Sometimes You Have to Live in the Mud (EP 131)

[0:18] Hello everyone uncle Marv here and welcome back to my unhealthy podcast on this show we cut through the usual health and wellness noise and talk about what it really takes to live a healthier happier life, from our physical well-being to our mindset and how we handle life's everyday challenges this is part two of my conversation with Laura Bratton, in part one she shared her journey of losing her sight and learning what courage really means and today we're going to get a little practical and talk about what grit and gratitude actually look like when you're dealing with a difficult, situation Laura welcome back to the show, thank you I appreciate the opportunity, all right so, it was kind of a weird little thing we started to talk about grit and gratitude we started to talk about you know you're just basically trying to get through day to day uh, and then turning that around so i guess the first question is you know, how do you keep going when, you know or without denying you know what you're actually feeling you're going through because that that had to be those moments when you were like,

[1:37] oh my goodness, my world has changed. But how did you make yourself keep going?

[1:42] So I first kept going because of the support around me. So it was not me just waking up one day and saying, okay, I have the strength. I'm courageous. I'm resilient. Here we go, world. It was having the support of others around me who they continue to believe in me. They continue to treat me as the person I was just needing to do things in a different way, obviously, without sight. So receiving that support showed me and taught me, yes, this is really, really overwhelming. Yes, you would change it if you could. And the reality is this is what it is. This is your new normal. So we still believe in you. We still think you have gifts and purpose and meaning. So after receiving such support, then it was up to me to choose the courage, to choose my new normal, to choose accepting this is really, really hard and I can keep going. So choosing and living in both truths of, yes, this is very, very difficult every single day, every moment, and I choose to keep going. But it all started by having that depth of support around me.

[3:05] So I want to be a little honest here and, you know, I hear a lot about, you know, people socially talk about practicing gratitude and, you know, in a lot of ways it feels like it's forced or it's a fad or they're just trying to jump on some bandwagon and stuff. And so when people here practice gratitude and think they're supposed to be thankful for everything, including those terrible experiences, what do you say to something like that? Absolutely not.

[3:39] The way I define gratitude is not being thankful for everything, even the bad, even the adversity. I'm absolutely not thankful that this experience happened, that I live with this every single day. That's not what I'm grateful for. So I'd love to share a short conversation with a mentor that changed my perspective, because I did think that exactly what you said. Graduates apply, just a fad going on. It's, you know, a way to cover up my pain. Just tell everyone I'm happy and positive when really I'm dying inside or struggling inside.

[4:17] A conversation with a mentor changed that perspective. So at the very end of high school, I'm extremely depressed. I'm extremely anxious. I'm grieving my vision loss. I'm grieving just the normal teenage experience that clearly I didn't have. And a mentor says to me, Laura, I want you to live. I want you to start with the perspective, a mindset of gratitude, and let that be your foundation, your strength. So being in the Deep South, of course, what did I do? Nodded, smiled, said, yes, ma'am, thank you, right? And inside, I'm thinking, okay, that is horrible, terrible advice. Only in my stubbornness, I was determined to prove her wrong. I was determined to say, this is not good advice. I'm grieving. I'm depressed. I'm anxious.

[5:17] Let me show you. I have nothing to be grateful for. So the one day became three days. The three days became a week. A week became a month. That month has become years and years and years and years and years of practicing gratitude. And what I realized was she was not teaching me to be grateful for the blindness, for anything, for everything, all the time, for minimizing my pain, not acknowledging my pain, not validating my pain.

[5:49] She was teaching me how to realize that gratitude is recognizing what we have in all of life. So in the good, in the bad. So she was not teaching me to say at the end of the day, Laura, I want you to be thankful that you're blind. Say you're grateful for that today. I want you to say, I'm grateful to have a guide dog that helps you navigate this world.

[6:16] So am I clear about the difference? It's not to minimize our pain. It's not to cover up our pain. It's not to be something we post on social media during the month of November. It's rather a tool of strength to say, this is really, really hard. And what do I appreciate that is helping me to navigate forward? All right. Well, I like what you said there because the one thing I was going to try to help people understand that gratitude is not about denying the pain.

[6:51] It's the opposite. And that, I would love to touch on that. That was a healing resource for me. For so long, I used gratitude to deny the pain. And when I stopped and acknowledged the reality and the severity of the depth of the motions, the depth, of the depression, the depth of the panic attacks, the depth of the anger, the resentment, the sadness, all the spectrum of emotions, and I've validated those emotions. And then I said, I am grateful for this. I know I'm grateful for her parents. It taught me to live taking it day by day rather than being overwhelmed by the future. I'm grateful for the brother who just continued to treat me like that annoying little baby sister. He didn't feel sorry for me. He didn't baby me. He didn't cuddle me, even though I was going blind. So again, what I work with people every day on is not using gratitude to deny our reality. It's using gratitude to acknowledge our reality and say, here's what I'm thankful for in the midst of it.

[8:01] So let me ask you this question. I don't know if you've been asked this before, but it sounds like you had an environment that made that easy. You had a family that was supporting. You had, sounds like you had friends in school, Arizona State made it, made it work for you. But how do you make room for, you know, sadness, anger, frustration, you know, when the environment around you is not as supportive? Does that make sense? Absolutely. that's when that environment around you is not supportive. And if that environment around you is not believing in you, telling you you're not worthy, it's not empowering you, it's more telling you to be victim.

[8:48] That's when, where is that one, is it a pet? Is it a nature? Is it music? What is that one entity, person, application, teacher, neighbor? What is that one perspective that can give you, I believe in you, I recognize your potential? And focusing on that one as a source of strength, rather than the environment around you that's negative. And also I've worked with so many people that yes they've had that a negative environment, and that negative environment has done the opposite it's in his rather than accepting the negativity that person says I know I'm more than this I know, I can do better than this negative perspective.

[9:45] So that's when it comes into tapping into that inner strength and then just choosing How can I change my environment? Maybe my environment is negative. How do I change it to make it supportive? So I come from a sports background and I understand that, you know, when there's negativity around you and you have this ambition to prove people wrong, I can understand that from a sports perspective. I can work harder. I can practice more. I can do all of that.

[10:19] You obviously had to adjust in different ways. But, you know, for somebody listening, you know, what are the practical things that can be done today when, you know, the future is not looking so bright? It is looking frightful. When the future is looking hopeless, when you're in that despair, and I lived there for so long despite the support around me. So with that support around us, whether it's positive, negative, in these extreme changes, we're all going to feel that hopelessness, that despair, that just deep anger, that deep sadness. A tool for me that helped get me through those hopeless despair days was mindfulness. Learning.

[11:10] The process of knowing our thoughts do not have to become our reality. So once I learned my thoughts are simply thoughts. They come and they go. It's not every thought is a concrete fact and going to be a concrete fact forever. That was an incredibly healing resource for me. So for example, when I was in a panic attack, my mindset was, oh no, I'm going to be in a panic attack forever. This is the way I'm going to be now and forever, every single day of my life forward. When I could learn the gift of mindfulness and say, I'm in this panic attack now, this is my reality and my present right now, it might not be tomorrow, that gave me hope. That gave me strength. So just the gift of mindfulness and observing our thoughts rather than jumping into every thought and viewing every thought as fact, that is an incredibly healing tool that we can all use.

[12:20] Folks, Laura Bratton, her website, laurabratton.com. She is an author, a keynote speaker.

[12:27] Speaker uh Laura what is i think when everybody thinks of keynote speakers it's always about you know these grandiose things that people have done um, extraordinary things that people have done uh things that people themselves can strive to most people, already have their sight they haven't lost it or anything like that what's something that when you're on stage talking to people that you share that makes them feel, you know, your story is extraordinary.

[12:58] So focusing less on my story and how the tools of grit and gratitude apply to their company, to their situation.

[13:10] So going into every speech, it's not about, here's me, I'm extraordinary, look at me, let me tell you stories for 30, 45 minutes all about me. It's about knowing what change they're facing as a company, as an organization, and using that 30 to 45 minutes to say, here are the tools I use in extreme change. So here are the tools you can use in this extreme change you're going through as a company, as an organization, and here's ways that you can apply it. Does that difference make sense? So it's not about me being on stage saying, look at me, let me tell you all these stories about me. It's about saying that here's tools I've had to use in a really difficult situation and time. How can you use them in this situation your company is experiencing? So it's all about tailoring it to the individual. Well, yeah, I mean, that makes sense. Although part of me is like, okay, well, practically, what does that mean? So what is a tool that you use to get through your situations that a CEO is going to use in their business to rally the troops and increase their sales?

[14:29] I'm glad you asked that because I've worked with a company called Vistage and.

[14:38] It's member CEOs that make up different chapters. So speaking to 20, 30 CEOs at a time.

[14:48] Why don't we focus on, well, can I say two different things, one for the grit and one for the gratitude. So with the grit, helping them to practically implement the grit in their company is not just pushing, pushing, pushing, sweeping under the rug, but helping them to implement the grit is saying, okay, we're in this really difficult situation. Acknowledging the validity of the difficult situation, and then saying, okay, here's how as a company, as a leadership team, as a C-suite, we're going to work through it. So validating the reality rather than just pretending it's not as bad as it actually is. Then on the gratitude side, the simplicity of gratitude. I mean, I had so many CEOs that said, oh, all I changed in my company was I started writing thank you notes and giving them out to people, and that changed the culture, of our organization. Or multiple CEOs saying, just remember my employees' birthdays. Me putting all their birthdays in my calendar and remembering that and giving them the day off. That changed once they knew I appreciated them. The culture changed. Everyone was supportive. Everyone was working towards the same common goal.

[16:13] So it does not have to be these major monumental changes we all think. It can be the small moments of appreciation that can change the culture, the outcome working through a very difficult situation within a corporation.

[16:34] Okay. Now, if a problem feels too big to handle, how would somebody stop themselves from getting overwhelmed? So that's my everyday life. And the way I work through it every single day and the way I've worked through it with CEOs and with all, especially on the coaching side, was working with people individually, one-on-one specifically, when they're going through a situation that seems way too big to handle, is breaking it down. Yes, the problem seems too big to handle the whole magnitude of the problem. So how do we break it down? Literally, minute by minute, section by section, if it's specifically within a person, day by day, or if it's within like a corporation organization, breaking that problem down to section by section. So taking the large problem and breaking it down into manageable increments.

[17:36] So yes it's overwhelming that doesn't minimize that that's never going to go away it's just how do you break it down into small sections to make it something that we can mentally emotionally cognitively handle, all right I m going to I m going to switch gears here and I ve got this this concept of toxic positivity.

[18:00] Some people are just they're just too positive too happy all the time. And sometimes I want to ask the question, like, what's the line between, you know, building resilience and putting pressure on yourself to stay positive all the time? Because I feel sometimes it's just forced and there's got to be a balance. So in my experience, this could be a whole another episode. In my experience, toxic positivity has hurt me. When I tried being positive and optimistic and trying to act like I was happy all the time, that made me more depressed, more anxious. Because here's what it did. It never gave me space to breathe and acknowledge how difficult life actually was. It never gave me the space to validate this is really, really hard and makes me incredibly depressed, anxious, sad, angry, resentful. You know, whatever the emotion is, the positivity never gave me space to do that.

[19:11] So I tried the positivity. be. I thought that was the key to working through this difficult situation, and it only made me more depressed. So that's why when people, when I'm first working with people and they're like, I've got this difficult situation, but it's really good. The situation is all good, and I'm really thankful for it, and it's teaching me a lot. I just tell them, no, it's actually not. That situation is not good you're going through. Everything does not have to be positive and we don't have to be happy about everything. So I'm very, very thankful you brought that up because being positive all the time did not give me space to acknowledge the difficulty of everyday moment. Does that make sense? It didn't, what you said earlier about gratitude, it covered up the pain, not giving the pain, room to breathe, room to be validated. So if you got to the point where you realized it was hurting you, what flipped that script for you? What was it that, you know, kind of made you realize that.

[20:22] To turn that around? Because how you phrased it in the very beginning was what I was feeling. And I'm obviously not going to say your exact words, but I was saying the positive words. I wasn't feeling the positive words. Does that difference make? I was saying the right things, right, to other people. Oh, yeah, I'm positive. I'm happy. Yeah, I'm going great. Yeah, yeah, everything's great. But inside, I'm having a panic attack. Inside, I'm going home and bawling my eyes out. So I'm saying everything's positive, but I don't feel that way or that's not my inner world. So no fake it till you make it going on there. It never happened. And I tried it for a very long time and it never worked. It never worked. So I finally got to a point where I just said, okay, I just have to be honest with how I'm doing and how I'm feeling and just quit saying I'm happy and thankful all the time. Sometimes you just got to live in the mud for a while, right? Right. And, okay. And living in the mud is healing. Actually sitting in the difficulty and just letting us acknowledge this is mud and the mud hurts and the mud's not what I would choose, that gives us strength to build that courage and move forward.

[21:47] Rather than saying the mud's wonderful and beautiful and I'm so happy the mud's here. Just acknowledging this mud feels really uncomfortable. That gives us strength to then move forward. Mud sucks. Right, exactly. Get through it and figure out what to do to get through the other side, right? Right, exactly. That is deeply healing and deeply empowering.

[22:14] I want to go back to what we talked about in terms of the environment. I mentioned that, you know, you had a great environment around you.

[22:25] Do you ever describe to people what role that others have in helping us get through difficult times? You smiled when I asked that. Thank you for asking that. And I'd say this, I've said this before, but I mean it deeply. That could be a whole another vibe. Literally, I did a whole episode with someone just on that. Really? How to be a support when you are that supportive person, supporting someone going through a difficult situation. And I wrote about a whole chapter about this in my book. And the quickest way I can sum it up is treat the person with respect. And let me say why I'm saying that. Let me explain why I'm saying that. I cannot tell you how many people talk louder to me and talk slower to me. I know I'm from the South. I know I talk slow. I know I'd make everything 12 more syllables than there needs to be, but talking louder and talking slower is not going to help me have better vision.

[23:40] So many people, we, I can be the same age as someone. They're like, honey, how are you doing today? The pity voice and the tone, they're way more people than not that either talk, pity, talk louder, talk slower, or the other end of the spectrum. Wow, you're superhuman. I could never do what you're doing. And the whole is that, the tone. All I want is be, treat me with respect. I'm another human in a very difficult situation. Treat me with the same love and respect that you want to receive. That's how you can best support me. Interesting. And I've talked to so many different people. I'm sorry. I talked to people. I didn't think people would really do that. The majority. Talking about her means nothing to a blind person. I and it's fascinating when I'm with friends you know my husband it doesn't matter who I'm with, they will talk one volume to whoever I'm with and then like practically scream to me, and we just start laughing and they're like her hearing's fine.

[25:05] The vision's another story but her hearing's great like yeah, So, yeah, I cannot say enough. And I've talked to people in different situations. I've talked to people with different disabilities. I mean, all different ages, races, all different situations. And they all say the same thing. Just treat me with respect. That's how you can best support me. I'm human just like you are. Well, that sounds like a statement we should end the show on. So I don't want to ruin it there. Folks, her book, Harnessing Courage, Overcoming Adversity with Grit and Gratitude. I'll have a link to that in the show notes. You can reach out to Laura, maybe use her as a keynote speaker, work with her, have her come talk to your company, laurabratton.com.

[26:02] Laura, your book's been out a while. Have you thought about another book or an updated edition to the one you put out? Writing no I mean yes and no yes I thought about it no I do not want to, the book writing process is very difficult and very very very time consuming, I have at this point I have no desire absolutely maybe updated edition that's what I do every day the coaching and the speaking but, at this point definitely not another book, all right well Laura uh thank you very much for having these two conversations with me um very interesting again like i said I ve got two other people that i know in my life that I ve not had this conversation with so uh, now i guess they'll listen to the show and come talk to me.

[27:01] All right, folks, we've talked about what it means to face adversity, find courage, and keep moving forward. And I guess the one lesson I think I will take from this is you don't have to pretend life is good when it's hard. We can live in the mud for a while. That's a good one, Laura. Yes. All right. That is going to do it for this episode, folks. Obviously, if this episode resonated with you, let us know, mark it, reach out to Laura. And, you know, as I said on this show many times, it's not always about, you know, getting to the gym and, you know, eating well and stuff. There are a lot of things that we can do in just regular everyday life to live healthy and be happy. And Laura has taught us that. So that's what we're going to leave out on the show, folks. We'll see you soon. Take care. Bye-bye.