The Everyday Awesome Project

Your life can look fine on paper and still feel like a grind in your body. Polly Mertens goes solo to unpack a deceptively simple question: how much of our daily suffering is created by what’s happening, and how much is created by what we’re telling ourselves about what’s happening? Drawing from a new Buddhism class and years of work around emotional intelligence, she offers three practical teachi...

Victim mentality and martyrdom can sound like harmless venting, but when it becomes a lifestyle it drains your nervous system, your relationships, and your ability to solve real problems. Polly Mertens and Samantha Pruitt dig into what it looks like when someone gets “stuck in the story,” why it’s so easy to get pulled into the energy, and how to stay compassionate without becoming the rescuer. If...

A mountain can be stunning in a photo and still completely wreck your expectations in real life. We’re sharing Polly’s Tour du Mont Blanc story from the inside: 10 days hiking around Mont Blanc, crossing France, Italy, and Switzerland, and discovering that “circumnavigation” still means relentless climbs, long descents, and rocky trails that demand your full attention. We talk through the on-the-g...

Detox is not a juice fast. It is the moment you realize your life feels heavy and you decide to clean house on purpose. I am Coach Sam, flying solo today, and I am sharing the detox model I live by: detoxification as a regular, as-needed practice for your environment, your schedule, your relationships, and your body and brain. After turning 50, I got painfully clear about mortality and purpose, an...

If you’ve ever felt proud of being the one who holds it all together, this will hit close to home. I’m talking about non-attachment, not as indifference, but as a real-life practice that helps us love people deeply without carrying their pain, managing their choices, or tying our identity to their outcomes. I connect the dots across Buddhism, Hinduism, and modern psychology, including Acceptance a...

If you’ve ever looked in the mirror and felt like your body was a problem to solve, this one is for you. I’m Sam Pruitt, and I’m going straight at the tension so many of us live with: wanting confidence and health while still feeling trapped by appearance-based standards we never agreed to in the first place.  We unpack what body positivity actually is (a social movement and a personal mindset) an...

Something wild happens when you say yes to a challenge that’s bigger than your usual routine. We’re talking about the Tour du Mont Blanc, a roughly 100 mile alpine trek through France, Italy, and Switzerland, done over 10 days of steep climbs, long descents, and nonstop awe. But the miles are just the surface. What we really explore is why we’re drawn to these “grand adventures” and how they becom...

The moment you stop thinking of the body as a machine and start seeing it as an energetic system, a lot of “mysteries” get practical fast. We dig into energy medicine as curious students, not as self-proclaimed gurus, and we talk through what it actually looks like in the real world: acupuncture, Reiki, qigong, breathwork, and the many ways modern clinics already use energy-based inputs like ultra...

If you’ve ever felt anxious when someone you love is struggling, then caught yourself trying to fix it fast, this conversation lands with a thud. We’re naming the pattern behind the “I’m just being helpful” reflex: codependency, a learned set of survival behaviors where our self-worth and emotional state get tied to someone else’s approval, needs, or crisis. And we connect it to attachment style a...

Stuck can look like a weight-loss plateau, a job you keep complaining about, a relationship you keep “thinking about,” or a health pattern you keep normalizing. We get real about what’s actually happening underneath that frozen feeling and why it so often comes down to one thing: a decision that wants to be made, paired with a nervous system that doesn’t feel safe making it. We break the problem i...

Twenty days alone in the Sierra Nevada changes the math on what you think you need. Sam Pruitt returns fresh off a solo John Muir Trail thru-hike: 250+ miles, roughly 70,000 feet of elevation gain, two off-trail resupplies, and a 35 lb pack she carried without sharing a single piece of gear. We talk through the real logistics of wilderness backpacking: permits, water sources, navigation with FarOu...

I’m heading into the wilderness for a 20-day solo hike across the Sierra Nevada on the John Muir Trail, and before I disappear into miles of granite and sky, I want to share what’s been getting loud inside me: integration. Not the buzzword version, but the real work of becoming a cohesive, functioning whole when your mind has opinions, your body has needs, and your spirit keeps asking bigger quest...

Your gut can be the quiet reason you feel energized and steady or inflamed, foggy, and stuck in cravings. Today Sam Pruitt goes solo to finish Gut Microbiome 102, pulling key insights from Cynthia Thurlow’s work on the menopause gut and adding real-world guidance you can use whether you are in perimenopause, menopause, or simply trying to feel better in your body. We walk through what a “healthy m...

Your gut is not just where food goes. It is where your immune system trains, where inflammation gets decided, and where your brain’s chemistry gets a huge vote. Coach Sam goes solo and shares the gut microbiome science that has her genuinely fired up, sparked by Cynthia Thurlow’s work on menopause and gut health. We walk through what the microbiome actually is, why microbial diversity matters, and...

You can have a good life on paper and still feel like your future went quiet. When Polly Mertens and Samantha Pruitt look around, they keep seeing the same pattern: people aren’t “hopeless,” they’re afraid to hope, and that fear slowly starves the ability to dream. We get honest about what that looks like in work teams, family cultures, and our own inner narratives, especially when we’ve been burn...

A month alone on a bike will tell you the truth about your limits. Our guest, Carrie Hayes, just finished the Tour Divide, the legendary ultra endurance bikepacking race that follows the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from Banff, Alberta all the way to the US Mexico border. His final tally is staggering: 2,716 miles with 172,000 feet of climbing in 27 and a half days, often riding 100 plus miles...

Your mind can make fear sound like logic, but your body tells the truth in seconds. Polly shares a solo, real-time personal transformation experiment she calls the “Seat of the Soul” practice: noticing when she’s operating from a fear-driven personality and learning how to return to the calmer, truer awareness underneath it. It’s not about deleting your traits or becoming “perfect” it’s about find...

Two hundred and fifty miles sounds heroic until you do the math: high altitude starts around 9,000 feet, relentless climbs that add up to roughly 55,000 feet, and the daily reality of moving through the Sierra Nevada with a fully loaded pack. We’re recording right before Sam steps onto the John Muir Trail, and we get painfully honest about what “prepared” actually means when you’re going solo for...

Your body often knows the truth before your brain can build a convincing argument. We get real about “woo-woo intuition” and make it practical: how to recognize the first clean signal, why we override it, and what it takes to rebuild self-trust after years of second-guessing, people-pleasing, or living from the neck up. We share stories that reveal the pattern fast, including online scams and high...

Your reaction isn’t “too much” for no reason. Sometimes it’s your nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do a long time ago, then dragging that charge into the present before you can even think. We get real about emotional triggers, why they feel disproportionate, and how to tell when a moment is simply lighting a fuse on an older story. We share two fresh trigger stories that look totall...

You can run a business, raise a family, keep the lights on, and still feel like something essential is missing. For us, that missing piece is often play: the kind that loosens the straitjacket, cracks the mind open, and lets your real self breathe. So we’re claiming it out loud: creativity isn’t a talent you’re born with or without. It’s your birthright, and it shows up everywhere once you know ho...

You blink and suddenly it’s mid-year. If your goals feel stale, your calendar feels crowded, or your motivation feels like it quietly slipped out the back door, we’re here to say: you can restart whenever you want, and you don’t need anyone’s permission. We talk through how we actually do a mid-year reset in real life, not just on paper. On the business side, we break down why a professional revie...

If you’ve ever been told hot flashes are “just part of aging,” we’re calling that out for what it is: an incomplete story that keeps women stuck in unnecessary suffering. We sit down and get brutally practical about the hormones most people reduce to sex and reproduction, even though estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone influence your brain, mood, sleep, joints, muscle, bone density, cardiovas...

Dopamine isn’t your brain’s “treat.” It’s your brain’s chase signal, and once you see that clearly, a lot of modern life makes uncomfortable sense. We talk through why dopamine spikes show up in everything from social media and gambling-style algorithms to shopping, porn, vacation planning, and signing up for big challenges and why the hit often lives in the anticipation, not the payoff. That same...

Forgiveness has a branding problem. People hear the word and think it means letting someone off the hook, pretending harm didn’t happen, or walking back into a relationship that still isn’t safe. We don’t buy that. We frame forgiveness as an intentional release of resentment and blame that loosens the restriction around your heart and gives your nervous system a chance to exhale. We dig into what...