Choosing Pain on Purpose
5 Lessons Learned From (Literally) Falling on My Face

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #524: Choosing Pain on Purpose: 5 Lessons Learned From (Literally) Falling on My Face

Jeff Sanders
Something very unexpected happened to me recently.

Although you could argue this painful experience was bound to happen at some point, and I'm kind of glad it did.

This is the 5am Miracle, episode number 524.

Choosing pain on purpose. 5 lessons learned from literally falling on my face.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful, lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

In the episode this week, I'll break down a recent running accident that sidelined me for weeks, a few lessons I learned both from the accident and the recovery, and how you can benefit from wild challenges you never saw coming.

Let's get to it.

So yeah, I kind of had an accident.

A running accident.

A brutally non-fun, destructive, painful "ugh" that took place a few weeks ago.

And on the day that this incident happened, I posted on social media summarizing in a nutshell what happened.

And what I'm going to do for you here is actually read to you that post.

I think it does a pretty good job of explaining what happened, and I will go into more detail afterwards.

But here was that post.

If you're looking for a fun/terrifying story from my Monday morning, welcome!

As a runner, today began in one of the best and then worst ways I could imagine.

I was up early, dressed for the below freezing temperatures, and out the door running in my neighborhood before sunrise.

Eleven minutes later, I was face down on the asphalt, with a bloody knee, no water, and no phone.

I wasn't hit by a car, but it sure felt like it.

Quite a few people were leaving for work during my early run, and one of them blinded me with their car's headlights.

In a flash, I tripped on the uneven sidewalk that I could no longer see, and landed directly on my left knee, followed by my right elbow, left hand, and then right hand that was carrying my water bottle, which broke upon impact.

The bottle, not my hand.

I debated posting the picture of my busted knee and chose to spare you from a gross experience.

I have been hobbling around all day trying to get work done, and just thinking about how many close calls I have had while running for the last 15-20 years.

Today was inevitable.

I was always going to fall like this at some point, and that's how it's felt for years.

I'm fortunate nothing is broken, but I'm not just focusing on gratitude.

Instead, as I hobbled home on one good leg, I kept thinking about how to do this better next time.

I'm not going to quit running.

I'm going to run smarter in the future.

I'm not going to blame the driver or even myself.

I'm going to learn from this experience and love the journey along the way.

I'm also not going to do what I've done in the past and just bulldoze my way through an injury.

I'm going to let this heal and return to what I love in a slow and methodical manner.

Just kidding.

That's not how I roll.

But hopefully I'll be smart enough not to make these injuries any worse.

Moral of this Monday - do what you love.

And when you inevitably stumble, learn from the experience and do it all over again tomorrow.

Just smarter, better, and with less blood.

Okay, so that was the post.

That was the experience.

This actually happened.

This was a very real, very unfortunate circumstance.

And I've got at least five lessons, maybe more, to share with you this week about what this experience taught me.

Because there's a lot to pull from here.

And it might just be, "Oh, Jeff fell while running and got a bloody knee.

That's the end of the story."

It could stop there, sure.

But I always look for more when something dramatic takes place in my life.

Any experience can be a lesson.

There's something to draw from this.

In this case, I think we've got quite a few things to draw from.

So let's get to it.

This is Choosing Pain on Purpose - Five Lessons Learned from Literally Falling on My Face.

Lesson number one, the inevitable always happens.

I said this in the post because I thought about that on the way when I was hobbling home that day from the injury, which is that this was going to happen.

This specific incident was written in stone for me at some point.

Whatever you think could or may possibly happen to you, honestly, you should plan accordingly because it might or likely will happen to you.

Yes, this was an accident.

Yes, this was kind of a fluke.

It has never happened before and may never happen again.

But I knew this thing was possible.

And by that I mean, let's look at the practicality of what happened.

I was running at about 5.45 a.m. way before the sunrise.

Sunrise at this time of the year is probably close to 7 a.m.

So it was very dark.

And not only was it dark from lack of sunlight, but in my neighborhood there are no streetlights.

So it is very dark.

And yes, I'm running on sidewalks and on asphalt, which can have potholes on even sidewalks.

You can have things that are hard to see.

And on this particular morning, I forgot my flashlight, but I thought I was OK.

I thought it would be fine.

I literally thought I can see just enough.

I know these roads well.

I've run them a hundred times.

I can do this.

No problem.

Well, problem, which is that I didn't bring my flashlight.

I didn't do the thing I knew I should have done.

And then, you know, for the first mile of this run, things were fine.

Things were good.

I felt healthy.

I felt alive.

I felt fresh.

It was a cold morning.

It was about 28 degrees Fahrenheit.

So about what?

The negative two, negative three Celsius.

It was chilly, but beautiful.

Great morning to go for a run.

First mile was awesome.

And then, of course, the inevitable.

The headlights showed up from these cars.

They blinded me.

And for a split second, I could not see the sidewalk.

And that's all it took.

A little uneven curb, a slight little hiccup in the pavement.

And bam, like I am down face down on the asphalt and it hurts.

Like I want to describe the pain.

It wasn't actually as painful in the moment.

It was the shock that really got to me.

The oh my gosh, like once one second, I am running at a good clip and a split second later, I am down.

That was the part that really got to me.

Not the pain of the knee injury, which was annoying, but just the I cannot believe what just happened.

I was in shock for a while.

I really just could not comprehend the fact that it finally happened because this felt inevitable.

This was a moment I saw coming as a runner for the last 15, 20 years.

I have fallen before.

Usually when I'm distracted, usually when I have my eye off the road or off the trail, like that's what takes place.

If I'm paying attention, I don't fall.

If I'm looking at the ground and I know what I'm doing, I am fine.

But in this case, for that split second, I did not pay attention.

The headlights blinded me.

The sidewalk was uneven.

I hit that thing and bam, I'm down.

The thing is, I have imagined this happening because I've run these roads a lot.

I know how dark it is.

I know how bright those headlights are.

This is not a new experience.

I knew what was possible and then it finally happened.

There's a big part of me that feels as though I've been going through a season of my life where these kinds of things have popped up in my business and personal life.

There's lots of examples I could throw out there, but let's just say that in a general sense of inevitability, I'm in a season where things I thought may happen at some point in the future, those things are happening now and I'm experiencing life in a way that I always knew could be the case and I get to live through it now.

Now, from this idea of it being inevitable, it didn't have to be, right?

I didn't bring my flashlight.

I was unprepared.

I didn't pay attention in that moment where it mattered most.

I could have made different choices.

And of course, going forward, I'm going to.

I have a whole new plan to prevent this from happening.

And that's really the point, right?

Is that things that are inevitable don't necessarily have to be.

We can be more intentional.

We can have better plans and better checklists and better preparation.

We can make smarter choices in the moment.

We can pivot.

An obvious one would be if I see a car coming with headlights when it's dark outside, just stop.

Just stand there, wait for the car to pass, wait until I can see the road and off I go.

Bring a flashlight, bring a headlamp, bring a chest lamp, bring all the lighting that I would possibly need.

I don't know.

Not run when it's dark outside.

Like there's lots of possibilities here that I could have chosen, but I chose this path and I got the results.

It brought me that day.

So I want to be able to say that life may bring you inevitability, that things that you have feared may happen or plan to happen possibly will take place.

And so my real thought around this is if we can craft a life where those things that feel inevitable don't have to be, where we are prepared, we have thought through the things that we know are potentially risky, we can mitigate that risk and then of course optimize the opportunities.

And that's the goal we're going for.

And then of course, if these types of scenarios do happen to you, you learn from them and say, well, maybe it was inevitable.

Maybe it was always going to happen and it did.

Now what?

How will I live differently now that this did take place?

Whatever that thing happens to be.

And speaking of moving forward, lesson number two is to forget blame and focus on the future.

I said this in the post that I was not going to blame the driver who blinded me.

I have no idea who the person actually was.

I'm also not going to blame myself, even though I kind of just did with all these things I know I could change.

My intent here is to make sure that my focus is on positive action oriented behavior.

Blame will keep you in the past.

Action moves you forward and actually solves problems.

This is such an important thing.

There's nothing to do with running, nothing to do with accidents, has everything to do with your take on personal growth.

I have discussed personal development for decades now.

And one of the core elements that I have seen time and time again from my own life, the books I've read, those who I've learned from, the podcasts I've listened to, is this common thread of looking backwards holds you still.

It sends you to a place mentally, physically, emotionally that doesn't result in what you want.

Blaming someone, looking to the past, trying to find a scapegoat, spending your time, your present moments, looking backwards in a way that is destructive, not constructive.

It prevents the forward moving action that we all need to actually get the results we actually want.

I'm not interested in blaming some driver who's going to work that day.

It wasn't their fault for going to work early in the morning.

And it wasn't my fault for going for an early morning run.

It's not fault we're looking for.

It's just great action to make smarter choices in the future.

Have a better plan, have a checklist, recognize the risks and mitigate them.

That's it.

I'm not going to stop running.

I'm not going to be the kind of person who says, "Well, this happened.

Forget running.

I'm just going to do something way simpler now."

Now, sure, maybe in the future when it's dark outside, I'll just go for an early morning hike instead of a run or whatever the case may be.

Maybe I'll mitigate risk in that way.

Or maybe I'll just run with more intelligence.

It doesn't really matter.

The point is there is a future focus with a better plan and off I go.

Lesson number three, accept the rest that shows up.

So this is the one that I have probably experienced the most frustration from as a high achiever, as a recovering perfectionist or active perfectionist, as someone who is a productivity nerd who wants to get stuff done.

If you're telling me I'm not allowed to do something for a while, it bothers me, especially when it's something I want to do.

But of course, when this accident occurred, I got injured and injury forces you to have to have a recovery period.

For me to say, "Oh, my left knee is banged up.

My elbow is messed up.

My wrist hurts.

I broke the water bottle.

Everything fell apart."

And for me to say, "Ah, forget it.

I'm going to go run again tomorrow morning anyway."

No, that's not me.

I'm not David Goggins.

I'm not going to put myself in that position to have that level of risk.

By the way, David Goggins is one of the most extreme people on planet Earth.

You can read his amazing books about how he would probably do things I would not do, which is why he is him and I am me.

But his book Can't Hurt Me talks a lot about this.

I share a different perspective.

And for me, after the injury, it was very obvious I have to wait.

I have to wait.

There has to be a recovery period where I'm not going to be able to do the things I'm used to.

Now, of course, I will have an active recovery period, which means doing everything in my power to assist my body and healing as fast as I can.

And I definitely did that.

That's been a part of my life the last, what, four to five weeks now since the injury.

And it has been the kind of lifestyle shift that I didn't want because I was in a really good rhythm.

I had some great exercise under my belt.

I was building momentum, moving things forward.

I was in a really good place the day of the accident.

So for me to get knocked down in that ramping up period of feeling good, it's very frustrating.

And the challenge for me, the lesson that I was forced to learn was to accept reality, accept the fact that rest was now part of my new equation, that I was going to be home for a little while not doing the thing I want to do.

I can't really run.

I can't really exercise.

You know, my knee was pretty banged up, pretty bloody, the kind of thing, the kind of injury where you don't push it.

You don't stretch the limit there and take more risks.

It was obvious that rest was going to be my new normal.

And so my question was, how do I do that?

How do I accept the rest period that is now in front of me, the margin that is now here where I'm not going to the gym for a while, I'm not going to the trail for a while.

That gives me more time back every day to do other things.

And so the obvious question was, what's the next most important thing I could do?

Well, the funny thing is right after the injury, Nashville got hit with a massive snowstorm and we were snowed in for almost a full week.

And the timing there was pretty ideal because then all of a sudden, wait a minute, I can't exercise and I can't leave my house.

I'm forced to rest yet again.

It was the universe being very clear.

Jeff, just chill, just chill.

Take a break, man.

That's that was pretty obvious.

And so what I decided to do was lean into that and say, if I'm not going to be the extreme guy on one side, I'm going to be the extreme guy on the other.

And so I tend to have that fully on or fully off mentality of if I'm not going to be super caffeinated and exercising and getting stuff done, I'm going to do nothing.

I mean, I'm just going to chill and put on my robe.

I'm going to make some hot chocolate.

I'm going to paint some pictures, which I did.

I'm going to plan my life.

I'm going to look forward to future activities.

I spent a lot of time calendaring, a lot of time looking forward and planning things with more intentionality, a lot of great time with my family and my two daughters and a lot of reflection time.

In fact, what ended up happening during this snowed in recovery period was the best kind of winter break that I definitely don't get during the holidays.

My holidays are crazy.

They're busy.

There's travel, there's family, there's activities, there's events.

I don't get to rest during the holiday season.

Instead for me, it is just a different chaotic pace.

Basically it's just a little more chaos in a new way.

So to be snowed in was wonderful.

It was fantastic.

We built fires, we watched movies.

It was the kind of winter break I always want, but in Nashville, Tennessee, we don't get those kinds of breaks as often as I would prefer.

Uh, once every couple of years we'll get snowed in.

But when those things happen, oh, they're awesome.

And so for me to be able to say this injury happened, it did.

I'm broken in some way and I need to recover.

Well, how can I recover intelligently?

What's the new active intentional plan to allow myself to be my best self as soon as possible to get back to me as quickly as I can.

But in that process, in that time period where I'm not yet back, I have to exude patience.

I have to accept my reality, live in the margin, right?

Just chill.

I'm a very bad guy when it comes to just chilling, but that's my challenge.

That was my challenge.

That is the high achievers dilemma.

Who are you when you're not a high achiever?

Who are you when you're not being productive?

Who is that version of you?

We all have that version.

Some of us more often than others, but we all have those different sides to us.

And my question was, how can I let this season be this season, accept it for what it is, get the most value from it, and then intentionally and intelligently ramp myself back up into the next season as it showed up itself.

So I'm now, as of the recording today, I'm ready again to exercise.

My knee is not a hundred percent, but very close.

I have returned to the gym.

I am working out a little bit back in the sauna, back to weightlifting, back to a little bit of walking and hiking, and I'll be running again very soon.

So I feel good about where I am with this recovery.

I feel good about the fact that my restful recovery period was a beneficial one.

My diet wasn't the best during this period, which is also very common, but that I will work on day by day.

But I do really appreciate and value and have gratitude for the chance to just chill because I'll have plenty of stressful days in the future, plenty of days to do a ton of work.

And I don't want to miss the moment.

I don't want to miss that chance to say, as a guy who values productivity and values getting stuff done, I want to also value downtime and let it be the phenomenal time that it can be.

Lesson number four, don't let the possibility of pain stop you from doing what you love.

The episode this week is called choosing pain on purpose, and that might not make a whole lot of sense based on what I've said, but I think that what I have pulled from this experience of running early in the morning, which by the way, a lot of people view as painful already, it was below freezing temperatures early in the morning, dark, cold, and I'm running.

Most people view that as painful.

I get it.

I love it, but a lot of people would say the opposite.

So when I think about choosing pain on purpose, what I'm really asking myself is what is the risk that I'm willing to take to move myself forward?

What is the marathon that I want to run?

Who is the guy or girl I want to ask out on a date?

The business I want to launch, the graduate school I want to apply to?

What is the thing that I'm going to say yes to, to move myself forward?

Understanding the fact that all those choices, big athletic events, taking a risk with a relationship, launching a brand new business, changing your careers, going to graduate school, all of these are examples of you saying yes to risk.

And all of these examples of risk can involve pain.

All of the journeys that we are on to achieve grand goals and to be these high achievers we want to be are all examples of us choosing some version of pain and thinking ahead, well, wait a minute, if I were to run a marathon, if I were to wake up early before I want to, if I were to launch a new endeavor, begin a new project, take on a new challenge, I'm probably going to experience some level of pain.

And when I think about that, I'm thinking, well, I don't want the fear of that pain to stop me from doing the thing I set out to do.

I don't want the fear of falling on my face in my neighborhood to stop me from taking care of my body, from being athletic, from going to the gym, from running my next marathon.

I don't want the possibility of risk to stop me from the joy of the opportunities that I could experience.

I'm saying this from the perspective of anyone who has ever been through something difficult and been burned by the experience, right?

You got rejected on that date.

You launched the business and it failed.

You went for a run and you got injured.

Bad things can happen and did happen to you.

Now what?

Now what?

Do you let that negative experience define your future or not?

Do you say, well, because running is risky, I'm not going to run.

Do you say because my business failed, I'm not an entrepreneur ever again?

Do you say because I was rejected by this person who I wanted to date, I'm doomed to be single forever?

These kinds of extreme thoughts are so common.

I experience these things all the time and I don't want that to define the way that I approach taking action.

I want the way that I approach action steps and goal achievements and vision, casting a vision for the future to include the wisdom of knowing bad things can happen and here's my plan.

A bad thing did happen and here's how I fix the problem.

A negative experience has the potential to sideline me for weeks, but I have a new way to approach this.

I want that to be the way that I approach all my goals.

If I have a new business idea and it could fail, well, duh, it's a business.

Businesses fail all the time, right?

I'm not interested in the guarantee.

The guarantee is boring.

The guarantee is easy and the guarantee does not carry with it the phenomenal results that you want.

John Acuff, who is a phenomenal guy, has been on my podcast before, lives here in Nashville, was recently talking online about the difference between going on an adventure versus doing chores or errands and he basically defined it as going on an adventure is risk.

It can fail.

You don't know the outcome.

Things could go badly, but an errand or a chore is boring by the very nature of what it is and you know the outcome.

If I do my laundry, the clothes are clean.

If I go buy groceries, I have food in my kitchen.

Errands are boring.

I get the results you want for the thing you're after, but there's no adventure there.

There's no sense of excitement or grand achievement.

It's dull.

Now, a lot of life is like that.

Sure, a lot of life is filled with errands and chores.

You could argue that most of life is just filled with those kinds of activities, but there's a portion of life that's not that.

There's a portion of life that is a grand adventure.

Now, how much of your life you choose to let that grand adventure take hold or not is subjective and totally up to you.

You do not have to be a high achiever.

You do not have to run a marathon.

You do not have to launch a business.

You do not have to take obvious risks, but the problem is that in and of itself is a risk.

The decision to avoid risk is risky.

The paradox of that is kind of annoying, but it's also real, which is that there's no such thing as no risk.

There is no such thing as a risk-free life.

There's no such thing as a life where you avoid it completely.

It will always be there.

It's really a question of what intentional calculated risk do you want to take to get the result you're after and how can you go about that in a more proactive, intentional, and wise way.

So when I have experiences like this, where a run went poorly, it's just a simple question of how do I run again smarter next time?

Because I'm not quitting.

I'm not done here.

My journey includes setbacks.

This is huge.

My journey includes setbacks, and I'm not going to argue the setback is a death knell to the project.

No, it is a part of the process, a part of the journey, but only part.

It's not the whole thing.

It's a small blip on the screen.

I've fallen before.

This is not the first time I've fallen.

This was just the worst one.

This is just by far the most destructive one.

My previous ones were annoying and I would scrape a knee in a small way and kind of be frustrated by it.

This one was the most I'm out for a while experiences, but still, even with that, it's a blip on the screen.

It's a part of the journey.

It is not the whole story.

So if you let the possibility of pain stop you from doing what you love, it's over.

The dream dies.

The whole thing falls apart.

And if you live that life, if you take on that perspective, if the small thing kills the big dream, the big dream never had a chance because the big dream is going to have a lot more of these setbacks, probably much bigger ones to those who succeed or those who persevere, those who do not quit, those who continue despite the setbacks, those who in some ways look forward to the setbacks because it makes you wiser for the next time around.

That's what this is.

Which brings us to the fifth and final lesson.

Choose pain on purpose.

There's an awesome book called The Obstacle is the Way.

I have discussed this book numerous times on the podcast.

Ryan Holiday is the author.

I've listened to the audio book multiple times, including just recently, about two months ago.

And it's a phenomenal reminder that the thing we're after is the thing that we struggle with.

The obstacle is what allows us to succeed.

The obstacle is the point.

The challenge is what leads to the success that our greatest successes and experiences are just on the other side of our greatest fears.

And that by facing our fears or demons or evil monster we're after, when you face them, that's what defeats them.

When you say I ran in the dark and it almost killed me, I'm going to go run in the dark again, but do so smarter next time around.

I'm going to do the hard things first.

I'm going to wake up early, have a 5 a.m. miracle, say yes to my destiny, yes to my big goals.

Ask that question, what would the hero of my story do right now?

I am choosing pain on purpose.

I am acknowledging the obstacle is the way, and I'm saying yes anyway.

I'm saying yes to the challenge despite what I know could happen, because I'd rather live that grand adventure than the opposite.

The errand, the chore, the life filled with boring, methodical, easy answers that bring no joy, no fulfillment, just monotony.

At least that's how I view it.

I know it's kind of bleak, but that tends to be the extreme nature of the way that I think about these things.

There really are only two paths, right?

The path of an adventure or the path without one.

The path where things are possible and the path where things are just dull.

I don't want dull.

I don't choose that.

I was laid off from my job 10 years ago and had the chance at that point to go full-time as an entrepreneur, and I said yes.

I didn't have to.

I had the choice then.

I've had the choice ever since to always go back to the "easier path," but I chose the harder one, to be the entrepreneur, to forge my own destiny in that way.

In the same way with the marathons, the same way with raising a family, going through IVF.

I mean, there's a thousand stories we could tell about choices we all make where we have an easy path and a hard one, or we have a difficult path and a more laid-out-for-us path.

It is your life and it is your choice, but I am arguing the choice of pain, the choice of challenge, the choice of saying yes to greatness despite the comfort you might have on a different path, the harder path to greatness is the one worth living.

It's the one worth pursuing.

So how can you benefit from these wild challenges you never saw coming?

How can you say yes to adventure in a way that's not going to have a curveball knock you off of your path in a horrible way?

I've been thinking about this possibility of relating this story to you on the podcast because I know that there's a lot to pull from a negative story like falling on your face, but the bigger question becomes what's the applicable nature for you?

How are you going to benefit from my negativity?

The best answer is the one that I've discussed a thousand times on this podcast, the Albert Einstein quote, "In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

And there is always opportunity, always opportunity, despite what challenges you may be facing.

Maybe it's not as simple as just you had a small accident.

Maybe it's more complicated.

Maybe it's way harder.

There are still opportunities.

In fact, I would argue the more complicated and crazy the scenario is you're going through, the more opportunities you have.

Your job, your mission is to find them and then leverage them and get the most you can from them.

The wild challenges, the curve balls, the things you never expected oftentimes are the ones that provide the best opportunities to pivot your life in a better direction, to move things forward in a way that otherwise would never have happened.

I have to ask the question, if I was never laid off from my job 10 years ago, would I still be there?

I might be.

It's totally possible.

And in fact, I might argue it's highly likely that I would still be at a job I did not belong at for long.

It was a good job.

I'm not going to say it was a bad one, but it wasn't my future.

That's not my story.

So being laid off was a blessing.

Having that curve ball thrown at me was perfect.

No, it wasn't fun to go through, but man, I took the chance.

I said yes to the pivot.

And the end result is the last 10 years I've worked for myself.

I don't know what the future holds for me.

There's lots of things that can and will go wrong, but at least I know that when those moments show up and the chance to pivot is there, I'm going to make the best choice in the moment that I can, that leverages the future I want.

And that's what it comes down to.

Now, another way for you to benefit from these curve balls is to let the crazy experiences be what they are.

In other words, we're not going to try to morph them into something they shouldn't be.

The challenge is, kind of like the example I gave before, of leveraging the rest period.

I didn't want it at first.

I was rejecting this idea of walking away from a winter break.

I wanted to move and get stuff done and work out, but I was told no in a couple of ways.

So when you let the crazy experiences be what they are, when you let the curve ball be the curve ball, you can actually lean into it and get more value from that pivot than you would if you just simply reject it, if you fight it.

You know, there's this whole history that I have in the past of what I would classify as swimming upstream or going against the grain and not in a good way, in a way that actually has made my life much more difficult, much more obnoxious.

And had I simply gone with the flow of these certain areas, not fought this inevitability that took place, I would actually have more value and more joy and more fulfillment.

Life would be a little bit easier and better because I went with it and didn't fight it.

So let these crazy experiences be crazy sometimes, and that may be the best path forward.

Now finally, for you to benefit from these wild challenges, expect them, anticipate them, plan for them, look ahead to the possibility that this is going to be a part of the journey and do your very best to not be surprised by them.

That's going to be a tricky one, but it is part of it.

I was just thinking the other day about how I tend to get pretty common fears about the future, whether it's about finances or health or family goals I have and these thoughts will be in my head.

And then I'll ask myself, well, how do I not just say no to fear in the future, but acknowledge the fact that, okay, a fearful thought hit me.

What do I do with it?

How do I anticipate I will have more of these in the future and then build a skill set to address those thoughts as they pop up?

How do I anticipate those negative experiences and have a toolbox ready to go to address each and every one of these things because they're going to happen.

There will be curveballs, there will be fear, there will be challenges and difficulties and weird stuff that happens.

But can we prepare now for those moments?

Can we build the skills we need to be able to handle those with ease and a real sense of I've got this because that's what I want.

I want to feel that sense of that problem showed up, no big deal.

I've got a solution right here.

Here's the tool of my toolbox.

Bam, problem solved.

I'd rather live like that than to be surprised by things that I honestly shouldn't be surprised by.

Should have seen it coming.

That fall I had in the asphalt.

Yeah, I saw it coming long, long time ago.

I just now have the opportunity to address it.

And for the action step this week, reflect on a recent difficulty and learn from it.

We all experience challenges and wild curveballs we never saw coming, but we don't always pause long enough to learn from what happened and improve for the future.

So take that time now.

What can you gain from something you've always viewed as a loss?

Now be sure to subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member of the 5am Miracle community by getting the premium ad free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5ammiraclepremium.com.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5am Miracle Podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life and the fun begins bright and early.

---

© 5 AM Miracle Media, LLC