This content was created by Susan Britton MCC. This content was uploaded by Susan Britton MCC. This is a YouTube video titled "Friday Encouragement: Would you rather lose $15K or 5 pounds?" (created 2020-11-13). It is a first-person encouragement monologue by Susan in which she shares a personal anecdote about receiving an IRS notice requiring an additional $15,000 and noticing an apparent 5-pound weight gain while on vacation. She explains that an uneven scale produced inaccurate data, which led her to shame and catastrophize, and uses the story to urge viewers not to let a single external data point define their identity. The piece is motivational in tone and closes with a supportive message. (Last edited 2026-03-26.)
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Hey, it's Susan. Here's my Friday encouragement. This one's a little bit vulnerable for me. It involves the loss of $15,000 and the loss of 5 pounds. So here's my story. A couple of weeks ago, husband and I packed up the car, closed up the house, get ready to go on vacation down in Phoenix. And it's sort of a start in Phoenix for a week to golf, and then we're gonna go up and get some settled in our place near Palm Springs where we spend much of the winter. And so as we're pulling out of the driveway, I thought, I better check the mail one last time. Did so, and there's a letter from the IRS there. Not good when the IRS is your pen pal. So I open it up, and it informs me that there was an error on my 2018 taxes, and I owe an additional $15,000. So I take a deep breath. I was really proud of myself. I didn't panic. I thought, okay, get proactive. Call the CPA, research it. How are you gonna handle this? And off we went. So then we land in Phoenix, and over the last couple of months, I will admit that kind of the COVID quarantine got to me and I gained a few pounds. And I know I'm not alone in that one. A lot of people have told me the same things happened. So a couple of months ago, I got serious about trying to get more exercise and more movement and logging my calories and paying attention to eating clean, or at least cleaner. And went into vacation and kind of just threw caution to the wind and thought, I'm probably gonna gain some of this back. So vacation's over, we come and move into our little place here in the desert area. I unpack my scale, I put it on the ground, I step on, I think, oh my God, I gained all 5 pounds back. And I want to tell you, that sent me into a tailspin much more than the 15,000 did. So I'm just like beating myself up, and I mean, the narrative and the imposter syndrome and the shaming that I was doing internally was crazy. So the next day I got on the scale again and I gained another pound, and I thought, something is wrong here. And this little intuition said, that floor does not feel flat and even. So move the scale, find this flatter area, hop on, and lo and behold, I'd only gained 1 pound after eating really bad over the last week of vacation. So long story short, the moral of this story is I had used this external piece of data that was inaccurate, and I had made all sorts of assumptions and shamed myself around that piece of data. And I'm sure that there are probably plenty of others of us out there who have done something similar, where we've picked up one piece of data and just sort of magnified and catastrophized it and had it kind of reflect on who we are and what our identity is. And the truth is, that is not who you are. So love and light to you this day.
