This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 186 / Becoming Resilient with Erika Rothenberger

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

On this episode we discuss what I believe to be the common denominator of success. The thing that all the people who make it big have in common. What do you think that is? Hard work? Talent? Passion or great connections? I believe it’s this: They are RESILIENT. Which, for most of us, is a skill we get to build. Here to help us do just that is Erika Rothenberger. She uses her degree in Civil Engineering and Masters in Business Administration in her full-time career as Director of Performance Systems for the large national utility contractor, Henkels & McCoy. She runs two female empowerment networking groups in her community, is the host of the “Grit,Grace & Glitz” podcast, and is a captivating keynote speaker. So she’s busy, but I need you to hear me – she’s resilient.  As she shares, resilience is less about sucking it up or muscling your way through it, and more about adapting, learning, growing and recovering well. It’s about bending, but not breaking. Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Connect with Erika Rothenberger: Website: https://www.erikarothenberger.com/ Erika’s speaker reel:  https://vimeo.com/900147226. Grit, Grace & Glitz podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grit-grace-glitz-with-erika-rothenberger/id1563962436  Thanks to our This Is Woman’s Work Sponsors: For CAKES grippy, not sticky, nipple covers visit cakesbody.com and use Promo Code: TIWW to get your 10% discount!

I'm guessing you do this too, but whenever I'm doing something big, something that makes me nervous, I have this routine that I follow. I listen to certain songs, I get ready in a very specific way, and I always wear my lucky bracelets. But I want to share a tip that I've learned from public speaking. Yes, have your good luck charms and even your superstitions, but what's way more important are the things that you choose that help minimize any possible distractions. For me, that means wearing comfortable shoes,

so I'm not constantly thinking about how bad my feet hurt or doing my hair in a way that it's not constantly falling in my face. And 100% of the time, that means wearing my cakes nipple covers because they keep those rooms really cold. And everyone saying my diamond gutting nipples would absolutely be a distraction for them and for me. So let me encourage you to add cakes to your big moments. Visit cakesbody.com or use the link in show notes and be sure to use the promo code TIWW to get your 10% off. I am Nicole Kalil, and I have a theory about what most successful people have in common.

I can't say I've done extensive research or that this is my area of expertise, but based on observation and experience alone, I feel pretty strongly about this theory. Today, on this episode of This Is Woman's Work, we're going to discuss what I believe to be the common denominator of success, the thing that all people who make it big have in common. What do you think that is? Well, let me share the most frequent answers I've heard over the last quarter century. That makes me sound really old, right? The most common answer is hard work. And for most successful people, I'd say that's probably true.

But we all know people who make tons of money and don't work for shit. I won't name names, but some people just get lucky, are in the right place at the right time, are born into it, or create success in ways that don't require working really hard. And we all know people who work their asses off, multiple jobs, long hours, back-breaking work that don't earn shit. So no, I don't believe hard work is the common denominator. I often hear talent or intelligence or business savvy.

Without going into it, I'm going to say right up front that I know that's not true. Other typical responses are passion, discipline, mindset, and confidence. And while I would love to believe that confidence is the one thing that leads to success, the evidence shows that many successful people struggle with imposter syndrome or feel confident in one aspect of their life, but not in others. So what is it? I believe it's this. Successful people get back into action faster and more frequently than everyone else.

They have tough days just like everyone else, maybe even more than everyone else. They face rejection, experience failure, lots and lots of failure. They have fears and doubts and somehow they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and get back into action toward what matters faster than everyone else. They're like the human equivalent of those blow up clowns with sand at the bottom. And when they get punched, they bounce right back up. They are resilient. They collect no's until they find or create the yes.

They fail forward. For some, resilience might come a little more naturally than to others. In some cases, logical thinkers can move forward faster than those who are more emotional. It could be that they grew up with adversity or faced a huge challenge or overcame a trauma. And now they know that whatever they face today, they can overcome because they've done it before. But foremost, the skill of tenacity, of resilience is one we get to build. So here to help us do just that is Erica Rothenberger. Erica is absolutely a hard worker, has clear and obvious talent, is smart, passionate, and confident, and she's resilient. She uses her degree in civil engineering and master's in

business administration in her full-time career as a director of performance systems for the large national utility contractor Henkels & McCoy. She runs two female empowerment networking groups in her community, is the host of the Grace & Glitz podcast, and is a captivating keynote speaker. She has an international team of more than 18,000 associates in her fast-growing wellness organization. So she's busy, but I need you to hear me. She's resilient. She's an advocate for assault and domestic violence awareness, and I am grateful to know her and to have her on the show. Erica, thank you for joining me. And I have to start by asking you to share

your personal story of resilience. Nicole, I don't even know exactly where to start. First and foremost, thank you for having me. I absolutely love everything you are doing with This Is Woman's Work and just propelling women to go to that next level. And I'm so glad we're talking about resilience today. And I honor you and thank you for having me here today to share my story. And, you know, many people may look at my feed or may read what I'm doing or see my website and say, oh, wow, you know, everything's all together. And what I want to remind everyone is, is we all need and have been using the gift of resilience, right? But resilience is like something that we have to continue

to sharpen. We have to continue to work at. It is not something that just can come natural all of the time. So I'll bring you back to a story that really tested my resilience, that really made me have to sharpen that pencil, that really made me have to dig deep to work on the things that I had already been really putting into place, but really find how resilience could come full circle and really help me get through some of the deepest, darkest times of my personal life. So I'll rewind. June of 2022, it was a fairly nice day out, middle of the summer. And my husband was in Kansas City.

My two kids were with the sitter. They'd been off from school for about two days at that point. New sitter, left them at home that morning, made sure that they were ready to go to the movies that day with the sitter, drove to work the same way that I always drove to work. I had a networking meeting around 9 a.m. for coffee, stopped at a local Starbucks, had coffee, left that meeting at approximately 10 o'clock. As I drove into my parking lot, I parked in the same place that, well, I always had. I went to go take that last sip of lemon water. I checked my emails really quickly before I was going to bustle into the office and knew that probably chaos was going to explode and went to go grab my things. And for any of you that carry a lot of bags, well, I'm kind of guilty of that.

My lunch bag, my purse, my computer, et cetera, et cetera. As I was sitting there, I opened my car door. I leaned over to the passenger seat and collected my stuff. As I looked back, right there, in that very moment, he was standing there. A man I had never seen before. I quickly asked, can I help you, sir? And before the word even came out of my mouth, the last word of sir, he punched me straight in the face. He grabbed me by the long tendrils of my hair and he threw me to that asphalt pavement.

He started beating the living shit out of me. I gasped. I screamed. I tried to get help. I tried to run away. Nothing was getting him off of me. He was treating me like I was a rag doll and not a human being. The next few moments were a blur. The punches, the screams, the pulling of the hair, the cuts,

the blood, the saliva in my mouth. And then the next thing I know, as I was trying to fight back with all of my might, he came up with his large crease of his elbow and put it below my neck and strangled me, trying to kill me because strangulation is a form of attempted murder. Luckily, by summon the act of someone much higher than me, I was able to get to my feet. I ran for help. He was in my car. I had no idea if he had a gun, if he would chase me, if he would find me, if he was going to come after me or attack me. At that moment, I was running into my office building, screamed bloody murder and begged someone to come and help me. He fled by foot. He fled and started burying himself into the high marsh grasses about a half a mile from my office. I went inside and gave a description to the police officers and let them know who had attacked me. They ended up catching

him only because they put the drones out and the dogs and found himself burying him into those high marshes. Unbeknownst to me, the night before, he had attacked four women on the streets of Philadelphia. He also, moments before he found me, raped a woman, pushed her into a vestibule, got back onto a local bus, changed his clothes in a preceding station, and then showed up in my parking lot. Let me tell you, I was tested to the nth degree with resilience. And I will tell you for the next 48 hours, it was an absolute blur. Detectives, police officers questioning every little bit, everything that was going on, family, friends calling. I didn't really even know who I was in that moment. It, really feeling threatened for my life. Who was out there? Who was watching me? What was going to happen? Was I ever going to be able to matriculate back into mainstream America? And in that very moment, I recognized

that I could be that victim. I could be a mere survivor or I could use this to thrive. And because of all of the things that I had put into place, I recognized that I needed to take that gift of resilience that I had been working on, on myself, helping others with, and I needed to dig really deep and pull that out to get me through the next couple of weeks. It's been over a year and a half since that happened. For some people that hear that, it seems relatively short. For me, it's been a long 18 months. But what I will tell you is that he is still in a correctional facility, still has not been given a trial date,

still has not gone to jail yet. However, the blood on his shirt was confirmed to be mine. And I await trial. But I decided instead of just standing still and just waiting, that I was going to go out and serve, that I was going to go out and help other people and use the gift of resilience to ultimately be my superpower. I so appreciate you sharing that story. Of course, it is horrifying and I'm endlessly sorry that you had to experience it. And I think sometimes when people think about being resilient, they think that the emotions of fear or doubt or the feelings that came along with the trauma or the challenge or whatever, they go away and that's how you can become resilient. I'd like to have you share, I'm assuming you still have moments of fear. I'm assuming you still have things you carry with you today from that experience, and yet you still

chose resilience. How do you go through that for yourself? Right. Part of my recovery, and everyone's recovery is different. And what I want to say, Nicole, is that anyone that's listening to this right now, we all have areas that we've had to use resilience. We've all gone through trauma and no trauma, no two traumas are the same and no one's trauma is worse or better. And I want to just clarify that this is my story, but I know that there's a listener on this call that's gone through a bitter divorce, or is that dealing with a child that has severe autism, or maybe they lost a pet that was the closest thing to them.

And I don't want to ever negate that every listener that's on here has gone through some sort of trauma in their life. They say that only 80% of adults actually go through trauma. I believe that number is far, far higher. I believe that we've all been through trauma to different extents and different levels. And some people may experience trauma that is way different than mine. But what I want to say is that part of my recovery has been being that light, sharing my story, knowing that I can impact maybe just one, two, maybe a hundred, a thousand people out there, make them think differently, make them grow differently, use those experiences. And by sharing my story and talking out loud about it and knowing that I can be the light for someone else who's gone through trauma also, that is a gift. That is a gift that

I get to continually give each and every day on podcasts like this, on stages, and be able to share it and use it. And what I also recognized is that so many of us, and what I recognized in my own life, is I had been through a lot of other trauma and I had pushed it down. I had forgotten about it. I had put it in the deepest, darkest box in my basement. And it came up during this time. And what I recognized is that we need to be able to validate it. We need to be able to talk about it because trauma has a very sneaky way of creeping up

when we least expect it. And if we don't deal with it head on, and if we don't talk about it, and we don't get ourselves the help that we need, it will rear its ugly head. It just is the choice. Do you want to deal with it right away? Or do you want to wait till it creeps up on you when you least expect it? And for me, that was part of my healing, recognizing that at some point this was going to haunt me. And not that it still doesn't get in my way, not that I still don't have those wall-kicking moments. I'd be lying to you. But what I will say is because I

do talk about it, because I have used it as a gift, because I have practiced resilience, just like flexing a muscle, just like going to the gym, just like drinking your water, just like eating healthy, right? You can't just pick one day to do it. You got to keep working on yourself. And when you do, that's when the gift of resilience really can come shining through. So much of what you're saying reminds me of, as I was prepping for our episode, I saw a quote that said, resilience is ordinary. And I think that's what you're saying is like, we all experience hardships and trauma, and we're probably all choosing resilience maybe without

noticing it or giving ourselves credit for it in some way or another. And so this idea that resilience isn't something just for a special few. Resilience is ordinary, but I will say the choice and the practice is extraordinary. And that's, I think, a shift. Now, you said a little bit about this, but it was one of my questions. So I'm going to ask it just to see if you have anything to add. Where does connection with other people, relationships, and speaking your story play a part in being resilient? Well, I think anytime you're willing to share and use your vulnerability and use your heart, like the areas in your life that have been destructive, stories have such an impact on people. We can spit out facts all day. We can refer to books or dialogue. But when we tell a personal story, that connection becomes so much

deeper. And truly, one of my keynotes is actually on meaningful connections. How are you building those connections and that wall, those people in your life that when trauma happens, because it will inevitably so, where is that group of people? And have you been working on building those relationships? Because we can only do so much alone. We can do great things together. And whether that's in business, whether that's personally, whether that's with our family, how are you cultivating and working on your own mindset and your own relationships. And to me, to be able to speak and to share, it's really been a huge part of my therapy, if not the most important part to me personally with my therapy. And I'm not insinuating that everyone on this call wants to jump on stage and share

their stories or share their deepest, darkest secrets. But what I'm saying is find an outlet, whether that's a good friend, whether that's a really good therapist, whether that's rating, whatever that may be, to be able to put that out there. Because I really believe that when you put out that vulnerability and you put out that rawness and you put out the pain, it has a hard time creeping back in once you've opened those gates. And ultimately, where it's come full force is the women and men who have reached out to me to say, your story has helped me.

Not because they had the exact same story happen to them, not because they were in the exact same circumstance, but I gave them a light. I gave them hope that, listen, they don't have to stay stuck. They can make a choice to be unstuck and to move on with their life and use it as a gift instead of something that has harmed them. So you have done a great job of reiterating that what you chose was best for you, is the right choice for you, but it might not be the same or the best choice for anyone else or everyone else. So my question is, when there are lots of ways to respond when something happens, how do you decide for yourself what's the most productive or most empowered or best for you?

Such a good question. And I really think that goes back to what is your daily practice right now? And do you have one? What brings you light? What brings you energy? What makes you, when you're in a non-trauma situation, right? You're just having a bad day, right? The milk spilled, like, you know, you got in a fight with your significant other.

Your kids are driving you nuts. Like, what gets you through that? Is it exercise? Is it writing? Is it, you know, is it calling your girlfriend or your, you know, guy friend or whatever that is? What are you doing already in just your day-to-day with the small micro traumas, right? That are going on in our life to, that help you, right? What gets you out of that funk, right? And to me, getting out of that funk has always been connecting with people. Like always has been like, hey, listen, if I'm having something that's happening in my life that may seem pretty minor in nature, I like to talk to two or three people about it and get their opinions or get their validation or have them

play devil's advocate with me. So I knew that even on a smaller scale, that really helped me. So I ask you to kind of dig back into yourself and say, okay, when I get into those funky days, we've all been there, right? More days than we'd like to admit sometimes, what gets you out of it? And ask yourself, like, what is that? And where am I going to go and like invest in that to help me get through that? And I knew for myself, I was already doing a lot of speaking. I already had a podcast. It was already one of those things that gave me that platform to be able to share. And I knew for me that was part of that therapy solution. It wasn't because a therapist told me. It wasn't because my best friend told me it was to do. It just felt natural.

So I ask you, in those moments, when you're at those deepest, darkest, wall-kicking, mascara-running-down-your-face days, what do you do to get out of that funk? And start practicing that even more. So God forbid, if something happens, you know that can be your platform that's going to get you out of that dark hole. So what I'm hearing is an element of self-awareness, right? Like knowing what works for you, generally speaking, and then sort of listening and trusting what that tells you to do in those moments, at least as a starting point. And then, you know, I often think too, in situations we want to know what the end game or the outcome is going to be. And

sometimes in periods like that, the very best thing is like one foot in front of the other. Yes. Okay. And reminding ourselves too, Nicole, I think so often, you know, and I know the women that are on your, you know, that your listeners that they're just extraordinary, right? Like they're just, they're golden unicorns what they are, right? And I just, I want to like, I want to preface that. So I think when you're acting as that a personality and you're a go-getter and you're an overachiever, like you never want to take three steps back, but recognizing that through this process and through this journey of any overcoming any obstacles in our life, sometimes it does take, you know, you may be doing well, doing well, doing well, and then it takes

three steps back. And like, we have to be able to be able to say, listen, it's like a rubber band, right? You can only stretch it so far before it wants to go back to its original position. And I'd be lying to you to say over the last 18 months, there's not some days where I go back to where I felt in that gazebo that day, in that very moment, that deep, dark place, and my reminder to myself of why I don't want to go back there, right? But allowing myself to get back to that place and to feel scared and to feel vulnerable and saying, it's okay because I have the tools and I'm working on myself in the self-awareness to move myself forward. Great stuff in there. And when we think about being resilient, we often think about trauma or challenges. But I also would love to talk a little bit about stress. I think as working women

often, especially with families or care commitments or people like you that take on so much, resilience can be important in business and in dealing with stress. So how do you cope with stress or use what you've learned about resilience in all the stuff that you do. Right. And stress impacts us so much, like from sleep to weight loss, to energy, to mental fortitude. And I think we haven't done enough like research on our own or done to recognize how much stress, like especially women who, you know, maybe in their ths, 40s, 50s, like the cortisol levels of just what that does, right? And I know like when I'm in that high stress mode, again, it's going back to, okay, what are my coping mechanisms? How am I getting myself out of

that stress? And for me, it's going on a walk, right? For me, it's writing. For me, it's listening to a podcast and maybe just going in like folding laundry, like just doing something complete mindless. And I think what we have to recognize is sometimes we try to push through it instead of saying, hey, listen, we got to pause. And the power of the pause can be so powerful of saying, listen, I feel stressed right now in evaluating it instead of trying to just slam through it. Because inevitably, so you're going to get stressed again. And if you don't learn with a coping mechanism of what's going to work for you. And for me, that is pressing pause sometimes. You know, I'll give you an example. Yesterday,

I was like, I was supposed to be at a networking meeting and I was doing this and trying to run here. And I was away this past weekend. And I, you know, I thought about all the to-do things that I had to do. And I was feeling this overwhelming amount of stress, right? This is yesterday, ladies. Like I deal with it every day too. But what I will say is I ended up taking my son skiing just for two hours and just being out in nature, doing something active, being with one of my most prized people in my entire life. I recognized that that pause, even though I wasn't getting all the things done and I wasn't following a normal Tuesday night schedule, that that pause was so important to me. And the value that it brought, the memories that it brought propelled me way more forward

than if I had stayed at home and tried to stay in that stress state. And I think it's important to notice that. And when you feel triggered, okay, how am I going to step out of it and notice it and tap myself on the shoulder? It's okay, I feel this way, but now I got to go do what's going to snap me out of it. I am so glad that you said that because I think when people think about resilience, there is an inclination to think about push through, suck it up, power through, the push versus the pause. And I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate you saying it and how I'm trying to practice that in my own life because my default is suck it up, push through. And there is so much power in the pause, whether

it's doing something that gives you energy or that brings you joy or a moment of reflection or grounding or something that you said, again, that self-awareness piece, something that helps you overcome your stress can be so powerful. My last question might not be a fair question, so I don't want to put you on the spot. But knowing what you know today, what's one thing you'd share or that maybe you wished you'd learned sooner about resilience? I think it goes back to a point that I made before. So like I said, I've dealt with a lot of other trauma that I never really recognized in my life as quote unquote, I never defined it as trauma, right? I just was like, this is what I've been through. And without going into all of those details, because we've all been there before, I really

tried to press it down. I did an activity actually with one of my first therapists right after the attack happened. And we did an activity and she asked me to describe a house. She asked me a plethora of different questions about this house and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she asked me what the basement looked like. And I put dark, scary, and dingy. And she goes, those are everything, all the feelings that you've pushed down. When you describe that basement, that's what you're pushing down and that it's okay not to be okay earlier in my life, that I have gone through trials, that I have gone through tribulations,

and be vocal about it and be vulnerable about it without feeling ashamed, I think it would have helped me a lot more in my earlier years just to get through other other things because I think so often and especially again we're we're in a changing environment I think about myself two decades ago and even the way the world was two decades ago like you didn't want to talk about like your family getting divorced or that your parents tried to commit suicide or that they were alcoholics like Like that was like forbidding, God forbid, talk about mental, you know, mental health or illness, right? Where nowadays we talk about it more.

And I think we felt ashamed to talk about it. Like, oh, there has to be something wrong with me. All to understand that there was plenty of other people that were going through it, but we just didn't feel like we had a safe place to talk about it. So I'm so glad today, and I think even moving forward 10, 20 years from now, it's going to feel even safer to be able to share what's really going on. I couldn't agree more. I think putting words on it, whether it's privately or publicly, number one, helps you recognize you're not alone. And number two, I think minimizes the power of whatever the thing

that you're holding silent or quietly has. There's something that diminishes it when you speak it, whether it be to someone you trust or on a podcast or something in between. So phenomenal, phenomenal advice, Erica. Thank you for being here today. I have millions more questions I could ask you, but you already crushed it. If you are listening and want to find out more about Erica, go to ericarothenberger.com and absolutely consider her for any speaking event. She's incredible. And we'll put other ways to find and follow Erica in show notes. Thank you, my friend, for being here and talking about what I believe is the common denominator of success. Okay. There are so many things that contribute to a full life and to creating success, however it is you define that. But resilience is

always going to be on that list. It might be the one thing that influences everything. Yes, how you overcome the hard parts, but also how you approach risk and how big you dream. Resilience is less about sucking it up or muscling your way through it and more about adapting, learning, growing, and recovering well. It's about bending, not breaking. It's about the pause, not the push. So I want you to think about all the things that could have broken you, but didn't. And I'd ask that you recognize and celebrate your resilience and remind yourself you have what it takes. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back into action towards what matters. Be resilient. Your success depends on it. Yes, get knocked down, but get back up as fast as you can.

Fail, but keep going. Bend and never break. This is woman's work.