Lessons - From Death Bed to TEDx Stage | Amberly Lago - Resilience Expert & Chronic Pain Warrior

In this lessons episode, discover how to build lasting resilience through simple mindset shifts and daily practice. Explore the pace or method that turns pressure into strength through perspective, acceptance, community, endurance, and rest, and understand why gratitude, healthy habits, and recovery are vital to sustaining growth and success. What are some tools or tips you've picked up on that really help you with resilience, with that mindset? You've sort of worked around and dabbled and spoken to some, but just really concrete strategies for people. Well, I think that especially with everything going on right now, and here in California, we've got our mask mandate back, and times are uncertain, and just figuring out, being an entrepreneur is that our work hours are different. Things are always changing. We usually have several different paths that we wear for a few different businesses or more, and so I think that it's so important to work on our resilience, and that's something that we can do every single day, and it's something that we can do in a moment where we feel tired or we feel anxiety, or we're starting to feel like we're going to hit a wall, and so for me, I have something called PASER, and it stands for perspective, acceptance, community, endurance, and rest, and we've talked a little bit, touched on that a little bit throughout the conversation, but perspective, I think, is really the quickest and easiest way to change the way you feel about your situation, and I think that that can be in any way, whether it's your financial situation, whether it's your getting caught up on comparing yourself to someone else on social media, or how much success they have versus what you have, or if you're anxious about something, a big event that you have coming out of, I think it's important to get grateful, and when you're in gratitude, it's alchemy. It changes what you don't have, into what you do have, and what you can't do, into what you can do, and just last night, I will share with you, we went out on a date for our anniversary, and it's the first time I've tried to put heels on, now my ankles fused, and my foot's deformed, but I managed to put this little heel on, it's only about that big, but I was like, I want to feel like sexy for our anniversary, and we get home, and I fell getting out of the car by the way, just to say, but I wore the heels, and I tried my best to walk the right way. Okay, listen, there's people that haven't had accidents that fall getting out of the car wearing heels, so you're good. My husband just like, he just shook his head, he was like, oh gosh, why didn't you just wear your boots, but I'm like, I'm doing it, and it's these little small accomplishments that we do, even if we don't do them well, that they start to build our confidence and make us feel good. But when we got home, I sat in the middle of the bathroom floor, and I was taking the strap that looked like more of a tourniquet around my swollen cancle, and I'm like, oh my god, and I just was looking at my leg kind of and discussed, and he goes, when I look at your leg, I say, oh my god, what a miracle, it's a miracle you have your leg, and that shifted my perspective, like yeah, it is a miracle. I went from disgust to gratitude real quick, and sometimes I think that if we have a hard time shifting our perspective, it's important to surround ourselves with people that can help us do that, and in order to have resilience or any kind of transformation leads me to the next part of pace, or which is acceptance, and that sometimes easier said than done for me. It was really hard. I was in denial about being diagnosed with a nerve disease. I had to accept that I could no longer run the way that I used to. I can run to chase after my daughter, and I did just beat her in a contest running from a stop sign to the car. She's always competing with me, and my husband's like, you had a little little lady beat you to the car, and I'm like, that's right, and so I still can run. It's not always pretty, but I can do it, but acceptance, I felt like it felt like defeat, and I had to shift my perspective on that, acceptance is really your, it's freedom. It gives you the choice to take action steps to make your life the best that it can be, and when we are in acceptance and we're authentic with our feelings and what we're going through, oh my goodness, that's when we can start to have the life that we've always imagined, and that's what really changed things for me, and it led me to a community of people on Instagram in my sobriety community, you know, in my life, and I think communities, you know, is the next part of PASER, and I think it might be the most important part of PASER, because when we have community, it's powerful, and sorry if you can hear the gardener, he just got here. No, I can't. That's the life of being in COVID, right? I go over home office, but community is so powerful. I felt so alone when I was going through some of the darkest moments of my life, and I can guarantee you that if you're feeling alone right now, and you're listening to this, and you're feeling like, well, nobody understands what I'm going through, nobody's going to get me, I don't know where to turn, I guarantee you there's somebody more than one person that's going through exactly what you're going through, and so reach out, reach out to someone, and you know what, that doesn't even have to be somebody that, you know, I connected to a community of CRPS warriors when I started looking at the hashtag CRPS Warrior, I wanted to be connected with people that were had passion and drive, and so I think it's really important to take a look at the people that you surround yourself with, and that doesn't just go for the people that are in your family, in your life. I know we can't get rid of family members, but we can limit the time that we spend with them if they're bringing us down, or they're not, they don't believe that our vision or our dreams, and that's okay, people won't always believe in your vision or your dreams, it's important that you do, and that you find people to connect with that are passionate, and that's those for social media too, if somebody that you're following brings you down, don't pull them, follow people who are paving the way, who inspire you, and because it takes a lot of endurance, and that's the next part of pace or endurance, I think is when our grit and our passion come into play, it's where, you know, we're not always going to be motivated, but if we look at why we're doing something, we focus on our why, then like I said before, it gets us through almost anyhow, but I think that we have to, in order to have endurance, I think it's important to set up really healthy habits and not rely on motivation or willpower, because let me tell you, that willpower is out the door if we are overtired, if we have an eaten, if we haven't taken care of our health, so set up those healthy habits, and that's why I think I've been able to get through COVID in a pretty graceful way, because I have set up healthy habits, not to say it's been easy, but because I have the strong foundation of habits of non-negotiables in my life that I do, I know that I have that foundation to tap into my inner source of resilience, and which leads me to the last part that I'm horrible at. Well, I'm going to rephrase that, I'm getting better at it, it's rest, and when I was explaining what I do every day to be more resilient to my husband, I said, honey, I've got a quick word that's going to help me get through every day, if I just remind myself of these things, and I'm explaining it to him, and he's like, I get to the word, our rest, and he's like, you are so foolish, okay, I cut some here, and I don't usually cut, but he does, and I was like, what do you mean? He goes, you don't rest, he goes, yeah, you do all that other stuff, but you don't rest, and it was really a wake-up call, and I had to learn the hard way of being hospitalized after going septic from not looking at what was going on in my body and pushing and pushing, and I was good at the grit, but I think it's so important to be resilient. We have to strategically stop sometimes and plan times to rest and recover, and however that may look like, that might be taken a break after zooms and going out in nature, taking your shoes off, walking through the grass and getting grounded, taking time to play, you know, scheduling out times where you do have some time off to be, create, like if we don't rest, it's hard to spark creativity. When I'm rested and I can get out there and do some of the things that I love, and I mean, I love my work, but how I can keep moving forward with my work is if I do things to take care of myself. If I do set an alarm on my phone for, okay, it's time to shut off the devices and go to bed, the emails will wait till tomorrow, the text messages will wait till tomorrow, the social media is done for the day, and I think as an entrepreneur with our hours being all over the place, that it's really important to schedule out those times to rest. Thanks for tuning in. 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