The Walmart Moment That Started My Rebuild

In this episode of The Fuck It Shift, Adam Ross shares the moment a routine trip to Walmart forced him to confront the life he had accepted—and became the first real step in rebuilding it.

Adam talks about standing in a store with only $78 in his bank account, quietly calculating every item while trying to protect his children from the reality of how little money he had.

This episode is about the difference between wanting change and finally becoming unwilling to remain where you are. Adam explores how blame, familiar patterns and even self-criticism can become comfortable stories that keep us from moving forward.

He also shares what happened after that moment—the conversations he initiated, the career risk he took and the discipline required to turn one emotional decision into a completely different direction.

Adam reflects on the role affirmations played throughout his rebuild, why he had to start giving himself the same encouragement he gave everyone else and how speaking about the future differently helped him believe a new life was possible.

Because rebuilding rarely begins with everything suddenly becoming clear.

Sometimes it begins with one painful moment that makes you say: this is over.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Fuck It Shift Podcast. I'm Adam Ross, and I'm joined by producer Jay, as always, who hits me with a question.

unknown 0:07

At what point I say fuck it.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Nice. Well, you either hate to lose, you're willing to change, or you hate to change so much that you're willing to lose. And the thing is, you got to decide which one of the those people you are if you want to fuck it and you want to change. You want to shift. You see, we love to complain. We love to say that we can't find the one that we love. Well, this isn't fair. The system's set up against me. We want to lose, lose, lose because we are afraid to change. But I would flip that script on you and say if you really want to make a shift and you really want to make changes, you've got to realize that when you complain, you remain, and when you praise, you raise. You've got to be willing to change. Even if that means losing. Losing your friends, losing the people that are holding you back, saying goodbye to old habits, saying goodbye to old patterns. Like think about your path. I just had this really powerful conversation with somebody I really, really, really close with about Gary Bishop's book, uh Unfuck Yourself. Shout out to you to Gary Bishop, it's a great book. You should read it. If you haven't read it, I encourage everybody to read that book. Because in one of the most powerful chapters is that we're so afraid to lose that we select mates, we select our partner already in the comfort of knowing how it could possibly end. That's that's fucked up. That not everybody, but a majority of people select relationships based on knowing, having the comfort of knowing it won't last, it's gonna end, and it's probably gonna end in this pattern. Because we're willing to lose rather than change and pick somebody new, pick somebody different, take a chance on something new. That should sit with you, that should be unsettling that you don't even realize we as a peep, as people, don't often realize that we are we are making choices a simulation inside a simulation and throw it to Rick and Morty where you're you're choosing the same thing over and over and over and over again, even know the results going to be or is the same because it's comfortable. And it will never it'll never shift. You'll never be able. You could say fuck it a million times, but it's never gonna shift. You name it, everybody I could but myself. It was this happened, and then that happened, and the investor did this, and and the regulator, none of that shit mattered. And the more you talked about it, the more those stories became real, the more they became a comfortable tale to tell, where I was losing by telling it over and over and over again because I wasn't willing to break the narrative. I spent seven years easily blaming, blaming myself. Man, that felt so good. It feels good to blame yourself, doesn't it? It's you. You made these choices, silly me, stupid me. I let this happen, I let my partner do this, I let my business partner do that. Well, fuck off already. Are we allowed to swear? It's stop it, man. The comfort you get out of that about making it your fault, it's so poison for your soil, but it feels good because you know what? I got no one to blame but myself, huh? Stop it already. It's actually stopping you from doing anything positive in life.

unknown 5:02

What was your fucking shift?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

I'll tell you the story that I think I've shared with you before. I'm in Walmart. I know that I have $78 in my bank account. I am a weekend single father. I have my kids for the weekend. That's the only time back then that I was happy. And I'm shopping for them using my calculator on my phone. And I'm almost finished. And I spent time saying, no, we we can't get that this weekend. Why? I really want it. Yeah, I don't want to tell you that I don't have any money. You're too little. None of this makes sense to you. Of course, you want the sugary cereal, you've seen the commercial, but I'm like, well, you know, next time we have some at home. We still have this, we're gonna do this this weekend, make up stories, excuses. Again, watching my calculator, and my son takes it when I'm not looking and zeros it. And in that moment of panic and knowing I don't have enough money and I don't want to be embarrassed at the register, and then I don't want to tell my kids I don't have the money to buy them the stuff that they need for the weekend. And I'm stuck looking at this card of stuff, and I'm not quite done yet. And I'm like, I got this overwhelming sense of panic and anger of like, why would he touch the phone and what am I gonna do now? And I got to start over. And then in that moment, I was like, fuck this. I'm actually accepting this job where I make this much money trying to juggle all of these things and telling myself I'm making changes and rebuilding when I'm actually just stuck in this box shopping with a calculator, and I'm in my 30s. What kind of example am I that? Am I to my kids? Who's gonna want to be with a guy that's got a shop on his calculator? I needed at that moment, I was like, this ends, man. I'm not going to the register worrying about whether I can pay for something anymore. I still tease him now about that story, about that shift. That was the first time the gear turned. There were many turns that needed to be done after that. I would love to tell you that in that moment in Walmart was an epiphany and a bright light shined down on me, and suddenly I turned into this guy today. But it definitely was the first step, the first time I was like, this is fucking over. And I got very disciplined. I was disciplined leading up to that with my health, my fitness, and taking care of my kids and being the man I needed to be for them. It's made me a better father down the road. But it was definitely the moment that the first clear the first gear clicked. Yes, 100%. I think what that was is I just didn't feel like I was a failure at that time. That was the bright light that was shone down on me, the bright light moment that I'm like, man, I'm gonna get upset over a calculator, over numbers on a calculator because I don't have the money, or I don't know what I forgot the number that was on the calculator. Something's wrong with this picture, and it's me.

unknown 8:58

So let's say podcasting that was a Sunday evening after Sunday switching. What was your first movie Monday?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

It was Friday, and it was uh around 4:30 right after school, shopping for the weekend. Uh, I thought about it all weekend, and I did two things on the Monday. One, I finally accepted uh that uh the path I was on and what I was doing for a living while I loved it, it wasn't gonna get me anywhere. And I started that afternoon on an outreach to one of my clients about doing something different. That led to several other changes in my life that brought me to where I am today. So I remember that Monday morning where I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna speak to this particular person. It was a client of mine. And I have two more clients later in the afternoon who owned businesses, and I was gonna start having conversations about what needed to change and what doors they could open for me. And that was the biggest shift. The second was having the balls to take the offer and change my life and roll the dice on a completely different career and learn it on the learn it in like less than 15 days.

unknown 10:26

What point did affirmations start to come at you about the current?

SPEAKER_00 10:30

I used affirmations during that time when I started to switch. First of all, I was very positive and very, yes, you can, you can do it. Self-talk, self-positivity, positive talk was important in the health and fitness industry because people came to me who were very low, very down, and not that jazzed on making changes. They were afraid to make changes, they were in a comfort zone, they were afraid of me, they were afraid of the program, they were afraid of the pain, they were afraid of the change that fitness could bring them. So you spend a lot of time if you're a personal trainer out there and I mean I'm a dinosaur, it was one-on-one. It wasn't online coaching like it is today, with building a lot of relationships, strong bonds and relationships built through encouragement and goals and plateaus, smashing through plateaus and getting results. So you learn those skills and you learn how to uh communicate with people. So that was that was one of the greatest things about that that job that allowed me to that opened the door so I could try new things and do new things. So positivity and that talk was always there. The affirmation part where I started to realize that I needed it. I was giving all of this out to everybody, but when did I ever take time to say positive things about me? I didn't. I went home and said, I'm a loser, I barely make any money, I don't want to be a deadbeat dad. I only see my kids this many days out of the month. This is crazy. Something has to change. It wasn't until I was like, I'm comp, but I'm not I'm not giving myself the same yes you can attitude. Now remember, there's no social media, there's no, there's very little YouTube was there, but it was mostly jokes and videos, saying someone's name a thousand times, a million times. Um the positivity and the affirmations were from uh, you know, business books about teaching your mind to stay positive and stay focused and to push yourself out of your comfort zone to grow. And that's when I started saying things like uh I and I realized how important the the speaking it in the future as it is had happened was the key, not oh, I'd really like to do X, I'd really like to do Y. I would start and I hadn't learned yet to thank the universe or thank God. So I would say, I have achieved X. I never said, I'm so grateful that I was able to achieve in 2020, and it got really finite. Now my affirmations are very focused for the year I'm in, but speaking as if the year had already happened. Very key to do because you shouldn't say you should have core affirmations about self, but you should also have affirmations that are fluid and change as you level up. I told you I used to say that, you know, that I was a millionaire. Then it went to I'm a multimillionaire, then it goes to I'm a multi-multimillionaire. Well, the next step is I'm a billionaire. And you have to like take yourself through those because and I that's insane, right? I'm a billionaire. Well, that that's just as crazy to me as you saying right now you're a millionaire. And that was possible. So affirmations came about a year into that new job after that first gear switch, where I was like, fuck it, now what's next? Hey, I spent six years speaking positivity into all my clients and getting all these great results, and now it's my turn.

unknown 14:33

During those six years.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

I don't think it was a woe is me moment. I was really like, I was so jacked to get people results, and the relationships that I built with those people, while they may not be in my life today, were such a good groundwork, foundation of who I am today. And it taught me such a valuable lesson about how important it is to hear people. Like listening and hearing, or you can flip it around, hearing and listening, they're two totally different things. I can hear somebody say I've had a bad day, or I can listen to their bad day. You had a bad day, that sucks. Next. Well, you had a bad day. What happened? And having a real grounded exchange. So that was so powerful and such a shift for me that that those lessons I take with me today and I put them into they're a big part of even my sales and communication training with new staff or or new people or anybody who goes through any uh one-on-one mentoring with me. They're real I those lessons are ground were the groundwork or what I still teach today and how important it is to be able to do that. Listen to the voice inside that gave you the idea, that gave you the kick in the ass, that turned the gear, to get you excited about saying fuck it and making the change. I need you to hold on to that voice because there's gonna be a lot of others inside that tell you that that voice was crazy and to don't do it. That's the risk, that's the discomfort. Fuck it, let's shift and the comfort's gonna be the shit that's trying to hold you back from doing it. Until next time, Jay. See you on the other side.