Voice First World

Hey listeners, this is episode 88. It’s Jen Vellenga and we interviewed Lindsey Roy. She is a senior leader at the Hallmark Corporation. But really that’s not what we talked about today. We talked about how you can change your perspective about things. One of the big takeaways for me was how you can think about five things that are actually worse than where you’re at right now.

And also, look at what’s good in your life. I also love that Lindsey talked about how you’re given what you need on your journey of life. So, start there. Think about the fact that you have exactly what you need. And your own life and your decisions that you make are in your control, and we want you to show up with presence. Thanks so much for listening. Here’s the episode. 

I had my leg accident at 36. The lung transplant I had at 45 years old. If you would have told me that those things were going to happen in my life when I was 25 or 30, I would have said, oh my gosh, I’m going to have a terrible life and be sad and depressed and everything’s going to be horrible.

And here I am at 47 and sitting here today, it’s beautiful, 60 degrees outside. It’s gorgeous, girlfriend. I woke up feeling so happy and blessed to be alive and getting to do things and it’s okay. That’s what happened to me and I’m going to go and move forward and celebrate what’s right, what I can do and not obsess over what’s lost.

Welcome back listeners and if you are new here, welcome to the Speak with Presence podcast. I’m Jen Vellenga. And I’m Jennifer Rettele-Thomas. On the Speak with Presence podcast, we believe perfection is overrated, leaders listen, and we all speak up to influence change. JRT, we are in person today at Real Media KC. I love being here. I’m pretty excited because we are here with our guest, Lindsey Roy. She is the Senior VP of Strategy and Brand at Hallmark Headquarters here in Kansas City. Headquartered here, that’s right, she’s a speaker, she’s also the author of, now listen closely to this title, “The Gift of Perspective, Wisdom I Gained from Losing a Leg and Two Lungs.”

Lindsey, we asked you to be here today to share your story of leadership, your resilience, and the lessons you’ve learned. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here. We love learning your story. And we’re so excited to hear more about your leadership. Now, as we hear just if we know nothing about you, and we hear the title of your book, you have experienced things that some of us could never even imagine.

So I’d love to start by asking you about something you said in your TED talk, which is this idea or this concept of a phantom life. Could you explain how you came to that concept through a bit of your story? Sure. So as is implied in the book title, “Losing a Leg and Two Lungs,” don’t worry, we will unpack all of that.

I know there’s a lot in that subtitle. It’s very bold on purpose. I’m like, we might as well just put it out there. But yes, so the phantom life. I had a boating accident 10 years ago, where I ended up with an amputated left leg. And a lot of you probably heard before there’s this idea of phantom limb syndrome or just phantom pain, phantom feelings, you kind of hear those things.

And what that basically means is. Your body is believing things are there and sometimes causing you pain that aren’t really there. I think if we take in the metaphor of that for a minute, it’s kind of self-obvious. But I will say that, first of all, on the physiological side, after my amputation, I was lucky.

I was blessed to not have phantom pain per se, but I did have phantom feelings. And so I remember being at home a month or so after the surgery and I did not have my left leg from my calf down, mid-kind of calf down, and I could feel a string stuck between my toes, and it was incredibly maddening, and it was not there, but it was your nerves and your brain are still wired the way they were the 36 years before I had my accident.

And so anyway, I started to kind of play with that concept years later when I decided to tell my story here in Kansas City for a TEDx talk, and the writer that was helping me, we kind of talked about this idea of sometimes you have a vision for your life that doesn’t play out exactly like you think it will.

And sometimes those preconceived notions can cause us phantom pain, pain that’s not really there. And so anyway, that was this whole idea of how do you embrace what is, what you still do have, what you still can do, and that was this idea of kind of the phantom life and I’ve really tried hard to embrace what I do have and what is my story. Which I know we’ll get into the second part of that the long part here in a moment, but I’ll just pause and kind of kick it back to you with that explanation of this idea of just embrace the life you have, and there’s so many awesome things you can do if you look at it from that lens instead of focusing on what’s been lost or what was never achieved in the way you thought it would be.

Well, my curiosity is, have you always been so positive and forward thinking, or was that a change?  You know, I think a little bit of both. First of all, I’ll say that I do get the word positive a lot, and I do think that I have taught myself and my brain through a lot of hardship, how to think more positively.

But I also want everyone to hear it kind of goes to that idea that you guys were talking about that perfection is not the end goal. And I don’t think always being positive is the end goal either. I mean, to be super raw and real through the different things that I’ve gone through my life. I have been angry. I have been depressed. I’ve gone through winter nights of not wanting to eat one bite of food or mornings not wanting to get out of bed. And so I’ve been there. So I don’t say that you have to have this magic idea of positivity. However, to your point, this ability to continue to strive forward, to get up, to not stay down, to be resilient.

You know, I think that lives in each of us. I think it comes down to, are you willing to put in the work, make the choices, and we can talk a little bit about what that is. And then I also believe that, you know, they say that God gives you, won’t give you what you can’t handle. I think the more positive way of saying that is you’re given what you need on the journey that is your life.  And I think there were always seeds within me to be able to handle these stories because that was the plan for my life. And so that’s how I look at it. 

Well, I think one of the things that, there are many, many, many things, but the one thing that I’m going to touch on as I was researching you and learning more about you, yes, I mean, I’m so special today.  I’ve got my notebook, was it really related to me and I know to a lot of our listeners and that’s why I want to bring it up. Because we’re going to promote obviously your book so that more people can learn about this, but the lessons. There were many lessons, but the lesson that I’m going to talk about now was kind of like the three things that you talked about, which is the brain, the anchor and the attachment.

And, you know, as you talked about the brain of, yes, it is so easy for us to think negative, right? And we, we know that right, as an adult. And I loved how you talked about it, it was a reminder for me. Like I needed that reminder, at the moment, of thinking more positive is kind of like doing our daily exercise for the brain.

So I wanted to point that out. I loved, the anchor means multiple things to you.  Multiple things to you. But I appreciated you talking about, you know, what do we anchor our perspectives to? Whoa. That was big for me. And then the last one is attachments. Again, I’m taking, I’m speaking for you. I’m just, I’m saying what you said.  But I think the one that I would love for you to talk a little bit more about, because it was a hard one for me to process, which was, you can detach from your old life and reattach to a new one.

I think all of us as, you know, leaders and moms or parents or community members or all the different hats we wear, you know, there’s a lot of things that we need to get done, a lot of things that we believe we want to achieve. And a lot of times things don’t go exactly as we have planned, and I should have said this, I always say this in the first two minutes of a conversation that, yes, I have a unique story, but so do you. Everybody has a story, and I think a lot of people walk around with hidden stories.

Mine are pretty evident because they’re these big sensational surgeries and extra parts and all the things. But back to, you know, that notion you’re talking about. I really do think that we can anchor ourselves or reattach to new expectations, and so there’s a lot of work on mindfulness, and Eastern philosophy talks a lot about, really expectations set happiness more than anything else, and I think that’s really interesting.

And by the way, I’m not like an expert on Eastern philosophy, but I’m saying this from something I’ve drawn on from what I’ve studied around mindfulness and the Eastern philosophy version of mindfulness is essentially, I’m going to totally dumb it down to my own words, for me, don’t get caught up in a preconceived expectation.

And so that’s what I’m talking about, this idea of attachment and reattachment and reattachment is an Eastern philosophy concept, which basically means, okay, I’m going to go through my life and think. I’ll give you an example of my own life. I remember when I was 17, you know, I’m going to get married at 26 and have a baby at 30 and have this job.

That’s not how life plays out. Maybe you don’t meet the person at the right time, or maybe you don’t have the baby when you’re gonna have the baby, or maybe you don’t get the job when you’re gonna get the job. But this idea of reattachment says, that’s okay. Let go of these preconceived notions and reattach your hopes and dreams to what is.

And so Eastern philosophy would say, do that every minute of the day. Don’t walk into a situation with expectations because you’re always going to then compare what you wanted versus what’s true and what I’ve found is, if someone would have told me, so I had my leg accident at 36, the lung transplant we keep alluding to, which we’ll get to in a minute. I had at 45 years old. If you would have told me that those things were going to happen in my life when I was 25 or 30, I would have said, oh my gosh, I’m going to have a terrible life and be sad and depressed and everything’s going to be horrible. I mean, wouldn’t you think that? Yeah. And here I am at 47, and sitting here today, it’s beautiful, 60 degrees outside.

It’s gorgeous, girlfriend. Woke up feeling so happy and blessed to be alive and getting to do things and come talk to you guys. To be here. I mean JRT. I mean, you get to be with JRT all day. And so I reattached to, it’s okay. That’s what happened to me, and I’m going to go and move forward and celebrate what’s right, what I can do, and not obsess over what’s lost. That’s really what that whole idea is about.

I love that. Thank you for providing that clarity for me because I think you’re right. We all, as we get to our age, very beautiful, mature women, right? At this age, you know, you’ve had multiple things in life that have happened that have created the fabric of who you are. And those things will continue to happen, right? Some more dramatic, some more severe. It doesn’t matter. They are things that impact the fabric of who we are and how we are going to reattach to the future and to the new one.

For sure. I mean, hardships are building seasons, I think, in every way. If you can just reflect on a moment where things were really challenging in your professional life, your personal life, with time, I think you learn the most during those seasons when you have time to look back and reflect.

But it’s not fun going through them. You know, Brené Brown, who everybody knows, has a quote that is, “embrace the suck.”  And I love that because it really is just acknowledging, and sometimes that even helped me in the middle of those hard days, just to acknowledge, okay, even though right now I hate everything about the circumstance, it’s a building season and something good is going to come from it.

And you know, just even kind of adding on to that, plus your last question. Three very simple things that I outline in the book is just ask yourself these three things if you’re in a moment of hardship. One, what are five ways it could be worse?  And I know it sounds silly, but when you are at the end of your rope, or even if you’re just really struggling with a situation that hasn’t remedied itself, do that.  And I’m telling you, you’ll get to two or three, even if you’re just in your car and thinking about them to yourself, and you’ll be like, okay, alright, that will shift your perspective. Or make yourself say out loud, write down, or at least commit to in your own mind.

A second question is, what is going right? I’ve said that a couple of times today, but it is amazing to put the power in what is going right. And then the other thing I try to say is, what have I accomplished today? Or what have I accomplished towards that goal? So, silly example, but I remember after my boating accident, my left leg obviously was incredibly injured leading to the amputation, but I also had an injured right leg and an injured right arm.

So I couldn’t do anything with essentially one limb. You can’t even, you know, move your own body, but I remember I had this little list I would write down like things I accomplished and I’ve looked back on that and one of them truly said, I put in my own ponytail today.  I mean, like, that’s so benign, but it was for that moment, for that day, or even on like a work project, you might just say, oh my gosh, this thing is like, we don’t have enough money, enough resources, enough people, no one cares, whatever.

Everyone can nod their head to that. But just say, what’s one thing I can do today? And then the next day say, what did I accomplish today or yesterday? So those are just three really simple tools. But back to this concept of how you find resilience within yourself. Sometimes it’s just taking the hygiene to work out.  Like nobody likes maybe every day having to run or get on the treadmill or do weights, like you said earlier. Physical training, mental training is the same thing. You just have to make yourself do those things. And I’ll tell you, just like people who work out a lot, you start to like it.

I’ve realized that I am much stronger because of those hardship seasons. But it’s a lot of simplicity. It’s just having, you know, the fortitude to do it. Absolutely. And you’re speaking of perspective, which makes sense because perspective is in the title of your book. Are you someone who journals? How do you keep yourself? You said, I went back and looked, and I put in my own ponytail. What are the mechanisms you use to stay, keep your perspective?

Well, a little insider information, I would say I am one of those people who likes variety and always likes things that are different, unique. I mix it up a lot. And so I’d like to say, yes, I’ve kept journals with the same size and the same handwriting, since 19 whatever.

That’s not me. We would judge you. I’m like, I have a variety of random tools that I’ve used in the moment. Frankly, just as one what works and what are coping mechanisms. So what I was referencing earlier, writing down what works, they were these giant poster boards that I had by my hospital bed in my house because I wanted them to be visual.  And I was in a really hard place. Other times, like during my, you know, recent nights in the hospital that I’ve spent the last couple of years, I would just write little notes to myself on my phone app. That’s it. Just little things to kind of remind myself, okay, here’s a little aha I had today. Here’s something I learned.

So to me, back to this, I embrace not being a perfectionist. I use whatever tools are available at the time, whatever I think is going to work. And then I try to weave them together when I take a moment to say, alright, what’s a big so what.  So when I wrote my book, I went through and I looked at those silly posters. I went through and I looked at a CaringBridge. So I did a CaringBridge site during my health challenge. I had a lot of things written down in there. I looked at my little notes on my phone app. I looked at the group text I sent friends and family. And so to me, it’s the consciousness or the realness can be in your own head. It can be telling a friend. It can be writing it down. But all of it in the end, just somehow make your thoughts concrete, because that I find really helps, versus to just wallow in, why is this happening to me?

Try to shift your perspective by saying, one of those things I said, what are five ways it can be worse? What’s going right? You might have another question that’s kind of a cousin of one of these questions. But you have to just hit the pause moment in your brain, because like you mentioned earlier, JRT, we will spiral into negativity. Our brains are wired for adaptation. It’s fight or flight. It’s the way we’re wired. And so you have to hit that pause button to sort of actively shift that perspective. 

Well, again, one of your quotes I’m going to say from the thing was the power of perspective is short term unless you find a way to make it last. And you’re the only one that can do that. Exactly. You know, we all have experienced the power of perspective, whether we know it or not. And so here’s I think the common experience.

You have your daily life, and by the way, if you’re living just a daily life where your worries are kind of small, that is a blessing. I always joke with people that like driving my kids to the orthodontist now, I’m like, this is awesome because I’m not in a hospital bed or on an oxygen tank or whatever  But anyway, when you have those just daily things and then you hear something, right? Like what happened last week here in Kansas City? I mean, I was right there, whole other story, but you know, you have those moments of like, oh, my gosh, like you don’t care about what if you had the chicken thawed for dinner or whatever, you’re not thinking about that. Or when you’re worried about, gosh, something’s happening at work, and then your neighbor tells you somebody in your community has some terrible health diagnosis, right?

Those moments, what do you do? You say, oh, my gosh, that puts things in perspective.  That’s what we say. But that power of that feeling where you’re actually focusing on the big things, the things that matter, not getting caught up in all this sort of daily swirl, I have found that you can tap into that same magical feeling, but you don’t have to wait on anybody else to have something negative happen because nobody wants to live in that place or you’re waiting on the next negative news cycle.

And it is more sustainable. If you can get yourself in a place where you’re going to actively look at things from a different vantage point. And I said a few questions earlier, you know, the five ways it can be worse kind of stuff. But you can also do other things. You can get outside and just take a breath.

You can take a pause moment and say, okay, well, this didn’t happen. What other good things can happen? Or one of the things I used all the time was, I would try to find my purpose in my pain. I called it a hidden advantage. I stole that from Malcolm Gladwell, and one of his books that I love is called David and Goliath.  And the whole book is about different little stories. Everyone here is nodding. Okay, I’ve got other fellow readers of David and Goliath, but it’s a wonderful book that talks about basically bad situations or situations that don’t look ideal, but how there are all these little hidden advantages, blessings in disguise, silver linings.

That’s another thing I do is I try to say, okay, I have a prosthetic leg and, you know, I’ve had to go through things to get me to a lung transplant, but what are some good things that have come from that or can come from that? Like, I would not be sitting here today if I was just, you know, had a “standard easy life.” I would have nothing to talk to you guys about. So that’s an advantage. And so those are the kinds of things that, and my book has many of them, but that really try to say, there are so many easy ways to just shift how you think about things. Because at the end of the day, we’ve all heard this, but it is true. How you see life and how you react to your circumstances are way more important than what happens to you. Way more important.

There’s a study that I’ve read that says, basically, your happiness only results to about 10 percent of circumstantial things. The rest of it, it’s something that’s within your control. Absolutely. That control piece, I was going to say, it’s what is in your control.

But it was two years ago that you had a lung transplant. Yes. And I know I kind of made rough math, but truly only about 19 months ago. So the headlines were, I always tell people, it’s like, okay, I dealt with a leg accident. I went through all the phases. I did all the things and I was trying to make good from it. I did the TED talk we referenced earlier. I’d started to write a book. I had my publishing deal and I have, I thought I had run the metaphorical marathon. I did it. Overcomer.  I did it. I got the t-shirt. And that’s the big question.

And then, and then, you know, fast forward. So boating accident 2013. In 202, I was on vacation with my husband and kids. And by the way, when I had my amputation, my kids were four and two. Ah, I know. So then fast forward to 2021, you know, they’re now in middle school and we’re on vacation and I started to realize that, gosh, I was really having trouble breathing and we were in Jackson Hole.

And so, you know, there was definitely elevation and altitude. So I thought, okay, it’s probably just the altitude, but we’d gone to Colorado all the time, like a lot of Kansas City people. And I had never noticed that before. But over the next few months, I would feel fine most of the time. Then other times I would walk up the stairs and I would be breathing hard.

I didn’t have COVID. I’d never been a smoker. And I started to think, well, I must be out of shape. You know, I’ve been working at home more than working in the office. And so I hired a personal trainer. All these things thinking I’m just out of shape because everything looked fine with my annual physical.

Well, then things just started to get to this kind of cliff event that fall. They say my condition is sort of slow build and then you just hit a light switch. And that’s what happened to me. So one day I was playing pickleball and the next day I walked to the kitchen from my bedroom and my watch showed that my heart rate was over 100 just from walking to the kitchen.

So over those few weeks of that fall, I would have a fine day, then I’d have a bad day. And I went to the doctor a few times, walked myself even to an emergency room, and every test showed nothing. You’re fine. I found out later that the condition I have, which is an autoimmune disorder, it’s a form of scleroderma.  It’s a very specific form of scleroderma that has a disease process that was not very known when I was first diagnosed with this a long time ago. It was supposed to manifest in me pretty benignly, mainly had just really bad Raynaud’s in my fingers. So you knew about that part? I knew I had that disease.

Okay. But it was very quiet and it was not supposed to form.  I had scleroderma. By the way, if you Google it, has a million different disease processes. Mine was a very specific one. Lindsey, was that diagnosed before the boating accident? Okay. It was. But anyway, it was always very quiet. I just had Raynaud’s in my hands.

Well, anyway, fast forward, I have all this trouble breathing and that was a rare condition on a rare condition. Now it’s known with a few experts in the country that this particular type of scleroderma can lead to organ attacks and often lungs. But you’re talking like a very, very, very small sample size.

Some of the people I’ve met along the way, took them almost a year to get diagnosed because it’s a rarity on a rarity. But I was lucky that back to those three weeks when I was having trouble breathing, I called a good friend of mine from K-State. Once again, the breadcrumbs that get put in our lives and he’s a cardiologist here in town.

He hooked me up. We did extensive testing and he called me and he said, hey, is my husband’s name is Aaron. He said, is Aaron around? I’m thinking. My friend, my doctor, is calling me on his personal cell phone in the middle of the day and asking about my husband. This is not good! Warning! And he basically said, we got the results back and your heart is incredibly under distress. Because what had happened was all of the little blood vessels around my lungs had been attacked and these little blood vessels were essentially closing and so the air was not properly flowing through them which then put pressure on the right side of my heart which helps oxygenate your blood.

So, all right before Christmas, the right side of my heart was three sizes, three sizes too big. I told my kids. I was the opposite of the Grinch. Yeah. Timing. I have plenty of heart to share. So into the hospital I went and then that was the start.  But once again, shift your perspective. I could either look at it like some people would say, oh my gosh, why is this happening to you? Yada, yada, yada. I honestly look at it now and that was December of 2021. I was put in the hospital, 50 nights of hospital stays later and oxygen tanks at baseball games and 24/7 oxygen when I slept. All the things, but just six months later, I received a lung transplant, a double lung transplant, which is a huge miracle.

I mean, from going from diagnosis. All the way, because for the first couple of months, they didn’t think I would need a lung transplant. I was on this crazy medicine treatment that was  a medicine thing that was like the size of a brick that had a special medicine that was basically threaded through a line in my jugular to squirt little medicine in that was supposed to open up those blood vessels.

That didn’t work, so not even knowing I needed a lung transplant until about 4 months before my lung transplant. So everything happened with divine intervention, so now I look at it and say, you know, gosh, what a crazy, unforeseeable kind of thing. But what a gift that I can sit here today and breathe and talk and walk in here.

So anyway, that was the second story. And I think a lot of times when people hear the headline, they assume that the events happened with the same situation for sure. Yeah, but they were two kind of different situations and I’ll never know what their interdependency is or isn’t, but they were eight years apart in my lived experience.

But here’s like five ways it could be worse. You could have had that lung issue during covid. Yes. Oh, my goodness. I have so thought about that, Jen. If you had been in the hospital when you were like, I’m sorry, we have no more beds left and the ventilator, I mean, oh my gosh. Yes. That is a thought that is haunting to me for sure. And I’m sure somebody out there knows somebody who had a really challenging medical situation.

I know I do. You guys are nodding your heads. And during COVID, which just exacerbated it for sure. I’m sure in the moment, it is certainly when the doctor asked your husband to be there with you, that does not feel like that moment to go, I’ll just change my perspective. Oh no, no. Like I said, don’t, don’t try to reach for that perfection in moment one.

I had many a days and many a nights where I was like, oh my gosh, I just can’t, or I won’t, or it’s terrible. I mean, that’s just human nature. But I have also found a very simple nugget of wisdom, which is do not ask why. There is zero wisdom in asking why. And it’s so easy to do, and people would say that to me, oh my gosh, why you? Why now? And I do not let myself go there. If my brain starts to ask why, I truly, it’s like I come in with a little stop sign inside my brain, and I don’t even let myself finish the thought. Because I’ve found it is, there’s this zero wisdom. You can’t control it. You can’t control it. And by asking why, you’ll never know.

Just say, this is my unique path. This is what, like I said, God set out for me and I’m just going to accept it and try to move to the next little station. Asking why is the biggest waste of time, but it is hard to stop. So I give you grace if you do ask why, because I know I have, but I’ll tell you that’s a piece of wisdom that I’ve learned and hopefully it’ll help somebody listening.

So good. Let that go. It’s like trying to look in the rearview mirror and try to recreate. It’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen for sure. And that brings us to presence. I mean, the whole anchoring and perspective, that to me, the definition of presence of being in the moment, being where you’re meant to be, when you’re meant to be there and now is always now.

Yes. Yes. Now is always now. That is the present moment. So that was the thing that excited me about having you on the podcast is your perspective and the anchoring and the only way you could possibly get from moment to moment through all the things that you’ve been through is by being in the present.

Exactly. And just living there. Exactly. And doing what you can. You know, one of my favorite quotes, it’s in the book, and I’ve used it in other places as well, is from Arthur Ashe, the tennis player. And it simply says, “start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”  And if you really parse and process that, it allows you to just begin anything.

I mean, I’m sure a lot of people are looking once again what happened here in Kansas City recently and said, or saying, gosh, what can I do to help? Right? That’s a question on many of our minds right now. Well, you probably have some unique gifts, some unique thing, whether that’s just even to comfort your own kids or to try to help legislation with whatever your point of view is or whatever it is, or maybe it’s in your own life.  You got that thing at work. I always tell people this and kind of corporate audiences. Would you all like more money for your project or your budget? Of course. Would we all love a 26-hour day? Of course. Would we all love more people to be our assistants and help us get things done? Yes. But the reality is, you’re not always going to get all of that.

And so what I found with not having enough body parts, not having enough reasons to, you know, be able to navigate even physically in the world, just start where you are. Use what you have and do what you can. Because I’ve found that if you give yourself a deadline, maybe it’s Monday, maybe it’s January 1st, maybe it’s summer, whatever. Make yourself just begin, because it’s very rare that the circumstances will be perfect. And so, just start. And the more you start, then you’re like, I can actually do this. Because the whole phrase, anticipation is often worse than doing, is so true. So just begin. Just begin. 

And just know that there will always be bumps. Yes, for sure. Just accept it. Just accept it from the deep inside. The time that you set that deadline, accept it, embrace it, and go with it. Exactly. Because the start where you are happens every day. You might start, I say, you know, with back to the leg accident and then the lung thing that you know, I’d finished the marathon and then I was like thrown back to 20 miles before the starting line. Well, okay, well that’s where I am, so that’s where I have to start. You can’t start anywhere else. Right. Start again. Start again. 

So, you have the book, you’re doing talks, you have your website, LindseyRoy.com. What are some other things that you can share with your audience that if they would like to connect with you or how you can come in and continue to inspire people in different places? 

Yeah, thank you for asking. And I’ll also, before I answer that, just say, my purpose is, I believe, that if I tell my story and it can help somebody else, there is purpose in that. And I know that purpose is different for each one of us, but I would want to encourage all of you, tell your stories to one another. And that doesn’t have to mean in the way I am. Your purpose might be very different than mine. I have, you have skills that I don’t have or have stories that I don’t have.

And stories that, you know, neither of you have here in the room with me. But if you tell each other, even at work, to be real with somebody to say, okay, the reason I’ve been taking all this PTO is because I actually have this thing going on. You know, that gives somebody with me a different perspective that will help them help you. And so whatever way is authentic to your purpose and your story, don’t be afraid to show it and share it because I really do think that helps us, all kind of help each other and adds to our collective wisdom. So that’s my PSA.

On to your point on why I even do what I do. I mean, to me, that’s the purpose I feel called to do. But yes, like you were saying, you know, LindseyRoy.com or my book is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. It’s at Rainy Day Books here in town and other places. You can find it most places that you would normally go to for a book, and that’s where I’ve just poured my heart and soul.

A, the part one, pre-Lungs, and then I said, gosh, I guess God said I needed more content, the book wasn’t good enough. So then I threw in all the lessons I learned from the lungs story. But, yes, you can check out the book or on my website, there’s a place to contact me. I would love to hear from you all. And if there’s anything I can do to help anybody out there, let me know because, like I said, life is short and hopefully we can all do a little something to help each other.

Thank you, Lindsey. And I will leave it with another one of your quotes, “actively forcing a new perspective is the cheapest and easiest way to change how you feel about your situation.”  That’s right. And thank you for sharing that, because I think that those words mean a lot to many people.  That’s right. Thank you so much.

Well, what an awesome experience, and thank you both for having me, and I love everything you’re doing to help others talk about purpose and paying it forward. The fact that you two are here spending your time trying to help uplift and empower, you know, other leaders, is amazing. So privileged to be a part of it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Lindsey. We’re glad you were able to be here. 

Thanks for listening today. This is the Speak with Presence podcast, and JRT and I are the co-hosts and also the co-founders of Voice First World. We are a communication and leadership coaching company because you can’t be a leader if you can’t communicate. And if you are looking for ways that you can elevate your communication and leadership skills one-on-one or for your team in the corporate environment, please reach out to us. You can go to voicefirstworld.com or the easier way to do that is just go into our show notes where you’ll see a link to Lindsey’s book and also a link to just get on our calendar and talk to us. It’s a completely free call. We’re so glad that you’ve joined us today. Thank you for listening.

Looking at Jen, looking at you JRT as I can call you now that I’m in the official, official studio. We’re in the circle. In the circle. Oh, deep. But each of the listeners, you know, I humbly say that everybody has a story and I think a lot of people walk around with hidden stories.