Transcript #165 Going Toe to Toe With a Broken Toe (Mindset)

Intro:

Hello from Hawaii. This is the Arise2Live podcast, episode 165. My husband broke his toe at the beach and blamed himself for all the plans that didn’t  happen. Is that crazy? But he’s like so many other business owners thinking it’s all on them. Fortunately, his support team came to the rescue.

Let’s see how he got out of this mess.

Scott:

Aloha to you all. Every so often I create a different type of episode that is based on a personal event that impacts my ability to be a business owner – this time it’s breaking my toe. Of course, I do realize that nothing unusual ever happens to folks running a business, so I might be the exception. Yeah right, if you believe that I have a battery powered bridge to sell you. In this episode, I’ll talk about my mindset struggles and getting a small victory by accessing my support team after all my well thought out plans exploded in flames when I broke my toe the 2^nd day on vacation. Okay, it was really a working vacation but it is still a vacation.

Welcome to the Arise2Live podcast. My name is Scott Weaver, host and business coach and this is episode number—whatever. It’s summer time and I’m supposed to be on vacation and this is an unplanned episode that my friend said I should do. So please enjoy this special encore!

This episode is being recorded on the tropical island of Maui, Hawaii, looking out from the porch of my in-laws house to a coconut tree and the Mountain- volcano Haleakala. For our European listeners, Hawaii is the 50^th state of the USA and located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with a time zone of -11 GMT. It is 3 time zones west of the West Coast of America. Yes, it’s pretty much on the other side of the world from Europe.

My story begins with all things good. The 9 ½ hours flight time from Nashville was very boring. Just the way I like it. No flight cancellations, no lost luggage, no fights over COVID masks, and even friendly airline staff. My in-laws were all excited about my wife and my kids being here, and gave a smile to me, their son-in-law. Things were lookin’ good.

My kids and I went to a nearby sandy beach to have fun. I ran barefoot with my daughter along the waves as they gently spread over the sand. It was beautiful.  It was great. Okay, I have to admit, my daughter jogged while I ran to keep up. Still, I enjoyed it as I was training for a 5K race and for a short while, my denial of getting older seemed to be working.

After the run, I was resting on a log on top of a small sand dune overlooking the beautiful beach. I got up to walk down the sand dune and the sand gave way and, in my stumble, manage to kick a half-buried stick. That’s when a very sharp, localized pain exploded from my toe. It was broken. Fortunately not overly bad, but I was out of action, and all my plans were out of action too. I was mad.

The next few days where tough. Every footstep was painful and all I wanted to do was sleep and eat. My Garmin watch was telling me my resting heart rate was 85 beats a minute. Plus, I was dealing with a family who didn’t think it was serious until my visit to the doctor’s office. Then the extent of the injury became very clear.

I wish I could say I handled all this like a champ, but I didn’t. Negative thoughts attacked my mind like angry waves on the beach. How am I going to finish my goals? I was excited with family time, working with my hands by helping my in-laws with some house maintenance, and of course, reaching a few of my business goals. I had it all figured out. But now I was suffering from an emotional let-down that was worse than the physical pain. I quickly hit a low. I felt side-lined from life and feelings of failure and anger ate at me. Some things were obvious and easy to handle, like don’t set up a local seminar talk if you have to elevate your foot, or do stuff like climb ladders.

Others feelings were, well, quiet mean and very unfair. Thoughts like “Why me? Stuff like this happens to other people, but not me.” And “Scott, you’re this big podcaster and coach and you have failed here in Hawaii on the second day. You’re a big disappointment and loser to your wife, your fans, and clients because you wimped out over a broken toe.” I would never be so judgmental with my clients, but why was I so hard on myself?

The mental and spiritual game, the battle for your mind and attitude can be one ugly, smashmouth fight. One you better win.

And in my case, I was losing.

I hate to lose. So I reached out to my support team. You know, the type of support team for business owners that I’ve encouraged y’all listeners since the beginning of the Arise2Live podcast. Well, I have one. And I needed them, quite badly. But I was embarrassed to talk about it to them. After all, I was admitting that I didn’t have it all together and needed help. My pride was getting in the way. My unreasonable self-judgement was also getting the best of me.

After a few days, I finally talked to my wife. After all, we’ve been married for over 20 years and she usually knows what I’m thinking. Actually, the real reason was that I knew I couldn’t hide this from her. Yeah, my head-space was not in a good spot.

Anyway, she chastised me in her own unique and loving manner:

Imelda Weaver: “Seriously, Scott. This can be a blessing in disguise. We are at my parents’ house and they will take care of the cooking and place. The kids are old enough to do the house maintenance stuff and they need the experience anyway. There’s 4 available drivers to take you wherever you want to go. So, relax and enjoy Hawaii. Nobody is expecting you to do everything.”

Scott Weaver: The phrase, “nobody is expecting you to do everything” got to me. Where did that self-expectation that I needed to carry the whole load come from? I think as business owners, we get so wrapped up in taking care of the business and employees, being responsible for the final results, and perhaps it’s also a built-in personality trait to take care of things to make sure things are going the right direction and the right way. Over time, I think us business owners have a tendency to start to believe that everything is all on us. I struggle with that. I admit it. Hopefully most of you don’t have to worry about this but I do suspect a few of you out there know exactly what I’m talking about. To believe that life as we know it is 100% depended on our success and we are going to do whatever we can, we will pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make it happen.  That is just how the world works.

Now, when I say that, it sounds stupid when spoken out loud. We ain’t God. But I know for sure, I’m not the only business owner who’s thought that and I bet there are some listeners out there right now, who secretly have that thought too.

I remember talking to Tommy Breedlove, he was a guest on this podcast…episode 46 if I remember correctly. He told me that we are our own worst judge, we judge ourselves way too severely and don’t provide ourselves enough grace. That got me thinking, maybe I should not be too hard on myself for breaking my toe as if I did it on purpose. Maybe I can change those nasty questions running through my mind, demanding answers to “Why?” and “How was I going to recover my plans?” Maybe there’s better questions to ask, questions like:

“What does this make possible?” “What does a broken toe make possible?”

My headspace was still off, so I called another support team member and long-time friend, D. Scott Smith.  You long-time listeners will recognize him as he’s been on this podcast many times.

D. Scott Smith: “Hey Scott, stories are good. Tell your story.”

Scott Weaver: “What story?”

D. Scott Smith: “The story about breaking your toe.”

Scott Weaver: “Really? I don’t think my listeners want to hear about my misery and ailments.”

D. Scott Smith: “Isn’t the Arise2Live podcast about real life? Seriously, Scott. You can do this.”

Scott Weaver: Great, he got me there. I didn’t want to do an episode recording on my toe, or on my supposed vacation, but gave it some thought. Obviously I gave it a lot of thought since I’m actually doing it. Maybe my broken toe incident can help some business owners out there and their families to get thru things that are unexpected, setbacks that come out of nowhere.  Just maybe my story can help you and I really do hope it does.

Also, in my support group, I am a member of a business mastermind and they helped out in a big way. Yes, this business coach is part of a mastermind to become better at what I do and become a better person. That’s part of growing. On a Zoom call, they reminded me that I was writing a business book for business owners creating their own vision and then they proceeded to arm twist me to get a commitment to deliver a full manuscript in a week. Which I did and it was a royal pain to get it done. But I got it done.

Looking back, I can now see what I couldn’t see before. After breaking my toe, I just had a bad attitude, frustrated that my plans failed, feeling like a failure, and generally negative about everything. I needed other people to get me out of this emotional ditch I’ve fallen into. After talking with my support team, my attitude still wasn’t the best, but something had changed in my thinking. I was starting to think about family time by driving around the island, doing an emergency podcast episode, and finishing up my book. These became my new goals that replaced my unattainable previous goals.  My support team came through for me and I didn’t even know it at the time. I’ll say now, that I’m very appreciative.

Wrapping up here, I’ll provide a list, because, well, that’s me and list is a way to remember the key points and I don’t know how we can have an Arise2Live episode without a list, right?

Hopefully this is a list you can take into the future, just in case you break your toe or something else blows up your plans.

You can go toe to toe and win in the mental game by:        12:40

1. Intentionally choose to win the battle for your attitude. You’re not so stuck that you can’t change your attitude, but sometimes it is a smash-mouth battle for your mind. Intentionally choose not to continue with the negative thoughts. Negative thoughts are like birds, you can’t stop them from flying over you, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair.

2.  Reach out to your support group. They can see beyond the negative situation that dominates your thoughts and your vision. Set aside your pride and trust them to guide you through the dark times and actually trust them and do what they say to do. You’ll be much better off than doing things on your own with limited sight and a negative disposition. Of course, this reaching out to a support group assumes you already have a close support group, one that you can trust. If you don’t have one already, make it a priority, make it a goal to create one this week and start sharing and building trust with them.  When the tough times come, ask, ‘What does this make possible?’

3.  Set new goals by letting go of the previous goals and expectations, especially the expectations.  When there’s a new reality that you’ve just landed in, it usually means you need to let go of the past plans. Maybe, in my case, it’s lowering expectations and goals, but I was dealing with a broken toe, and in the process of my support team helping me set new goals, I managed to finish this podcast episode and a book manuscript. That’s something good. Something that I did not plan to do.

4.  Move and do things even if you don’t feel like it. You’ll thank your future self for taking action, no matter how small the action is.

5.  Enjoy the benefits of the new reality. Right now I’m outside on the porch looking at tropical trees and a really pretty blue sky. I would not be here if I didn’t take my friend’s advice to record this episode.

Sooner or later you will get hit over the head with a wooden bat, or broken toe. That’s just part of living. When that happens, intentionally choose to win the attitude battle by putting positive things into your mind and reaching out to your support team because that is how you Arise2Live.