Brian Gubernick reflects on his interview with Boston Marathon bombing survivor Adrienne Haslett, who lost part of her left leg but returned to running and dancing. Haslett publicly declared she would dance again and run the marathon, and those spoken goals became her catalyst for recovery. Gubernick challenges listeners to name a personal goal and share it publicly with trusted people to reshape their motivation.
Chapters
Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Just the other day, a couple days ago, we ran our interview with Adrian Haslett, and I'm going to guess many of you have probably listened to it by now, but if you've not, I would definitely go back block out an hour and listen in, listen to that story Adrian tells us. Adrian, a professional ballroom dancer at the peak of her career, finds herself at the finish line of the Boston Marathon as a spectator in 2013 and experiences life transformation by a bomb that, that went off, and she ends up losing a portion of her left leg. She has to recover. She has to persevere. She's got to display massive resiliency in the face of adversity. And, and she goes on to not just recover, but find herself at the, at the starting line of the Boston Marathon just a few years later and becomes an accomplished runner from there and dances again and becomes an inspirational speaker and has a TED Talk of 18 million+ viewers, and it goes on and on, and the best is yet to come for her. Adrienne's truly a very special individual. And one thing that she discussed with me in that interview was what I would call the power of goals and the power of hope. There was this transformative power of hope that, that you heard Adrienne speak around. She was determined to not just recover, but to set bold goals like running the Boston Marathon, like dancing again. She told us a story about when she was in the hospital not too long after the bombing. And she had this conversation with Anderson Cooper. He was interviewing her. And if you recall, she said she was kind of out of it. She was a little loopy from the drugs she was you know, being fed for her pain, I'm assuming. And she was being interviewed by Anderson, and she made some statement. She declared, actually, that she'd dance again. As a matter of fact, I think Anderson asked her, you know, "When you dance again, will you teach me?" And she said, "Yes, of course I will." And she declared that she would dance again. Not too long after that, she declared that she would run the marathon, that she would run the Boston Marathon, the same marathon where this bombing occurred. She would one day run it. Now, mind you, she's missing a leg. She was not a runner before that. And she'd have to do it with the prosthetic. But Adrienne had this philosophy, she has this philosophy that she shared with us. It was a philosophy around saying her goals out loud. And when you say your goals out loud, it makes them real. Not only did she say her goals out loud, what she had shared with us is one thing that she'd consider, or she believes that others would say is weird about her, is that she's constantly talking to herself. She's saying affirmations out loud and she doesn't care who hears her. She is constantly talking to herself out loud, out loud, usually in the positive. Saying goals, saying affirmations, things of that nature. And she had put it out there that I'm gonna dance again. And she had said that on an interview with Anderson Cooper. And she had said to many of her friends and those she was speaking to, I'm gonna run the Boston Marathon. She said that goal out loud and said those goals out loud and it made it real. Running the Boston Marathon for her was a way to say thank you to the Boston Strong community. And it was to inspire others. There was a tremendous amount of accountability when she said it out loud. See, Adrienne found that when she shared her goals publicly, there was this role of accountability. And this is before— when she said these things, she had to have some degree of doubt that she could even achieve them, but she did it nonetheless. And she shifted from being a non-runner to completing her first marathon and a second marathon and other running events. She became a competitive distance runner. And she didn't end up dancing again. She did end up teaching Anderson Cooper how to dance and said he wasn't all that bad. So, I think there's just so much power in speaking these goals out loud, having affirmations out loud. I think most of us, many of us may write our goals down, may think of them in our head or affirmations down, think about affirmations in our head, but rarely do we cast them out to all those around us to hear. So, I want to ask you today to think about a goal that you have that you've maybe been hesitant to share. And I want to challenge you to speak that goal out loud to someone, ideally someone you trust, or maybe to your group of peers, or maybe to your team. I want to challenge you to put that goal out there for all to hear. Adrienne had said to us, there's a great quote, she has said, hope is what gets us going. It's the belief that the future can be better. I just love that quote around hope. And I think that when you cast, you know, your, your vision out loud, your goals out loud, when you have this, this belief or this power of hope, you could overcome so much, and you can rally those around you to support and inspire you just as you're doing the same for them. So, quick hitter today. Remember, think about a goal and share it publicly. Put it out there. Don't be afraid. And see how it changes your behavior or your thought process around achieving that goal, much in the same way I think it inspired Adrian. To, to have the determination and commitment to go after hers. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
