What’s In Your Toolbox?

Hello. Hi, everyone. I disturbed beast since he's here. It is Jill. Hi, everyone. Mary and Denali. He's like, mom, put me down right now. He was sleeping, and our voices disturbed him. Well, now he's here for the show. The toolbox Tuesday show. How's everyone feeling today? It is the middle of December. We're in the middle already. It's. That's crazy. Time is literally just flying. I was cleaning up my closet earlier today, and like any millennial who has a gen x parent, they literally just kept everything.

All of it. I have paperwork from. From when I was born to now today, and it's what? Cards and coloring book. Oh. Pictures. All of your schoolwork. Oh. Oh. And when we used to, like, glue macaroni to pages to make things like, the macaroni is still intact. Anyway, I was laughing out loud because literally 20 years ago, like, basically to the date, I wrote my mom a letter, and she kept those two, and they weren't like, the lovey dovey letters. Hi. Hey. It wasn't like a I love you, mom letter. She liked to keep my apology letters, and I had a lot of apology letters.

Cause I was a PETA. And if you don't know what PETA means, it's an acronym for pain in the a**. And I was a major PETA, and it basically just, you know, says all the things that I will do better. So it's funny because we were just talking about the fact that. Holy moly, it's to the date 20 frickin years ago. That is in the middle of December. So happy December. How are y'all doing? How are you handling the hustle and bustle of the holiday season? PETA. Is that funny? Please take that and use it whenever anybody's p I p I t.

A. Pain in the a**. Pain in the a**. Yeah. I was a major PETA. And I will admit that I still am a major PETA, just not to my mom. Or rather, to my. We have tendencies of it. We do. It's fine. I. You know, once a PETA, always a PETA. Is that. No, that's not true. PETA tendencies. They stick around. Anywho, sir. Anywho, we were just chatting right before jumping on around what we wanted to talk about. What's the tool in the toolbox that we wanted to talk about? And Jill came to the table with something, and I came to the table with something, and that something meshed together beautifully.

She said, do you want to talk about doing hard better? And I said, yes. And it can be a yes. And not just a yes, but, yeah, I was walking my dogs. You met one of them. His name is Denali. Last night, and I came upon a mother daughter duo, and the mom was holding onto the daughter for dear life, not cause she was scared of anything, but because the daughter was learning how to roller skate. And she literally looked like a baby giraffe on ice. I mean, limbs were flying everywhere. She had no idea what she was capable of.

She was falling all over herself. Her knees were caving in. Her elbow pads were really putting in work. And I looked at her as they came upon me because I pulled off to the side. We didn't need her having any more obstacles to overcome. Three dogs. Holy moly. And she's trying to roll her skate by him. And she bent down to pet him because she loved dogs. She fell down to pet them because she loved dogs. And I looked at her, and I said, it's not how many times you fall down. Remember this. It's how many times you get back up.

And I don't know if she needed to hear that in that moment, or I needed to hear that in that moment, or the mom needed to hear that in the moment. But her mom was obviously very appreciative. I don't know if she actually heard it, because whenever you're overcome by three Yorkies, I mean, you don't hear a whole lot of things. You don't hear the inspiration coming from your neighbor, from whomever the random lady walking three dogs is. But as I was walking away, I repeated that to myself a lot, because this year has been like a squeeze year, and it's been hard, and we've had to fall down so many times.

And, you know, when you wind up failing is when you don't stand back up. So that leads into what Jill's subject was beautifully, because it was doing hard, better. And what I love about this story and when we were talking about what we wanted to talk about, and we find inspiration based off of our own experiences. And I came across a video where this coach from Duke University was coaching her players around, not waiting for easy. Like, oh, you know, just, let's get through the holidays, and then it's gonna get easier for us or my finances.

You know, at some point, it's gonna get easier. And we wait. And we wait until we one day, like, we're just gonna wake up, and it's. And it's gonna be easy. I picture it being the scene in Cinderella when she's just waking up and the birds come in and they dress her and they do her hair and they put her shoes on. All of a sudden it's easier. And I really loved the message because I'm like, man, how many times, especially in this year of business for us, where we're like, when is it just going to get easier?

And reflecting on that statement to combat that, it's, well, how do you do hard? Well. So when you are feeling squeezed, when times are tough and you are challenged, that is the moment to embrace. Because when it does get easier or when you feel like you're out of the valley that you've been in for a while, you can appreciate it a lot more. But you now have the skills and the wherewithal and the grit to overcome something like that again. So it's getting comfortable with the hard stuff. And I really loved that.

And I think there's contrast in that, too, right? You can't have light without dark. You can't have morning without night. All of those sayings, if you've things been through something hard and you've gritted it out and you've learned a lesson through that, then the next time something hard comes up, you can look back, you have history, you can pull up receipts and say, oh, I've made it through that. I know I can do it again because I have proof that I've already done it. So you have contrast to what is hard and what is not.

And as a past, previous gym owner, somebody who loves to work out, I know that the workouts don't get easier. I know that they're gonna be hard, period. But what happens is you get better. You're able to adapt, you're able to overcome, but only if you have a mindset that allows you to do that. Because if you're in a headspace of always wanting something to come easier or always expecting a handout, then things are never going to get easier for you. They will remain hard because you're going to always view it from that perspective.

And that's where we want you to shift your mindset just. Just a teensy weensy bit into understanding that you're capable, you're more than capable. Looking back and seeing the things that you've overcome as things that happened to you. Excuse me, sorry. Things that happened for you, not to you, in order to refine your character and who you are today. That's the mindset shift 100%. And I love the example of this girl roller skating, because I don't know about you, but kids are. If they're not good at something, they quit especially, and I'm speaking from my own kids, they just want to be good at everything.

And to hear that this little girl was struggling, and I'm sure it was hard for her. I mean, she's flailing around. She's falling. Zero proposal. She's getting. She's getting back up. I loved that story because that truly is doing hard well. And that, in turn, is building confidence. So it's so easy when times get hard to quit and we don't want you, especially in whatever it is that you're working towards, the goals that you're going after. When it gets hard, it's so easy to sit down on ourselves.

It's so easy to be like, you know what, someone else is doing it better. So I'm not going to do it. How do we have the mindset to say, you know what, I can do hard and I can do it well, and is it going to be challenging? Is it going to make me feel uncomfortable? Am I going to feel squeezed? Absolutely. But it's not giving up because you're not going to wait for easy. Right. And as you so eloquently put in the captions, there's a really cute kids book called try again, Sally. We love a good Sally.

I love that. What about Thomas the train? Was that his name? Yeah. Thomas. Thomas. I think I can. I think I can. Right? There's affirmations we can say, and some people look at that and say it's. It's too childish or it's. It doesn't relate. Find yourself in the story. Right. Are you the little girl trying to roller skate or are you the mom trying to teach her how to roller skate? Because there's heart on both sides of that line, and that's where the relatability comes in. No one is ever going to know exactly what you're feeling or going through, but they can relate and they can empathize because they've likely been through something hard themselves.

And I would imagine that that is exactly why you're on this app, why you're a consumer of this type of content, because you want to be able to relate to somebody who has some lived experience similar to yours. You want to find inspiration. You look at somebody aspirationally, and that's. That's what we love about this community, because we know we're all in this together. My heart might be different than your heart, and that's okay. We can still relate to one another and gather inspiration from one another in that way.

So the rest of the week is full of incredible lives with incredible creators on this app. Please don't make this the only live that you tune into. We're obviously very excited that you're here. We will be checking out. Try again, Sally Jane, because I love that. I am immediately gonna go to Amazon or my audible and download and find it. Yeah, it's on audible. That would be funny. A little kids book on audible. But yeah, no, we'll put it in our record recommended books list because we're always looking for, like you said, inspiration.

So any hooser. That's the second time I've said that. I love it. Definitely time to sign off. Any user, it's time to sign off. Go find your hard. Embrace your hard. And we are here doing hard things with you. But let's do the hard things well. Let's do them together. All right, y'all. See ya next time. We'll see you on the next episode of toolbox Tuesday. Bye.