The Power of Oxygen 1st
When my son was little, I was a single mom who was doing it all alone. I was putting everyone else first and my own needs last. To everyone around me, I was successful but little did they know that my success was tied to pushing, stressing, sleepless nights and early morning workouts pushing my body and my limits to the extreme. Until one day I was flying alone and nearly crashed an airplane and I realized that I needed to take care of my own needs first before anyone else. You see, when you’re a pilot, if you have any issues in the plane, you put on your oxygen mask 1st, not your passengers. They need you to land the plane.
This podcast is all about this journey to healing, to getting clear on the desires of your heart… and stepping into them with courage while leaning into, asking for and receiving support. I hope you feel inspired to do less, to follow your passions and infuse them into your daily life and truly claim the life you were meant to live: a life filled to the brim with epic ADVENTURE.
The Power of Oxygen 1st
EP 73: How to Bounce Back Like a Boss & Recover Faster from Life's Challenges
Have you ever wondered why some setbacks knock you down for days while others barely register? The difference might be what I call your "comeback rate" – your emotional resilience when life throws its inevitable challenges your way.
In this deeply personal episode, I share my journey through divorce and how I've transformed my response to triggers that once left me paralyzed. Where drama used to derail me for days, I now process, set boundaries, and move forward with surprising speed. This change didn't happen by accident – it's the result of intentional work to honor my feelings rather than suppress them.
We explore the counterintuitive truth that fully feeling our difficult emotions actually helps us process them faster. I share practical strategies for building resilience, including how to set healthy boundaries, honor your needs without judgment, and practice genuine self-care (which goes far beyond bubble baths). You'll discover why numbing your feelings ultimately slows your recovery, and how taking radical responsibility for your inner world creates freedom, even when external circumstances remain challenging.
The goal isn't to never face difficulties – it's to develop the inner resources to meet those challenges with greater grace and self-compassion. As my coach recently pointed out, sometimes we're so focused on the problems that repeat in our lives that we miss how dramatically our responses have evolved. That evolution is worth celebrating.
Whether you're navigating a major life transition or simply dealing with day-to-day stressors, these insights will help you strengthen your comeback rate and return to your center more quickly after disruption. Remember – the world needs you at your healthiest, most resilient self. And that begins with putting your own oxygen mask on first.
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Hey guys, this is the Power of Oxygen First podcast, and I'm your host, dot Rock. I am an entrepreneur, a mom, a stepmom and a scaling consultant who is obsessed with the art of hiring, support and that dirty word we call delegation. I'm a recovering perfectionist who pushed my body and my limits to the extreme until one fateful day I learned that, just like pilots, I needed to take care of myself first. This podcast is all about the journey to healing, to getting clear on the desires of your heart, stepping into them with courage and leaning into and asking for support. I hope you feel inspired to do less, to follow your passions and infuse them into your daily life and truly claim the life you were meant to live. Hello, my podcast friends, I hope everyone is just doing amazing out there and or I hope that you're just feeling what you're feeling.
Speaker 1:I think that one thing we all share is the times we are facing are unique, confusing, exhausting, and we all have a different experience through it, and if we don't just feel those emotions, it won't serve us. But feeling our way through those things is actually what, in my opinion, builds resilience. So today I really want to talk about what I would call our comeback rate, what is our emotional resilience and what does self-care look like during these hard times? I have been noticing this in myself a lot because I'm noticing my changing responses to the drama around me in in very I'll be very specific how it relates to my divorce and you know the person I was married to and how he triggers me, how it, how the drama around him, used to trigger me and disable me. Quite frankly, it was almost like paralysis during the marriage. I couldn't function at work, I couldn't like. Everything took longer to recover from. Drama would happen, we would have a fight, there would be kid drama and it would really derail me. And now what I'm noticing is, while the divorce stuff continues, the things that were, you know, the final chapters that were closing through that I have noticed that my bounce back rate, my comeback rate, is really quick. It's really improved and I attribute this to the work that I put in to feel the feelings. I attribute this to the boundaries that I've been setting and remember. Boundaries are just about being able to see what we need and express't get slooped into name calling or any emotional drama. Just like, I need the bank statements these are the dates that I need them, and or setting boundaries around your time and money, right. So I've noticed that as I I'm able to call out what I need, put it in paper and send it off, I'm actually able to release that energetic hold that ongoing drama has in my life.
Speaker 1:So I was driving in my car this morning thinking about this comeback rate. My coach pointed out to me she's like your comeback rate is so much faster. About this comeback rate, my coach pointed out to me she's like your comeback rate is so much faster Because what I said to her was it feels like the same story. Different day, we continue to have the same problems. Well, and she was like whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, you don't. Maybe it's the same issue that keeps coming up, but your response is totally different. She's like it used to derail you four days and now you just like process it, set a boundary and move forward. And that's actually true and I'm really proud of that.
Speaker 1:And it's hard for me to pause and celebrate myself because I just constantly want to raise the bar. I constantly want to do more. That's how I am wired, but I want to pause and really celebrate that, and so that's why this podcast, this today, is about talking about this comeback rate and how quickly we're able to really return to our center, to calm, to clarity after something knocks us down. For me, it's this ability to move through hard times with more grace and less self-abandonment, more honoring, more self-honoring, and, as I do, that my comeback rate has just really improved. And if you struggle at all with your comeback rate or things derailing you, I encourage you to look at this for yourself because, again, it's a muscle that we can all strengthen now.
Speaker 1:I wasn't like really thinking like let me improve my comeback rate as I faced this crumbling of my marriage and the divorce and the lengthy process of the divorce right, but I did start self-honoring. I did start putting on my oxygen mask. First, I stopped pushing through everything. I stopped pretending I was fine. I started honoring this yucky, mucky hard space. I started letting myself cry every day. I started letting myself go on walks. That felt good. I started letting the tears flow and I stopped as in many ways as I could. No, and I am not perfect, but I stopped letting myself numb the feelings out, because I do not believe we can selectively numb. I started letting myself really actually feel and I took radical responsibility for my inner world.
Speaker 1:So you know, like I said, there was this time in my life not very long ago, that these hard moments, these like looking for a place to live a year ago, could have completely derailed me. I would spiral, I'd overanalyze, I'd disconnect from my body and I'd even disconnect from others my friends, my family and I wasn't myself. And what changed in me is not that life got easier, because it has been a really, really challenging year, with Dominic's appendix, with Obi getting kidnapped, with the divorce, with the trial, with the all the things. But I stopped letting this drama define me and I started letting myself just feel it. I started meeting each of these moments with compassion and not more chaos and not more numbing and slowly.
Speaker 1:I think what I'm seeing looking back now is that my bounce back has shortened my bounce back rate, my comeback rate has shortened my bounce back rate, my comeback rate, and that's what building our comeback rate is all about, right, and so when I think about this, I really want to honor that. Part of this was this role, self-care and feeling it all has in my body and in my life, because I think that we really do increase our comeback rate when we honor our bodies, we honor our need for rest, our need for food, our need for movement, instead of punishing ourselves, instead of doing something that drains our tank, instead of doing something that in that moment makes it feel better but later on will have an after effect, a hangover, so to speak. I think we increase our comeback rate when we let tears come as they need to and when we stop saying I am fine, I'm not fine. It has been a hard period of my life as I close this chapter that I did not expect to close, but it is also exciting and exhilarating to think about opening new chapters and all the ways that I am learning to take better care of myself and Dominic. That's exciting. I think one of the other ways that I've really increased this comeback rate is to stop judging my own sadness, frustration and grief, to stop pushing it away, to stop saying like when will my life get better? I really want to live in the now and enjoy this moment. Now and enjoy this moment. Even though my house is a mess, even though we're still struggling, even though there's still final threads of this divorce not closed. I still want to enjoy each day and I have to create space in my life for silence, for processing and for asking myself on a daily basis what do I actually need right now? Last night that was yoga. The night before that was holding down the couch and sitting there and working on my taxes, while watching something on TV, while making Dom a quicker dinner. That's what it was in that moment. We all know at this point that self-care isn't just a bubble bath, although sometimes it can be. It's more about this commitment to not abandoning ourselves in our hard moments. What do I actually need right now? Maybe it is a bubble bath, but no matter what it is, it's in asking yourself the question and actually honoring what you need right now and putting that oxygen mask on first, always right now, and putting that oxygen mask on first, always.
Speaker 1:For me, the truth is I am not the same person that broke. I'm not the same person that started this divorce process more than a year ago. I'm actually not the same person. I was last week or yesterday week or yesterday, and neither are you. You've been doing the work, you've been meeting yourself in the hard places. So when those old feelings resurface and you notice them, start noticing that it doesn't quite have the same grip on you anymore, and that's not a fluke, that's growth. Same grip on you anymore, and that's not a fluke, that's growth. Your comeback rate is improving.
Speaker 1:So next time something doesn't go your way, I encourage you to pause to breathe and ask yourself what is this moment asking of me? What do I need? Maybe it's a nap, maybe it's a journaling session, maybe it's a calling a friend who reminds you of who you are, maybe it's trying something new. That's always called your soul. But the goal isn't to never fail. It's to fail more gently and to rise more connected.
Speaker 1:Today, I just want you to honor how far you've come. The version of you today, the one who knows how you feel, how to care for yourself, who is listening more and more to your needs, who's setting those boundaries with others so that you can honor your needs, who's that person in you who's learned how to return to your center. That's a really powerful you. So let this be your new story, like it's my new story. This is a new me, this is new strength, and I have a new comeback rate. I hope you all just will celebrate how far you've come, like I am today. Once again, thanks for tuning in to the Power of Oxygen First. If this episode resonated, I'd love it if you shared it with someone you love and, as always, just keep putting on your own oxygen mask first. The world needs you. The world needs you to be the healthiest version that you can be of yourself, sending love and light.
Speaker 1:How much return we get by investing in something. I've applied this very masculine concept to hiring into the art of receiving support, and so what this little tool does that you can just go and download from my webpage, dot rock consulting, dot-com. What you can do is go and download this and use curiosity 15 minutes total of your time. Go through this tool and it's going to help you make a little bit of data driven decision making around hiring and why it can help you in either your personal or professional life. You don't have to be an entrepreneur, but you could be an entrepreneur and it's going to help you understand the impact hiring or delegating more or handing off more tasks, or even not spending any money on this and simply asking for more support how that could change your life.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about this freebie and I hope you will go check it out. Download it, dot rock consultingcom. Enjoy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the Power of Oxygen First podcast. I hope you walk away feeling inspired to do less, to follow your passions and infuse them into your daily life and truly claim the life you were meant to live, and I hope that you start leaning into the art of receiving support. I'm here to support you on that journey. Find me at dotrockconsultingcom or dot underscore rock underscore on Instagram. I'd love it if you'd go, follow me and shoot me a quick DM and let me know what takeaway from this episode hit you the hardest, sending you love and adventures on this beautiful day.
