Shelly Rood shares how her son's knocked-out tooth and her own facial scar taught her to stop hiding wounds and start owning them as proof of survival. She challenges you to show off your scars, physical or otherwise, as stories that make you who you are.
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Good morning everyone, Shelly Rood with Mission Ambition. Welcome to your weekly Dare. Dare to Be is our weekly newsletter that goes out to the world hoping to inspire you through stories of personal and professional business success so that you can get your week off to a great start. Because Mondays belong to winners and that's exactly what you are. So let's click Claim the day as we head into our work week. This week we are drawing inspiration from a personal story. My son was in a pretty bad skateboarding accident last weekend, and the mental journey that he went through is just astonishing. His perspective changed, and as his perspective changed, everything that he got out of this negative situation really helped develop the character within him. Are you ready for this week's dare? This week I dare you to show off your scars. I want you to think back of some major traumatizing whatever, whether it's a physical issue, a mental issue, something that happened to you, your parents were divorced, you have a medical condition, whatever those scars are, we're going to think about them and we're going to think about how you retell the story of those scars. When this happened to my son on Saturday night, I would catch him crying and sobbing. At one point I said, "Jackson, does it really hurt that bad?" He said, "No, Mommy, the kids will make fun of me." That taught me a lot about where his perspective was on the whole situation. Later that evening, he came up to me and said, "Well, Mom, now I know how a hockey player feels." He found some source of social connection through what had happened to him and realized that it happens to a lot of other people, too. By Monday morning, his journey was a little further along and he actually was excited to go to school so that he could show the kids for a day or two what it looked like to have your front tooth knocked out. Here's some pictures, 'cause I know you guys are interested in exactly what happened to him. So when we think about our own scars, I know I have one, and when I tell the story, I never say, "This is what happened to me." My story always starts with, "I was trying this awesome thing when," and then we talk about how life interrupted our fabulous and wonderful plans. So I was at boot camp, starting to serve my country, very motivated, working with a team on an obstacle course, when we lost balance, fell 6 feet above ground, and I was knocked in the face with a huge chunk of wood. Jessica Stern, I know you're out there, she's my battle buddy, she remembers this very well. If you guys ever notice the scar that I have under my left eye and into my nose, um, went to the emergency room, had a bunch of stitches put back in, my face was completely busted open to the bone. It was horrifying. It's one of my favorite stories of my life, and my perspective on it is just awesome. I own that scar, and I'm proud to tell stories about it. And I want you to feel the same way about your scars, just like my son now feels proud about his fake front tooth that he's gonna have for the rest of his life. So this week, I dare you to show off your scars, really figure out what's deep down inside of you, what helps craft your character, and let's own it as we go into this work week. I am Shelli Rood with Mission Ambition. If you would love for me to come in and spread the message of encouragement to your team, please email me at coach@shellyrude.com. Check us out on the web at missionambition.org, and while you're there, head over to Facebook and leave me a 5-star review. Thank you so much, you guys. Go out and have an awesome work week. It's beautiful. I'm glad the sun's out today.
