003 Life is tough, my darling, but so are you! How to be resilient in life

Life is tough, my darling, but so are you! This is the way things are, and yes, it's tough right?

So what's next? How can we become more resilient and take some responsibility and do something about it?

In this episode I unlock...

• My personal struggle of being angry and bitter over the past few months.
• How I have taken responsibility to do something with this struggle and now behave differently.
• The key learnings to become more resilient in life and how that can help support you how to think and feel for those next steps
• A reminder of some of the key learnings from The Mental Toughness episode with Sarah Rudder.

Magical Musings

This segment is all about reflection and thought from the episode.

• We are human beings, not human doings. It is ok to feel this way!
• SUMO, E + R = O, you can take the responsibility to respond and react to determine the outcome.
• If you have to take a sideways move, that's ok. Don't be hung up on the labels we attach to ourselves, because no one is attaching them to you.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Setting the Context

01:09 Feeling Anger and Bitterness

04:01 The Kubler-Ross Curve and Emotional Journey

05:57 Gaining a New Perspective

07:47 The E + R = O Equation

09:44 Acceptance and Taking Responsibility

11:39 Choosing How to Think, Feel, and Behave

13:06 Key Takeaways

14:00 Conclusion

Links From The Show

• The Kubler Ross Change Curve
• S.U.M.O By Paul McGee

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Ricky (00:13.198)

Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of Unlocked, the podcast to help inspire success in your business and your life presented by a magical man, me, Ricky Lock. This week, it is just me and my dulcet tones, but we are going to get really honest. As you know, it is pretty tough out there right now running a business. It's not plain sailing right now, especially in the wedding industry. But we won't talk about that because that'll probably be a lot longer podcast episode for another day. But.

Before you start switching off saying, Ricky, I am fed up of hearing about how tough things are and how COVID is affecting things. I just want to follow the amazing conversation that we had last week with Sarah Rudder on mental toughness. We've had so many great comments and some lovely feedback about that episode. And I think it'd be really great to just carry on a little bit of that theme with a little bit of extra context about my current way of thinking. And I want you to listen to this episode as I hope it can bring you some peace of mind to know that you aren't alone. And maybe my words and my experiences will.

help inspire you to think differently and look at things with a new perspective. So who can relate to these words? Anger, bitterness, annoyed. And these are just a few words to describe how I've definitely felt over the past few months. And if I'm honest, I've felt at times incredibly bitter and almost like a spoiled brat saying, life's not fair. Why has this happened to me? Why is my business disappearing? And before you start switching off thinking, oh my God, Ricky.

I really want to explore this because recently I've had a kind of an awakening. Someone has massively opened my eyes, which I will credit later on this podcast. So thank you to you for giving me a bit of a different perspective. And I'm hoping that my experience will help you to think a little bit differently and to take some responsibility right now, because that's all that we can do right now to explore this a little bit further. If we just go back a few months, you will know from a previous podcast episode that I talked about, I had a 15 year career in a corporate world.

where I did many roles such as leadership, manager, behavioral training. And that was geared up at the same time with a business that I was building for the last five years. And this year was that moment. I unfortunately was made redundant earlier on this year. And at the time I'd been building this business that 2020 was going to be the year to be professional magician to create this new speaking business. And it was the year. It was the big year that I was going to marry my best friend. We were going to get married.

Ricky (02:37.454)

going to have all these lovely plans that happen and then everything like most people taken away in an instant overnight and yeah it is pretty tough right now we're all feeling something right now and i just remember for a few months feeling this isn't fair i've worked extremely hard for this over the last five years building this big business working two jobs you know spending time in hotels creating my business on my laptop and all these sorts of things and to have it just taken away i feel like a

like a spoiled kid saying, I want more, I want more, why not? You know, this isn't fair. And that can get you really wrapped up feeling angry and bitterness and it's a horrible thing, right? And I just remember just thinking, you know, for the last couple of months, although I did start to pivot and adapt my business to do online shows and stuff, when you don't see that success coming in, it can really affect you. And when you see other people promoting success or how successful they are, that can really...

Wind you up and you're in a chimp starts talking to you saying oh how come though they are successful and you're not and you start to then Think in wouldsley thinking this isn't fair. I don't like this and there's at times when you're running that business thinking Why should I keep posting social media content? Who's looking at it? It doesn't feel like any work is coming in What's the point in all of this right and that anger can really affect relationships? It can affect your success as well, and it was only until recently

When my eyes were opened by a wonderful woman called Beth, so thank you Beth for our conversation a few weeks ago that I've now started to understand about acceptance now it's ironic because the next thing that I'm about to share with you is an idea that I used to teach and train in my previous job and My good friends in the old tdi YT that you'll know from a previous podcast episode will all share this feeling That you don't always practice what you preach

So it's ironic that I'm now kind of understanding it a little bit more. But the thing I want to share with you is the Kubler -Ross curve. Now, visually, if you are listening to this while you're out for a walk or anything like that, I want you to just imagine a graph with a line that kind of goes, starts to go upwards and then it spirals really down quickly and then kind of goes back up again. And basically the Kubler -Ross curve, there will be a link for this in the show notes so you can see this image. It's basically an internal emotional journey that

Ricky (04:58.606)

people and individuals experience when dealing with change. So you kind of go this up and down or what some people probably say the COVID coaster right now. And in this Kubler -Ross curve, you experience many different emotions such as shock, denial, frustration to depression. And then eventually the good part is when you start to accept and then you adapt and you change. Now, in terms of my story, as I started to say that life's not fair and I started to feel this bitterness and frustration,

which kind of led to really low self -esteem and low mood, I was at that bottom of that curve. And that's all that I kept thinking that this isn't right, this isn't fair. It's only until, as I said recently, I'm now starting to kind of get out of that curve that I'm now accepting things. And let's face it, I probably took a long time to accept this, but I have to credit here Bev for absolutely opening my eyes. And I know I mentioned Bev's name on the last podcast, but thank you so much Bev for the valuable conversation that we had. Bev just shared with me,

different perspective. And through that conversation, I started to really feel embarrassed that I'd vented off to her for about an hour and a half about how life's not fair. This isn't right. You know, I'm really annoyed. I can't do what I want to do. Nothing's coming in. No one wants to book entertainment and that kind of thing and that can be really frustrating. Until I understood and listened to this story that she shared with me about somebody else and their perspective of how they've adapted, did I realize that I've neglected

everything around me in terms of what I'm grateful for. I'm in a very valuable position that I have a house, I have a loving fiance, I have a loving family, I have great friends, I've got a car. These are things that I neglected and I should have been grateful about. And it was an upon you know, looking at a different perspective, did I realize that I'm moaning about things that are insignificant right now. Everybody's in the same boat. Yeah, life isn't fair.

What are the things around me that are important? There are people here around me that talk to me that helped me. There is a car, you know, I can still go watch Netflix. I can still play my PlayStation, whatever it is. I have these things around me that I just forgot about. And I was moaning about things that were insignificant. And it was only until looking at a different perspective and looking at things from a different angle did I realize that, geez, yeah, I'm moaning about things that I shouldn't be.

Ricky (07:20.11)

And this completely opened my eyes. It probably took me a long while. And this links really well to a reference that I'm going to share with you, which you have to go read this book. It's fantastic. It's a great book. It's called Sumo and it's by Paul McGee. And he has this wonderful equation in this book, which kind of mirrors my my period of wallowness, that moaning and bitterness of moaning about life's not fair. And I'll share this with you.

Basically, the equation is E plus R equals O and E stands for the event. The R is reaction and the O is the outcome. So, for example, the event is the global pandemic for me taking away my business. The R is the reaction. As I said, I was feeling annoyed, angry. Life's not fair. I was owed this success, that kind of thing. The outcome, I felt really low. Didn't feel great at all. Right. And now I now understand that

It is okay to feel that way. So if you are feeling like this as well, just remember guys that it is okay to feel this way. We are human beings. We are not human doings. That means that we think and we feel. I was just having a very large wallow time. Like Paul says in the book, I love this example. It's like a hippo wallowing in the mud right now. And that's okay. It is generally okay to feel that way. If some days you wake up and you don't, you know, you can't be bothered to work and you just want to play your PlayStation for hours like I did yesterday.

That is OK. The difference is as long as you don't stay too long in that period of wallowness and you take some action and do something about it. That relates really well because of what Sarah was saying last week on the podcast. This is about taking responsibility. Mental toughness is learning from that experience and the difference between resilience and mental toughness is about taking some action and adapting and learning from that experience and taking responsibility to do something about it. In that equation, E plus I equals O.

It's only until now after looking at things in a different perspective and understanding what I'm grateful, what's around me, I'd now understood that the event is happened. COVID has happened. The business has been affected. And I accept that life is tough and life is unfair. Now I can choose to react. I can continue to feel like rubbish, to feel angry and bitter and just be generally annoyed. Or I can decide to feel differently.

Ricky (09:44.27)

Whether that will be to pivot, to adapt, to do something different, that will determine the outcome. And just by looking at things in a different perspective, I've now realised that, yeah, it is as it is and I've accepted that. And now my next step is to understand what am I going to do about it? So what is the next step? Well, I've come to that point where I accepted that, yeah, life is tough, it's hard. The business certainly isn't producing what I want it to produce. I've got no wedding, there's no stag do.

But I'm going to take some responsibility to choose how to think, how to feel, and ultimately how to behave. And I'm going to do something about it. And that may well mean that I might have to take a sidestep temporarily to go get a part -time job whilst the business isn't really taking off as it should. And there may well be a few of you out there who are also in the hospitality industry and you might be reluctant thinking, why would I want to go get a part -time job? That's taking a sidestep backwards. You know, I've built all this momentum for this business for so long.

If I do that, I'll be branded as a failure and you know, this is going backwards and not forwards. But you have to remember who is putting those labels on you? Well, nobody. The only person that's putting those labels on yourself is you. And like Sarah said with the mental toughness episode, you can choose to take them off. To be honest, I don't think anybody really cares right now because ultimately this is about everybody's in the same boat and this is about doing the right thing and what's important right now.

For me, the most important thing to me right now is my lifestyle, is my health, is having a roof over my house and having food on the table. You know, that is really important to me. So if I have to get a part time job to help fund still the business, to keep that rolling, then that's OK. That's fine. Try to remember that don't be attaching those labels on yourself and don't be worried about what other people might think. This is about doing what is right. I often think of an old phrase that we used to use in retail, which is

Are you living to work or are you working to live? But ultimately, it's about working to live. For me, this is about living and having these wonderful moments playing PlayStation, watching Netflix, going skateboarding. Yes, I am 31 and I still skateboard. Please don't judge me. But this is about living right now and doing the right thing. It's just a temporary moment right now. Yes, it's very hard right now. But remember, you can choose how to think, how to feel and how to behave.

Ricky (12:09.902)

So to credit a few people in this episode, there are so many people out there right now that I would consider as thinking partners that have helped me look at things in a different light. And I truly, truly credit here Bev from the Clear Thinking Partnership for opening my eyes. So thank you so much for everything that you've done. There are so many wonderful people out there. Bev, Kate, Matt, Jan, my thinking partner, accountability partner, Harriet. We have some great inspiration talking to each other.

Even on the phone this morning to Andy Lamath, we had a great conversation about how things are taking responsibility. There's Richard, there's Joel, there's Sam, there's Luke. There's so many people out there that I often share thoughts and feelings with. And, you know, I really credit everybody really right now and, you know, for opening my eyes and giving me different perspectives. And if you are listening to this podcast still at this point, thank you. But remember, you know, this is about taking some responsibility right now to to choose how you want to respond to things and doing the right thing.

So with Magical Musings this week, I would say the three key takeaways for me is it is okay to feel this way. So if you're feeling like me that life's not...