A leader shares how a suicide attempt in their teens led to a framework about reacting versus responding. They use horse training as an analogy: people and organizations perform better when taught to respond thoughtfully rather than react defensively. Breaking free from limiting labels lets leaders reignite their purpose.
Chapters
And I took a molehill of a breakup in a relationship as a young teenager, definitely blew it up into a massive mountain. You know, it came to this core of I had a self-narrative of the world doesn't want me. Well, if that's the case, I don't wanna be in the world either.
Yeah.
And so I was like, okay, had a day to myself and attempted to take my life. And, you know, God showed up in that moment and he was like, what are you doing? And I was like, what do you mean?
What am I doing?
You know, it's just like, I'm just done. Or he was just like, I could just be like, child, child, child, you know, I could just picture God doing that, right? Like, what are you doing? You know? And God's like, come on, you know, I, I, I love you and that is enough, you know? And so it was like, I had to get, you know, go through that anger and rage and everything that I was feeling in that moment and finally get to a place where I could really listen to God's voice of saying, look, I love you and that is enough. And Lisa, I went through all the teachers that I, that I, that I know and watch, you know, from Tony Robbins to everybody, to the women we have today, Mel Robbins, Marie Forleo, all of them. Who are the— Brené Brown even. Who are the thought leaders? And I know they teach on this principle, but are they teaching it in this framework because I didn't want to be copying anybody.
Right. Right.
And I'm like, I'm like, nope, nobody's teaching it this way. Nobody's teaching. I'm like, this is mine. This is mine. I'm like, so this is what I take, what I take out into the world. And then when I did more self-reflection, I'm trying to be respectful of time too. So let me know when we need to go. Uh, cause I, I blocked it until 9:30. So I'll try to wrap it up in a couple of minutes here.
Kids are important. Your husband's important. All of those things were so important, but they started to become Labels because you left your dream on the table.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And so then you, then you reignited your passion and now you're clearly in that rhythm. You are clearly, because I can see it and I love the visual. I'm such a dual coded learner, uh, learning person. Actually, I have my process was, I love that you said, um, reaction versus responsiveness, because that was one of the things I would teach people. When I was training them with our horses. You want your horses to respond to you, not to react to you, right? You want your horses to be thinking beings because they can think, even though some people think they don't. I have proof that they do, but you want them to be thinking beings, not reactive prey animals, right?
Exactly.
They have, they have the ability to do both. But I brought that forward into business also.
Yeah.
Because you wanna be responsive, you wanna be proactive, right?
Right.
You wanna be creative, but I love your reactor creator. I think that is, I saw it as soon as you held up the word reactor. I was like, I know where she's going with this because it's, you made it a clear visual and also you paint a beautiful path. And I love this, see yourself in the middle. Just use the letter C.
