“Getting what we want isn't always what we think it is.” –Shirley Baldwin Owens
There is no way to avoid adversity. But there is a way to navigate through it and use it to your advantage. Today, Shirley and Nina talk about how failures create the greatest successes. Nina shares her unique perspective on facing and conquering challenges and her method of Five-Year Thinking. She also addresses how we can narrow down our choices and be happy with the path we choose. Life is long. Whatever you are facing right now is just a fraction of your life. Learn from it and carry the lessons through the next chapter of your life. Never underestimate the power of resiliency. Tune in to today’s episode!
Highlights:
01:42 What Makes A Great Success
06:46 What’s Written In Your Book?
14:26 Don’t Forget Who You Are As A Woman
16:06 Five-Year Thinking
20:51 Narrow Down Your Options
23:46 Life Is Loonnnngg!
28:50 Embrace Your Challenges With Resilience
Resources:
Book
Tweets:
Stop looking behind. Your future is before you. Tune in as @SfbaldwinOwens and @NinaSossP converse about strategies to successfully navigate through adversities and challenges. #getwhatyouwant#self-sabotaginglanguage #overgeneralizing #options #letitgo #resilience
Quotes:
05:57 “We never grow from a place of success. We get success from going through failures.” -Shirley Owens
22:16 “If we spend all our time worrying about all the options we didn't choose, then we'll never be happy with the ones we chose. We have to choose an option and then choose to be happy with it.” -Nina Sossamon-Pogue
27:57 “Our trials and our adversities come from a place of accomplishing everything that we thought that it was that we wanted to.” -Shirley Owens
29:07 “Resilience is… adapting with optimism.” -Nina Sossamon-Pogue
30:41 “You can't ever go back. But you get to decide what pieces of you to take forward into the next part.” -Nina Sossamon-Pogue
31:40 “We don't learn from anything we do. We only learn from what we do wrong.” -Nina Sossamon-Pogue
Connect With Nina:
Nina Sossaman Pogue is a Bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker, and former USA gymnast. She is an expert on resilience and she researches and writes about how highly successful individuals and companies get from adversity to achievement. Nina was also an Emmy Award-Winning Television News Anchor and Reporter who jumped from TV to tech. The highs in her life came with some life-changing lows. Nina is the author of This Is Not The End- Strategies To Get Through The Worst Chapters Of Your life, where Nina shares her proven approach to help you grow from adversity and control your own destiny.
Transcriptions
Shirley Owens: My guest today is Nina Sossamon-Pogue. She is a bestselling author, speaker, and former USA gymnast. She was also an Emmy Award winning television news anchor and reporter who jumped from TV to tech. The highs in her life came with some life changing lows. Nina is the author of This Is Not 'The End': Strategies to Get You Through the Worst Chapters of Your Life where Nina shares her proven approach to help you face life's hardships grow from adversity, and control your own destiny. Nina has three kids in college, and she and her husband live in Charleston, South Carolina. Welcome Nina.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Well, hello, I'm honored to be here. Thanks for having me.
Shirley Owens: I am super excited for our chat today. I know we've had a little bit of connecting through gymnastics, and I have a daughter that's a college gymnast, and so I had asked you about your gymnastics, and I would love for you to tell our listeners when you're a gymnast and what happened. I'm assuming that that kind of is what started this idea of you learning how to overcome so much.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: It did, and it was back in the day as you call it. I was a gymnast back in the 80's, back in the Mary Lou Retton days. I actually roomed with Mary Lou on the road when I was on the US team, not because we were number one and two, but because my maiden name is Rosy, and it was alphabetical Rosy and Retton. So I did have the opportunity back then to be, but it was a wonderful time to be in that sport. So in the 80's, I was a gymnast. I did not make the team in 84 which was a crushing blow for a high school kid. I was on the cover of magazines and stuff. That was my first big time when I had a plan that didn't go as planned. And then I went to college and I went to LSU, which was a strong powerhouse in gymnastics back in the 80's, still is, still is. Yes, D-D Breaux who was there was my coach back then, that's how long she's been there.
Shirley Owens: And my daughter's team is competing against them next week.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Yeah. Anyway, so I want to tell you I was one of the top recruits at the NCA and I went down to LSU and really tried to start a new with a whole new mindset of, let's be the best I can in this arena. And then I blew out my knee, freshman year at LSU, and I had to make a tough decision of whether I was going to have a lifetime of walking or not. And I tried to because the doctors told me, he said, I heard it, injured it so many times. He said: "There's not much left to work with in there. You can either try to repair it again and do gymnastics. But it may be the last time you get an opportunity to have a healthy knee. If you were too injured again, you probably could not repair it." So I stepped away from the sport, which was really difficult. It's a difficult time for me.
Shirley Owens: Oh, I can't even imagine.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Yeah. And so I, luckily, there's lots of boys and beer, so I majored in that for a little while while I figured out my proudest moment. But it was the first of many big life changing moments. When I wrote my book, I had to go back and revisit some of these things. So it was the early gymnastics and not making the Olympic team, and then being a high level athlete again and blowing out my knee and losing my sport altogether, which was a big identity. My identity was tied to, back then, it was on my first stickers and my tee shirts. Today would be on my Twitter handle, or on my Facebook page, or my Instagram would be covered. So I think today kids have it even harder when they have a really big blow to their identity. As I went through life, I went from that to get into television and was very successful in television for years. And then I was actually let go from a television station. I want to trust and news anchor on a Thursday and was let go on a Friday. Then they did some major budget cuts across the nation. And so that was another big blow. And then how do you rebuild after that? Yeah. So I've just, the series of things that happened in my life became this. I became this go-to person when people would come to and say, how do I run business? How do I get to a better place in my head when something big happens? And it started this journey on what the, is that, what is, what type of person is that that can do it. And I needed a better answer than when I used to get. So I used to give this answer, well, I was a gymnast and I would fall on my head and you stand up and yell and you just keep dancing because that's what happens in gymnastics. You become very resilient.
Shirley Owens: Right.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Yeah. Like your daughter, you become comfortable. You are actually trying to find out what you're doing wrong all the time so you can make adjustments. So that's part of what the thinking around this book was, how do you make that big adjustment when something big happens? What makes it, but some people get stuck in the really bad things. I also went through a divorce, how do you even not get stuck in that? And reinventing, you have me married for 15 years, how do you do that? And I really found it fascinating to look at people, and companies, and the highest level in all of their arenas, and look at what makes good happen, staying power and great success. And what is it that makes other people falter? So the book is built around the failures more so than my resume for success.
Shirley Owens: Wow. Well, I mean, so many of my podcasts, we talk about failure as being the key to success in a lot of ways, right? Because we never grow from a place of comfort. We never grow from a place of success. We get success from going through failures. So that's why I'm so excited about this because I feel like so many people get in this rut in the world where they're not getting what they want, right? So we have those that feel that they never get what they want and they're stuck in this victim hood of, Oh, woe is me, and it never happens to me, and I'll never get that. And so there's just self creating that life. And then there are those who actually work really hard, and follow direction, and do what is necessary, and commit, and get what they want and then something happens. So speak a little bit under that, because that sounds like this is, like you're a professional at this.
“We never grow from a place of success. We get success from going through failures.” -Shirley Owens
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: I become, I become a professional at those. Yeah, so I attend it over and over and I got to the, I kept saying, I have one day, not too long ago where this grown man in his 40's knocked on my front door and my neighborhood, and there with a cup of coffee and said: "I just got let go from my job. Can I just talk this out with you? I don't know even where to go from here." Sort of became this GoTo guru for them. And then I realized I had to look at it hard, and the language that you said that always happens to me and it never happens. Or you meet people who've been divorced for five years and still can't let go of the anger and move on, and build something fun out of their life. It's that self sabotaging language, overgeneralizing, it always happens to me, catastrophizing, this is never going to be okay, I'm never going to be happy again, or exaggerating, this is a million times, I'm going to have to do this a million times before I get right. So we all do those things. And when I teach these days, and when I talk about my book, we just need to be kinder to ourselves. One of the things I learned through my journey to be able to talk to myself like a child, how do you, you would go here, and here's a good example, you're having a bad quarter or something bad happened in your life, and you sit down with your young daughter, you don't say, well, mommy's having a bad quarter and she's not very smart, and her boss was a jerk and she's probably gonna lose her job, and we're going to have to cancel Christmas. No, we would never talk to a kid like that. So we need to talk to ourselves a little nicer too. And the language in our head needs to be more like when we were talking to a child and saying, Hey, mommy's just grumpy because she's having a bad day, but mom's smart and she works with smart people, we'll figure this out. It's not like we're going to cancel Christmas or anything, it's all going to be okay. We have to learn to do that for ourselves.
One of my favorite things that I talk about, I use a book analogy through my book, and when I speak about resilience all over, the book analogy is my favorite visual for this. So you, Shirley are, you've got mom, you've got daughters, you've got your grandma, you've got this story that's unfolding in your life. I know you had an injury as I heard in one of the podcasts, you had injured your back and that was part of your story, so you have your story. So for all your listeners too, we all have our stories. So what does the book of your life look like? How big is it? If it's a thick book, is it a hardback picture? If it was sitting on the table in front of you, what colors? Maybe it's a children's book, maybe it's a picture book. What does the story of your life look like if you put it all in one book? And what colors that cover, and now picture in front of you, now open it up to today. So we're all on a page, today is the day that we're looking at in that book, and we're writing out our script right now as we were listening to this podcast, or we're having this conversation so much today and everything has brought you up to this page. And some of you, maybe at the beginning of your book closer if you're in your 20's or so, maybe 20, 50's like me, you're more in the middle. It's just the middle of our books ladies. So where are you in your book on that page? And what I like about this is, at this moment on your page as you envision it, all the pages ahead are blank. There's nothing on them. The language that we use to describe something, the characters, the places, we will decide all those. No one has more control over what goes in those pages than we do. And a lot of it is that language that's in our head and how we use that language. Because what you're saying in your head comes out of your mouth. And then it said to other people, those people say it to other people and that becomes your story. So the whole idea of writing your story, and it's really fascinating to me, and when we think of it that way, it's much easier to look at how we can control our own destiny.
I always use when you get fired from a job as an example, one, you're angry often when you get fired from a job and you let go, especially if you didn't see it coming, but someone's going to call you from your former employer, immediately former employer, and they're gonna say, Hey, are you okay? How are you doing? And people, that's an awkward conversation anyway. Usually people just call just to let you know they're thinking of you, but they don't really know what to say either. But you have a choice, you can pick up that phone and go, wow, I work twice as hard as so-and-so, I can't believe they let me go. I didn't see this coming. And they have no idea what they're losing. They're never gonna make it without me to have this tirade that you go on, or you can have that same, and then think about that. So you go on this rant with your buddy that calls, and then your buddy puts down the phone and looks around the room, and everybody else's office goes, Hey, how's he doing? Or how's she doing? And they repeat what you said. Angry feels like this really, so if you do the same conversation, you pick up the phone and you say, didn't see this coming. Wow, it was a long eight years. I sure learned a lot and I wish you guys the best. And Hey, I'm going to need another job so if anybody at the office needs/knows anybody, let them know. Then when you put down that phone, that's what the guy says on the other end or the woman says on the other end, Oh, you know, they're upset, but they're looking, if anybody knows of anything, he wishes us the best or she wishes just the best. So that language, how you create your own story going forward, whether it's a divorce, or whether it's a getting fired, or some of the bigger things that happen in life, a traumatic accident, or you're the victim of a crime, all of those things become the language in our head that we say out loud and then it comes back to us and becomes part of our story.
Shirley Owens: Yeah, I love that.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Yeah. And I think that, when you just get what you want, if we can have great plans, but they don't always coach, big stuff happens.
Shirley Owens: Most of the time--
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: I call him in my book, I call him your plot twist.
Shirley Owens: I love the whole book idea. Yeah, I love the book idea. My husband and I were in Washington DC once, and we were at a wedding, and it was like 11 o'clock at night, the wedding was over, and everyone was going to hang out at the bar and he was, he was just like, Hey, babe, we could go to the bar and hang out with everybody, or we could rent some city bikes and tour the city in the middle of the night. And I was in high heels, and a tight skirt, that just didn't sound as fun to me as maybe it should have sounded. And he said to me: "Well, what do you want your story to be?" Because we say this all the time together and we both use this a lot to convince the other person to do something crazy. But this one time you said: "What do you want your story to be?" And I'm like: "I guess I want my story to be that. I was in high heels, and a skirt, and I rode a bike through Washington DC in the middle of the night. We were hopping curbs and driving through traffic, and we got some really amazing pictures that are hanging on our walls." And I think it's funny because ever since that night, we always use that like, Oh, remember that time when we went here? Like when we went to Costa Rica, we didn't zip line, he said that to me. So of course, I had to zip line and I never have to do it again. But so important for people to realize those blank sheets, they don't have to be like the rest of the chapters. And I think a lot of times people think, Oh, well this is what my life has been. So I have to have this consistency throughout, but we can even rip that book up or put it on a shelf and start a new one, it doesn't have to be the same--
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Right. Start a new chapter. Big plot twist in the middle, change the characters, change the theme.
Shirley Owens: Right.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Yeah. I think in a lot of women's conferences, I'm actually doing a fun one tomorrow, and what I love doing is, and it's amazing because we're, I was a working mom, I had three kids, full time job, a husband and an ex husband, and they're still work, and cannot not married to him, so it was a lot, lose who you are a little bit. There are years in there where you just get up and go from morning till night, and then you plop in the bed, you get up and do it again, I get that. But there are years where you forget who you are as a woman and what you liked. And so a lot of times when I'm speaking to a big group of women, I'll say, Hey, stop for a second while we're here and pick one activity that you love to do, and one food that you love, and tell it to the person next to you. And sometimes they can come up with that. I mean, that's just easy. As I used to say, think of five things that you really like that are too much. So now it's just one activity and one food that you like and tell it to the person next to you. And then I go on and say, look, let's decide in the chapters ahead to have more of that. Like I love kayaking, I love walking on the beach, and I live in a coastal area, but I can go months without ever doing that unless I consciously go, you know something? Those things make me happy. Let me put that in my day, let me schedule that, or just make it a priority. So I talk about how women, working moms, and men too, I catch my husband doing this. There are things that we really enjoy, but we just forget in the busy part of the day that we want that to be part of our story. And you have to actually write it in. You have to make it a priority or life will just keep going. You're never going to be bored, I don't know, maybe other people are. I don't remember the last time I was bored. So it seems like there's so much to do.
Shirley Owens: Nope.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Yeah. Yep. So that's thinking. And then there's another piece that I really love to share when big things happen, when really tough stuff happens, I call it my five year thinking. So sometimes when we're in the middle of something really bad, so you get fired, or your book company goes under, even my college kids will come home with a buddy of theirs and they'll stay out late, everything's horrible, that's horrible, this girl dumped me, I'm failing school and my parents don't even know it, I got an accident and crunched my car and I hadn't told my parents that either, I made a jerk of myself at a party last night, I didn't want to walk on campus, life sucks right now in every direction. And sit there and look at this poor kid who's pouring their heart out to me and say, Hey, what kind of dog do you want when you grow up? And this kid will usually look at me and say, first, they'll just look at me like I'm crazy, and here I am pouring out my soul and you're asking you stupid questions. But then I'll push them a little bit and go, just work with me here for a second, what kind of dog do you want when you're like, and they'll say, because I know somebody college kids want to get a dog someday. So I'll say, okay, you want a Black Lab? Five years from now when you and your Black Lab are at the park or walking down the beach, you and your Black Lab are walking down the beach, you're going to look back on this and go, wow, really crappy semester. It's a really crappy chapter in my life, I really made some poor choices, that was really bad, but it's not going to be your whole life. This doesn't stay forever, you're not going to feel like you feel right now for forever, so sometimes we have to get out of our own heads and go, five years down the road, this is going to be part of my story, but it's not me, it doesn't define me unless you let it. Unless you want to just sit there, and keep talking about it, and belaboring it forever. You really can choose to just own it and go, what? Not doing that again, and moving forward. So five years thinking I found whether it's your company going under, or just something really tough going on in your life, if you can think out five years and think, Nope, this is a really crappy chapter. This is just a really crappy chapter and I'm going to look back on this someday.
Shirley Owens: I think sometimes it's hard for people to wrap their heads around that when they're sitting in the middle of something. But even having them look backwards at some tragic event and realizing that, Oh, yeah, that seemed pretty rough at that time too but I somehow got through that, and I think having a realization that our life is really made up of obstacles, and trials, and adversity, and I always like to say: "We're on a roller coaster ride, we just want to have more ups than downs."
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: We still come back each time.
Shirley Owens: Yeah. And how quick can you get back up, because those downs can go really fast. Like a roller coaster then you can go right pop up again. And getting in that mindset that, Oh, this is just another speed bump, it's just another thing. I just need to get through this. When I think about getting what you want, people will say to me, why I say to get through this one thing and then everything will be fine. Oh, I just need to get to everything and will be good. And I hear this constantly, and so I think people always have that mindset of like, I just need to get through this next thing. And I have said, sometimes there's got to get through this week and things will settle down or whatever. And there are times when just getting through something, but in life and all reality, as soon as you get through this one thing, the next thing is coming. So how do you successfully navigate it? And I really love this book because it's like, Oh, well, as soon as this chapter is written, I get a dream up and create my next chapter. And if there's a speed bump in there, then I get a, it kind of reminds me of one of those. Like you choose books, you choose your path, this happens, go this way. This happens, you go that way. I'm imagining this book where this works out awesome. I'll take on the next obstacle. It doesn't work out, it's my obstacle that I'm taking on. And it's just like, it kind of loved that idea of writing it. Just always having that vision, writing your book and your story, and because I really truly create whatever you want.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: I believe so too. And I believe you have a lot of options. One of, when you said pick up, choose left or right. One of the things that's really key to talk a lot about these days is options in general. So two things happen with options when something happens. One, when you make a big change, say you do have something big happen, like diagnosed with a horrible disease, or you have a divorce, or your company goes under, or you're in a traumatic accident, something like that. So people don't ever look at you funny when you make a big change, it's kind of licensed to change your life, which is kind of nice. No one looks at you weird like, Whoa, she just made a big change for no reason. So one, it's when you have a choice to make a big change when something happens without anybody thinking twice about it. But the other thing is when you look at all your options, you have to choose one and then not belabor, like not continuing to think about all the others. The analogy I use is, do you know Starbucks? I love this. So Starbucks, both, they had 80,000 different variations of drinks at Starbucks. 80,000 different drink orders you could do. So if you really wanted to try every single one to decide which one you liked best, look at every single option, you could have two a day for 109 years, you would literally die trying to try them all. So maybe just narrow it down to the lattes and then pick a few, and decide that you like those, and don't spend all your time thinking about all the ones you didn't choose. Because life has a lot of options. And if we spent all our times worrying about all the options we didn't choose, then we're never happy with the ones we chose. We have to take an option, choose an option, and then choose to be happy with it. Go down that path. You can't spend your time worrying about all the choices you did make, all the house that you didn't buy, or all the things when you go house shopping, or car shopping, or comparing yourself to things that other people have, just you choose your path, at least narrow it down to a handful and we got to let those other ones go and go. That's just not me, we're all different. There'll be you, everybody else is taken, I always told my kids, Hey, everybody else was taken, just make your own choices.
“If we spend all our time worrying about all the options we didn't choose, then we'll never be happy with the ones we chose. We have to choose an option and then choose to be happy with it.” -Nina Sossamon-Pogue
Shirley Owens: That's huge.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Yeah, and it's big to get your brain going in that direction of, Oh, I didn't choose that and I can just let it go now, like little Elsa said, let it go. Like it's no longer something you need to think about.
Shirley Owens: Exactly. We sing that a lot, by the way.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: My husband will do it, look at me every once in a while. He's like this big six, three tall, lanky dude. And he'll bend and twirl his arms and go, let it go, let it go. Not pretty, but it's entertaining.
Shirley Owens: Sure. And it gets the job done. Lash and let it go.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Exactly. I'm like, okay, I got it. I got an answer, yes. For all of us, it just seems, and you said it, life just seems like it goes really fast. And I talk about that a little bit too, here, this is fun. When you, this is in my book, I call it my chapter 6, thinking I do this timeline and this math around as long, because when you're in the middle of big stuff, you feel like it's everything. So here's a good example, when you were 10 years old, remember how long the summers seemed when you were 10? They seem like they just went on forever. Like a summer day was this big long day. And now when you're 40, it's like, whoa, that day came and went so fast. So when you are 10 years old, that one year of your life when you're 10 is 1/10th of everything you know. When you are 40, that one year of your life, the same 365 days is 1/40th of everything that you know. So as you get older, the time, it does seem that the percentage of a day, the whole overall of your life is a lot smaller. I think about when you're a mom parenting, when you're 40 and you're parenting a 10 year old, when they say you're ruining my life, it is their whole much bigger piece of their life than it is for you and it goes by in a nanosecond, it's just very different way to look at time.
So when I think about, say I was a gymnast when we started this, what you're talking about, or where your daughter is right now. So it lost my sport when I was 19, I think you said she was a senior, so she's a little older. So you're 19, 20 whatever, and you have done this sport since you're three, or five, or something. Most gymnasts had done that their whole life. So what I knew of the world when I could no longer be a gymnast at 19 was about 80 plus percent of everything I knew, it was pretty much all I knew with that, it was my life experience when I was a gymnast. At the age five til the age of 19, and so it did feel like my whole world was crumbling. That was a very real feeling, it was 80% of my world that I knew of. Now at age 40, that's a smaller percentage for me. At age 50, it's a smaller percentage. By the time I am, when I turned 50 and my kids all left for college, that was about 29%, so it keeps getting less and less. So if you just do the math on how big these chunks of our lives are, you'll realize even just having my kids at home, for the 20 years that my kids were in the house, because we were all close together. But the 20 years that they were in the house, that was only, if I lived to be a 100? That's only 20% of my life.
Shirley Owens: Yeah. That's so crazy.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Isn't that crazy?
Shirley Owens: Yeah. I know with Gracie, she is in her senior year at ASU, and she just turned 21. She started young, and she just injured her knee with a few meats left, and she is on the sideline cheering on the rest of her team. And she was just telling me the other day, I don't even know what it actually means to be able to make my own choices in life. I don't even know what that means. I'm so excited about it. That in may, when she graduates, she actually got what she wanted. She accomplished everything that she set out to accomplish. At 21, she has set out to accomplish everything she ever wanted to. And she's graduating as a D1 scholarship athlete, collegiate gymnast, and I think she had a few moments like, Oh, I didn't finish it all the way because I injured myself but you are finishing it. But yeah, she doesn't know what, in her mind she just keeps saying, I can't wait to be able to make my own decisions, and my husband can't wait to not have to ask permission to take on a day. But like you say, that's been her whole life so she doesn't even know what she's talking about in a sense.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Right. You can't have that perspective so later.
Shirley Owens: Yeah. Wait up for, so I have a feeling there's going to be this moment when she doesn't have to be at gym 30 hours a week, she doesn't have to be to all her NCAA meetings, and she has no coaches to answer to, and she's just her, and she gets to create whatever she wants going forward. I would think that as exciting as that is going to be, I'm anticipating there being a, who am I? Where do I go from here? What even is this? So I'm helping her through that moment. But I think sometimes our trials and our adversities come from a place of accomplishing everything that we thought that it was that we wanted to. So she does have these high hopes of being a mom, and she's a wife, and she wants to create her own business, and actually use her degree, and she has all these things, but at the same time, it's like she's a baby again. So she's starting on this small percentage of her life where she gets to go. So I wanted to ask you, I'm sure there are a lot of people in that place, whether they're starting a new career, whether they're ending their career as an athlete, creating a new business, whatever it is. What is your advice? Like one word advice that someone could start with today to be stronger, able to overcome adversity and be on the road to getting what they ultimately want.
“Our trials and our adversities come from a place of accomplishing everything that we thought that it was that we wanted to.” -Shirley Owens
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Embrace the challenges. I really believe, I call them the, this is, I don't know if I have one word, but resilience is the word I keep coming back to. And why I don't say grit or persistence, which both are talked about a lot now, but really resilience, because resilience is about using what you have just gone through the learning part and moving onto something greater. So it's adapting with optimism. So that's the, if you look at, there's the definition of resilience, but if you look up the thought process around resilience, it's that adapting, grows stronger pieces so that your daughter, it's a great example, you said she's like a good baby, you're starting new. She brings with her all of this grit and determination, and she all had to be a teammate, had to be strong, and had to keep pushing forward. She brings all that she's learned from athletics with her into this new chapter?
“Resilience is… adapting with optimism.” -Nina Sossamon-Pogue
Shirley Owens: Yes.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: So just deciding what to do with that, and where to go with that. So the word I go back to is resilience. It's adapting, grows stronger, and as we accept the change, things change, the one constant is things change. So accept the change and then adapt, learn from it, and then use that to grow stronger. When I was a gymnast, I used that when I got into television, and so times when it was really tough for, it was really challenging, I have all of my things that I brought from being at high level, elite level, athlete, I brought that to the table, and I could just push hard and keep going, and I could take criticism, and I could be coached. I was super coachable when I was in gymnastics, when I was on television. And then when I left that and I got into tech, I had all the stuff I'd learned about people in communications from television, that I could take into tech, and I could use that in the next chapters of my life. So I tell my kids, you can't ever go back, but you get to decide what pieces of you that you really like, that you get to take forward into the next part. You don't have to take it all, it's like when you break up with a boyfriend, experiences you had and what you learned about love, what you like, what you don't like, and bring all that with you. The guy doesn't come, he's actually going to go write his own book. Yup, he's not in your book anymore, and he's going to have his own. But you get to take everything you learn from this person and the things that they taught you. You get to take them on to the next parts of your book. All of those experiences, and those lessons, and the happy memories. So it's the same thing when you're making anything, a career change. That resilient piece is the learn and grow stronger piece as you make a big change in your life.
“You can't ever go back. But you get to decide what pieces of you to take forward into the next part.” -Nina Sossamon-Pogue
Shirley Owens: I totally agree with that. Thank you for that. And one question that I always ask my guests is, is there anything that you regret, or would want to do over in your life?
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Automatically add a lot, and I have had some big changes and some things I did not do well, but I really feel like we don't learn from anything we do, and we only learn from what we do wrong. So I don't think I would change a thing. There are probably a few nights I could have not drank tequila in college, but that's what I don't consider big.
“We don't learn from anything we do. We only learn from what we do wrong.” -Nina Sossamon-Pogue
Shirley Owens: Oh, sure. You learn from that.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: I probably learned, yeah, that was a learning experience itself, but I don't think I would do something majorly different if I could do it over again. It all has made me who I am and brought me to this point now where I have written a book that is helping others, and I hadn't gone through the really tough stuff, then I wouldn't be able to be here and share the journey to success with you and your listeners. So Nope, no big change.
Shirley Owens: Awesome. Well, tell us how we can get your book and access you, whatever you want to share.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Okay. Well, I am more about me. You can find at ninasossamonpogue.com which is a spelling nightmare, that has the number one, it has been number two, just the record there. It's Sossamon, S-O-S-S-A-M-O-N, Pogue, P-O-G-U-E, so long last name, but when we got married, children were young, and they all wanted me to have their last name so I could pick them up in the carpool line. So ninasossamonpogue.com, and you can get my book, it's through Morgan James Publishing, it'll be out in all bookstores nationwide and in Canada in August, not till August the 18th, but right now, you can get the ebook on Amazon Kindle, and it's called, This Is Not 'The End': Strategies to Get Through the Worst Chapters of Your Life, and you can get it on Amazon Kindle now and the ebook version.
Shirley Owens: Awesome.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: The audio book will be out later this year.
Shirley Owens: That's exciting. I remember when my book came out, it's so fun. Yeah, I'll put a link to your ebook for right now and then we can switch it up later when the actual paperback comes into stores.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: That would be fantastic, and I thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share with your audience the way I'm thinking these days. I feel like I have something to share. I'm still figuring out exactly the journey to get it out there.
Shirley Owens: Yeah, you for sure do, and I love it. Resiliency is key I think to anything, so thank you so much for being here. Really grateful that you would come on the show, and we will for sure keep in touch.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Absolutely. I look forward to keeping in touch and seeing all the great things your daughter does too now that I'm connected to her somehow.
Shirley Owens: Thank you so much, Nina.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Thanks for having me.
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