What if the hardest thing you have ever been through is not something that happened to you - but something that was always going to make you? Sara Schulting Kranz was blindsided by divorce, betrayal, single motherhood, and the complete collapse of the life she had built. She was 40, across the country from her family, with no career, no clear path, and three boys watching her figure it out. She did not go around it. She developed a five-stage framework for walking through it - and has since used it with Fortune 500 executives, professional athletes, and a blind female para-athlete she guided rim to rim in 24 hours. This episode is about what it actually takes to get through the thing that looks like it is going to break you.
SUMMARY & GUEST INTRO
If you are standing at the edge of a change you did not choose - a divorce, a career collapse, a loss, a life that no longer fits - Sara Schulting Kranz has walked the canyon you are looking into. She is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, certified executive coach, and elite adventurer who has spent 32 years building and living her five-stage framework for navigating change. Her book is called Walk Through This. Her tagline is 'The way out is forward.' And in this episode, she brings the full weight of her own story and her decades of work guiding others to help you understand exactly where you are in the change process - and what to do next.
INSIDE THE EPISODE
- The Labor Day Weekend That Changed Everything. Sara was beyond rock bottom. She had moments of wanting to end her life. Her friends took her to Sequoia National Park, a friend put rocks in her pack, and she climbed to an outcropping of rock, looked out at the valley below, and felt completely disconnected from the problems she had been carrying for a year. That was the moment everything shifted - from 'I am a victim' to 'I am going to thrive on the other side of this.'
- What We Fear Is Our Greatest Success. Stage one of Sara's framework is approaching the change - and the biggest resistance most people feel is not actually to the difficulty ahead. It is to the success that might be waiting for them. Sara breaks down why that is, what it looks like, and why courage is the only thing that develops confidence.
- Blame as a Form of Control. In stage two - descending into the change - blame shows up almost every time. Sara explains why: when everything feels out of control, blame gives people the illusion of getting some control back. The move out of blame and into ownership is where the real transformation begins.
- The Three Types of People Going Through Change. The wait and seer. The resistor. And the let's goer. Sara shares why high-achieving women are constantly assumed to be let's goers - and why that assumption is one of the most costly ones made about us. You cannot pour from an empty cup. Taking care of yourself is not optional. It is the only real leadership move.
- Every Time She Does the Hard, It Gives Her Permission to Do the Other Hard. Sara sold her house and 98% of her possessions in 2017. She went from 4,200 square feet to 800. She has spent at least seven nights alone in the wilderness every year since. She hiked the John Muir Trail for 22 days in 2020. Not because she had to - but because choosing the hard thing on purpose builds the resilience to face the hard things that choose you.
- With My Last Breath. Sara's mother was her best friend. She died in 2022. They used to talk about regret. When Sara thinks about what matters, it always comes back to one thing: when I take my last breath, I want to know I lived it my way. This is the question she leaves every listener with.
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