313. Close Calls

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 313: Close Calls.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello everybody. How’s it going? I just wanted to give a quick mention that I’ve been getting so many questions and requests about wanting information about the Business Minded coaching program. So, if you’ve been following along on the Tuesday bonus episodes I’ve been talking business and I’m going to keep doing that through to the end of the summer. But we are going to be starting on Business Minded in September and it’s going to be a year long program.

And I promise you that I have details coming very soon. So, stay tuned. Make sure you’re following along with Business Minded on Tuesdays. And make sure that you are on the waitlist where we’re going to send all the information, because there’s some of you listening that are like, “I don’t care about business. I don’t want to start a business.” And that’s okay. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.

I’m not going to stop talking about development, and the brain, and emotions, and all of the things that I’ve been talking about here on Be Bold for years. Are you kidding me? I love that stuff. So that’s why we’re creating a separate interest list for people interested in business because eventually we’ll sort of make sure that we’re not giving people things they don’t want. Alright, so jodymoore.com/business is how you get on that interest list to make sure that you’re getting all the goods.

Okay, today I want to talk about close calls. I want to talk about when you have a close call. You guys have experienced this. It’s not just me. Something happens and it could have been a disaster. It was nearly a disaster but then luckily it wasn’t a disaster. And the brain wants to loop on it. I had a close call this week which is what made me want to record this episode because I’ve been watching my brain and I’ve been noticing my brain. And I’ve been playing with what will serve me best when I have a close call.

So, this might be that you’re driving down the road and suddenly another car swerves into your lane. And you swerve out of the way just in time. Or you’re the one who swerves into someone else and they honk, and you quickly swerve back the other way and you barely don’t have an accident. But you almost had a car accident. It was a close call. It could be physical danger like that.

It could be emotional danger. You walked out of your bathroom and you had a piece of toilet paper stuck coming out the top of your pants and you didn’t realize it. But you happened to turn around and catch a glimpse in the mirror and then remove it just in time before you walked out into the world. And you would have been embarrassed had you not noticed that. And your brain’s like, “Phew, that was a close call”. It can be anything trivial like that to really big what could potentially be more serious disasters.

Let me tell you about my close call and then I’m going to walk you through some options for what we want to do afterwards mentally and emotionally. How I recommend that we direct our brains after a close call. So, I was invited to be on TV. Did you hear that? TV. I love TV, personally. I don’t know about you, but I love TV. And in my mind you don’t get to go on TV unless you have something really important to say, or a lot of money.

So, the fact that somebody invited me to be on TV was pretty awesome. It wasn’t, like some people might say it wasn’t a big deal. It was just a local news program type show. But I chose to think, whoa, this is a big deal, I’m going to be on TV. And best part of it all, I mean it does feed my ego a little bit to think they want me to be on TV.

But much more importantly than that the reason I was excited to go on TV was because I would get in front of more people that way possibly. I would get to get my tools, and my message, and the help that I’m trying to put out into the world to more people. And if that helped more people, even if I never met that person, they never ended up ever paying me a dime, or anything. I don’t care. I want to get this to more people. I want to help more people, that is my mission.

And so, the fact that I was going to get to probably get in front of some people who otherwise I wouldn’t get in front of was pretty exciting. It wasn’t going to cost me a dime to get that help out to more people. Awesome. Here’s what happened. I’ve had kind of a busy week, which I totally put on myself. Whenever I start feeling busy I know that I am not focusing, and planning, and managing my brain correctly. So that’s what I did this week.

And I’ve been working longer hours than normal and creating more content than normal. So, my brain is tired. And I went and gave a talk to some youth and their parents on Wednesday night, and it was awesome. And then I thought to myself, I can sleep in a little bit tomorrow. I think I will. I think I need a little more sleep. So, I did, I slept in longer than normal, got up, took a shower, got dressed, thought that what I had on my calendar that day was just a call with someone on my team, that was an important call, but that was all I had.

The rest of the day I was just going to get some work done. And at about 10:05 my phone rings, and I didn’t have my phone with me because often I don’t, my kids take it. And I normally have a watch that buzzes when my phone rings so it notifies me. But I had taken that watch off to charge it. And the only reason I knew I got a phone call at 10:05 is because my husband said, “Your watch is right here on the counter and it’s buzzing. I think you’re getting a phone call.”

And I looked at it, and I didn’t know the number so I ignored it. And then that same number came through again. I’d put my watch on at this point. Same number calls again a couple of minutes later. And I think, somebody’s really trying to get a hold of me, so I listen. And it’s the TV station. And they’re saying, “Hey, we’re about to go live with your segment and we don’t see you online. I hope you’re coming.”

This was an online visit I was making to a TV show. And my brain went into panic mode. Oh my gosh, I am supposed to be on TV in one minute. I was actually supposed to be there five minutes ago I thought. And then I started thinking back to wait a second, it’s 10 o’clock. I was supposed to go on that TV show at 9 o’clock. I don’t know why they’re calling me now. But thank goodness they didn’t call me at 9 o’clock because I didn’t get out of bed till about 9 o’clock. And then I got in the shower at 9 o’clock. And I was like, holy cow, I totally forgot about it.

So, I hurried, I said, “I will be right there.” I called them right back, “I’m coming right now.” I plugged in my computer, booted up, threw on some lip gloss, pressed play. And they said, “Alright Jodie, we’re going live in 45 seconds.” And they did the countdown and I went live and I did my quick little TV segment. And they said, “Good job, you nailed it.” And then it was done. And my brain was looping on it all day.

My brain was telling me, oh my goodness, you almost didn’t show up for your TV segment. You almost no-showed them. They’re probably never going to invite me back anyway just because they had to call and remind me. That’s not very professional, okay, maybe. But also, it would have been way worse, it was a close call.

My husband happened to be by my Apple Watch, which actually it’s a Fitbit. But he happened to be by my watch and say, “Hey, your watch is buzzing. I think someone’s trying to get a hold of you.” And I happened to have at least gotten dressed and put some makeup on and looked somewhat presentable. And I happened to have already prepared for that call, which sometimes doesn’t happen. Sometimes I do it right before. I happened to have my notes all ready to go, it just so happened that it all worked out fine.

And then here’s the other part, remember I said I was supposed to go on that show at 9 o’clock. Well, they had emailed me earlier in the day saying, “We’re running a little behind. We’re not going to be ready for you until 10:45.” And then it turned out they actually weren’t ready for me until about 10:05, which is exactly the time when I was ready and saw their call and hopped on. And it all worked out. But it was such a close call.

So, let’s talk about what our brains want to do after a close call. Our brains want to loop on what could have gone wrong first of all. That’s what my brain was doing. It was trying to imagine what would have happened had I not shown up at all. Had I not received their call or not taken the time to figure out who is this calling me. What would have happened had I been at the park with my kids, or at the gym, or just still in bed? What would have happened had I been still in my pajamas or something just unpresentable for TV? What would have happened?

And then it gets really creative and starts creating all these disaster scenarios about how I would just be completely untrustworthy. And it would kill any opportunity I have to ever work with certainly this TV program, or maybe any other. And just on and on about how bad it would be. I like to make it really dramatic. I don’t know about you. My brain likes to get really dramatic. It would probably on live TV be like, “Now we’re going to hear from Jody Moore.” And then just nothing.

Even though in reality that probably wouldn’t happen. They would just take that segment out. But that’s where my brain goes, to the worse case. This is what we do. The brain is super imaginative. It comes up with some great scenarios. So, the brain also wants to loop on reminding us how dangerous that was. And I don’t know about yours, but my brain wants to judge me. So, I always talk about the shame blame trap. Our brain wants to be like, “Something’s wrong with you. You’re a hot mess. You can’t even follow a basic schedule and show up on time.”

But then that doesn’t feel good so we want to go to blaming someone else. I want to be like, “I bet this is my assistant’s fault. She probably put it in my calendar wrong, or you know what? She needs to remind me every day what’s happening”, which is nonsense. First of all, she does already do all of that. And yeah, she makes mistakes on occasion, but not very often, and this certainly wasn’t one. She did not make any mistake. This is definitely not her fault.

So, I’m like, “This is the TV station’s fault for some reason, let me think why. You know what? They should have sent me that Zoom link earlier. They only sent it that day.” As though that’s a legit reason. That’s what my brain kind of does. And then it comes back to shame. No, this is me. I’m a mess. I’m irresponsible. I’m too busy. I have too many things going on. I need to learn to say no, I need to – all the judgment on myself. The brain is tempted to do that after a close call.

Something almost went wrong. Who’s fault was this? Then it wants to just be in fear and worry. And it wants to go, “Listen, we can never let this happen again. We should just never get in a car again, that way we never almost get in an accident.” I mean, that’s what the brain does.

So, this is all a little bit dramatic and unnecessary. And yet it feels useful to the brain. This is what the brain is supposed to do. The brain is supposed to learn from the experiences that we have. And then rewire itself accordingly to help us not only be safer and live longer, but to have a better life. But it’s a little out of hand and there is a point of diminishing returns. In other words, I’m all for us keeping the part of our brains that learns from past experiences and adjusts accordingly.

So, in this situation I’m all for, let’s slow it down. Let’s decide, is there anything we want to learn and take from this experience? If I didn’t know that planners were a thing, and calendars are a thing, and that was all new information to me. I might use this experience to learn about planners and calendars. I might ask other people, “How do you make sure that you remember to show up for appointments that you’ve scheduled?” And they’d say, “I have a planner. I have a calendar.” They might even give me new suggestions like, “I always set an alarm for things that I know I really need to not forget.”

Alright, let’s get some advice. Not really a lot of new advice in this situation. Really pretty much just I was a human. I was being a human that day. I’m always a human, but my humanness showed up in terms of me getting tired, and overwhelmed, and overlooking something. So, I don’t really need to take a lot of new information from this, brain. Thanks anyway, thanks for looking out for me. We don’t need to worry. We don’t need to panic. You know what? In fact, even if worst case scenario happened, I would be okay. It would be okay.

I sometimes will make mistakes. I will mess up. Even in what my mind thinks are really gigantic ways, or what the world would say is a really big way. That will happen. I’m not going to sit around worrying and fearing that because that will not serve me, that will cause me to play small. I could just prevent that by never agreeing to go on anybody’s show, or podcast, or anything ever again. But that’s not how I want to live my life.

So, the solution isn’t let’s make sure we never miss an appointment. Yeah, we want to do our due diligence to not miss an appointment. The solution is, if I missed an appointment, it would be okay, brain. We don’t have to panic. Not making a mistake is not the goal. Do you see what I’m saying? So, in other words it’s okay, we don’t need to panic, and we’re not going to keep looping on this. We’re not going to keep thinking about it.

Now, here’s my favorite way to redirect away from that. That was dangerous is one version of the story. Something almost went terribly wrong is one version of the story. But you know what is an equally true version of the story? Everything is rigged in my favor. Clearly I am watched over. Clearly I am guided in my work. Clearly I was supposed to go on that TV show and share my message in the five quick minutes that I had to share my message. Clearly that was supposed to happen. Somebody was supposed to hear the message that I got to share that day.

And it is not because of me. It’s not because I’m so great or I’ve done anything amazing. It’s not me at all. If it were me, I wouldn’t have even been on that show. Clearly I’m watched over and guided and protected because look at all the things that went right, even though I dropped the ball, even though I didn’t remember. I didn’t look at my calendar that night before I went to bed. I didn’t get up on time. I didn’t set an alarm.

But something else, some higher power, you can call it God, you can call it spirit, you can call it the atonement, the enabling power of the atonement. You can call it the universe, whatever you want to call it. There’s something higher guiding me towards the things I’m meant to do. Because it just so happens that that TV program was running behind, not just a little behind, a whole hour behind that day. And it just so happens that my husband noticed my watch buzzing on the counter. It wasn’t even buzzing. It was just barely vibrating and he noticed.

And it just so happens that I had gotten up and put on some makeup and a decent shirt and was ready to go for the day. So, we can say it just so happens and there’s a whole bunch of coincidences, and then panic. Or we can say clearly I am being guided by a higher source as are you in every area of your life, my friends. We are looked out for. We are guided. The righteous desires that we pursue, I’m not saying sit back on the couch and miracles happen.

I’m saying, get up and do your best, but when you fall short, a higher power, which I happen to believe comes from the enabling power of the atonement of Jesus Christ. But whatever you believe it is, a higher power will step in and carry you the rest of the way. And this doesn’t mean that you ever won’t drop the ball. It could have been that I didn’t show up, that I missed it.

Again, it’s still all rigged in my favor. If I didn’t show up, I can choose to believe I was not supposed to give my message that day, for whatever reason. That was my path. I’m being guided in a different direction. I’m being steered away from that and towards something else. I wonder what it is. But there are so many instances when it does all work out.

Your child was almost injured, but then not. Or for me it’s like I almost forgot to pick my child up, but then I remembered at the very last minute. Apparently I have a forgetfulness problem it seems like. When you have a close call, you can make it that was scary, something crazy almost happened, we should be freaked out. Or you can make it, that was an amazing miracle. There was an example of how my life is guided. Love it.

Alright you guys, thanks for joining me today. Have a beautiful rest of your week. Please share this episode if you found it to be valuable. And I just appreciate all of the sharing and kudos that you guys give to the podcast. It helps more people to find it. So, I’d love if you’d leave me a review or share it on your social. And I’ll see you next week. Take care. Bye.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.