Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #138: When You Know It’s Time To Ask For Help with Heather!

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

Do you remember all those flight cancellations last week? Of course, I got caught up in it. And if you could imagine me at 5am frantically trying to bend reality in order to pick up my son from camp on time, you’d understand how crazy it was! But that was when I realized, I didn’t have to do this all myself. I asked for HELP. And my wonderful friends absolutely pulled through for me. They were happy to help and I was so thankful. Asking for help is not giving up and it is not weakness. It is a practice in grace and gratitude. When you are feeling overwhelmed, how can you ask for help? Challenge yourself but know you don’t always have to go it alone.  Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this LINK and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you!    To pre-order Overcome Your Villains NOW and get the bonus bundle click here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. Welcome back. I'm ready for my close-up. Welcome back. I'm so grateful you're back here with me today. So first of all, I wanted to give a shout out to you.

I received so many beautiful messages from my last individual episode, the one on forgiveness. And it was really surprising to me how many people that message resonated with. There's different times where you feel like you're one of the only people in the world going through something. And then to hear how many people needed to hear that message, agreed with it. And I'm so happy if you haven't listened to that episode yet, go back two episodes and check it out. It definitely is something that, pooh, I'm so glad my good friend talked to me about this. and opened my eyes to the power of forgiveness. It's not something that I had thought a lot about, which is so crazy because, of course,

why wouldn't I have thought about it? But I just, I never, I don't know, I never thought about it until now. And I'm really, what I've also learned is that it's not a one and done solution, right? It's not that you make the decision you're going to forgive and miraculously it's done. Instead, it's more of a process and a journey. and one of my listeners sent me a note on LinkedIn the other day, which was a post that another woman had put up talking about how forgiveness sometimes you can think that you've worked through it, you can think you've completely forgiven only to become triggered again by something else

that kind of takes you through the process again. So it sounds like this is something that I'm going to be working on from now on, but I'm really grateful to have opened my eyes to it, to have acknowledged that it's important to me to have created this goal of having forgiveness for everyone in my life and for myself. It's been, it's been a lot. I'm not going to lie. Okay. So if you haven't checked out that episode, please go check it out. Okay. And on to this week. This has been a really challenging week. Oh my gosh. It's been so challenging. And I know it's been super challenging for a lot of us. If you have been on a flight or looking at flights, you've heard thousands of flights have been canceled in

past week, which of course I had a flight scheduled this week and my flight got canceled. So I just wanted to kind of share with you what happened, the rundown and how we were able to find solutions because you may find this helpful. I wish that I had these cliff notes when things started going sideways for me about a week ago. So I had mentioned that my son went away to camp for a month for academic camp. He had broken his arm while he was there. I had gone to visit him. I was so impressed by his strength that he was committing to stay and finish his program. However, his last day of camp was this past week, and we had already planned and I'd scheduled to fly out, pick him up, and bring him back home.

So everything was in motion. And frankly, he had been dying to get out of there since day one, even before the broken arm. He was living in a tent. It was the rainiest month of July they've ever had in the history of camp, mud everywhere. I mean, just a complete disaster, right? But he told me that the way he was able to get through it was he just kept saying to himself, I can get through today.

I can get through one day at a time. And that was really his strategy. And it's funny because my strategy when I'm going through tough times is I like to focus on something I'm looking forward to ahead. And I was talking to him about that yesterday when he's back home with me now. And I was saying, was that helpful for you when we would be on the phone every day talking about, you know, how you're doing, that I would try to bring up things you could look forward to. And he said, well, not really. So it was interesting to see that everyone has different

coping mechanisms, different things work for different people. And if we don't ask, we really can't assume that what works for us works for someone else. So he taught me that for him, when he goes through tough time, just focusing on that one day, that one moment, and that one minute is what allows him to get through difficult times. So there you go. Do not assume, definitely ask. So I'll be able to provide better support in the future firm. Hopefully we won't have a situation like that again. So I knew that I was going to pick my son up. I had an 8 a.m. flight scheduled.

I had no idea, like many of us, you know, if we're not planning on traveling, we're probably not researching travel and we aren't aware of it. We all live in our own little bubbles, right? Where just what's happening in our network and our world is what's impacting us. So I had no idea. There are thousands of flights being canceled. I woke up at an 8 a.m. flight on America. out of Miami to Boston, which was going to get me in to Logan at noon so I could get the rental

car and drive three hours to New Hampshire to pick him up from camp. I was scheduled to get him by 3.30 in the afternoon. So things clearly had to go very timely, you know, in order to achieve this timeline. I never thought it wouldn't, right? I didn't even think about it. It didn't cross my mind. And then I woke up at 5 a.m. to start getting ready to get to the airport and get ready for my flight, and I look at my email, and there's an email from American Airlines, and it says your flight has been canceled. We have rebooked you on an 1130 a.m. flight. That does not work for me, right? The 1130 wouldn't get me there in time to get the rental car, to drive to New Hampshire, and I had to hit these timelines, as well as the place he was going to camp. There's no lights out there. There's no street lights.

So I don't know the roads well at all. It would be pretty dangerous for me to be driving around New Hampshire, the back roads of New Hampshire at night, not knowing where I'm going using a GPS, right? So I thought to myself, okay, what can I do? I always lean on taking action, right? That's my go-to. So I called American Airlines, and I've been flying American Airlines for 20-something years. You know, I've status. I thought, okay, this is, I'm going to get to somebody. They're going to get me on another flight. At the same time I'm on hold, I start Googling flights to Boston today to see if I can get on another airline maybe or maybe fly out of Fort Lauderdale, you know, find another solution, right? So just keep focusing on the solution and take action to find out how you can achieve it.

I can't find anything. I mean, I had no idea how many flights have been canceled. Thousands, right? So I'm sitting there. I'm been on hold now for over an hour and a half with American Airlines. I can't find any earlier flights, and I'm rebooked on an 1130. So it's starting to look like, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to take the 1130. I don't know how I'm going to get to New Hampshire. And in this, it might not sound super stressful right now, but that morning, oh my gosh, it was as if my world was coming down because, of course, your child is waiting for you to get them and you want to 100% find a way to make it work. And luckily, somehow, some way, as I was racking my brain and what can I do, I can't be driving in New Hampshire at night in the dark. I'll never make it. I don't know where I'm going.

I had a hotel in Boston booked for the night already. I was going to have to book a hotel in New Hampshire, because if I could make it there to get him, I wouldn't be able to drive back. I'll be too late. I mean, the ideas I was going through my mind were crazy. So I ended up, I booked a hotel in New Hampshire just in case because I thought if I can at least get there in time, then I can get him and we'll just stay at a hotel locally. I'll lose the money on the Boston Hotel, and then we'll just drive back in the morning. It just, it wasn't coming together well, but I was trying to pull some levers so I had a plan B in place. and all of a sudden I just something hit me and I said, wait a minute, I don't have to do this by myself. Why don't I ask someone else for help? So that was the one key that I wanted to plant in your mind today with whatever challenge that you're facing, so many of us want to grab the wheel and fix it, you know, take action and find solutions and I'm right there with you. But thankfully, I stopped and I asked myself this, who in the Massachusetts do I know that could help me possibly get my son.

And I grew up in Massachusetts, right? So it was like this epiphany moment that there's a lot of people I could call, actually, and just ask. You know, I don't know if they'll be able to do it. Obviously, it's a big ask to go drive, you know, six hours in a day to pick up my son and bring him back. But I can ask. So I called my first friend and the phone was off and went right to voicemail.

So I called my second friend, Raymond, who I grew up with, who's a dear friend. And the minute he picked up, I just said, oh, my gosh, I'm having a nervous breakdown. I need your help. And he said, anything, what do you need? And I explained the situation to him. And he said, hang on, you know, I've got a few people I can think of, don't worry about it. I'm going to take care of it. Just figure out your flights, you know, text me and keep me updated.

But don't worry about what's happening here in Massachusetts. Someone is going to be on their way to get Dylan from camp and bring him back to meet you at the airport when you get into town. And it was such a feeling of relief to know someone I trusted, someone who I know would make sure my son is taken care of, someone who I know will not let me down, made that big commitment to me that, don't worry, I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I'm going to take care of it. And it was such an amazing feeling, oh my gosh, I'm so grateful to have really great friends in life is, what a blessing. And the funny thing is he was so happy to help. He, I mean, he must have said to me 800 times, this is no big deal, Heather. I'm happy to do it.

It's a pleasure to do it. I'm happy to help take care of him. And it really ended up being this amazing experience that reminded me how great for my dear friends and how grateful I am for people who I can count on and who support me and my son. So I headed to the airport for my American Airlines flight. And wouldn't you know, I get there and I'm ready to take off waiting at the gate, waiting at the gate. All of a sudden I see delay, delay, delay.

Delay. I mean, the good times just keep on hitting. Are you kidding me? And so it was delay after delay after delay. Who feels me on this one? It is so painful sitting there. And P.S., everyone's wearing masks in the airport. People are super tense. And the airport's packed because thousands of flights have been canceled. So people are just angry, right? So I tried to find a place to sit where I wasn't too close to anyone else. And it just had my mask on, had my AirPods on, and basically sat on my phone trying to. to see what was going on with my flight. Well, it turns out one of the things I didn't know was apparently the airlines had laid off a lot, if not the majority of flight attendants during the pandemic. And I guess what's happened now is that they're incredibly short-staffed

because those people moved on to do different things or didn't want to come back to the company. And so they don't have enough flight attendants to actually run the flights. And now people are traveling a lot. You can do the math. and see the numbers don't work out. So what we were actually, we kept getting delayed because we didn't have flight attendants.

So I felt a little bit better that, okay, there's a plane. That's a good sign. Now we just have to find flight attendants. Suddenly, you know, a couple hours later, after a few different delays, a team of flight attendants made it to the plane and we were able to board. And then we had to, we were delayed on the tarmac because we weren't in the right time slot anymore, right? So we had to sit on the tarmac for a long time.

Anyways, this ended up being a really challenging day of travel, not only for me, but for thousands of people. And the good news is we ended up making it out. And I have this app on my phone called Life 360, which allows me to see where my son is. He can see where I am so that if you're trying to meet up or whatever, find someone you can know exactly their location. So the whole flight, I'm just basically tracking him.

As I know, my friend ended up having one of his employees go to pick up my son to get him from camp, to drive to New Hampshire, to bring him back to Boston to meet me. So a huge inconvenience for anyone to do that, obviously. I mean, it's almost six hours of drive time and one day on no notice when, you know, he had plenty to do at work. And anyhow, I'm tracking my son on the flight. And obviously, I'm so much later than I was supposed to be. I'm not now getting until nighttime.

And so I'm texting my friend from the plane, thank goodness for Wi-Fi, saying, okay, bad news. I'm delayed again. You know, I'm not going to get until it was, I believe, 530. and I said, they're going to beat me to Boston before I can land. What can we do? And he said, don't worry, I'll send them to get something to eat. They have my credit card. They're going to be fine.

What a great friend. And oh, my gosh, just put out gratitude for good friends because they are game changers. This one just completely saved me. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. All in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest Registered Agents has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years.

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And we were able to have dinner, and he was able to get to sleep in a regular bed, not a tent, which was amazing for him. And the next day, we had an afternoon flight out, which was great. And I had changed the time of our flight going back just because I knew my son was going to be so tired. And he had wrecked all of his clothes living in a tent for a month. And we had to go pick him up some things. So anyhow, with all of this going on, it hit me that I had a keynote, a virtual keynote, presentation for a company based in Boston.

And I started seeing their locations everywhere, which was crazy. And as my son and I boarded the plane to get back home, my keynote was a next day. I get an email from my client that I'm speaking for the next day saying, hey, Heather, can we jump on a quick call, wanted to go over some last minute details. P.S. I'm taking off yet again another flight, hoping I'm taking off. And I had to email back, please don't get nervous. I'm actually leaving Boston right now, but I'm on the flight. I will be home, you know, late tonight, and I will be fine for our keynote tomorrow. Poor woman was so nervous and saying, please just get home safely, please let me know that this is going to be okay. But I let her know,

Listen, there's one thing that I'm clear on. Even if I didn't get home, I'd find a way to do the keynote from Boston. I'll find a way to do it. You know, I made the commitment. I am going to come through no matter what. That I can promise you. So we did get home late that night and we were able to, you know, get up in our own house the next morning. And then I remembered another curveball that I live in a building and they had announced that the month of August would be fire alarm testing.

Well, how do you have a month of fire alarm testing? I'm not really sure on that. So I had called my point of contact at the office here, who is a great guy, super nice, and I stand very good terms with it. I reached out to him and said, hey, can you give me a heads up on what the actual days are? Because I do a lot of virtual keynote speaking each week, and I need to know if I need to go and rent a studio or what I need to do. So he had told me that he had zero updates on it. And so that morning that I woke up, I had actually called a studio so that I could have a plan B in case.

fire alarms started going off here because my client would not appreciate that. And it ended up, I sent him a note that morning, hey, any update? And he wrote back, yes, they're not doing fire alarms this week. You're in the clear. So that was one amazing blessing. One thing that I was worrying about that did not need to be a concern at all. And I was so grateful that he was able to, you know, yet again, get me some information, even though it was last minute, it worked out. And then I was able to incorporate, you know, my Boston experience and what had just happened and how I had just been in Boston the day before now that I was doing a virtual keynote for a company based in Boston, and it actually ended up pulling everything together perfect, and they really loved that I had

just been there and seen their office and whatnot and had shared that at the beginning of my keynote. So moral of the story is ask for help and keep your good friends close because those are the people you can rely on and they want to help you. Like I said, my friend was so happy that he was able to jump in and help. And I'm so, so grateful for it. So Ben, a crazy. week. Okay, so then I'm back at home, and as you know, I'm a rookie author with Harper Collins leadership. My new book, Overcome Your Villains, is available for pre-order now, but I have no idea what I'm doing, of course, as this is the first time I've done a book with a publishing house. And so we have, every two weeks, we have a team meeting with Harper Collins to go over a variety of different

things. This week, we were talking about our pre-order campaign and pre-launch and hitting the goals to sell 7,000 books before the book launches. And so, as you know, if you want someone to do something, you need to give them more value than you're asking for. So right now, Amazon's running a sale on my book. It's $24.99. What I decided to do was put together a bonus bundle of offerings, my $299 confidence video course, my 30-day email accountability program to help you achieve your goals, the new Overcome Your Villains Workbook that I created. the first chapter of the book. And for people who want to join the launch team, they get Zoom meetings with me where I'm going to read chapters of the book and answer questions. And so I'm

coming with all these offerings to get people to take action to buy the 2499 book. And so I'm on the call with Harper-Conn's, and it was crazy and very unexpected. My point of contact said, Heather, I just want to let you know your website, Overcome Your Villains.com looks amazing. Your workbook's amazing. Your bonus bundle is worth $500 that you're offering people for free just for buying the book. It's amazing. She said, I have to tell you, it's so nice to work with someone that gets things done so quickly and follows direction so well. She said, this is not the way it usually works. Usually it's not this seamless.

I felt super proud, first of all, because I've been working so incredibly hard at this, and it's not easy, right, that the amount of time going into this stuff is obscene. However, I'm super proud of what I'm creating, and I'm so grateful to all the people who are pre-ordering. If you have not pre-ordered yet, please go to Overcome Your Villains.com. You can buy the book from the links there and then download your $500 bonus bundle. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, so I was really shocked and surprised about that call and did not expect it at all. However, every time I have a call with them, the list of things that I have to do grows and grows and grows.

However, I know if you don't put the hard work in, you will not get the results. And that is the bottom line. Everybody wants success, but people don't want to put the work in. And the darkest days are the ones that you need to grind through to see that breakthrough on the other side. And I am so committed to this. And definitely the last year has been so incredibly challenging. But I will tell you that I see light at the end of the tunnel. I don't think it's a train.

I think it's going to be great. and I'm pushing through these tough times now so we can have better times tomorrow, and I want you to do the same because you're worth it. Okay, so this is surreal, and I just noticed it that four years ago today, the announcement went out in the media industry that I had just been fired four years ago. And I put myself back in that day and remembering what it was like and how scared I was and how much anxiety I had about the unknown and just the fear of what would I do. And fast forward to now, you know, I didn't know I'd self-publish and write my book Confidence Creator. I didn't know that book would trump Donald Trump for the number one on the business biography list, right? I didn't know I'd launch a speaking business. I didn't know I'd be named top 40 keynote speaker in 2020 by real leaders.

I didn't know I'd give a TEDx talk that will get promoted to TED and translated into six languages. I didn't know Harvard would call in January and ask me to teach a professional sales and sales leadership course for them. I didn't know I'd be appointed to the board of directors of HealthLink. I didn't know I'd sign with HarperCollins leadership and write a book with them. I didn't know. I didn't know I'd launch this podcast. I didn't know any of those things. And the key to remember is this.

You can only connect the dots after the fact. You can't connect them on the front end. No one has that vision or that master plan that just drops down on their lap. It's something that you have to take messy and aggressive action, repeated action and repeated action, to continue to find your way. And today, four years later, I can look back and I see how the dots connect. And I see why they connected. But four years ago today, I had no flipping idea and I was petrified. And by the way, I'm still scared so many days because I constantly put myself into new arenas.

I start over as a new first-time published author. I start over, right? I'm constantly challenging myself to go into new unknown environments, which is scary. But the more that you do it, the better you get at it. And the more normal it seems. So step into fear, choose to see fear as a green light that means go and grow and go now. And the more that you do it, the easier will be next time. So until next week, please, if you could subscribe, rate and review the show, it would mean the world to me. If you tag me, I'm always reposting you on social media. And if you haven't yet, please pre-order the book, Overcome Your Villains. You can go to Overcome Your Villains.com or anywhere books are sold.

That book is everywhere. It is so crazy. It has more websites up than my first. first book ever did. And I'll tell you, in sales, distribution is key. And I'm thinking this is going to be a game changer. Until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will too.