83. He Almost Didn't Exist

Changing your mind can look messy from the outside, but from the inside it can be the most honest thing you do. A brand-new baby in our family has me reflecting on second chances, identity shifts, and the moments that prove you’re not stuck being who you used to be. The world loves certainty, but real growth often comes from a pivot that only makes sense to you at first. 

We get into the mindset work behind an unbreakable mind and body: how direction creates momentum, why people judge lane changes, and how to stop letting old standards run your life. I also talk about the kind of “miracles” we rarely name, the small daily actions that compound over time, just like strength training. We unpack acceptance and surrender without confusing them for quitting, and why changing the lens you view your life through is a practice you build, not a switch you flip. 

You’ll leave with three practical action items you can journal on right away.

If you’re ready to give yourself permission to evolve, press play. Subscribe to the Unbreakable Mind and Body Podcast, share this with someone who needs a second chance, and leave a review so more people can find mindset tools that actually stick.

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Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only.  This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.

Transcript

Welcome And A New Nephew

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body Podcast. I am your host, Tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate creative, storyteller, and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Tiana, and on this episode, we're going to talk about second chances. And I am very, very, very excited to share some news with you. I am now an aunt. As of a few days ago, at the time of this recording, my brother and his wife had a baby. And it's been an amazing experience throughout her pregnancy. And now that the baby's here, it's been it's been incredible. It's been surreal. I've been so introspective and really thinking about second chances, about changing your mind, about reframing things. And you know, on this show, we do talk a lot about what it takes to get stronger physically. But on this episode, we're gonna get into more of the headspace and the mindset and perspective because if you think about it, you need to have direction in life. And with your direction, you can then take action and take steps to move yourself forward. Of course, by the end of this episode, you will walk away with three action items that you can reflect upon, you can journal on, or you could just ponder on your next walk. So that maybe you can find things in your life where you want to give yourself a second chance, or maybe reframe how you see

Family Backstory And Hard Choices

SPEAKER_01 2:10

something. So here's the backstory. My brother and I are a little less than two years apart. I'm the oldest. I'm currently 47. He is 45. And he spent most of his life telling people he didn't want kids. Um, he was almost certain, and we would joke about it all the time. And in 2018, I had to make a difficult choice. Um, I had a lot of health issues, and I decided to um go through with a hysterectomy because it was really cramping my style. And without getting into all of the specifics, we had tried my doctor and I, we had tried several things before we came to this crossroads in my life. And on the day of my surgery, my brother was at the hospital. He shut up for me. Now, we have always been very close, but we've certainly made a lot of different choices for ourselves in the past. Growing up, I was a straight A student. He decided to do different things with his life. He dropped out of high school, he was constantly in trouble. He spent a good amount of time uh in his 20s in and out of prison. And it's been such a surreal experience for me to witness his change, his turnaround in his life, his ability to be completely transparent, honest, and real with every human being he encounters, whether they find him abrasive, entertaining, amusing, kind, funny, or they think he's an asshole, he doesn't give a fuck. But he is always honest. And although we have been very different in some of our life experiences and the paths that we have respectively chosen for ourselves, when it comes to that, we are very much the same. We say it like it is, we say the uh uncomfortable thing, and we know that you know the real strength in a relationship is how two parties can have an uncomfortable conversation, be very vulnerable with each other, and then find a constructive way to either come to a compromise, find a resolution, find forgiveness, and then you know, create the path forward from there. So going back to just watching him completely change his life, it's been amazing. We had a co-ed shower, and the groups of people truly were all there

Watching A Life Turn Around

SPEAKER_01 5:10

for him. And I know that 20 years ago, that probably was not anywhere near where he thought his life was going to the direction it was going to go in. So to see him at a baby shower, to see pretty much everybody there for him, and of course for his wife, uh, and to just take it all in. It was it was a lot. I'm very proud of him. And so now going back just a couple days, being in the hospital, seeing my newborn nephew, eventually getting a chance to hold him. Um it brought up a lot for me because it's not just about this family moment that we're sharing together, but it's also about how I was thinking about how the world really rewards people who are certain, people who know exactly where they want to go and they have a direction, like I mentioned earlier. But oftentimes, the people who change their mind are confusing to other people. The world looks down upon people who change lanes, shift gears, maybe a highly successful career woman, and then she decides that she needs to take a sabbatical from her career to nurture her children. And people have opinions. But what if what if that's backwards, right? What if the identity that we're gripping on to is preventing you from an amazing experience? Like my brother saying he didn't want kids for a really long time, and then to change his mind as he got older. You know, he got more serious with his partner and then realized, you know what? This is something that I really want. Now he's no spring chicken, right? 45 is, I wouldn't say it's old, but it is his firstborn. So no one really knows if uh it's a one and done for him or not, but we'll time will tell, right? But it's this idea that you can change your mind, you can hold out on something, and then an experience will come your way and it will flip you on your head. And are we going to see that as a weakness or as a power, as a strength? Now, the thing that no one really talks about is, you know, miracles in life. And we think that miracles have to be this like big dramatic thing. But what if the miracle is that you can actually change your life by doing small, little actions every single day? Very similar to what I talk about when we're talking about strength training and how I share on many episodes of this exact show that you are going to make a massive transformation in your life, but it's going to be the culmination of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of micro steps over a long period of time, a sustainable transformation. So maybe there will be times when you're going to say to yourself, oh wow, I was wrong about that. I thought I wanted this, but I really want that. And you know, nobody's really keeping a spreadsheet of your opinions. Nobody's keeping tabs on what you want for yourself. I think that more often than not, we're worried about what other people think, and other people aren't really thinking about you. They're not thinking about me. So maybe that will help you find some comfort when you find yourself trying to decide which direction you want to go in. The reality is you know

When Changing Your Mind Looks Brave

SPEAKER_01 9:20

what you want to do. You just might be holding out, you might be holding yourself to a standard that an older version of you holds, not the person you are today. Now, thinking about acceptance, once you change your mind and it's confusing to other people, that that doesn't matter. Is it confusing to you? Because when you walk inside of a store or uh in someone's house, you take your sunglasses off, right? So you're changing the lens with which you view life, and you are allowed to do that for a lot of things, for everything. You can decide to punish yourself through a transformation, a process, a journey, an education, or you can accept the baseline, you can accept where you're at at the current moment, and then build off of that. Because acceptance and surrender is not necessarily giving up, it's acceptance, it's acknowledging what is while still moving forward in that new direction that you want to go in. Hopefully that makes sense. A lot of people think surrender is quitting, and it absolutely is not. It's about saying, hey, this is where I am right now, but I don't have to stay here. And that's a brave move. But adjusting the lens that you view life through, or a moment through, it's a practice, it's not something you can just switch on and off. It's gonna feel uncomfortable. It's kind of like establishing a boundary. You have to practice it. Learning a skill, you have to practice. We see people creating artwork, music, or putting together offers in the digital space or even in the 3D world, and it looks so easy, but but that's because that person has put in hundreds of thousands of hours into their craft. You watch a ballet dancer, they move across the floor with ease and grace. Inside of their shoes, they have blisters. Their toenails are probably cracked, maybe no toenails at all on some of their toes, bleeding, band-aids, muslin. That's uh muslin is like uh, it looks almost like cotton, but it's a little bit lighter, like more airy. And I believe it comes from wool. I might be wrong about that. It's been a minute since I've been in the ballet studio. But the point is they make it look easy, but it's the craft, it's years of work. And so just like a skill, sometimes you're going to ping pong because you're gonna make a different choice for yourself because maybe in your heart that's what you want, but it's confusing, and so you might default back to your old ways. So it takes practice. Now, uh here's some takeaway items. This is gonna be a shorter episode this week because well, sometimes I just like to be concise. I want you to think about one belief. Take an inventory of something that you keep repeating to yourself, something that that you've been telling yourself for so long that

Small Miracles And Micro Steps

SPEAKER_01 13:10

it feels like fact. I want you to write it down and then I want you to ask yourself, is this still true about me? Or is this who I used to be? A belief, a question, and then sit within. So I'll tell you for me, uh a belief I used to have for myself was that I wanted to be this wildly successful commercial real estate property manager. I wanted to be like a senior regional manager or director and have a team working for me. And as I was climbing the ladder and making my way up, I realized this is not what I want anymore. I had been going through my health issues at the same time as working on a big portfolio of financial institutions in northern New Jersey and Rockland County, New York. And I realized I was killing myself post-natural disaster because I had over a hundred properties I was responsible for, and many of them sustained damage. And so I was pushing myself out on the road at night, doing inspections, writing up reports, trying to get work orders um submitted and then inspected, and then closed out, get those invoices paid. And I stopped and said, so I'm working harder to get a promotion, to move up, to work harder, to get more responsibility, to maybe get another promotion, to move up again, and maybe oversee people in a position that I used to have. And you know what? It just didn't appeal to me anymore. And when it came down to it and I was contemplating entrepreneur life, I realized, oh my God, I don't want to climb the corporate ladder anymore. I'm not interested in doing that. That is not something that I want for me. And it was really challenging because I put in blood, sweat, and tears to get to that point in my career. It wasn't my first career choice either. It was the third time I had already made a change. And now I was walking away from all of that, a six-figure income. I had very little debt. I owned my car outright. I had three gym memberships because I worked all over the state in New Jersey. So I had two gym memberships in New Jersey because sometimes it was just easier to work out near work and then drive home. I also had a gym membership at home or in my hometown, and life was great until it wasn't. So I had to really sit down and ask myself like, is this who I am anymore? Or do I have a bigger calling that doesn't make sense to anyone but me right now? And I did. It was time for me to leave to pursue fitness, my passion. Now, number two,

Three Action Items To Try

SPEAKER_01 16:25

this next takeaway. I want you to think about what is your second chance going to be? What is the thing you've been circling? What is that version of yourself that you have almost let yourself become? Consider naming it, consider writing yourself a letter from that perspective. So it's five years from now. You were brave, you did the thing, you made the change, you are embodying this new version of yourself, and you're writing a letter from the future to yourself today. What would that look like? What would you say in that letter? What would your title be? How much money would you be making? What kind of life would you be living? Where would you be living? It's a little woo, but you know me. I always like to mix a lot of the practical with a lot of the spiritual because that is how I roll. Now, this third thing, try the reframe exercise. Maybe you had a hard conversation with somebody. Maybe you missed a workout. Maybe you had a tough day and your diet is off. And instead of telling yourself you failed, you fucked up, I want you to tell yourself I have information. And then I want you to think about what that information is telling you and try to reframe it so that you know what the next move is. You see, when you're leveling up in your life, when you are becoming someone or doing something, becoming something, you have to think about what kind of decisions you would make from that vantage point. What would that person do? So I'll tell you right now that if you want to improve your quality of life in some sort of way, let's say you want more money in your life, which is a pretty common desire, a practice that you could incorporate would be to stop going to four different grocery stores to get the best deals. Because the wealthier version of you is going to value their time more than snipping coupons and wasting gas money and time going to four different grocery stores for their sales, which we all know are not really sales to begin with. So that's my little take. I'll go through those action items again and I'll keep it a little more concise. So, number one, let's find that belief, something that's been repeating in your head, something that you want to know if it's still true about yourself, and question it. Second thing you're gonna do is think about what's that idea that you've been circling? What's the version of yourself that you want to become? And consider naming it, and then write yourself a letter from that future version of yourself. So maybe the person who you're going to become in five years from now, writing a letter to you today. And then the third thing you're going to do this week is reframe a situation. Okay. So maybe you missed a workout, you had a tough conversation, you fucked something up. Instead of beating yourself up about it, instead of telling yourself, you failed, you're going to tell yourself, I have information. And then you're going to examine what that information is and let it guide you to the next move. Because the only way you're actually going to get to that next level version of yourself is if you start acting as if you are already there. Now, if the next version of yourself in five years from now is somebody who is a billionaire, I do not advise spending all of your savings today on a luxury purse or a vacation. You don't have to be reckless, but could you could do something small to treat yourself, or you could save yourself some time. Now, on a sidebar,

The Time Value Reframe

SPEAKER_01 20:35

and you know this wouldn't be a podcast episode with me if I didn't go on a sidebar at least once. When it comes to getting a solution, a wealthy person wants to buy back their time. So they don't necessarily want to spend hours learning a skill or doing something. They will pay someone to do it, or they will pay someone to give them back their time. Okay. So that's really where I was coming from with the whole like going to four different grocery stores because of their deals. You're not valuing your time when you do that. All right. You are wasting your time, you're wasting your energy and resources, you're also wasting gas. So when you think about it that way, you're not saving any money at all. But again, that is a total sidebar. And yes, it is my opinion, but I think if you actually did some number crunching, you would see that I'm probably right. All right, so let's bring it back around because the whole point of this episode is that a child that almost didn't exist came into the world this week at the time of this recording.

Second Chances And Closing Ask

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And the whole reason why he is here is because one person said, I changed my mind. And that's it. And that is a beautiful and powerful thing. And it didn't require a complete lifestyle overhaul, it didn't require any epic changes, it was just a conscious decision to move in a different direction and to get the outcome that they wanted. So kudos to my brother. The family is so excited, so blessed. We are so happy to have this baby here. And if you are still listening, thank you for your time and attention. I appreciate you being here each and every week, bouncing back and forth between all of the lovely topics. But you know, this is life. We can't always just talk about one thing. And uh I'm I truly appreciate you being here for me and supporting me on this endeavor. If this show resonates with you, I kindly ask that you share it with somebody so that they can get into our community as well. That is the best way to support the Unbreakable Mind and Body podcast. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you on the next one.