Episode #82 - You control the 90%, but beware of the 10%!

Episode Notes: 

They say, “life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it”, right? 

Does it seem like life has been throwing more than its fair share of 10%’ers at you lately? 

More importantly, are you struggling to manage that 90% in a somewhat positive manner? 

Join us this week, as I share a personal story about a medical emergency in my family, a 10% situation that had me seriously questioning how I was handling my 90%, and what I needed to do to flip the script!

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Transcript

This week I wanted to focus on a very important subject that affects everyone of us, but to do this effectively, I need to share a very recent, extremely personal story that I feel really drives home the message. 

It was a beautiful, warm Sunday evening, and after a great cook-out dinner, it was a perfect time for my nightly walk through my sub, and through the nature trail at the back of our complex, this time in shorts & t-shirt!

I usually enjoy my Sunday night walk more than the rest of the week’s walks, because it gives me time to reflect on the prior week, how I ended up compared to my goals, what I want to accomplish in the coming week & mentally “cleanse” my mind, while working off my dinner.

 One of favorite parts about this nightly walk I’ve been doing since early in 2020, is that I always wear my earbuds, so I can squeeze in a good podcast, it helps me learn a little more and sometimes I’ll just turn on some ocean sound tracks… those really help me “cleanse” the clutter out of my head, and it also allows for some of my most creative thinking times. In fact, I’ve mentally written many of my podcast episodes while on these walks, and usually I can’t wait to get back home and jot down a few notes before I lose those thoughts!

 I was only about half-way through that night’s walk, when a call came through my earbuds, and I heard a sentence, I never thought I would hear… and it stopped me dead in my tracks… the familiar voice was saying words that my mind was struggling to comprehend?...

          ____________________________________________________

I’ve always been a firm believer in the concept of the saying “Life is 10% what happens, and 90% how you react to it”.

I know it’s true in my life, as well as many of the people around me, good or bad… that 90% can make the biggest of differences in your life.

That isn’t limited to the 10% that happens “to you”, but the 10% that happens in your life, or others’ lives that somehow can affect you.

These are not occasional things to deal with, life throws 10%ers at all of us, every… single… day.

Don’t be fooled, life is not all sunshine & unicorns like you see from the “overnight millionaires” on Instagram & Facebook, or the ultra-successful business leaders… we all have problems, issues & setbacks… we all have our own shit to deal with daily!  

 The way I see it, these 10%’ers seem to fall into about 4 different categories:

·       Minor inconveniences

·       Problems or issues

·       Pains or...

·       Losses

 Minor inconveniences are the small things, or irritations in life;

Somebody cut in front of you in traffic this morning, it’s not that big of a deal, you can just move over to a different lane, probably end up ahead of the jerk that cut you off anyways, and continue on to your destination… you’ve got things to do, places to be… OR, you can ride right up on their bumper, blow your horn… maybe give them the one-finger salute… OR, ratchet it up a notch, speed-up, cut back in front of them, brake-check ‘em & possible cause a pile-up or a road-rage shooting… massive difference in that 90% YOU control, huh?

 Maybe you pass Sally, the new CSR, on the way to the front office, you say a quick “Hi” and she doesn’t reply… not a big deal either, right?... but you start thinking “what, is she too good to say Hi to me?” … “what nerve, how rude, what did I do to her, why does she hate me?... that’s the last time I say Hi to her”!

So maybe you didn’t see under her hair she had an earbud in & was on the phone with a customer, or possibly she was trying to remember an important message to relay to the parts manager in back, involving a few different numbers & didn’t want to mess-up, being new?... could be many reasons, but there goes your 90% reaction off the rails!

 Problems or issues are exactly what they sound like, and take up a large portion of what makes our days challenging, right?... a broken appliance that you have to either get fixed or replace… you have 3 good jobs to work on, but have to wait on parts for all of them… your kid forgets their lunch for school & you have to run it up there… they changed a software program yet again at work & you have to learn all over, just as you had this last system all figured out… there’s plenty of those 10%’s, but how you react, how you handle those everyday issues makes a massive difference in how big of a problem they really are, right? 

 Pains come in many different forms; physical, emotional or financial.

We’ve all dealt with these in our lives, sometimes they’re small pains like you sprain a wrist or tweak your back, have a blow-out with your spouse or are overwhelmed with a fear about something, have an accident with your car and are stuck with a 5-digit repair bill or meet with your CPA and realize not only are you getting no tax refund, but you OWE more than twice what you used to get back! (that one really sucks!) … again, how you deal with these can vary widely, but that IS under your control!

 Losses can be the absolute worse… that 10% that life makes sure hits everyone of us, can be much more impactful.

Whether you lose a suitcase at the airport or all your belongings in a fire or flood, losing a finger in a sawing accident or losing an arm or leg in an auto accident, losing a best friend because they moved away or losing a loved-one that has passed away… these events can be the most devastating 10%s you’ll ever encounter… but remember, you DO have all the control of what you do next, what thoughts you do or don’t dwell on, how you stay stuck or move forward from there… the 90% of life is always on you!

                   _______________________________

 … the familiar voice in my ear, my niece Jess, was telling me her dad, my brother Dave… my best friend since we were big enough to wrestle around as little kids in our living room, had suffered a heart attack and she had just taken him to the hospital… she continued that the small-town hospital, close to where he lives, was not fully equipped for cardiac procedures & he would have to be transported to a major hospital in a city 40 minutes away!

 
I just froze in place, in the middle of the street…

My brain was having trouble making sense of what my ears were hearing…

I was completely floored… the thoughts started running through my mind:

Wait a second… this can’t be right?... 

My “little” brother 4 years younger than me… he’s in better physical shape than me… his diet has been impeccable for years… his job is relatively low-stress compared to mine… how the hell can this be??

It was just then I could feel my emotions starting to kick in, a could feel a hotness building in my eyes… sadness, fear then panic was trying to creep in:

How could this happen to him?

OMG what if he were to die?

I can’t lose my best friend… my little brother… one of my last remaining siblings!

I can’t lose another family member, how could life do that to me?

Then I stopped that train of thoughts, stifled the emotions & quickly regained my composure and went into “take action” mode.

I need to get home, tell my wife what’s going on, figure out what I can do to help and get to the hospital to be with my brother! 

I started heading back home at a very quick pace, all while my phone started blowing up from my sister-in-law, my wife & my niece again.

The 10% of life this time, had kicked me hard, right square in the groin… but I knew that the next 90% was up to me, turning into a basket case would not help the situation, nor make it go away or get any better… but the growing fear was getting harder to ignore!

I feel I need to give you some perspective on this event, regarding my recent past when it comes to family, so you get a better feel of the gravity of this for me… 

Being raised in a family of five siblings, lots of Aunts/Uncles & cousins, family was everything… my mom was the heart center of our family and we all grew-up staying close to each other. My mom’s three sisters all had families that were all raised with the same experience. Holidays, birthdays, Sunday get-togethers were a staple in our lives growing up… we had always celebrated these things together, all through our lives, right up until we lost both my dad & mom, a dozen years ago. Even after my parents were gone, us siblings still continued the tradition of celebrated those things with each other.

To say family is important to me, would be a gross understatement.

 If you have listened to my previous episodes, I have talked about some painful losses I’ve suffered 18 months or so.

 Both my sisters had passed away within 30 days of each other in fall of 2020, both still relatively young, in their early-60’s. Which left me & my two brothers devastated. The 90% it took to deal with those deaths, to heal and move past them, challenged me more than I would have expected, fortunately all the self-developmental improvements I have implemented in my life did prevent it from totally destroying my mindset. 

Early the next summer, I had two of my cousins die as well, again within a month or so from each other, both to gun violence.

Apparently, the whole pandemic scene wasn’t enough to deal with, life kept throwing in some really nasty 10%ers on top, just to keep testing my 90%, so it seemed?

My two brothers were the only remaining members of my immediate family. My oldest brother & I never had a solid relationship, not that we don’t like each other or anything, it’s just he was so much older than me, married early & moved out to start his own life & family, we just never spend the time together growing up.

But my younger brother Dave… oh man, we’re tight... we look alike, sound alike, think very similar, enjoy the same things in life… much like twins, only separated by 4 years.

 Now as I’m moving into “action” mode, my thoughts were still on “I can’t lose my brother… my best friend”. 

My niece called again, they didn’t have an available bed at the larger hospital, so he had to stay where he was until one opened-up, or his condition changed.

 “You got to be kidding me?” 

 She put him on the phone, as I talked to him (and was glad to hear his voice) he sounded a little scared, but insisted he was feeling fine, no big deal, he’ll be OK.

I felt a bit of relief after talking to him, and continued my brisk pace back to my house, but before I could even get in the door, Jess called back again and said Dave was having another heart attack, and NOW they are going to transport him immediately to the cardiac unit at the larger hospital for an emergency catheterization procedure. 

 Honestly, I’m not making this up!... here goes my 90% again, but this time I jumped into “positive action”, quickly grabbed from home what I would need for the rest of night while at the hospital, grabbed my keys and headed directly to where he would be taken, hoping I could get there at the same time so I could see him before he went into surgery (you never know what’s going to happen once they start, I’ve seen a couple medical shows, things can go bad quickly it seems).

My whole drive there, I took positive control of that 90%, pushed out the thoughts of my brother passing away on the table, and planned on seeing him in recovery, getting him to laugh, and giving him some friendly shit about pushing a dead riding lawn mower up a hill 100 yards by himself… how that was a dumb-ass move… you know, brotherly love!

 Well, I’m happy to say, things worked out the way I envisioned, he survived… he did not leave his family, nor his big brother, he had 4 stints installed due to blockages, and I got to see him by midnight… hugged him… and then gave him some shit... I mean, brotherly love! 

  An important point to make about this, is that this one event, a medical event, a major event, an event that many times results in death, happened to one person, but that 10% of life happened not only to Dave, but to so many around him, his family, friends that love him, the people he works with and works for… all have a different 90% to deal with, do you see what I mean? 

 Some will handle ok, some will not, some will get stuck in a funk of fear about it happening again?... some will move forward…. But the most important person in all this, obviously is my brother. This was a very tough 10%, as was losing our sisters, as was losing our cousins, as was losing our parents, as was him being diagnosed with diabetes 20 years ago… and so many other 10%s that we all experience.

The real question is: how will my brother control the next 90% for himself?

Well… I DO know my brother very well, I DO know how he will handle this… he won’t spend time feeling sorry for himself, or complaining about the new restrictions he will have now, he won’t complain about having to take a slew of new medications that are mandated after a heart attack… he will but his head down, move forward and get back to life. In fact, he’s already asking about when we can get tother for a game of golf!

 I think I can help him with that 90%!

 We all are faced with very difficult situations, drastic changes, painful losses, tragic events and tough times throughout our lives… no one person is exempt… that is a fact.

I think the past 2 years has really tested all of us at some level.

 But the major difference in the quality of our lives, whether we get stuck, dwell on the worst of it and end up miserable, resentful people unable to move forward with our lives… or, look at the situation through a more positive lens… look for the lesson or learning that is ALWAYS part of it, make the adjustments, start again and move forward in the direction of becoming better versions of ourselves.

The choice is always yours on what you do with the 90%.

One of my favorite quotes from Tony Robbins is:

“What if life happens FOR us, and not TO us?”