk about the

thing that we didn't want to put off.

And this time he called on me.

So I stood up and I said that

I had been terrified of open water my

whole life.

And that I had been dreaming of taking

people to learn to surf in some beautiful

place like Costa Rica and that I wanted

to then help people who learned about themselves

on the surfboard come home and surf their

edge at home.

And the room erupted.

I mean, there was just 300 people just

cheering and saying, go do that, go do

that.

And at the end of me speaking about

this and everyone cheering, Ryan invited the room

to send a whoosh to me.

And that whoosh arrived 10 months later when

I was standing in that shower getting ready

to go out for my next surf lesson.

So it was about 10 months from the

time that I stood up in that room

and said I want to do this to

when I had it planned.

I had a client and I actually traveled

to a new country I'd never been to

before and was leading this retreat.

And all of the love of those 300

people found me.

So that was probably that in and of

itself.

If nothing else had happened that entire trip,

that probably would have been enough just to

feel that whoosh to realize that I had

created this thing that was still very, very

new.

And then I was just testing, right?

I was still in the testing period.

It was pretty clear to me that my

client was loving it and that it was

going to be a go.

But just that I had taken that risk,

that I had trusted Anne, this person I

just met, that she would help me create

this beautiful experience for people in a place

I'd never visited, and that I just had

the courage to put it together, put it

out there, talk to people about it, and

go.

That for me was the true surfing your

edge experience that I had created the thing

that needed to exist in the world.

All right.

So it is day three, I believe, of

the Panama trip.

We've been in Panama.

My client and I have been in Panama

City.

We've done some amazing stuff in this little

eco resort where we start out.

And we've traveled across Panama to Veraguas, and

we're on the Pacific Ocean, and it's been

a six-hour drive in pouring down rain.

And we get there at like 4.30

p.m. We have a five o'clock

surf lesson.

The very first thing we have to do

is this surf lesson.

So we get there, we throw our bags

in the room.

We get dressed.

We go out to the surf lodge where

they're like picking out our surfboards.

And I'm a big girl.

So they give me this gigantic, gigantic stand

-up paddleboard to be my surfboard.

And I have to carry this thing down

this long road.

I've since fixed this, right?

We don't carry surfboards anymore.

We have a van drive us.

But for this retreat, I had to carry

this big, heavy-ass surfboard down this dirt

road in the rain.

And I was terrified.

I was already terrified.

I created this program because I wanted to

address my fear of open water.

And here I was, minutes away from getting

into the Pacific Ocean in the rain.

And I was not doing very well.

And my client was just bouncing down the

road, just happy as could be, chatting with

the surf instructor.

And I'm in the back, just carrying this

big old board and just cranky as all

get out.

I'm just in my breath, under my breath

going, it's my retreat.

I shouldn't have to carry my own board.

And I don't want to be here in

the rain.

And anyway, we get to the beach.

And it's a beautiful, huge, wide, black sand

beach.

Gorgeous island off there and beautiful waves rolling

in.

But it is still raining.

And there is lightning out over the ocean.

Lightning!

And my surf instructor speaks English, but it's

not his first language.

I think it's probably his third language.

And we had been clear, as clear as

we could be leading up to this, that

we were going to be older women who

had never tried anything like this.

And we needed somebody who was patient.

And I get to the beach and he's

like, okay.

And he's showing us.

He's like, we're going to work on the

beach.

We're going to work on how to pop

up on your surfboard.

And then we're going to go out.

And I will be out there with you.

And we're not going to, you know, and

I'm just like, no, there is lightning out

there.

And I'm stomping my foot going, this is

not how I want to learn to surf.

I am not learning to surf in lightning.

And he's like, well, if you are, you

know, the only way you're going to have

any issues is if you're touching the bottom.

And I'm like, I don't know how to

surf.

I'm going to be touching the bottom.

And I was just, I kind of, I

have this vision of myself looking down and

just watching what was happening.

But I was stomping my foot on the

sand.

And just being like, no, I'm not going

to do this.

I'm not going to do this.

And finally, he said, okay, fine.

You don't have to surf today.

We'll do some pop-ups on the sand.

And then we will just go out and

we'll ride in on our bellies.

And we'll just get to feel what it

feels like to turn the board by shifting

our weight.

And somehow I let that be okay.

And so we practiced, you know, laying down

in the sand and this leg, and then

this leg and popping up.

And, you know, so we did the whole

thing.

And then he let us out one by

one and push, you know, we'd flop up

on the board and he'd push us in

and I didn't die.

But I've got to tell you when, you

know, you're in, I'm only 5'4".

And these waves were coming in and they

were over my head.

And I'm just like, no, I'm not going

any farther.

And he's like, yes, yes.

So the whole thing was this major argument

with me and this very sweet young man

telling me it's going to be okay.

It's going to be okay.

And he kept, and actually his phrase was,

it's normal.

It's normal.

It's normal.

Everything for him was normal.

And my client loved it and I survived.

And at the end of the day, I

was like, you know, it's really good that

I had to get out of a van

and go straight into the water.

Because if I had had more time to

stop and think, who knows if I'd gotten

out there on my belly, right?

I might not have gotten out there at

all.

So when I look back on it, I

was like, really grateful that I made myself

immediate, that that was the first thing we

had to do.

But it was not pretty.

And my client who, someone I had gone

to high school with, we weren't close then,

but enough that she knew something about me.

She was just kind of shocked to see

this person that I became on that beach.

But the good part of this story is

that the very next day we went down

to the beach and my client and I

and the person who was supporting us on

the trip, all three of us stood up

on our boards for the very first time

on our second day.

So we all got a ride and it

was like, oh, we can do this.

And that was really exciting.

My client and I were both 49.

And my, and Ann, our lovely guide actually

turned 60 on that trip.

So she learned to surf for her 60th

birthday.

And I think that is amazing.

So what I want to say about this

is that I did not immediately overcome my

fear of open water.

I fought with it on the surfboard.

I fought with it when we were snorkeling

because I had never snorkeled before.

And I told my sister I was going

to learn to snorkel.

And she's like, learn?

What do you mean you got to learn?

You just put your face in the water

and swim.

I'm like, okay, well, for me, I had

to learn.

So, and I had to, yeah.

So I fought with it.

And then at the very end, as my

little treat to myself, after my client had

flown home, I stayed an extra day and

went out with Ann on a whale watching

boat, 20 miles straight out away from the

shore, where it's like, if this boat goes

down, what are you going to do?

And I, you know, dealt with my fear

doing that.

I'd never been that far away from shore

before.

So I did all of that.

And then the next year, I did it

again.

And the next year, I did it again.

And that was 2018 was our first one.

Last year in 2025, I bought a standup

paddle board and started paddle boarding in the

middle of the Patuxent River.

And I'm like, oh my God, I'm in

the middle of a river by myself on

a board.

So things have shifted.

I would not say I'm terrified of open

water anymore.

I have a healthy respect for open water.

But I can snorkel now.

I can surf now.

Well, I can learn, continue taking surf lessons

now.

I would definitely not call myself a surfer.

But I am proof that my own process

has worked for me in terms of overcoming

my fear of open water.

But the thing that one of my clients

figured out in the second year that we

ran it was that it's really not about

the surfing.

You go, we call it surfing your edge.

You do play around on a surfboard, but

it's not about the surfing.

It's really about you getting out of your

comfort zone in any of a number of

ways.

Like my first year, Tracy, my first client,

her big fear was leaving the country and

leaving her son.

She was a single mother.

She had a son who was still in

high school, and she had never left him

alone before.

So she was leaving him.

She didn't have a passport.

She didn't speak Spanish.

One of her friends told her that Panama

was not where a blonde American woman should

go, that she might never come home.

And so she had all of these things

going on in her head.

And other clients have other issues that they're

dealing with.

Not everyone goes because they want to become

a surfer.

Most people have never thought about surfing, and

they've all got their own edge that they

are exploring.

For some women, it's even just the ability

to give themselves permission to go, to spend

the time and the money on a trip

that gets them out and seeing whales and

dolphins and monkeys in the wild and trying

new things.

Trying new food and being in a place

they've never been before.

Just giving yourself permission for that is a

huge challenge for a lot of us.

So anyway, I just want to make it

clear that it's not just about the surfing.

It's about whatever edge you want and need

to address.

And then when you come home, there's the,

how do I bring this person with me?

How do I show up as that carefree

person who was playing on a surfboard, or

that woman who saw something different for her

life when she was floating in the pool?

Whatever.

It's powerful work, and it's not just about

the surfing.

So what I want to say here, as

we kind of wrap up this second part

of this story, is I would not, I

cannot imagine my life without the Surfing Your

Edge experience.

I don't know who I'd be if I

hadn't created it.

And I would love it if you'd come

play with me sometime.

But even if you'd never come play with

me, I'm wondering what adventure of whatever nature,

whether you leave the country, stay in the

country, whether it's physical, whether it's mental, emotional,

what adventure have you been playing with in

the back of your mind and not given

yourself permission to fully sink into?

And what would it look like if you

took the first step toward giving yourself permission

to do that thing?

All right.

And if you feel inspired, I would love

to hear from you.

Feel free to send me stories about your

own adventure, about something that changed your life,

about an adventure you would love to engage

in.

Or even if there's just a longing and

you don't even quite know how you might

respond to it, send me a message.

Let me know.

I love, love, love talking about these kinds

of things with people.

So I hope you will reach out.

And I hope you will also join me

in the next episode.

Until then, I am wishing you wonder.