In this inspiring episode of One Small Change, Yvonne McCoy sits down with Jena Taylor to explore the transformative power of resilience and the profound impact of incremental decisions in overcoming adversity. Jena Taylor shares her deeply personal journey of recovery after a traumatic brain injury and the cascading challenges that followed, including profound loss and life transitions. Listeners will learn practical tools for building resilience, moving beyond a victim mindset, and embracing change—whether in entrepreneurship or personal growth. The conversation is full of warmth, humor, and actionable insights for anyone striving to bounce back from life’s setbacks.

Guest Bio:

Jena Taylor is a speaker, coach, and the host of the upcoming "Resilience Brilliance" podcast. A survivor who has rebuilt her life after a traumatic brain injury, she now helps high-achieving individuals overcome adversity with neuroscience-backed strategies and heartfelt support. Her unique approach combines playfulness, lived experience, and actionable tools, empowering clients to build resilience, adapt to change, and find joy in the everyday moments.

Chapters:

00:00 Reclaiming Life After Adversity

05:58 "Gamifying Growth with Humor"

07:50 "Striving for the Best Self"

11:40 "Recovering from Gradual vs. Acute Challenges"

13:33 "Resilience: No's Lead to Yes"

18:56 "Curiosity and Unconventional Opportunities"

23:17 "Embracing Failure for Success"

24:00 "Overcoming Fear of Commitment"

28:15 "Supercharge Your Business Podcast"

Quote from the Guest:

“Emotion is what moves it through. Emotion gives it the motion to leave.”

Link:

Claim your free seat at Jena’s next training "Resilience Reset: Overcome adversity, beat burnout, and reclaim your life": https://pages.resiliencebrilliance.co/webinar

Welcome to the One Small Change, and I am glad you're back with me this

week. And I am happy that we're going to be on a journey of exploration

and transformation. I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring

almost 30 years of entrepreneurial experience and I have a passion for

discovering growth through the power of seemingly small change.

And this week we're going to have a guest who's going to be talking about

how they had a smaller, unexpected or insignificant decision

at spark both remarkable transformation and growth. And

it could be in their personal life or their professional life.

And today we have with us the amazing

Jena Taylor. Jena, thank you

for coming and spending time with us today. Thanks,

Yvonne, for having me. I'm happy to be here. So why

don't you tell us what you do and what was the thing that made

you decide to do that and be better at it than

anybody else? Absolutely.

I know this is a titled One Small Change podcast

and I am a story of repeated small

changes. I had a traumatic brain injury that required

me to completely learn how to do everything all over again. I couldn't walk,

I couldn't talk. Not so small,

right? Yeah. And it, you know, I, I devoted a whole year. I had

zero short term memory. I couldn't drive, I couldn't work, I couldn't,

I couldn't function. I remember walking into the kitchen and I didn't know

why, and so I just stood there and looked at the mountains.

So what I did at that point was I adapted a

mantra. And my mantra was reclaim my life. I had

to reclaim my life. Otherwise,

what else did I have to look forward to? What was this new version of

me going to be? Was it going to be

somewhat similar to what I was prior

to the accident, or was it going to just be this

version of that current self that wasn't acceptable to

me? So I did many small things to

get to where I am today, but I couldn't get

to where I am today without each one of those

small things. And because of

the, the effort that I did, cognitive therapy,

occupational therapy, physical therapy,

I mean, every therapy, vision therapy, I even had to have like

tape on my glasses so that my vision

wouldn't be impaired by my frames. So little small

things like that, and people were like, well, I'll buy you dinner, but you have

to wear your tape glasses. I'm like, okay, you know,

I couldn't be in a crowd, I couldn't be in a dark. I had to

be in a dark room. I had to wear visors, hats,

earplugs everything. Because I was so

stimulus sensitive and so because of all

of these things, I am who I am today. And

the theme is resilience. And I would go

through multiple traumatic effect events.

And one of them was 10 weeks after a major,

major operation. And the day I had

the surgery, I went under. I lost my service animal. She died in her

sleep. And everybody thought, Jena's going to lose her shit. Well,

I didn't. I had a goal. I had to do more small

things. I had to do my rehab. And I knew I

needed another dog in my life. But I couldn't get a puppy because I couldn't

walk. I had a walker or crutches. And

ten weeks after my surgery, my longtime partner died

of a very traumatic death. It was

long time addiction combined with alcohol withdrawal,

which if you're not familiar with alcohol withdrawal, it's the most withdrawal of any

drug. And you can.

The first 24 hours is the most dangerous. Then 36

and 72. But within the first 24 hours, the

hallucinations are pretty good. And he took his own life in a very

traumatic fashion. So that's kind of when I fell

apart. And then I had to do one small thing,

right, to get myself back into my

resilient shape. And I adopted

Mickey, my black chow chow. And he got me

out of bed every day. And that was the one. It was a big thing,

but it was one small thing that I added to my life. Some people think

that's a major responsibility, but for me it's not. And that,

that's how I got back onto my resilient

theme. So, you know, I think sometimes that

pe people don't realize, first of all, I'm

exhausted from everything that you've been through. I, I

can't even imagine it. But what, what I hear is it's kind of like

putting one foot in front of another, you know, that, you know, a

journey starts with that first step.

And you know, when I was losing weight,

you know, I, I don't know if I told you at one point I weighed

440 pounds and I lost almost 200 pounds.

So. So for me it was about all the small

things that I did continuously every day, you

know, that to, you know,

change old habits and form new habits. And you

didn't always see the results right away, but

by the fact that you continued to do it, you started,

it became cumulative. And so then you

started to see results, you started to see change.

Right. So with this

amazing background and overcoming as much as you did

tell us what you do for your clients. Thanks.

So what I do is I take the lessons I learned,

the tools that I researched, a lot of them are neuroscience

backed and I, I present

it with humor and heart.

And it's like for

me, when I was going through my brain injury and overcoming all of

the obstacles and the setbacks, I made it kind

of like a game because I like games. And if you gamify something,

your participation in it is a little bit more committed. And

so I have that. I'm a very playful person by

nature and so I have that kind of

an aspect to it that I think brings a lot

of warmth and encouragement and

enables people to adapt because there's a

lot of resistance to change. And if there is a

warm supporting environment, we all need social

support. And if we have even just one person who's our

champion, then, then that fosters that environment.

And so that's one of the things that really sets me apart from

other people. In addition to. I'm a

lived experience. I've lived through this and I

haven't even, like, there's so many events that I haven't even

mentioned that people are like, why are you still

smiling? Why are you happy? Why do you have joy in your life?

Well, because I, I live resilience and life is

meant to be lived joyfully. And so I bring that

into my training. And so you. Do you

work mainly with entrepreneurs or just anybody who is,

is trying to recover from, from a particular situation or just wants a

better life? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. I work with high

achieving people, high achieving people because

they have a higher burning desire and

you need to have that burning desire. If you're, if you think

like, let's take my example. When I had my brain injury, I had those two

choices. I could be the best version of my

new self or I could accept that I was never going to get better.

So high achieving people choose that route of wanting

to be the best version of themselves. And that's important because that facilitates

change. And then also part of my

brain injury is I sometimes forget things. Can you repeat the question again? So I

was saying, who are the people that you work with and kind of what

situations are they in? Oh, thank you. Yep. So the couple

different situations. People who want to overcome adversity,

maybe they're going through a life transition. You know, the sandwich generation. Right

now, people my age are having aging

parents move home with them and they're taking care of them. They also have had

their adult children move back into the house. Like wait a second, when we

grew up we, we were going to be on our own and the kids were

on our own and the parents were on their own and three little happy families.

Right. That scenario is, is different today. And so there

are people and women especially, we

sacrifice so much for other people

at. And we take care of everything and everyone at the end detriment of

ourselves. And so anyone who, who

resonates with that is someone that I like to

work with and burnout anybody in the corporate

world who's a high achiever and is feeling burned out. And

the Gallup 2025 State of the

Workforce has two lists. $2.9

trillion in losses to US corporations alone

by disengaged employees. There are a lot of unhappy

employees in the corporate world. And so if, if you're one of

them, you could really benefit from my resilience training

programs. You know, one of the things that you said that, that hit

home with me is I remember I could not wait

to leave home. That was like my main goal in life.

Right. So I feel very weird that all three of my

kids at some point moved back in. You

know what I'm talk. Well,

and there's also grandparents raising grandchildren. Yes,

yes. I mean life is very different. I mean I, I would

not have survived and had a business if my husband hadn't

retired the year that my parents need started to need

a lot more assistance, you know because he was

the one that really kind of stepped in so I could still, still

work my business. And you know, he did a lot of stuff for them.

So there is that, that feeling of being torn in so many different

directions. I mean, I think that

what people don't understand is that

you get grind down. You.

Let's see how I can say this. Yes, there are situations like

yours, like having a brain tumor or having a car accident, you know, that

are, that are very specific things. Things. But

the thing I think that people don't realize

is the detriment that happens from being

grind down daily to the point that you are

just. Yeah,

exhausted, Utterly exhausted. Like no, no gas in the

tank, no joy, no fulfillment. And when our

soul is empty, that's a very dangerous place to be.

And I think, I think people can rebound

faster from a specific one time

incident because they know that it is one time. I

mean it can be huge. But you know that it, you know, you know when

it started and you know, you know what you have to do

and, and yes, people go about it differently, but the

everyday grind, you don't realize when it actually

started and it just, it's like, you know, putting the

frog in the boiling water, you know, you know, putting it in the water and

turning up the heat. It doesn't know, you know, that kind of thing.

So I could see where this would be of an incredible

help to people, you know, because. But the problem is that a lot of us

don't realize it. I mean, how do you, how do you help?

You know, and I'm going to, because my audience is mainly entrepreneurs.

Can you talk a little bit about the kinds Absolutely.

That entrepreneurs face that,

you know, rejection, rejection, setbacks.

How many times have we, like I'm, I'm a serial entrepreneur myself, so I get

it. There's. You're one person typically most of the time

and you have to wear so many hats. You're wearing the

greatest, the visionary, the technical.

Let's not forget your, your own, your, your, you are usually your own IT person.

And then you have to build this. If it's

a product and minimal viable product or you have to have something

out there and if people aren't buying it or if

they're not happy with it, or if you don't get contracts, whatever

it is that your business is, you, we

as business people have to rebound

from rejection. And I think that's probably

resilience helps people rebound. And one

of the, one of the great quotes that Michael, my long term time

partner would say is he would smile and dial

because we shared office space and he would be making these

calls out, just cold calls one

after another and, and he, I listened to him in awe because

same same thing. He'd say the same thing, leave the same message. But it

didn't sound like it was a repeated thing. He was jazzed and I'm like,

how do you do that? How do you get 10, you know, how do you

get so many no's and just you just done, dial,

smile, call, same thing. And he says

every no gets me closer to a yes. So that, that's the

resilience. We need to remember when we are in business

that we are going to have setbacks, we're going to have trials and tribulations and

then we're going to have some successes. That it's like golf, you

know, if you play golf, you keep coming back when you have

that one great shot and that's all it takes in business is that one great

moment to keep us being resilient. Well,

I think as entrepreneurs probably we are our worst enemies.

I mean it's like, oh, I could have done that better? I can't believe I

did. I mean, I. You know, a lot of times I'll say to my clients,

would you talk to a friend like that? Right? You know? Yeah.

I mean, you. Would you go, oh, my God, of course. You know, but, you

know, we. And. And, you know, my joke is, how

many times did you quit this week because

you have something happen? It's like, is this really worth it? It might, you know,

then, you know, the. The part of you that goes, oh, no, I

need to do this. I have to do this. You know, and you pick yourself

back up again. And my quote was, when I was losing,

it doesn't matter how many times you fall down. It only matters how many times

you get up. And then I added how fast, because you

said, well, I'm gonna start again, you know, in a month or a week or

whatever. It's going to take you forever. But if you can start, you know, rebound

right away, you know, you know, it.

It. It's not really. It's a dip. It's not,

you know, a ditch, I guess. Right, right. And the other thing to

remember is I'm a man mindfulness practitioner. We

have to be able to remove that emotional charge from things, right?

So you. If you envision it, you know, like a TV screen, right.

Your brain is a TV screen. So an idea comes in,

it's here. All of a sudden you see it,

and then you've got to let it go out. And if we

keep processing things in a fashion like that, it

removes that emotional charge, which allows us to pick ourselves up a little bit

faster. Okay, so that. That's a great

tip. So when you see something and you

process it, what's the next step?

So. So you see it, you process it,

feel it, feel it in its ugliness. If you have to cry,

if you have to scream, if you have to go, whatever it is,

emote. Emotion is what

moves it through. Emotion gives it the motion to leave.

And then you go, okay, I've emoted done.

But it's when we hang on to that, when it's here and

we're hanging on to it, that's what, like, grinds us down.

Because then we got a chip on our shoulder. We're bitter, we're angry.

Well, we can't be productive. We can't be. We can't sell ourselves.

We can't sell our business. We can't come across to our. Our client, our clients

and customers like everything's great. Like, we're happy if we've got a

chip on our shoulder or we're angry, we are

going to project that. And this is one of my favorite

quotes, Dale Carnegie. People do business. People like to do

business with people they like. So we have to be our true

self. We have to be in a homeostat, static place

in our own life so that we can

attract the right clients.

I think I'm listening to what you're saying, and I'm, I'm, I'm kind

of saying to myself, how many times have I

heard something or somebody said something that,

you know, years ago my therapist said, you're a grudge collector.

Oh, yeah? What's that serving you? Tell you everything that I thought

you did wrong back to God knows when, right?

Let go of that. Thank God. Let it go, Let it go.

The other thing that has helped me is

understanding that the way we react to things

a lot of times is based on our previous experience.

And so we have a default. And,

and you know, when, when you don't give it any thought, you go to

that default. And typically that default is judgment.

You know, it's like something's wrong with somebody, something's wrong with me,

something. You know, if you can, if you can stop

that and go to a place of curiosity

and say, tell me more about that. You know, I mean, I

used to say to people, this is not a good business

idea. You know, you're not going to make money on this. Right.

Which I'm sure was soul crushing, right?

And now I've learned, and I, I don't think I've ever

said this in a podcast, but there was somebody, I think on Tick Tock or

whatever that was selling farts in a jar,

thousands of dollars. And I was like, if you can make money at this, you

can make money at anything, right? So after that

I started saying, all right, tell me more about

this. Tell me who you think would need this. And being curious and really

digging into what they were trying to accomplish and, you know, how

I could help them accomplish that. But I, I'm,

I started, I got the detoured, but I think the whole

thing was. How many times do we hear something, make a decision

about it that

we're adding to, like a whole bunch of stuff

that's not necessarily healthy for us. Do you

know someone? Yeah. It's about prejudice. The problem with prejudice

is there probably is one seed of truth in it. You

may have met one person that is a certain thing

that did a certain thing, and that may be true. And then you

take that and generalize it to everybody. That's like that person,

whether it's. Oh, yeah, and that's the same thing with a name. Like if you

meet somebody and they have, let's say their name's Larry. That's just.

No, this says, you know, this is fictitious. Right. My example. But

you met a Larry, and Larry was not kind. Larry was

bullying. Larry was everything that you just like, oh, right,

okay. Then you go and you're in your life and then all of a sudden

you get introduced to somebody whose name is Larry. Oh, now you've got

everything that you thought about Larry right up here. And you,

you're projecting your previous Larry experience with

brand new Larry, who's none of those things. But we

have this. This, like you say, this

prejudice that is so buried in our subconscious, or.

Bias, we can call it. And I think what we do is we collect

evidence that supports whatever that bias is. So it just

gets bigger and bigger. And that's where I think what you were talking about,

you know, processing it and then letting it go. It doesn't,

it doesn't add to that pile of misinformation.

You know, it causes us to make, you know, to see the world

incorrectly or not to see it as. As being as good as it

possibly could be. This is amazing.

I, you know, I, I think we could talk about this for a

lot longer. A really thoughtful frame of mind, but

let, let's get kind of a little bit practical and stuff. And you

already gave us one tip, which was, you know,

take things in, observe it, emote, and then

get rid of it. Right. If it's not. If it's not useful, I would assume

y. Do you have any other tips that as entrepreneurs that we can use?

Yes, this is, this is kind of one of my biggest pet peeves.

People. People like to be the victim and they like to fall into

this victim mentality and they use excuses.

Well, I didn't get that project because they

weren't ready for me. I didn't get this project because

they didn't like me. You know, you think of the

different scenarios instead of using

that. I'm going to go on that theme of curiosity. When

you lose a project and you don't get a client or

a project, you don't win it. Stop

and be curious. Why Take those

filters out, remove that victim mentality, have a

clear head and really reflect on,

did I do this right? What can I do better? How can I not

repeat this? What can I learn from this? That's the best one.

What can I learn from this? So that I'm

Better. We talked about earlier, the small steps made

successively make a huge impact. If we do one thing

differently, how does that change?

How does that help us? How does that improve our outcome?

So I think, you know, when you say that one of the.

It was a small change, but it was a huge change.

You know, I grew up in a situation where failure was not

really an option. What I realized was that that was keeping me from

trying things. If I didn't think I could do it,

I would. I wouldn't. You know, if I thought I was going to fail, I

wouldn't do it. It's funny because it, that came up just recently because

I thought I had pretty much fixed it,

you know, because what I realized is failure is part of the,

part of the formula for success. You actually learn more from your failures than you

do from when you succeed. Because when you succeed, you go, okay, great,

I'll just do this again. And it. And the same circumstances may not

be there. And so you do it again and it doesn't work. And you're like,

huh, Right, Right. My daughter said to me, she was, I, I just

recently took up Pilates, so for those of you that are getting on the tail

end of my podcast, you're going to be hearing about Pilates all the time.

But she said, you know, I've noticed every time the instructor

asks you to do something, you say no,

and then you do it. And that's part of that, that, that whole thing.

I, that whole, you know, years and years of if I

say no, then I, and then I do something, then I haven't

failed because I haven't actually committed to doing it. Do

you know what I mean? It, you know. Yeah. So weird to me, she noticed

that, that I, that I'm still doing it. So, okay, I took you off. I

took you off. So we've got the, we've got the, you know, emote. Let it

go. Get rid of the filters and stop being a victim. Learn from what

you're doing. And you have a gift too, right? I

do. I do. I offer free live training with

me once a month. It's typically the last

Tuesday of the month with the exception of January, February and March.

And then it'll be on Thursday. And it's called Resilience

Reset. And it's a high level,

meaty one hour session with me to really

give you some tips that you can use right away to

start building your resilience and, and think about this. Like if you

go to the gym and you start lifting weights, you're you want to,

you know, transform your muscles. So if you take a resilience training

from me, you are flexing and

building your resilience muscle that will help you

navigate life's turbulence. Because life

isn't always smooth. It's very bumpy. And

sometimes some people, like me, I've had this

just really crazy, turbulent life.

But sometimes you look over and your friend is like, live in,

like, the dream. And you're like, how is this? You know? But

every one of us has turbulence in our lives.

And. And if you flex that resilience muscle

and build it, you will be able to adapt

much better, recover faster, and feel better

when you come through on the other side. And I think there's an. Another

story. Do I have time for one more quick story? If it's quick.

Okay, so there's a. A prophecy or, you

know, something that, like the, the buffalo and the cow and

in the Indians, the Native American Indians, they

would, you know, like, you think about the

buffalo. You see the buffalo, they're

big, strong, right? And then you got our domesticated cattle.

Well, be the buffalo. Why?

Because when there's a storm, the buffalo head

straight, they duck their heads, and they head straight into that storm.

They're going to go through the storm faster. It'll be more

intense, but they're going to get through the storm faster.

Cattle, on the other hand, they turn tail and

they walk and they walk the same

direction as the storm. So they have to go through the

storm longer at less velocity, but they're

in it longer. So I always say, be the buffalo.

Oh, that's fantastic. Okay,

before we run out of time, when was the last time you did something new

for the first time? Yeah, I thought you were going to stump me on that

when I read the question. So I have two examples.

Two weeks ago, I went to the Modern, the Museum of

Instrument, Musical Instrument Museum, Mim here

in Phoenix. And that was the first time. And then

professionally, I signed up for Riverside

fm and I'm using them as my podcast

recording. And it's been learning a lot.

And I had. I was really stumped by the focus on my camera.

So, yes, I spent a lot of time learning this week.

Fantastic. All right, time for commercial before we run out of

time. So, as always, I'm going to ask you to make sure you share and

engage on social media about the podcast. And one of the

reasons that I did it was I want to help you to supercharge your business.

And I wanted to be able to give back to this community and introduce

you to a lot of interesting people that could help you to grow your

business. So I hope that you will continue to join us for the one small

change where even the tiniest can yield a monumental

transformation. And if you haven't done it yet, check the first

episode. And also check the.

Every quarter I do the cl. The. The quarterly clarity check in

which I just did, and see if you can come up with any

ideas. Okay, Jena, what's your

favorite quote or your. Your last words of wisdom before we end?

Oh, I have so many. I'm just going to finish

with the same one. It bears repeating. Dale Carnegie.

People like to do business. People they like.

And can I put a plug in for my podcast? Sure. And the notes

will be that. That will be in the notes as well. So what's the name

of your podcast? The podcast is Resilience Brilliance, and it

will be releasing here in October. Fantastic.

Okay, so there'll be a link for that. There'll be a link for Jena's free

gift below. And we need to wind up.

So, you know, I always say, remember, change

can be simple, but it's not always easy. It requires courage,

resilience, and a willingness to step out of your comfort zone

if you are in your comfort zone. If you stay in your comfort zone,

you are not growing. If anything, the world is going

forward and you're getting left behind. You are stagnating. So

I want to make sure that you continue to join us for the one small

change. As we embark on this journey, I want you to have a

bold vision and look for innovative possibilities. Until the

next time you come, stay curious. And, Jena,

thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It

was great. Bye, everybody. Bye.