In 2017, I had a bit of a mid-life crisis.

It’s a long story for another day, but in a moment of what I can only describe as temporary insanity, I decided what was missing from my life was extreme endurance sport. So naturally, I jumped headfirst into Ironman triathlon training.

Let me paint you a picture: A girl who could barely run a mile without side-stitches. Who had set foot in a gym only a handful of times. Whose extent of “open water swimming” had been limited to splashing around in the ocean waves on vacation. That girl, with virtually no sports experience to speak of, decided to take on one of the most exhausting sports in the world in an attempt to recover from being an exhausted new mom.

I know. It doesn’t make sense.

Building and Breaking

Ironically, the experience both built me and broke me.

It taught me so much about discipline. About how small, consistent steps can conquer seemingly impossible feats. About what the human body and mind are capable of when you refuse to give up. I did things I genuinely thought were beyond me, and I’ll always treasure those achievements.

But I also stressed my body to a breaking point.

After two years of intense training, moments before my first full Ironman in Louisville, I passed out on the starting line. My body sent warning signals—panic attacks, fainting spells—trying to tell me I’d pushed too far, too fast.

In my very brief Ironman career, I completed three half-distance races and one full. And yes, I’m so proud of that. But the road to recovery afterward was rough.

Of course, this was all of my own making. You can do the sport without breaking your mind—plenty of people do. But I wanted too much too fast and paid the price.

Meeting Myself

What came out of that recovery, though, was a skill that has completely altered me in all facets of life.

I was told to try meditation as a way to relieve the anxiety. A way to come to terms with the panic attacks and lessen their effects. And in my typical way, I dove headfirst into that too—going deep, trying to learn the “best” and “right” way to meditate.

And there, in the quiet, I met myself.

My truest self. The one I had mistakenly thought was asking me to complete 140.6 miles of endurance sport. She wasn’t asking for that at all. She was simply asking to be heard.

What I Found in the Silence

I unlocked so much in those early meditation sessions.

Memories I’d buried. Fears I’d been running from—literally and figuratively. Hopes and dreams I’d set aside because they didn’t fit the life I thought I was supposed to be living.

I reacquainted myself with the woman I had become and learned to love both the beauty and the flaws in her. And from that acceptance—from finally stopping long enough to listen—it opened up a fountain of creativity I didn’t know I’d been blocking.

It helped me drop the expectations of the world around me and learn to live for my true self. To chase my own passions and dreams. To explore those dreams in new ways, without apology or justification.

The ideas that became the Monnaco Collection? They were there all along, waiting in the silence for me to slow down enough to hear them.

The Seeds of Our Best Ideas

As creatives in a world of constant demands and endless inputs, we need to shut the door sometimes and allow ourselves to get lost in our own heads.

This is where the seeds of our most unique and precious ideas hide.

Not in the noise of social media or the pressure to produce or the comparison game we all play. Not in forcing ourselves to keep up with impossible standards or pushing through exhaustion in the name of achievement.

Our best ideas live in the quiet spaces. In the moments when we stop performing and just… are.

These are the ideas we’re destined to bring to life. But we’ll never recognize them if we don’t take the time to listen. To sit with ourselves. To get comfortable in the silence and soak in the magic that’s already inside.

An Invitation

I’m not saying you need to take up meditation—though I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I’m saying you need to find your version of getting lost. Whatever that looks like for you.

Maybe it’s long walks without your phone. Maybe it’s sitting in your car for ten minutes before you go inside. Maybe it’s morning coffee before anyone else wakes up, or late nights when the world goes quiet.

Find the space where you can hear yourself think. Where you can distinguish between what you genuinely want to create and what you think you should be creating. Where your truest creative impulses can whisper to you without competing with the noise.

Because I promise you—the ideas that will matter most, the work that will feel most authentically yours, the creative path that will sustain you for the long haul—it’s all already there, waiting for you to get quiet enough to hear it.

You just have to get lost long enough to find it.