Meet Julie Sanquist

We recently connected with Julie Sanquist and have shared our conversation below.

Julie, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

When you are growing up, your values are hand-me-downs. Especially if you were a kid in a religious household like me, you learned an important lesson early on: obedience. Listen, learn, and submit to authority. My first purpose in life was to not sin and follow instructions.

I went through an awakening in adolescence. I started to realize, once I was exposed to other cultures of family and faith, that there were questions that I needed to answer for myself – big ones. I believed the plan of my life was already written, and I was to be a servant and follower. My faith didn’t allow for boundaries, and my faith did not care about my health. The more you suffered, in fact, the greater your purpose must be on this earth.

Teenage years were my first attempted significant self-harm because I my life lost meaning and I thought I was destined to endure and carry pain that I could not stop. I adopted the strategies of learned helplessness and submissiveness: do whatever you could to avoid more hurt.

When I finally ran away into adulthood, I swung from extreme self-sacrifice and Christian selflessness to the epitome of selfishness: addiction. Starting with disordered eating and progressing into disordered drinking (and descending into fully-developed alcoholism over the next few years), I launched myself into the opposite of what I knew. I had no purpose and I wanted no purpose: I wanted to escape reality and manipulate my feelings, which I mastered.

This led me to an echoing loneliness. You do not intend to be consumed by yourself when you become dependent on a substance or a behavior, but that is the only destination that road travels. You obsess over ‘the thing’ and recovering from ‘the thing’ and hiding ‘the thing,’ and ultimately you become a person incapable of living a full truth who is slowly, day by day, bricking themselves away from the important things in life. When you live in opposition to your beliefs it creates cognitive dissonance; the wise mind whisper that says you’re on the wrong path; you need to turn around.

Sometimes I heard that voice faintly, and most often I rolled over and clutched the pillow over my ears. This eventually created a huge fault line in my heart; earthquakes became more frequent as my own anxiety and tension grew. The other problem with addiction is that it leads you to make compromise after compromise, often without realizing it, because it chips away at your integrity. This is almost unnoticeable at first, but eventually you see all of the damage you’ve done and allowed to be done (unfortunately both).

I hit my bottom very hard and very fast; I lost everything I had all at once and checked myself into in-patient treatment. For the first time in a decade, I had to ask myself: what is my purpose? I did an amazing job defining what it wasn’t: it wasn’t selfish, hedonistic, or dishonest. Pitying and isolating myself in existential loneliness was also not the whole story. What is a life worth living?

I started to really dig at the root of my values. I learned there are hierarchies of values, and that people’s values are deeply unique and personal. I learned that perhaps there is no one set of values that we must all adopt, unlike what religion taught me, and that I must determine and live in accordance with my values before all else. This is a very, very deep root to dig at. Get out your best tools and sharpen your patience.

As I started to loosen my grip on drinking, I started increasing my bandwidth for others. I found my thoughts and time were no longer kowtowed inward, serving my own destruction, but that they actually started to reach out toward the sun. I started showing up honestly for myself and others; relationships that were suffocating were revived, I had energy to pull weeds, and I had the ability to nourish. I could think clearly. I could feel things again. My journey for meaning started with radical honesty and acceptance: who was I, who am I, what matters to me? I stopped asking ‘why’ and started asking ‘what.’ What do I want my life to look like? What kind of woman do I want to become?

Purpose something precious that you must find on your own and never lose; it is not a shadow that will always be with you. It is not taught to you when you were young and never challenged, not unless you have never ventured out of the Cave. Your purpose is found, purified, and fortified only by walking through the fire. It is personal.

Purpose is derived by experience. For example, one of my values is to encourage and care for others. I do this not because a doctrine commanded me, but because I have empathy and understanding that has been generously shared with me in my lowest valleys. Part of my purpose is now to share that hope. The meaning in my life is tailored to my values. If you want to live a life worth living, you must do two things: ask the hard questions of your heart – listen to the voice that whispers – and radically release your selflessness. Abandon the urge to focus on self and lift your eyes; our purpose is not derived from self-satisfaction. Our purpose is always best shared.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am an ultrarunning and trail coach that just launched a new race company, Avidya Running, in New Mexico.

I inspire others to push their limits and pull down hard things they never thought possible; we do this work both externally and internally. The reason I adore this work is highly personal: I get to witness others grow. I get to measure and encourage others to do harder, wilder, impossible things and re-define their limitations. I get to be a hand up and the encouragement to take another step, and I get to stand at the finish line cheering.

My new adventure into race directing allows me to build opportunities for suffering: I put on events where you are allowed, encouraged, and motivated to endure. To test yourself. To peel back the layers and find out some truths about you. As a long-time ultrarunner myself, I understand what makes these events meaningful, valuable, and successful.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The three most important skills to live your life with: resilience, humility, and integrity. Without resilience, you will never know the highest places. Far too often you will find yourself stuck in the muddy places, unable, unwilling, or slow to pull yourself up. We are stronger than we think we are – more capable and significantly harder working – but we do not know unless we are resilient enough to try again, to go further, to carry more.

You don’t know what you don’t know (and neither do I). Without humility, we miss opportunities to learn and connect. Our eyes are closed to the minutia that is always teaching us something new. We need the quiet voice of a calm mind and open thoughtfulness to absorb the nuanced teachings available.

Finally, do nothing unless you do it with integrity. When you work hard, let that work speak for itself. When you lead, lead without hypocrisy. When you engage with others, mean what you say. How we act, how we speak, what we choose with and without an audience – all of these things speak to our character. Respect yourself. Be someone worthy of respect.

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

Creating a brand and voice in a sea of social media and messaging is overwhelming at times. The media is loud, marketing requires decision-making, even finding the right audience and channel of communication is challenging. Without a background or education in things like website-building, advertising, etc. small things become challenging to do well and cost-effectively.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://avidyarunning.com
• Instagram: avidyarunning
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liveultrarunning/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-tertin-07219380/

Image Credits

Leonardo Basil