Navigating Life's Curveballs: A Seven-Step Framework

Navigating Life's Curveballs: A Seven-Step Framework

Have you ever been thrown a life altering curveball? I mean, like, the universe just gave you a hard stop from the path you were on and said, no! Maybe a life altering injury, a death, loss of career, loss of relationship, or something else. It can be absolutely devastating. You feel completely lost and you aren't sure how to proceed forward.

You lose a major part of who you are and how you see yourself all in the same moment. Well, today I'll share some insights with you on how to navigate this time or build your identity as you move, move forward with this new turn in life. I have a lot of experience in this area, guys. I've had several life altering injuries over the years.

And honestly, while I was writing this show, life threw me another curve ball that, you know, Completely changed my reality. And today I'm going to share with you the framework I use to navigate those times [00:01:00] and to move forward. It's worked for me. It can work for you. Let's get into it. Here's the million dollar question.

How do men like us reach our full potential growing to the men we dream of becoming while taking care of our responsibilities, working, living, being good husbands, fathers, and still take care of ourselves. That's the big question. And in this podcast, we'll help you with those answers. My name is Brent and welcome to the Fallible Man Podcast.

Now, gentlemen, there's a part of me that wishes I was sharing all this with you, all these insights from a purely academic place, because Even when you rebuild, there will still be lingering, lingering, if I can say it right, residual impact from these kinds of life changing moments. Some of them can and may haunt you for the rest of your life, if I'm being honest.

When you have life changing kind of events that we're talking about, no one gets out entirely unchanged. [00:02:00] And, Because life is not short on irony. As I stated while I was writing this episode, I got hit with a pretty profound curve ball that really just waylaid my business and my show on a massive, massive level.

And I'm just barely being getting to see the upcoming repercussions of that happen. So I wasn't sure about material for this episode to begin with, but now I'm talking to me at the same time I'm talking to you. So it's a good thing that I've been through this framework before, by the way, my name is Brent and welcome to the fallible man podcast, your home for all things men's life.

Today I'm going to share my seven step framework. I'd hold up fingers for those of you on YouTube, but you know, that might prove I can't count or something. My seven step framework to help you process recenter and move forward in life's hardest resets. Be sure [00:03:00] and like, and subscribe to the show. Let us keep bringing you more episodes like this by knowing that they came out because you subscribed.

Wouldn't that be easier instead of having to just find it every time guys, without further ado, we'll just dive into it. So how do you start over and rebuild and reframe yourself after a major change? That's the question at hand, because everybody's going to face this at least once. And my honest wish is you only ever incurred this kind of life altering changes.

in your life at worst. I hope that for you, but I don't believe that's a strong likelihood just based on my life experience. Now, I told you, I've had some life altering experiences, several. In fact, I had my career waylaid when I was 20 by an injury. I've had. Two life [00:04:00] altering or three life altering injuries since then that have literally changed the trajectory of who I am, my life, the way I lived every day.

Uh, I've dealt with deaths in the family. I've dealt with sudden career changes that just stopped me in my tracks. And some people will say that a sudden career change isn't a life altering guys. When everything you've ever built is on the line when your income is gone and As many people, unfortunately found out during 2020, when all that, you know, goes away and you have to start from scratch, it's a gut punch.

You really don't know how much you are invested into something sometimes until it's gone. And as men, we especially identify with our professions. And so if you've been either in a profession for a long time or had your own business, or just been with the same company for years and years and years, [00:05:00] The loss of a job can be a major life change, especially if that loss of a job came with another hitch, like an injury that took you out of it or something like that.

But we're all going to experience some kind of change. It might be the loss of a relationship, the loss of a job, whatever yours is, this seven step framework will absolutely help you. So number one, Now, this seems silly to some people who are listening to this. Mourning is not just something that happens after the death of a loved one.

In fact, mourning needs to happen after the death of a career sometimes. After the death of a business. A major undertaking that ended badly. The end of a long friendship. A major betrayal. And probably several other places, anywhere with a deep emotional connection will require a period of mourning. Now that period of mourning may [00:06:00] not be the same for each one of those, but it exists and you need to process it.

When I was 20 years old, I watched one of the institutions I believed in with all of my heart and soul punish me unjustly for doing the right thing, which I can say I was later vindicated for. Then I watched the entire plan for my career and my future go down the drain, literally in flames and burned ashes.

Uh, that's a whole nother story, but like I said, there were actually flames and ashes involved in that, and it was the end of my life. My plan for life. And I was lost. Uh, I waxed poetic on, I was adrift, devastated, demoralized, disillusioned. You know what? Actually, I was all of those things. Probably it took me a lot of years to realize like that waylaid my life for years, because I hadn't figured out this framework yet, [00:07:00] and I didn't know that I needed to mourn that passing.

The process was so brutal. Gentlemen, I, I actually attempted suicide at one point, twice during this process, it, it devastated my life. As Splee just said, there's no worse death than the end of hope. Some people may dispute it, but, if you've ever had a, your deep earnest hope for something, life altering just dashed, then maybe you're identifying with what I'm talking about here.

The main point here, the main point of this is you have to allow yourself to go through the mourning process. You are going to experience grief, whether you've identified it as grief or not. And if you don't go through all those fills, I know we don't like fills, but if you don't go through all those fills, you're never actually going to [00:08:00] bounce back to your fullest self.

Like I said, I was waylaid by that moment for years of my life. Because I did not know I need, had some mourning and some grief. I didn't know that I was stymieing those emotions and not processing those. And it was actually holding me back. So the quickest route through it is just to go through it. It will be way worse if you try and go around it or avoid it or skip it entirely, and it can set you back for years.

So that's step number one is you're going Going to deal with grief. It might be little, depending on what the life altering thing was, or maybe massive, but you have to experience it and let yourself process it. If you're going to move forward, large retail store just canceled a huge order, leaving us with a ton of extra, my pillows, but you know what?

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They've never been offered this low before. We have limited quantities at this price. So limit's going to be 10 and once they're gone, they're gone. Number two is assess the situation and collect data. Now, if you've listened to the show before, you know, I'm huge into collect data, assess, assess. There's a great deal of data to collect and assess [00:10:00] in any kind of major loss, then this is vital for the process.

Data about the situation, data about your life, data about your choices, data about who you are and what you believe about yourself, data about your role in the situation. Did it happen to you or because of you or were you involved with it? Data about outside influences and impacts. Data about your emotional state, honest evaluation, data, mind, the ever loving crap out of the situation.

This shouldn't sound new if you've been on the show before, but I am, I am a staunch advocate for just data mining the crap out of everything. The more information you have about your situation, the more equipped you are to move forward and to actually not fall into those same solution problems, right?

You only lose if you don't learn something out of it. Every event in life has lessons to teach you. The monster life altering events that we're [00:11:00] talking about in this episode will teach you more than years and years of work and study. Well, it may seem heartless, but you would be a full to not garner every piece of information that you can from this situation.

Now, here's a caveat. Don't get stuck in this step. It's easy to become too critical of yourself and get lost in the details and dwell. Datamine it. Emotionlessly datamine it. Don't let your emotions get involved. Datamine the crap out of it like a computer. Don't feel about it. Identify information. Number three.

After you finish those two steps, or while you're still in the mourning process, likely, you're going to be able to start datamining. Once you've datamined. The next step I want you to do for number three is to do something that reaffirms yourself. Now there's a lot of options here, [00:12:00] but you need a quick win that reaffirms yourself to yourself.

Did you follow that? It reaffirms yourself to you. Go do something challenging outside of your comfort zone. Do a Tough Mudder or Spartan. You know, we support both those products, those events, uh, here on this channel. We're good friends with Common Man OCR, and we actually have been doing those kinds of things for years, hit a new PR in the gym, strap on a ruck and challenge yourself to knock out 25 ruck miles in three days or something, get out of your head and do something to remind yourself that you can.

That, that is the emphasis on something physical men, particularly, and I recommend this for women too, but men particularly are revitalized by physical challenges. It taps into our primal drive and it helps us to move forward in a positive way to reestablish a physical connection. [00:13:00] It gives you a moment to get out of your head.

It actually gives you a lot of moments to process and data mine. There's something magical about a physical reaffirmation of your own capability. And it doesn't have to, you don't have to go like hike the, you know, Pacific crest rim trail. Don't do that. Okay. But do something physical challenge yourself and prove to yourself.

You can, I promise it will do magical things for you mentally and emotionally on the journey. Number four, who do you want to be? One of the bright side, that's air quotes for all of you listening, silver lining parts of this situation is it frees you up to make major shifts in your life. So look yourself in the mirror.

No, no, no, not figuratively. Very literally look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, who do I want to be? And ask it out loud. Like [00:14:00] talk to yourself in the mirror. I'm not exaggerating. Picture the man in your head. The ideal man, the man you look up to, the man that you want to be, the man you wish you were.

The hardest thing about a life altering change caused by events, outside events are partially outside events of one kind or another is that you start to doubt who you are and your entire direction in life. You got hit. Now it's time to get back up and decide who you will be moving forward. So identify that man and reverse engineer it, but have the conversation with yourself.

It sounds crazy. And we've talked about a lot more crazy things than that. Look yourself in the mirror and have a conversation with yourself. The who will be written by what you do from this moment going forward. Number five, build the plan. You decided who you're going to be. [00:15:00] You reverse engineered it in your head.

Now put the plan down on paper and outline all the steps and pieces to make this happen. Some of you may know if you've listened to the show before that I've been in project management on and off throughout my life. And so when I talk about data mining things, that's part of that, where that comes from for me is I've got a lot of experience in project management.

Identify the roadblocks, identify the key steps and organize it like any other process, like any other project. Sorry. How are you going to handle it? Identify the phases, the steps, the smaller steps, everything you need to do. Number six, and this is part of building that plan that most people don't do.

Number six is plan for the hard days. The mourning process can be incredibly lengthy depending on what happened and how you are at processing grief. Processing [00:16:00] grief is a skill. Unfortunately, getting good at that skill generally means you occur. It's not the right word that you incur a lot of grief. So if you're really good at processing grief, I'm sorry.

Cause that probably means you had to deal with a lot of it and that's no fun, but it can be a really lengthy process. There will be days when the setback will weigh on you more than others mornings, when the loss is sitting heavy on you, failure, setback, whatever it was, all the feels air quotes are fresh in your face.

Maybe somebody asked you something about it without realizing that it was an issue, something you did or see will remind you something will air quotes trigger. Yes. Air quotes. I hate the word trigger. We've, we've screwed up that word entirely. We'll trigger that thought or that memory and bring those feelings rushing back because you're still in the process of [00:17:00] dealing with it.

And like I said, A life altering event like this, well, that absolutely you may be way down the road from it, but some of those things have long term consequences, both emotionally or physically and mentally. So make a plan on how to deal with it. When you're outlining your plan, make that plan of what you're going to do when you're reminded or when it comes up fresh.

If you have a plan of action for these moments, you'll navigate them faster and more easily without getting sidelong, sidelined for as long or at all. Think of it as an emergency parachute. And you need to be able to jump off that train. It's probably a really bad metaphor because trains and parachutes sounds like a really bad idea, but you know, I, I'm not original today.

So think of it as that emergency parachute. You just pull that ripcord and it's going to [00:18:00] take you right off that track. And you'll be good to go again. Number seven, take action. Start moving forward one step at a time. That's all is required one foot in front of the other. Just take action. Start moving again.

Stagnation is what's really dangerous in this situation situation. And as we learned from finding Nemo, just keep swimming, just keep swimming. I challenged my friend, Cogman OCR at his very first OCR with that phrase. We're doing. A 12 mile event that was on a mountain. So it was either up or down and he was not near in the shape that he needed to be for this first event because he knew nothing about doing them.

And it was brutal. It was freezing rain. They were taking people off the mountain in solar blankets. People were catching hypothermia. It was a horrible experience. And he's gone on and done like [00:19:00] hundreds of races since then. Who knew that such a horrible experience would create something like that, right?

But I drove him nuts because he wanted to quit. And so I would bounce around him just outside of reach because he seriously would have punched me if he had the chance and kept chanting, just keep swimming, just keep swimming because I needed him to be angry enough at me to keep taking that next step.

That one next step, one foot in front of the other told him, don't think about the next mile. Don't think about the next step. Are the next obstacle. Think about the next foot moving forward. And that's what I'm telling you, take action, move forward on something, take the first step, then take the next step.

That's all you have to worry about because you still may be in that grieving process, but start taking action, moving forward on something will help you shake off the stupor that these moments often cause. Because if you've ever experienced one of these moments, You might be [00:20:00] familiar with that stupor that sets in.

And sometimes you're just like, I don't even know what to do at this moment. Like, I'm just, I'm just kind of frozen. I'm just kind of stuck. That stupor is actually incredibly common moving forward. Help you shake that off for a lot of people. starting to move again after you mourn will help you actually proceed through the grief and through that moment that set your life off kilter and on to the next action is very very cathartic is that the right word we'll see correct me in the comments if it's not this process that i've outlined isn't actually entirely linear i'd love to tell you that it is it's not You're going to kind of weave in and out of some of these steps.

It's not simple. It's not painless. Whether someone you love died or you lost a career, your major passion collapsed, your air quote shot. Your big chance got canceled outside [00:21:00] of your control. Your business was shut down. You got that diagnosis of that bad news. There are a lot of life altering moments and they all hit you at varying degrees depending on who you are, not depending on what they are, depending on who you are and how you already process these things.

They all feel like you got punched in the face. This process works for all of them. I've been through more life altering moments than I'd like to actually admit. And more than I ever thought I was going to, I did not have this worked out in some of the first ones because this framework was built through like lots of life altering experiences that I had to try and figure out where I was going from.

Do I move forward? How do I move forward? I had to kind of troubleshoot a lot of that and I did some research and I explored some things and I find what just found that just worked for me. This is my process and it's been refined through a lot of [00:22:00] painful moments. Okay. That's not a poor me thing. I wouldn't change any of it.

This process isn't perfect and there's a lot of it. You're going to have to fill in as you go. It's a loose framework, but it's very effective for moving forward. Want to share one of my favorite quotes that has to do with this. And you guys already know this. If you're a movie fan, the world ain't all sunshine and rainbows.

It's very mean and nasty place. And I don't care how tough you are. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently. If you let it. You, me, or nobody's going to get. Hit as hard as life can hit, but it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.

How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out there and get what you're worth, but you got to be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you want to be because of him or her or anybody hours through that.

That's not [00:23:00] you. You're better than that. That's a quote from Rocky Balboa. If you don't familiar aren't familiar with it and guys, honestly, I don't know if Sly pinned that whole thing himself or if he had help or if he had any idea how powerful That truly was, but it is one of the most powerful quote movie quotes, I think in history.

And it applies to these moments in life. The curve balls will come. You can't stop. Well, let me phrase that. You can stop. You can go backward, but that's not the way you probably want to live your life if you're here. You can move forward. What you do will help define who you are. Rocky was right. Life is hard.

It's amazing, but it's harsh. If, or how you redefine yourself post life altering event, that's up to you, but it's what will will define [00:24:00] you going forward is how you respond to it. If you want to move forward, which is probably why you're here. This framework, I promise helps. It has been battle tested, guys.

I experienced a life altering event while writing this. Because life has a great sense of humor. And so I'm actually in this path right now, myself using this exact framework. This is how I will navigate this moment in my life. Because I've used it before and I know it works and I promise it will work for you guys.

As we land the plane for exclusive content, be sure to subscribe to our bi weekly newsletter. There's link down in the show notes and share this episode with somebody who needs it. There's a lot of pain right now in our world. So just keep swimming, take one step at a time and be better tomorrow because of what you do today.

We'll see you on the next one. This has been the Followable Man Podcast. Your home for everything, man, husband, and father. [00:25:00] Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to miss www the followable man. Do com for more content and get from.