Turning 40 and Kickboxing Her Way Out of Depression on the way to Becoming an Ironman

Forty Drinks

Turning 40 and Kickboxing Her Way Out of Depression on the way to Becoming an Ironman

Elle Nagy was living in a foreign country with small children when she found herself slipping into depression. Several years later, and on the on the brink of suicide, Elle asked the Universe for a sign, which it sent in the form of a kickboxing dojo she had never noticed before. She started that day and the sheer physical exertion of kickboxing lifted her years long depression in mere weeks. And then she became hungry for life. She competed in her first Ironman at age 41 and is known today as the Fear Maven after an encounter with a voice in her head during that race.

Guest Bio

Elle Nagy is the only self-leadership expert who utilizes an innovative, ground-breaking model for pioneering women around the world who want to stop fearing fear in an age where so many are expending energy around fear instead of legacy. Known as The Fear Maven, she's been selectively working with business leaders described as inclusive, humanitarian, disruptive and energetic. Her work spans 3 decades with professional qualification including BA Psychology, ILS Coaching, Pranic Psychotherapy, Yoga teaching and Personal Training bringing a truly holistic approach to embodiment of greatness potential.

In addition to her love for her profession, she’s relished the physical exploration of her own potential by participating in numerous cycling races, IronMan events and the illustrious SkyRun. Originally from South Africa, Elle now lives in New Zealand and as always obsesses in all things celebrating the gift of human life today, every day.

Early Life was So Easy

Elle Nagy was a good girl growing up in South Africa. She got good grades and did all the things that made her parents proud - but not enough to make other people feel bad about themselves. Her childhood was typical and she says she was a little weird, but she always wondered if the stork dropped her off at the right house. She was told she was too loud, too different, “too” many things. So she worked hard, got all A’s in school, earned awards and achieved things, but never felt good enough. She says achievement became such a part of her operating system that it was the only thing she knew. It did set her up to do well in adult society…until it didn’t.

Through her 20s she found life to be easy. She got a job, got promotions, and got a degree. She felt confident and unstoppable. Then, she got pregnant and her world changed. In Afrikaans culture, the next step is marriage, so she married her childhood sweetheart and became a mom - something she never thought she wanted to be. When her second baby was six weeks old, the family moved to Ireland.

Elle remembers her 30th birthday: it was pouring rain and she was sitting in a maroon-painted room crying. She remembers thinking she had no idea who she was. She knew she was a wife, a mom and a daughter, but she had no idea who she was on her own, which sent her spiraling down into depression. After several years of being depressed, she became suicidal.

She found it difficult to reach out for help. In her family, these things weren’t spoken of. One time, she told her mother she thought something was wrong and she thought she was depressed. Her mother told her “women in our family don’t get depressed.” So Elle thought, oops, sorry, and carried on.

Her family eventually moved back to South Africa and Elle didn’t feel like she was coping well, with the moves, with her kids, with the deaths of several family members. She remembers sitting in the bathroom one day with a bottle of sleeping pills thinking, “this is it. I’m done.” Then she heard her kids’ voices and realized that the pills might be an easy out for her, but not for her kids. So she made a doctor’s appointment.

She told the doctor, “if you don’t help me today, I will not see my children tonight.” She was diagnosed and put on antidepressants and sent to therapy. It sucked and she hated it. She hated the antidepressant. She didn’t want to kill herself anymore, but she wasn’t happy. In fact, she didn’t feel anything. She felt like a robot. And she hated therapy. She felt worse after every session.

One day, she was sitting in her car after a therapy session and she said a prayer. “God, Universe, whatever is up there, you have to show me another way, I can't do this anymore. I cannot go to one more therapy session." And as she drove home she saw a kickboxing dojo that had been there for years but she had never noticed. She pulled in and asked them when the next class was. She signed up and never went back to therapy. After years of suffering, in just weeks of kickboxing, the depression was gone. She was off her medication and she felt hopeful.

Hungry for Life

She also felt like a changed woman. “Once you've been to that dark place and you choose to live, you don't want to ‘just live’ anymore, you don't want to ‘just exist’ anymore,” she said. “You want to live. You become hungry for life again. You become hungry for experience again.”

Kickboxing made her feel like a badass again. It felt good to move her body. She progressed from ladies' classes to mens’ classes to full contact. That’s when she realized she needed to be fitter to do what she wanted to do. So she took up cycling, got bit by that bug and started racing.

“The more alive I felt, the more curious I became,” she said. So she went looking for other healing modalities because she certainly wasn’t going back to therapy ever again. That led her to a life coaching course (which, 20 years ago, was unheard of). She loved the belief in people’s potential and acknowledging the past but not having to go tromping through it. She became a certified life coach. She became a pranic healer. She became a personal trainer, a spinning instructor, and a yoga teacher. She explored mind, body and spirit modalities because she wanted to know how they all fit together to get someone to a state of being whole.

Becoming an Iron Man

“Then life started picking up for me,” Elle says completely unironically. She began competing in cycling, winning medals and feeling unstoppable. Then a friend sent her a video of an Iron Man event.

When somebody finished the race, the announcer said, "John, you are an Ironman!" And Elle was certain she was born to be an Ironman. “And I went online and was like, "When's the next Ironman event?" and it was four months time. And I took out my credit card and I entered the event and ran to the bathroom and had a spiritual poop because I couldn't believe what I had just done.”

Only then did she research what the race actually entailed. That’s when she realized she probably should have done some research before she entered because she couldn’t swim and, in fact, had a traumatic near-drowning experience as a child. The cycling she felt comfortable with, despite it being further than she had ever cycled. Also, she had never run more than about a 10K.

Elle tried to find a coach, but the ones she talked to said there wasn’t enough time to get her ready, so she found some YouTube videos and a training program online and started training herself. Before long she started to feel pain in her lower body after running and found out she needed hip surgery. The doctor told her to pull out of the event. She told him that wasn’t an option. She found someone “crazy enough” to help her and told him, "If you get me to the start line, I'll get myself to the finish line." She did rehab seven days a week on top of her training and found herself at age 41 at the starting line on the beach with all the other athletes.

The problem was, she never really thought through the part about swimming in the ocean (with sharks!) since all her training had been at a pool. She figured out a strategy for counting three breaths and then spotting on the fourth breath to keep her going in the right direction.

The race included two laps of the swim area and, as she came around the last bend of her first lap, she remembers hearing “you might as well give up.” At first she thought it was God talking, but it turned out to be another competitor who said they would never make the deadline. And Elle said to him, "You have no idea what it took for me to get here. There's just no way that I'm giving up until they tell me, sorry, it's game over."

As she emerged from the water on wobbly legs and headed for her bike, Elle heard another voice, this one from within that said “behind your fear lies your freedom.”

That was the day Elle became an Ironman.

And though you’d think she would feel incredible afterwards, at the finish line, her only thought was, ‘pfft. Anybody can do this.’ That’s when she realized that high achievement may not be the path to fulfillment and happiness.

Behind Your Fear Lies Your Freedom

After the race, Elle spent some time reflecting on the statement she channeled: “behind your fear lies your freedom.”

She thought of all the things she had missed in life because of her fear of the water. There were pool parties during school that she either didn’t attend or hid inside for fear of being thrown in the water. She wanted to surf and boogie board, but didn’t because she couldn’t swim. And then she wondered, “what else did I miss out on because of fear?” That led her to move into her fear - not just overcome it, but sit with it. “ I had to really French kiss my demons in order for me to get to the other side,” she said.

Elle says that every fear we have is conditioned by our “tribal consciousness” and that you can’t self-actualize until you’ve confronted the fears that have been planted in your mind through conditioning. Now, once you start questioning the “tribal norms” it’s likely you’ll be cast out of the tribe, which isn’t such a bad thing according to Elle.

But if we’re here to do great things, to disrupt and to create and do things that haven’t been done before, we have to acknowledge our conditioning and let it go and be willing to outgrow it.

Most of our fears are not life–threatening so it’s possible to sit with them and examine them. What are you really afraid of? What is the story running in the background of your mind that has you feeling fear?

“When you start understanding that any story, any belief, is just you saying the same thing over and over again, and creating evidence in the process - that's what beliefs are - then you can go, okay, Well, how's that working out for me? Do I really wanna continue believing this? Or am I intending to see life differently?”

Elle’s approach to life is, if I’m not dead yet, then I’m not done yet; and if I’m not done then why not do big, fun, audacious things? She says some people are so afraid of dying that they’ve stopped living.

But How?

For people who might be curious about what she’s talking about but have no idea how to start, Elle suggests that using your physical body is the fastest way to prove to yourself that there’s so much more you can do.

She suggests you consider how far you can walk and then have someone drop you off a mile further than that and walk home. While you’re walking, pay attention to the thoughts that come up. You may progress from, “this is easy,” to “well, maybe not as easy as I thought,” to “this is starting to hurt,” to calling someone to pick you up (you’ve warned them not to ahead of time!), to “this was a really stupid idea,” to “wow; I did it.”

That might then open the door to questioning your limits in other areas. And if you do these kinds of things on a daily basis, you’ll create evidence that discounts your previous beliefs. You will create better evidence of what you’re capable of while being present with your thoughts.

And Elle’s favorite line for interrogating our beliefs is: “oh, that’s interesting.” If we become curious about our thought patterns around a certain topic or belief, we allow ourselves the room to process the thought without judging ourselves.

The Voices in Your Head

We’ve all got voices in our heads, mean ones, nice ones. Elle says to create space for them and tell them that you will listen attentively but you don’t promise to obey that voice because it is not your master. You can choose for yourself. Elle says that those voices are in service to her growth. So many times those voices are speaking your fears and Elle believes fear is also in service to our growth.

She also cautions that the “nice” voice may not sound like what you were told it should sound like. For her, the sweet, soothing, indulgent voice is the enemy. That’s the voice she says wants her to be mediocre and complacent. Her true “nice” voice is spunkier, bossier and much sassier and doesn’t let her off the hook.

Elle has another take on the syrupy “nice” voice: “She's the tribe voice. ‘Welcome. Sit by the fire. We'll all hold hands and sing kumbaya and we'll keep you safe. And we will love you. And we will be the source of your happiness. You'll never be alone until you break one of our rules, then we will first turn on you, we will make you feel bad about yourself, we will give you another opportunity to fit in. Sit down, shut up, cross your legs. Look nice. And then if you still don't behave, we will brand you the enemy and we will turn on you.’”

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The Forty Drinks Podcast is produced and presented by Savoir Faire Marketing/Communications

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