How do you get fired up and stay fired up in the midst of change and challenging circumstances? Carol Grace Anderson shows the way

Hello everyone and welcome to the Better Life Better Business podcast presented by The Speakers Group. I'm Shawn Ellis, founder of The Speakers Group, and today I'm talking with Carol Grace Anderson, motivational speaker and expert and author of Get Fired Up Without Burning Out. You can find Carol online at getfiredup.com. Today I'm going to be asking her for her best advice on how you can do just that, how you can get fired up and stay fired up without burning out, especially in the midst of challenging circumstances. So I want to let Carol tell you a little bit of her story in just a moment because then you'll see that this is a woman who doesn't just speak about getting fired up and staying motivated, but she really knows firsthand how to overcome adversity and You can stay fired up through all of life's challenges. What I will tell you is that Carol has been a sought-after speaker and best-selling author for over 15 years. She's been published in 4 languages and also contributed to the mega bestseller Chicken Soup for the Soul series. I've known her for several years. We both live here in Nashville, and I am absolutely thrilled to have her with us today. So Carol, welcome and thank you for being here.

Ah, thanks for inviting me. I'm very glad to be part of this venture. It's very exciting and very relevant and timely, and so I'm excited to be part of it.

Well, thank you, thank you, Carol. Before we get into the practical advice and some of the questions I want to ask you, as I mentioned, I'd love for you to just share with our listeners a little bit about your life story because it's really a remarkable story, and I know that a lot of what you share comes out of that story as much as it comes from your formal research and expertise and studies. I know that your life experience has had a major influence on that. So can you just tell us a little bit about from growing up and coming to Nashville and some of the interesting journey that you've been on?

Sure. When I was a kid, my mom, dad, my oldest sister Lynn, and I lived in an 18-foot trailer in a trailer park. And it was in New Jersey, right across the border of New York City. So we were surrounded by circus performers because they lived in the trailer park and then they could ride around to the different circuses in their trailers. So I learned at an early age that I— first of all, I thought everybody lived on wheels because that's, that's all I had seen. And I remember my parents always being very happy and positive and upbeat even in this tiny trailer. And so I think back and I realized that it's not the size of our space that we live in, it's the life in our space. And as I think back, my mom was such a great role model because in the summer she'd plant these little sunflower seeds in back of the trailer, and when you drive by our little trailer, you'd see these huge, bright, blossoming, beaming sunflowers that were taller than the trailer. And I saw that— what an attitude she had. You know, she could have had so many challenges, I'm sure, but she turned her challenges into strengths and made the most of it. She literally bloomed where she was planted. And when I was 12, we moved upstate New York to a little town called Godefroy, New York. I'm sure none of you listening have heard of it, but it's between Huguenot and Cuttybackville, if that helps. Okay. And when I was a senior in high school, my guidance counselor, when I asked him if he would help me apply to college because I wanted to be a social worker or a teacher, and he said, "Carol Grace, you are not college material." And I was so crushed, and I went on to find 3 colleges that would take me in line there, and I flunked out of each one and went to the next one and the next one, and I was living up to his low expectations. Then I realized, you know, it's really that old saying, "If it is to be, it's up to me," and it's so true. And I realized that it was my decisions to not really study and not make the most of it, and I knew in my heart I was college material. So I went back to school and buckled down and got my degree, went on to New York University and got a master's in counselor education. And I started teaching, it's really life skills, but it was Psychology 101 and stress management. And after 5 years, it was in a male prison upstate New York, and I would see the same faces come back over and over again. And so to keep myself fired up, I got a little group together with my sister Mary Beth and two other women, and we started playing music, and it was country music. So we'd play around New York and New Jersey, and someone heard us and said, "You know, you're really good. You ought to go to Nashville." We said, "Well, we don't really know anyone there." And they said, "We do. We'll set up a meeting." So we drove down here to Nashville from upstate New York and played our little demo, and we were hired to be staff writers for Warner Chappell Music. And we decided at that time that if we are really going to follow this part of our dream, we'll have to just make a sacrifice, which we all have to do in life. And we made a decision to move to Nashville. And when we did that, we had the privilege of singing with Johnny Cash on one of his albums, and we sang with Willie Nelson. And finally, we toured with Roy Clark. We went all over the world. It was fantastic. It was so much fun doing The Tonight Show and all kinds of special but we were on the road for 275 days a year some years, and it occurred to me that I'm singing a lot of "oohs" and "ahs," and it's so much fun, but I kind of took a detour of my real passion, my dream of sharing what I'm learning with others. And I went to a motivational seminar, and I sat in the very front, and I could see that these speakers were sharing their stories, but there wasn't one woman all day. It was an all-day seminar, and not one of the speakers was a woman. So I thought, I need to be doing this. I'd love to be sharing what I'm learning on my journey. And that's what led me to, to decide that I would do whatever it takes to become a professional speaker. And that was 18 years ago, and I'm just very grateful that it has worked out. And one speaking engagement led to another, and another, and another. So, that also led to my writing books. And when I was— oh, it was 1995— and my younger sister Mary Beth, who I moved here with, and sang with, and traveled with, she was battling breast cancer. And I realized that she was really fading, and I spent time with her. I took her to her chemo sessions, and then when she passed away, I just thought, "What am I going to do? What can I I'm so burned out now, I don't know how I'm going to get myself fired up again. So I hit the books and I started to write my own book, and that's how Get Fired Up Without Burning Out came about, really. It was to try to, to deal with the loss of my sister. And through the years, you know, we all have challenges, we all have losses. I lost all vision in my left eye permanently when I was stressed out and didn't know how to really de-stress. And so I talk about that, how important it is to keep fired up without the burning out part, you know, and to keep balanced. So I had to learn lessons for myself, and that's what I share in my programs. Yeah, I think that works.

That personal experience is— well, it's just— that's an amazing story. That's why I wanted you to share it. And, you know, I just saw there was a Families and Work Institute study that was released this year that said that more than a third of of workers in our country feel stressed or burned out by their work to the point that it affects their performance. Coming out of this experience and what you speak about, what advice would you have? I think we can probably all get ourselves fired up at one point or another, but how do we keep it going, or is that even realistic? What is your experience? What is your— your advice on that?

It really takes work, Shawn Ellis. I've tried shortcuts myself. You just have to do small steps every day. What we focus on is what flourishes. We know that. And sometimes to keep fired up, we have to slow way down. We're in such a treadmill of activity, and technology has changed so much that now we can work 24 hours a day. Woo-hoo! So, we have to learn to unplug. We have to learn to have fun. We have to learn to give ourselves time to have fun and chill out. And, I find that so few people can do that, or feel like they can't do that. And, it's a new perspective. If we look at it with a new fresh perspective, it's not reinventing the wheel. It's simply to make few changes but be consistent. Make small changes and stay with it. It's like climbing any mountain. We have to just take one step at a time, and if we just move up a degree— they say that water is really hot when it's 211 degrees, but when it goes up one degree to 212 degrees, it's boiling. And when it's boiling, then we can, we can purify things, we can cook things. You know, it changes the whole use and the relevance of the water.

Right, wow.

Just one degree. So if we just do something new every day, just take a step toward our goal, toward keeping fired up, keeping that passion. We were all born with that passion. When we're little kids, you probably see it in your own, but they crawl around and they're so happy to learn everything, and they're very happy with life, and they're excited. And then as they get older, they hear the word "no," they hear the word, you know, "grow up" or "be quiet." "Sit down." And they kind of get squelched in their creativity and their passion. And what I like to do is remind people to be more childlike and to go back to when life was fun. And one of the requirements that Southwest Airlines has in their application is you must agree to have fun. And if you have flown Southwest, which I'm sure you have, you can see that they do have fun. In fact, the other day I was on a flight and the flight attendant said, "We'd like to welcome you aboard this flight, and we are known here at Southwest for having very handsome and very capable pilots. Today's pilot is very capable." That's awesome. They have fun. We have to go back to say, "I am going to commit to having more fun and chilling out and putting time into other areas than just working and doing." to-do lists are from here to eternity. We have to stop and chill out. Stop, look, and listen, like we learned in grade school.

Yeah, and I love what you said about the one-degree thing and just doing even one thing differently. I think especially if we are feeling burned out, just everything looks like a mountain at that point and we feel like maybe we need to turn our whole life around. But just the— just the reminder that it's, you know, if we could just do one thing, move that one degree, that it doesn't have to be something huge. We can start with just one thing today.

Right, right. And then it's more doable. It doesn't seem overwhelming. It's the way we look at it. You know, Dr. Carl Menninger always said that attitude is more important than the facts. And if we just tweak our attitude, start looking at the choices we have, and realize that everything we're doing is a choice pretty much. We can't, of course, control the circumstances. Circumstance, but we can always control our response.

Sure.

And so once we think that way and realize, well, today I can't control the weather, I can't control the traffic, but I can control what I do about it. And if we keep that in mind, that is such a powerful thought to realize that we have choices all day long.

Right.

It puts us back in the driver's seat.

Definitely. What, since most of our listeners are in the workplace in one way or another, so let's say that someone is listening and this advice you've given so far is, you know, that they come away from this interview feeling, "Okay, I can do that. I can get myself fired back up." What about that scenario in the workplace where, you know, we've all had one of those coworkers and we say, "You know what? Well, this one of my coworkers is just—" can bring everyone else down. I'm going to work on myself here, but how can we get her fired up or how can we get him fired up? What do you say to someone who's in a situation like that?

I think most people have experienced that or they are experiencing that right now, Shawn Ellis. There's always somebody who looks at the dark side of everything. I was listening to Ed Gordo, who did an interview with you recently, and he was talking about negotiation. I thought it was really, really interesting and very well done. And he gave some wonderful points, and one of them was that you can only control you. And that's so true. We can try to understand the negative person on our team. We can try to include them. And then if they are just resisting to everything we do, we have to move on. And we say, well, we can control our response, so let's keep ourselves positive. Let's try to be role models instead of role players, and let's be role models of having a great attitude. And we'll have to deal with this person or try to include them, try to understand why they are acting that way, because there's always a reason, or there's fear, or there's always some underlying factor when people are negative, right? And if we try to understand and try to, to make them feel comfortable, and then if they're just not willing to do it, we have to, you know, put our mask on first and take care of ourselves. Yeah, because they can bring the whole company, the whole organization, the whole association, whatever it is, they can bring it down. It happens in so many organizations, and, and it is something to deal with. And if we, I think, try to be more understanding of it, we will approach it in a more positive way. Yeah, great, great advice.

I know sometimes just that ability to step back or step outside ourselves just for a moment to think about what it, you know, what that person may be going through or what situation they're in. Exactly. Good advice. Well, before we go here, one of the One of the things that I've heard the most here at the Speakers Group in the last couple of years, our clients have been looking for help managing change because it doesn't matter what field you're in. We hear a lot about it in healthcare and of course with technology, but everyone's dealing with change in some way and there's so much change that it can be overwhelming. And I've got to think that that plays into this burnout epidemic. So what is your advice for someone that's, you know, they feel like maybe they're just drowning in change every day. It's something new, how would you advise someone like that? What kind of help would you offer them?

The goal, of course, would be to learn to embrace it and just say, okay, change is here to stay. Change is constant. That's one thing we can be sure of. And with technology and social media, for example, it has changed so much in how we market, how we do business. And I read somewhere that it took radio 38 years to reach the masses. It took television 13 years. It took the internet 4 years to reach the masses. So it is just moving, it's snowballing. And to keep up with it, we have to break it down into small pieces because change can be so overwhelming. And I heard my colleague Joe Callaway say that if you think change is stressful, try not changing. That's really stressful when everybody is moving forward. And all these kids today, I see are so computer savvy and tech savvy that it's hard to keep up because they're already just so steeped in technology. So we have to break it down, try to simplify it, and learn one thing at a time and keep practicing so that we can keep moving forward with change because it's here to stay. Just think, in the years I've been speaking and in the years that you've been working at this, things have changed so drastically. When I started, hardly anyone had a website. No one sent electronic press kits. Everything was sending huge, massive amounts of packets. Do you remember that? I do, I remember. Oh, the packages, and they'd all have to go out priority mail, and you'd send a copy of your book and a copy of your VHS video. You know, it was just so different, and it's so much easier today. So if we look at the good parts of change, the positive side of change, things have really, in a gotten more cost-effective to not have to do all those big heavy mailings, to just say, here's a click, visit my website. Right. And a way to keep fired up is to realize that change is here. Let me grasp it. Let me embrace it. Let me do the best I can for today. All we have is today, and if we keep looking in the future and striving, then we're not going to really be fired up for today. Because now is all we have. Absolutely. This moment, this day is it.

Yeah, definitely. And I guess the common theme that we've seen come up time and time again, just in the short time we've talked, is that it comes down to our perspective on things, the way we look at them, and breaking things down into this simple step, whether it's simple changes that we can make to improve our life, or whether it's breaking these external change down into simple things. I guess those are the two things I've heard a lot today.

Yes, and those are three points that I talk about in order to really get fired up without burning out, is to reach into that new perspective. Just look at things in a refreshing way. And then we have to take risks. We have to take a risk in order to change and in order to grow. And third, we have to refuel. We can't run on empty. You know, when a car runs out of gas, it flat-out stops. It doesn't care if you're on the interstate or where you are. But we try to do the same thing. We try to keep going when we're out of fuel, and that's what will make us sick. It will make us stressed out. It will make us depressed. It will take away our energy, and so we have to refuel. And one way to do that every day is just to take a moment to breathe. To breathe deeply and just let oxygen get to every organ of our body. And it's free. We can do it at every red light. We can just breathe is one way to really— it gives you energy plus relaxes you, so it's a double whammy win. And then, if we start focusing on everything going right— it's so easy to focus. Every city I go to, I flip on the TV and there's all the terrible crashes that happened that day and all kinds of local problems that are going on, and it's all pretty much negative. So we have to counter that by looking at everything going right. One thing we can do is wake up every day and spend just even 3 minutes writing down everything going right. And we can start with, "Hey, I woke up." That's a good thing. Definitely. You know, and start getting in the habit. Most of what we do is by habit. They say up to 90% of our behavior is by habit. It's a habit. So if we tweak those habits and start looking at the good, the good in people, the good in that negative person at work, the good in our negative circumstances that seem so negative, but what can we find that's a little light, a little spark in the darkness? What can we find that's something positive in everything that we're involved in?

Excellent, excellent advice, Carol. Well, thank you very much I'm feeling more fired up already. Good. Thank you for this great advice. For those of you who are listening, if you'd like to learn more about Carol and how she can help you get fired up and stay fired up in your life and business, you can find her here at thespeakersgroup.com, of course, but also at getfiredup.com. By the way, when you go to getfiredup.com, look for the fun photos with all the stars that Carol's worked with through the years. Some great, some great pictures there. You can also find her book on amazon.com. And if you're on Twitter, follow Twitter @CarolMotivates, and you can get quick motivational tips and quotes, some great stuff there. But thanks again, Carol. Thank you for listening to the Better Life Better Business podcast, and we'll see you next time.