#196: Being Your Best In Challenging Conditions With Alex Katz

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So, please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I am absolutely feeling privileged, honored, blessed, and grateful at this moment to be here with all of you, to be— just to be, honestly. There's so much going on in the world right now that is both beautiful and challenging. And I absolutely believe that we are made better by our challenges, that we are made stronger by our challenges, that it creates something for us for the future, something to learn from. And at the same time, when we lose something, it's also natural, normal, and the right thing to do, I believe, to mourn, to grieve. And there's a certain element that's happening on the inside for many of us, if not all of us, that is grieving the loss of what was. The world that we lived in a few months ago is not the same world that we're living in now. And I like lately to refer to it as the new abnormal. And with that new abnormal come lots of great opportunities, growth in ways we didn't predict, changes that I believe are long-term and short-term best interests, many of them. And at the same time as all that's happening, there's suffering and there's loss of jobs, there's loss of life, there's loss of things that again we will mourn. And so it's a mixed bag for sure. But I am feeling more than anything gratitude and being present to what there is to appreciate is one of the greatest tools I have at my disposal any day of the week, any day of the year. I am thrilled that I have a great guest on the show today to talk about some of these things because she knows full well what it takes to be at your best in challenging conditions and to overcome a mindset that might get in the way of being at your best and performing at your best. And so we're going to talk today about resilience and holistically speaking, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual resilience, what that looks like for my guest, Alex Katz. She is a certified personal trainer and get this, an American Ninja Warrior coach. So we'll talk about that because that is way cool. Soon to be a certified nutrition coach, public speaker, director of Neighborhood Ninjas, and a mom to her amazing 2 rescue pups, Spartan and Ninja. And it says right here in her bio, are you noticing a theme? So I love that. That's really, really cool. Welcome to the show, Alex. It's a pleasure to have you with us.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. That was a great introduction. Actually, I am now a certified nutrition coach, so we can add that to the list too.

I love it. We update the bio right now.

I'm going

to make the change. What is not a part of the bio that I just read, Alex, that you would love for people to know about you at the beginning?

Yeah, so, you know, I would say I also do a lot of coaching around mindset and resilience, which you alluded to, and I work full-time with kids in the Connecticut foster care system working with not only high schoolers but college students who are experiencing homelessness or complete separation from their families but may not have ended up in foster care. And that's really my passion in life, I guess you'd say. It's really— there's 3 things, you know, it's working with that population, it's fitness, and it's my dogs. So if you were to kind of boil me down to one sentence, those are the 3.

Yeah, I love to just sort of— I don't know if you like to do this too, but just to sometimes When we can step back and see the larger landscape of connections between things. And this may not seem like such a big connection, but the other day we had a puppy in our home because our daughter Lindsay and her fiancé Connor came over with their new puppy. And we hadn't seen him. Actually, this little fellow they got when he was just only 9 weeks old. And we are big, big dog people and lost our 2 big pups. Just about a year ago. He had a black lab and a golden. And so this puppy, this little 9-week-old golden, looked very much like our golden Duncan. And maybe a few days later, I posted on LinkedIn an article about the correlation between how it is that dogs create their resilience and how dogs are these resilient beings and what that looks like and how us humans, how do we learn from that? What's the example? those dogs that we can learn from. So I think that's a really interesting little synergy just to start between us here because I didn't expect to ask you this, but what is it about dogs that really— well, I guess that you learn from, if that's even a thing for you? Would you say there's some learning that we can take from the pups?

Yeah, I love that. You know, I never really kind of put it in those words before, but it's definitely something that I think about. I actually posted about my dog yesterday, and one of the main things I said that I learned actually from Ninja is Just that gratitude. So when I saw Ninja, I was actually working a mental health event, and we were at this big fair, and he was in the adoption area that was next to it. And there were all these dogs that were getting adopted, right? And I don't know what it was, but right, he didn't fit the characteristics that people were looking for. He kept getting passed up. I just felt so bad for this puppy. And I think, you know, it's similar to how I feel with kids in foster care too, where it's like Sometimes the most loving dogs, the most loving kids are the ones that have the most trouble finding a home, right? And for some reason he clicked with me right away. He was so shy around all these other people. We clicked right away and I knew I couldn't leave without him, but I didn't have the money for the adoption fee, but I knew it had to happen. And the rescue actually said, you know what? He's bonded with you more than anyone. We haven't seen this happen yet. So we're going to let you foster him for the weekend. Oh my gosh. So you can come up with the money. And so that weekend I got really creative because I knew that I could not let this dog out of my sight. And so, you know, he's very different from my other dog. I've definitely had to adapt with how my life has been since I rescued him, brought him into my home. I'm so, so grateful for him every day. And, you know, even things that people might get annoyed about, like dogs waking you up with a giant slurp up the face, I love it. I absolutely love it, right? 'Cause it's all about how we look at the things that are happening In our lives. This morning, he woke me up by licking me up my nose and then in my ear, and I could have gotten frustrated and annoyed by that, but instead it's like, look, he's showing you love, right? And that's the other thing I love about dogs is just that unconditional love. No matter what you do, if you're having a bad day, whatever's happening, they're there. And they always seem to find a way to be happy. That's the other thing, right? Dogs are just, they're always looking on the bright side. They're happy to be outside, happy to see a squirrel, happy to see you. And I just love that. And I try to bring that energy into anything that I do.

Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now, we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. I remember that one of the things I podcasted about right after we lost Duncan was the fact that he was always so present with us and always happy in that present moment with us. In fact, we could have forgotten to feed him, and the moment we walked in the house, he's like, oh, you know, like he wouldn't be upset. He wouldn't hold a grudge. He wouldn't bark at us. He just would— He was happy. Be so thrilled that we were there. And then, of course, you know, we take care of them. But there's just something about that unconditional love that you get from a pet, from animals. I don't even so feel comfortable calling them pets, honestly, because there's something about how that just feels to me. I don't put that on anybody else, but they are living beings. They are sentient beings just like we are. Yeah. And they have brains and they have memories and they feel. There is a lot I think we can learn from them. So thank you for sharing that with us. Yeah. So here's this person who is drawn to rescue animals and kids in foster care. I mean, I really want to understand better what the foster care connection has been for you. Is there something that goes back a ways with that?

Yeah, no, definitely. So when I was younger, I grew up in a very abusive home and Never actually ended up in foster care, but I should have been, right? The Department of Children and Families got involved several times. I was experiencing homelessness on and off from an early age because my parents would just kick me out of the house randomly for— could have literally been I could come home and the locks were changed and I had no idea why. Or it could have been something where, you know, I got a B+ on a test instead of an A-. It could have literally been anything. And so— Growing up in that environment was really where I learned resilience, right? That was kind of my first exposure to it. And by the time I was graduating high school, I was half living out of my high school locker room. I still have pictures of it. And it was funny because I was actually a varsity track athlete, so I was really lucky that I got a big varsity locker and I was able to stash everything in there. But my teammates thought that I was just really messy. So, you know, they were making fun of me a lot. I actually broke the door of the locker because I stuffed so many things in there. And for me, you know, that was also a really big lesson that I work with on my kids, basically to let them know that you never know what somebody else is going through, right? And so to them, this locker was messy. To me, it was, well, I'm trying to cram all my possessions in here. So by the time I graduated high school, I had actually been accepted into the University of Connecticut. I knew that college was going to be my way out. Despite everything happening in high school, I worked really hard. I applied to, I want to say, 63. That is the number that I've stuck to to this day, 63 scholarships, and I received maybe 10 of them. And I still give that example to my kids as well because I want them to know that you're not going to always get the first thing you apply for, or you're going to have to fail many times before you see results. So I applied to 63, I got 10. It was enough. It got me into college. And so When I left, I left for good. That was it. And so it's been over a decade of not having contact with my parents. And so when I went to college, I was surrounded by all these students who still had that contact, who still had somewhere to go for spring break or for Thanksgiving or winter break, right? And so I was learning how to navigate college without anywhere to go, without that family support. And it was difficult. I'm not gonna lie. It was really difficult. There's also that feeling of everybody else has something and I don't. Right. So I had to figure that out. And during that time, I became really passionate about wanting to help other students. It took me a while to figure it out. And then I said, you know what, this isn't just me. I think one of the biggest issues is when people feel like they're the only ones going through something, right? We talk about this all the time with mental health. You feel like you're the only one and you're alone, and that makes it worse. And everyone's so afraid to talk about it because they think they're the only one. But when they do talk about it, Amazing things happen. So by the time I was graduating, I reached out on social media and said, "Hey, I want to start a club. Does anybody else fit these categories?" You know, similar to what I was going through, and learned that I wasn't the only one, and there were other people struggling. And so I said, "You know what? I want to come back and work at this university and create a program for students in my situation." So I went on, got my master's, and then in 2018, I came back. to actually run the program at UConn working with high schoolers in foster care and created another program for the college students who are in a similar situation navigating homelessness, food insecurity, et cetera. That's kind of where that came from.

I didn't know you were a Husky. I didn't see that in your bio. That's cool.

I'm a Husky employee.

Yeah. My wife and I, we went to UMass Amherst. So we're in the New England Sports League. Absolutely. Ninja Warrior. All right, so this is— on the one hand, we're hearing about you and your givingness, the way you serve and the sensitivity, and then there's this other aspect of you that you are indeed a Ninja Warrior. So for folks that don't know what that is, I'd love it if you'd explain it. And then of course we have to know, how is it that you got into that? Because that is just so rad.

Yeah, thanks. So Ninja Warrior, for anyone who's listening at home and doesn't know— oh my gosh, how do I explain it? It's like a mix of gymnastics and rock climbing and obstacle course racing all in one. I definitely recommend checking it out on NBC. And there's no way to really explain what it is and what it actually is like to do it. When I first watched it on TV, I remember seeing Casey Catanzaro, who was the first woman to really make, you know, leaps and bounds in the sport. I remembered watching her do it and thinking, if she can do it, I can do it, right? And I think pretty much everyone has had that thought at some point. And I talked to so many people that watch the show and think it looks easy, and I did too. At the time when I first watched it, I was bodybuilding, I was powerlifting, I was doing Spartan races, and I was like, I can totally do this. This is fine. And I went to try it and I sucked. Like, it was just— I couldn't do anything. I was scared of heights. I was scared of water. When you train in a gym, there's no water, but you are very high up and you're above mats. So I remembered thinking, I'm strong, I can do this, and then just getting in my head and being too afraid of the heights, or my body didn't know how to move the way that It would have, say, if I did gymnastics growing up, right? A lot of these moves you're doing what we call a chase. So that's where you swing from, let's say, a bar or a small object or really anything. It could be anything. We like grip in this sport, but you swing and you fly through the air, maybe 5 feet, maybe 8 feet, maybe 10 feet, and you have to catch something else. So it's all very upper body intensive, a lot of trusting yourself. And so one of the big reasons I got into it was because I realized I had this deep, deep fear of heights and water. And actually a lot of it was trauma-related for me on both ends of it. I'm very big on pushing yourself past your fears and being more than whatever it is you've gone through. And so I said, I have to do this. So I started training and I learned how to kind of reframe all of that in my brain. And, you know, I think I was scared for a while for the first couple of months, and then I got really annoyed with myself and I'm like, you're so strong. Yeah. You could be such a good athlete, but you keep getting in your own way. You keep getting in your own head. So I was really tired of letting my fears define me. I kept having conversations with people saying, I'm strong enough to do this. I could totally do this. I'm just scared. And I felt the need to qualify everything and make excuses. And your brain doesn't know what's real and what's not, right? So when you tell yourself, when I'm telling other people, oh, well, I'm scared, the more I said that, the more scared I became. And the second I flipped that script and I started telling myself every day that I didn't care and I was not scared and I was stronger than my fears, things actually flipped in my brain. I told myself I wasn't going to make excuses anymore. I wasn't going to even tell anybody that I was afraid anymore and just do it. And it takes time, right? You don't rewire your brain overnight. But over time, that actually did become my reality. And now I've been doing the sport for about 2 and a half years. I've competed in the world championships. 3 times now, and I'm now a coach. I run a Ninja Warrior nonprofit, so it's definitely become a really big part of my life. And I'm so grateful for the sport because I think it's helped me grow mentally in ways that I never even imagined. The community is so great. It's really that idea of chosen family that, again, in any sport that I've ever done, I've never felt this level of community. You know, we're all competing against each other. There's rankings, right? You want to get the fastest time, you want to go the farthest. But at the same time, we all cheer each other on, we all help each other. So if I just fell on obstacle 5 on a course and there's another girl who's going to go after me and, you know, she's worried, I'll say to her, hey, I fell because I made this mistake. Don't make this mistake. And she might actually beat me. She might actually go farther. than I did. But that's kind of the way that we are in this sport where that doesn't matter. We just want to help each other, which I think is so, so cool.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. I remember seeing American Ninja Warrior for the first time a few years back and just being blown away. But unlike you, I looked at it and said, that's tough. I was like, yeah, I could handle a couple of those things, maybe. I don't know, but that's really tough. That's just incredible. I'd love to get a sense of where it is that when you said earlier that you reframe things, where is it that you reframe things on a regular basis? And the reason I'm asking you is because part of what is our theory about what creates resilience, and there's a lot of things, of course, that contribute to whether a person's resilient or not. We've looked at in research and data and just in my own personal experience and the experience of people on our team, For example, that there are 3 traits of really resilient people and organizations, generally speaking, and these 3 traits start with the ability to reframe situations. So I'd love to get your perspective on how you define that.

Yeah. So I think that reframing looks different depending on what else is happening in your life at the time. And so for me as a kid, when everything was going on, I wasn't labeling it as reframing. I had no idea what it was, right? But I had all these things happening, you know, I felt like my parents didn't love me, the message I was getting was like, everything you do is wrong all the time. And for a little bit I actually believed that, right? And you see that so much with kids who grow up in the system or grow up with abusive parents. And at some point I said to myself, hold on, wait a minute, that's not you. There's a theme here and it's not you, right? And I think that was my first experience with reframing, but I just didn't know what that was. And then when I got to college, I really had to, you know, I was a psychology major, so I was also learning about how the brain's working and everything and really being intentional with that. And I learned about choice theory. And for anybody who's listening who doesn't know about choice theory, this changed my entire trajectory because I'm not going to lie, I was definitely struggling with my mental health, you know, coming out of all of this. trying to adapt to college as a first-year student. And then choice theory came into my life. And basically the idea is that a lot of times we have a picture in our heads, right, of how things will go. So let's take this quarantine, for example, and, and the loss that we're feeling. So maybe we had a picture of how our high school graduation was going to go. Maybe there was a trip we were about to go on. Maybe, you know, there was something that you were looking forward to or something you were doing. And now that picture has changed. And the picture that we have in our heads Doesn't match our reality. And so that leads to a lot of cognitive dissonance, a lot of feelings of distress and despair. And so sometimes we can change that picture, the picture in reality. Sometimes we can change it. Sometimes we can make tweaks. Okay, maybe I'm not going to the gym anymore, but I'm working out at home, right? But sometimes we can't. And that's where we have to learn how to change the picture that's in our head to kind of make them match a little more. And if you can't change either, where's the middle ground? So learning that really changed things for me. And I started thinking about choice theory. How can I change my picture? Right. And that was my real first experience practicing reframing. And so now I look at things not as why is this happening to me or that something is happening to me, but what is happening for me right now? So I try to look at the situation, you know, if I just lost my job, if something negative just happened in my life, you know, as an athlete, I was injured on a course last year, I tore my lat and couldn't move my arm for months and missed competitions, you know, and I had to step back and say, what is this trying to teach me? Like, what is happening here? And I think that's really been pivotal for me. So I guess the short answer and the long answer for me is reframing is being able to look at a situation. And see how can I look at it differently? What are my feelings around it? How do I shift my perspective in my brain in a way that allows me to keep going, in a way that teaches me something, in a way where I can be grateful for whatever is happening right now, in a way where I remind myself that I'm strong and I'm resilient and I will get through whatever the situation is?

Yes. And from my perspective, the one thing that I would say is included in that, that we talk a lot about actually, is finding the creative opportunity. And that's embedded in what you said. You know, when you reframe what's happening to me as what's happening for me, it implies that there's something positive in it. There's something that we can use to grow from. And that is— there's no question there's a creative opportunity in everything that's happening to us always.

Mm-hmm.

So that's really powerful. And choice theory It's definitely something I would recommend that our listeners research and look at as well. There is resilience, I think, embedded in all of us. We have the DNA of resilient people, of resilient beings. That's why we're here. That's the only reason why we exist at all anyway, is that the human species has been so adaptable and resilient over time. And yet resilience is something you can still create and it's something that you can grow just like a muscle if you work it. It grows. If you don't work it, it atrophies. So I'd love to know, what are some of the things that you do on a regular basis to grow your resilience?

Yeah, that's a great question. And definitely what you just said, that's something I say to all my clients. I say when I do public speaking is your brain's a muscle. You have to work it just like anything else. So for me, I have a couple daily rituals that I do, if you will. So one of them is practicing gratitude. And so just to preface all of this, I will say that when I first started looking at how will Could I rewire my brain? And I was coming up with literature on practicing gratitude or affirmations or all these things that I'll get a little bit more into. I didn't think it was going to work. I think I spent a day or two writing down things I was grateful for. I think the first day I couldn't find anything I was grateful for. You know, the second day I was like, okay, maybe this. And then I gave up. And then I was like, okay, we're going to try this again. I see this a lot in clients I work with where it doesn't happen right away and you give up. But the thing with behavior change is you have to keep going, right? You have to actually keep doing it until you believe it. Because if I say I'm grateful for the sun right now and I don't actually believe it, or I'm not putting intentions behind it, then nothing's going to happen, right? So keep going until it clicks. Same thing with fitness. You're not going to work out for one day and see results. And I think people kind of miss that sometimes. So for me, gratitude, 100% every day, multiple times a day, especially, you know, if something negative does happen. When we talk about reframing, I stop and think, okay, but what am I grateful for right now? So yes, quarantine happened, but what do I have, right? I might not have my job at the gym, or I might not have this or that, but I'm able to spend time with my partner for the first time in months. I'm able to spend time with my dog. I can continue growing as a trainer by learning how to do things virtually. I can catch up on sleep because I was working 4 jobs and that wasn't happening, right? So being grateful for all those little things. I think for me too, just from where I've come from, I'm grateful for the smallest things like having a bed, having a space that's my own. So that's definitely been big for me. And then in addition to gratitude, I would say affirmations, but I call them something different. So instead of affirmations—

What do you call them? I

call them your superhero powers.

Mmm.

So, and I do this a lot with my clients and my students. So I like to remind people that they are superheroes in exactly how they show up in this world already. I think when quarantine started, people didn't know what to do. They didn't know if they needed to shut down or they needed to be heroic for other people, or what direction do I turn, right? And I put up a post basically saying, look, your superpower is showing up exactly as you already are. Don't feel like you need to be somebody else right now where you need to be everything to everyone. So like, if you're not a yoga instructor, don't start suddenly offering virtual yoga classes, right? Like, operate in your zone of power. And so if that's you're a good listener, you're a good friend, you're funny, you're caring, you are strong, whatever that is for you, whatever makes you feel like a superhero, that's your power and those are your affirmations. And sometimes we forget that, especially when life gets difficult. So— I have my clients text me what their superhero thought of the day is every day. And same thing with my students. And I actually got a text from one of my students right before this that was just— it was really emotional because I don't have to remind her anymore. She just does it. And this is somebody who struggled so much with self-esteem and just feeling like she doesn't belong anywhere. And now she just does it daily and she's actually starting to believe it. But I remember how hard it was for her when we first started this, you know, so. Superhero powers are huge. I call it superhero powers and supervillain thoughts. So the supervillain thoughts are limiting beliefs that are going to come in, and then you send out the superhero thoughts to fight them. And you have to repeat them every single day so that when the supervillain thoughts come in, it's just on autopilot and they just come in and fight and you don't have to do anything. So that works really well.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode. Of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. And it's interesting too because so many people want to change their behaviors. They want their outcomes to change and they know that to get a different outcome, they've got to do something different. The behavior piece of it. And when we initially published Pivot, I remember one of the things that we heard from a lot of people from that book was this change in the order of things, meaning we were saying, you've got to change your beliefs before you change behaviors because behavioral change doesn't stick, similar to what you just said, unless the beliefs, the underlying beliefs about yourself change, your identity changes. So, what I love about that among other things, is that to be able to frame up, to give ourselves that superhero understanding and power, and to own that is certainly a way to believe something about yourself that ultimately would translate into, if you did believe that about yourself, what would you do? If you did believe that you had superpowers, whatever those superpowers are, what would you be capable of? How would you deal with adversity? From that lens or from wearing that superhero cape, you're so much more empowered to take actions from that standpoint. So that's really brilliant. I love the way you put that together for us. Thank you. Is there one particular ritual? I always ask our guests this too, because I'm a big believer in rituals and they can be the things that you do when you begin the day, you start the day. I know that about a year and a half ago, I revealed through a TED Talk that I gave, what my waking ritual is, because that's sort of my superhero power is that I know when I wake up that I don't have to think about how I'm going to feel. That's already now become programmed and ingrained. And I know I'm going to start the day in a way that I own something that is very, very powerful and very much in alignment with my deepest values. So that's a ritual. And I'd love to know if there's A ritual either at the beginning of the day or at some other point in the day. Because here's the thing too about that. I've been reading this old book. It's 1971 or '72, I think is when it came out. But Og Mandino wrote a book called The Greatest Salesman in the World. And there's one section where he's talking about starting the day. I start out the day with love. And he says, you can commit to greeting the day with love in your heart. That's a big thing for him in this book is how you greet the day. And that resonated with me deeply. But what I found was that I could greet the day with love and do what Augmentino was suggesting, and then 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I might just deal with somebody who was in a foul mood or sent me a foul email or whatever. It would trigger some other part of me that would sort of go from greeting the day with love in my heart to 3, 4 hours later being a kind of a miserable prick. And I think it's that sort of building and tearing down, that foot on the gas, foot on the brake experience of life that can really be frustrating to people, frustrating to me, and can keep us stuck at times. So I became aware of that and started to really work on not just greeting the day with love, but meeting the day with love and how it is that I continue to show up in that way throughout the day. So that ritual, even though it starts at the beginning of the day, it sort of extends throughout. So I'd love to hear about either one or more of the rituals that are helping you right now to create resilience and maintain it.

Yeah, great question. It's funny because I'm not really a morning ritual person, and for a while I tried it because I thought I should, because it seemed like everybody else had some sort of morning ritual. I think for me, I always wake up full of energy and excited to start the day and seeing the infinite possibility in the day. And then just like what you're saying, Things happen, right? Life happens. And so what I do is I actually have it with me. I have this journal where I keep my superhero thoughts on tap so that if I am struggling, I can look at it and I actually recite them back to myself. So if I'm feeling my limiting beliefs start to creep in, I look at it and I remind myself of what exactly my superhero powers are and that, you know, just kind of reaffirming to myself that I'm doing what I should be doing or that I'm showing up in the world the way that is impacting and helping Others, and that's been really key. If I feel like everything's just miserable, something big just happened, again, maybe I lost my job or something happened, I again look at, okay, well, what do I still have in my life that I can be grateful for? So I really work on the superhero thoughts and the gratitude in the middle of the day. And then I also have quotes that I live by. So along with the superhero powers, I kind of remind myself of those. Awesome. One of them is actually by Emily Schramm, who has her own podcast. It's Meathead Hippie. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I absolutely love, love her stuff. Her voice is like meditation for me. So Emily, if you're listening to this— But she says something that's really stuck with me over the past year, which is that everything is aiming. And I've really kind of adopted that. So it's the idea that really all you can do with your life is be intentional, right? So let's say you have a bow and arrow and you're going to Shoot the arrow. Once you release it, that arrow can go anywhere, right? Like the wind could take it, it could get eaten by a dragon. Like who knows what's really gonna happen, right? But all you can do is set up your shot and be intentional with that. And so that's how I've started living my life. What are my intentions? Whether or not the outcome matches what I wanted, I put forth my intentions. So what you can be intentional with are your time, Your energy, who you let into your life, the relationships you want to create, right? So in the middle of the day, I remind myself of that and I remind myself to really focus on my intentions. And the very last thing I do is I remind myself to act boldly all the time. And this actually also came— I have to give credit. So this came from Nick Pags, who he's also a mindset coach. And I heard this at a really great time in my life, again, about a year ago where he said, The difference between you and the person you want to be is that person you want to be acts boldly, consistently. So whenever I feel myself starting to get in a funk, I remind myself to act boldly, consistently, and act with intentions. And that's been working really well for me just to stay motivated and keep moving. And actually, I'd say the very, very last thing I do is remind myself of everything I've already overcome, right? So I know people are struggling right now and I keep reminding them that if you're reading this post, if you're listening to this podcast, you've already come so many obstacles in life. And this is just another one of them. And every single obstacle you go through makes you stronger. And so I'll usually remind myself that I'm really strong. And then my last ritual of the day, at some point I'll go do handstands or pull-ups or something because that's my zen space. So that's kind of my daily ritual.

Because you're a ninja warrior. Right, exactly.

Ninja warrior.

Totally. That's your superhero. Oh my goodness. I have so, so enjoyed this conversation, Alex. And I know that our folks have enjoyed it as well. And I'm just curious, have you ever delivered a TED Talk? Is there a TEDx talk that you've given?

I have not. I would love to. I've spoken on many different stages, but I've never done a TED Talk. I would absolutely love to do that.

That's way cool. All right. Well, you and I perhaps can talk about that at some point. We work with people on getting those wonderful talks, and you are just one of those people I can see delivering an epic TED Talk because you are So inspirational. Just naturally, I'm sure the comments that we'll get from this show are that you are naturally an inspiring person. And we are in the world right now, people need very much to be inspired on a daily basis. I hope very much that this show has done that for all of you out there listening to it, watching it perhaps on YouTube, and that all of our shows in fact are aiming to do that. And I really appreciate how you edified— Thank you. That everything is aiming. And the person whose podcast you mentioned, I'm not familiar with her, so I'm really excited to look at her as well. The name of the show again is?

It's Meathead Hippie.

Meathead Hippie. And who delivers that?

Emily Schramm. And it wasn't her exact words where everything is aiming, but she gave this whole podcast episode where she was talking about— she read this metaphor from this ancient script about this concept. And from all the things she said, what I boil it down to were 3 words: everything is aiming. And it's just made it into everything I've done since. So definitely life-changing for me.

Way cool. Way cool. So as we close out this session, I'm going to remind myself and remind everybody else out there too that the way that you begin the day is very, very powerful. And if you begin the day with joy, if you're more leaning in that direction right out of the gate, Gratitude is the first thoughts you've got. You're in a good place to build that and whether that's you or that's not you, again, just my own dirty little secret I suppose is that for a long, long time, more than 10 years, I start the day putting my feet on the floor, feeling gratitude and saying 4 simple words out loud which are, I love my life. And some days, those are tough words to live up to. In fact, my wife will sometimes even come up to me if I've had a day that's been challenging, she'll say, do you still love your life no matter what? Because it's that no matter what piece that's really the deal. And I always chuckle and smile and go, yeah, I absolutely do. That's not negotiable. So however it is that you do start your day tomorrow, I'd love for you to take a page out of Alex's playbook here and come up with your superhero thought of the day. My superhero thought of the day is I love my life. What's your superhero thought of the day? I'd love to hear from you, find out exactly what that is. You can go to adammarkel.com/podcast and leave your answer to that question. What is your superhero thought of the day? And we would love to engage at that level with you. And of course, you can also go on to the Start My Pivot Facebook page and leave your thought of the day there as well. Well, I'll just say ciao for now. And again, Alex, thank you so much for being

Thanks so much for having me.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.