Today we’d like to introduce you to Erica Terblanche.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I am an endurance runner and wrote a best seller about the journey.
My book RUN for the Love of Life tells the story of how I found myself needing to run in the Sahara Desert to get through a difficult divorce.
In my life I have come to understand just how very much people need help to get through life’s challenges.
This has been my purpose and drive for many years: to help people on the journey and to help people persevere and to help people to be happier, despite circumstances.
And all of this started in my own challenges and difficulties and struggles, especially in childhood when a very traumatic event set me on this path. I speak of what happened to me in RUN for the Love of Life but still find it hard to talk about, All that I can say here is that rather than destroying me and crushing my soul, the event made me make up my mind that I was never going to be a victim again.
In a way, the terrible event set me on my path – our mess becomes our message. Today I am a psychologist and have several coaching qualifications. I have a Master’s degree in positive psychology and many, many years of international podium endurance sport behind my name.
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While writing RUN for the Love of Life, I realized just how very much running and moving my body and being in Nature have helped me to get through life’s challenges. I wrote the book to help people understand this and to inspire them to get active – because it’s not just about being fit – it is about being fit enough to meet life’s ups and downs.
I quote from the first chapter of the book:
“CHAPTER 1
Choose a path with heart, Sahara Desert, 2009
“All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. One makes for a joyful journey. The other will make a curse of your life. One makes you strong, the other weakens you.”
– Carlos Castaneda
The greater the darkness, the brighter the stars.
And so, too, it is with suffering: The greater the sorrow, the greater the opportunity for us to grow – if we choose it.
Like everyone, I have known my share of suffering, and one thing I do know is that the deeper the dark well we fall down, the stronger we get as we climb, one slow hand over the other, back towards the bright-blue sky overhead.
Hope is a long rope.
It can draw us up, even out of the deepest well – as long as we keep hoping and keep moving towards the light. I mean physically moving. It is by the sheer act of moving our bodies – whether swimming; dancing; running; surfing; hiking; gardening; stretching in long slow ohms, or whatever other way one chooses, that we are able to process our grief and come out the other side, salt-caked and sweating, shattered and thoroughly cleansed, inside and out; and feeling suddenly light, as if we have dropped a bag full of suffering and old ghosts.
On 10 September 2009, I hit one of the lowest points of my then-39 years of life. We walked down Holborn Street in London. Behind us loomed the macabre gingerbread brick-stack of the High Court, and behind it, the sky shone brilliant-blue. A good summer day like any other. The pavement seemed a dim blur through my tears. My now-ex-wife walked beside me. Billy was silent, cold and grey as a stone.
We had just stood together at a wooden, barred counter, polished floors, echo in the hallway. “Sign here,” the clerk had said. It seemed so indecent – ending everything in as trifling a manner as buying stamps at the post office. We had signed. It was over. Almost seven years, thousands of kilometres of adventure, all of the love that had gone before and all the high dreams that had once stretched ahead of us, and all the meaning these gave to our lives. All gone.
The divorce papers were filed. On the same day, a man-and-a-van arrived, and then it was done. All that remained was the pain and the emptiness, and the flashes of relief mixed up with grief, and the fragile exhilaration of new freedom, and then, again, the loss like a severed limb.
For reasons unknown to the machinery of my rational mind, in the aftermath of my divorce, I was compelled towards the Sahara Desert with the same urgency that a drowning man thrashes for the blue surface.
The Sahara of which I had read stood in my mind’s eye as a place of miracles, of illumination, a place for wandering and healing, a place where one could climb out of the narrow coffin of rumination. It was the Bedouin desert of the Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz, where poems blew barefoot across the vast sands. It was a magical place where a willing pilgrim could be hollowed out and purged and purified, and where prophets tuned into the great voice of God.
To get through the pain of our divorce, I needed to cut deep, right to my marrow, where I hid a lifetime of aching for things gone wrong and things done wrong. Perhaps it was redemption I needed as much as healing. And one thing was certain: A glossy-brochure camel safari, complete with a train of bearers and table-buckling, belly-bulging buffets for breakfast, lunch and dinner was not going to do that holy work! Oh no! My heart was clear: I needed to run the Sahara Desert. I wanted to run bearing all of my belongings on my back, carrying scarcely enough food and sunscreen for seven days and a thin sleeping mat, and to disappear into all of that barrenness.
I could never have imagined that I would encounter an experience so extraordinary that in seven short days it would heal my heart in a way that seems impossible, even now.”
In the book I describe how the Sahara started for me 15 years of long-distance running adventures in the harshest and most awe-inspiring natural landscapes in the world – the Atacama, the Namib, the Grand Canyon and the Kalahari, Turkey, among others.
These running races taught me that on the outer edges of human endurance there is a great prize: Unwavering commitment, perseverance through pain and tedium, inescapable humility and prayers at the cliff-edge of quitting.
In my life, I have known much difficulty and I speak candidly about it in RUN, but I also tell about the victory of the human spirit over adversity – and of the camaraderie and love that makes us stay the course against all odds.
In the end, my story is about far more than just running: They are examples of how our share of challenge and pain shape and refine us; how, over time, the grit in the shell becomes the pearl. They are stories of how our dreams can come true, with hard work and conscious and consistent effort, while facing all of the risks, difficulties and stresses of trying.
I am now 51 years old and I find that I still show up for some of the toughest races there are. When I was younger, there was something in these races for me about growth and about shaping my character and about becoming. Now they are far more investigative experiences, a chance to look in and see and understand human nature better and to return from these races far better equipped to teach and to mentor and to guide.
This is where my energy goes now – in helping people to become happier, to make the most of their precious lives and to develop the habits that will help them to lead a fulfilling and meaningful life.
I have started two businesses in this direction. Thrive Guru is a coaching and teaching business that brings the science of happiness into corporates and schools. Teach A Girl to Fish is an adventure company that takes people of life-changing personal growth adventures.
I am also a life coach that helps people to set worthwhile goals and to actualize their highest potential in their one precious life. In my free time, I take teenagers on Life Navigating trips into the wilderness and I run a pro-bono Run Club for beginner runners.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Nothing that is worthwhile accomplishing is attained without some effort or struggle.
The obstacle is the way – because that is where one develops the courage and the grit to keep on the path.
At the age of 49 years old, I left a successful twenty-five-year career in corporate strategy to pursue my passion of teaching the science and art of happiness and deep well-being and to become a widely published author.
The process of letting go of the familiar and of the securities of my corporate life has been enormously challenging. But the grit and perseverance that I developed in my endurance running have spilled over into my life and despite being terrified, I have walked the path and stayed the course.
My first book RUN for the Love of Life has just been nominated a top recommended title by our biggest bookseller and last month my book reached best-seller status. Thrive Guru is now recognized as a thought leader in happiness and mental wellness and I have a weekly radio feature on the building blocks of happiness.
Am I where I want to be? Not even nearly. My ambition is great and my work ethic equals it.
My dream is to speak at the World Economic Forum on the transformative power of nature, and especially how we can use nature interventions to help teenagers to cope better, develop resilience, confidence and healthy self-esteem and to escape the scourges of depression and ADHD.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
THRIVE GURU helps people to be happier and ultimately to make the most of their one precious life.
The business offers:
1. Online teaching on the building blocks of well-being, the science of happiness and how to build resilience, hope and confidence (for corporates and schools) – typically 90-minute ZOOM sessions delivered in a series of 3 sessions
2. One-to-one online happiness coaching via ZOOM (for adults and children) – build a customized program of sessions for each person’s needs and objectives and make sure we achieve it with a minimal amount of sessions.
3. Powerful motivational speaking on the topics of how to build resilience and become antifragile, happiness as a skill that one can learn, overcoming depression, increasing deep intrinsic engagement and how to make the most of one’s precious life
4. Life changing adventure experiences in Nature
– weekend happiness bootcamps in the wilderness where we learn to navigate in the wilderness and in our life – this is
great for teenagers who need to find some direction and build a sense of agency, self-esteem and resilience
– 5-day kayaking expeditions in Greece under the brand of Teach a Girl to Fish for empowering women through physical
activity and nature-based adventure
– Lift-off weekends for people that have come through painful divorce or separations and who want to reclaim the joy,
power and direction in their life.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I don’t believe in luck.
I believe in effort and in trying and learning and trying again and if needed in changing direction.
I believe that great fortune favors the person who is out there trying and who has committed to a dream.
I have been blessed with talents, with grit, with a very strong mind and a stronger will. I have been blessed by many friends and by the fortune of a wonderful and supportive partner. None of these things happened by themselves. They were made and cultivated and strengthened through effort and through attention.
I believe that everyone has greatness in them. All that is needed is the will to find your best path and then the commitment and discipline to embark on it, knowing that there will be challenges, but also knowing that it is the only reasonable and worthwhile way to live this one precious life.
Pricing:
- Coaching US$ 85 per hour
- Happiness and Mental Well-being Teaching US$ 550 for a 90-minute session
- Motivational Speaking US$1500 for 45 minutes
- Outdoor adventures ranging from US$400 for a weekend to US$700 for 4 days kayaking
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thrive-guru.com
- Instagram: @erica_terblanche
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ericaterblanche.thriveguru/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOD6srHs5IY
- Other: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thethriverunclub/
Image Credits
Racing the Planet (main photo)
