3 Ways To Let Others Help You
Posted by John Livesay in blog | 0 comments
We all know that babies need help in order to survive.
Babies have no problem asking for help (loudly) by crying.
Yet as we get older, we tend to start becoming more independent. We say things like “I can do it myself.”
This is the natural process of growing up.
However, the concept of doing everything ourselves can really be detrimental.
Here are three easy ways you can let others help you.
1) The key to the fear of the unknown is: don’t go it alone!
A healthy ego is one that realizes it can’t do everything alone and needs other experts to help.
If you think you can do everything by yourself, you will not go far.
As the African proverb says: “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.”
2) Asking for and getting help is not a form of weakness.
When I decided to launch my podcast six years ago, the concept of editing the podcast and getting it out on all the platforms and creating transcripts was overwhelming.
Luckily for me I found a great company called Podetize. They produce my podcast so I can do what I love best: interviewing!
Another friend of mine was also thinking of starting a podcast at the same time and thought I was crazy to pay someone to help me do something that I could “figure out on my own.”
Now I have over 300 episodes out in the world, and she has yet to launch her podcast.
Sometimes, trying to do everything yourself causes you to never get anything done.
More recently, I had eyelid surgery to help my vision.
The doctor told me that not only would I need someone to take me home after the surgery, but I should have somebody stay with me because I should not be bending over or lifting anything.
Luckily, my sister Barbara came in from Chicago to stay with me in Austin for the week.
In a way, when you’re sick or recovering, you go back to being completely helpless.
I certainly couldn’t bend over to put the harness on my dog and take him for a walk, for example.
She was also fantastic at helping me keep ice on my eyes for three consecutive days.
3) The next time you think you can do it all alone, remember that we all need each other.
Letting other people help you in your career and in your personal life is a form of self love.
Love yourself enough to let others give you what you need, or pay them to help you in your career.
If you are struggling to figure out how to tell a better story and are looking for some help, let me know. Click here to book in 15 minutes to chat.
Resilience in the Rain
Posted by John Livesay in blog | 0 comments
In October 2020, I decided to put money down on a lot where new homes were being built just south of the Austin airport.
Little did I know, this decision would start a journey of testing my resilience, patience, and organizational skills.
After I picked my lot, I then had to decide what I wanted the house to look like. Normally this entails going to a design studio, but during a pandemic, most of it had to be done on Zoom.
There’s a book called The Paradox of Choice. It says that when we have too many choices, it is overwhelming and can even be depressing.
Luckily for me, my friend Phillip Sherman is a professional interior designer, and he was able to help me.
Decisions can get overwhelming.
There are big decisions like what kind of stone and brick you want on the outside of your house to small ones such as what color should the gutters be painted, what color do you want the grout in your shower to be, and what type of toilet paper holder do you want.
The goal was to have the house done by the end of February. What was unforeseen was a shortage of lumber on top of a freeze in Austin that was unprecedented, which caused the house not to be finished until the end of May.
Not knowing when you’re going to move is very stressful. Some of the concerns I had was whether or not I could extend the lease on the condo I was renting and when I should order the movers.
While it was a lot of fun to visit the house on a regular basis and see the progress, there were also mini twists and turns along the way, including light fixtures being on backorder, the driveway needing to be repaired, and the washer/dryer not being available due to the pandemic of shortages.
If you ever applied for a loan, you know that can be incredibly stressful. Trying to convince a bank that being a speaker during a pandemic with no live events should still qualify me for a loan was challenging, to say the least.
While juggling the many back-and-forth requests with the loan office, I was also scheduling an inspector to come to the house while getting my real estate agent to go with me on something called a blue tape walk-through. This is when you get to walk-through and put blue tape everywhere they have missed a spot that needs to be touched up or on a mirror that has a dent in it. Once the city inspectors sign off on everything, then I got to go to the title company.
In this case, they were so busy I had to wait over an hour before someone could see me.
Not much has changed in this industry, and I still had to manually sign many pages. On top of that, the keys they gave me were not cut properly and didn’t work. I had to wait until the next day to get the right keys from the builder. The combination of having to wait that long and then getting the wrong keys also added to the list of things I could choose to be stressed out about.
I recently read the book The Energy Bus, and there’s a line in it that says, “I’m too blessed to be stressed.”
I chose to use it as my mantra.
Are you starting to see and feel how all these things could start to chip away at the joy of getting a new home?
Instead of resisting what is happening or complaining about it or losing my temper or getting frustrated, I decided I was going to tell myself a different story.
Let’s look at all the wonderful things that they got right and let’s be grateful that the interest rates are so low right now. That’s the story I chose to focus on.
The night before the movers were scheduled to come, I picked up my friend Phillip at the airport, and we went right to the new home with keys that let us in. It happened to be in the middle of a huge lightning storm, with a lot of wind. After only being in the house for 10 minutes, we started to see water coming through the electrical light fixture in the kitchen ceiling, and quickly place a bucket underneath to save the brand new floors.
I chose to see this as a little bit of drama. I decided that “big drama” would be if the ceiling collapsed.
I texted the builders and they sent roofers first thing the next morning to fix the problem. This was happening concurrently while the movers were coming to pack my things into the truck.
One of the things that I had bought during the pandemic was a motorized standup desk that allowed me to stand up and have my computer go up and down depending on whether I wanted to stand or sit. When the movers came to me and said they were sorry but they had broken the desk, I was numb to bad news. I just simply said, “Send me the pictures and I’ll file a report to get reimbursed later.”
After the movers unpacked the last box and left, my friend Philip and I were exhausted, but we decided to go out and treat ourselves to a nice meal at a nearby restaurant.
This whole thing is a metaphor, I thought to myself. We are all always going to have some rain in our life.
How do we stay resilient in the rain? Whether it’s a leaking roof or waiting on other people, we always have the choice of deciding whether something is going to knock us down and keep us down or just be a temporary bump in the road.
I’m now happy to say that my first weekend has been filled with gratitude and creativity as I decided with my friend Philip where to hang art.
(Have you ever noticed how things that have been hanging in your house for a long time are suddenly seen in a new way when they’re in a different space?)
I think the same is true of our life. We can take relationships for granted. We can take many things for granted until we don’t have them.
Remember that you are the movie director of your own life, and if you don’t like what you’re saying or thinking, you can say cut at any time and tell yourself a different story.
Email me at [email protected] and let me know your own story of resilience!
At 10 years old, I had to wear husky-sized pants…
Posted by John Livesay in blog | 0 comments
The day my mom took me shopping for “back to school” clothes and I realized that the only pants that fit me were labeled “husky,” I was humiliated. I thought, This is a nightmare!
This was especially challenging for my dad as he was a great athlete in both baseball and football. To this day, anything to do with hand-eye coordination and a ball is a no-go for me.
But still, I struggle with my weight. The imprinting of emotional eating is something that requires a “re-wiring” every once in a while.
Just when I think I have mastered replacing a stressful situation with something besides a cookie, a new challenging situation comes along.
What always amuses me is when labels are created.
“The Freshman 15” for the 15lbs many freshmen in college gain from all the late-night pizza and beer.
Now it is “The Covid 15.”
“If only it was 15 extra pounds!” I thought to myself when I read this. For me, the perfect storm for weight gain is isolation, stress, and the fear of the unknown. To have all of that happen right after I moved from LA to Austin on March 1, 2020, was a new level of stress eating.
Just when I was starting to get in a better frame of mind, Texas got hit with a freak snowstorm in February 2021, and I, along with thousands of others, lost power and water. Luckily, I was able to stay at a friend’s heated home, but let me tell you… there was no “healthy eating” during survival mode.
Well, now the challenge is to still accept and love myself despite clothes that don’t fit or a number on the scale.
No amount of beating myself up ever helps anything.
Instead, let’s all give ourselves a little compassion, and remember we are the director of the movie of our life.
We can change the story at any time.
What story are you telling yourself around addiction: whether it is food, drugs, work, relationships, drinking, or anything else you use to “escape the current anxiety”?
Let me know so I can remind you of the truth of who you are!