47: Veronica Tubbs on How to Get Life Rolling Again

Andrea Liebross |

www.andrealiebross.com |

Episode 47

Speaker1: [00:00:09] You're listening to the Time to Level Up podcast. I'm your host, business life coach Andrea Libros. I help women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week, I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly gain confidence. Make your time productive. Turn every obstacle into an opportunity. And finally overcome the overwhelm so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career. And best of all. Live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's time to level up.

[00:00:57] Let's do this.

Speaker2: [00:01:08] Hey, time to level up, listeners, welcome back to the podcast. So today we are talking about life and how life can either feel like it's rolling along. Or it feels like it's going down a bumpy road through my conversation with my client, Veronica, today I'm going to introduce you to a tool called the Wheel of Life. And what happened to Veronica was that her company got bought out and she went from being one of their top, top salespeople to having all of her accounts swept out from under her feet. And it really rocked her world, and she describes how she just was sitting on the couch and not knowing what to do and how to dig yourself out of the place that she was in. And life got really bumpy and all sorts of ways. And then I introduced her to a tool called The Wheel of Life, and she started to realize no wonder everything was feeling rocky. It was this work change had really rocked her whole world, and she needed to get back up on her feet, which she did. So I want you to listen in and see how she did this. You could access this tool that she's talking about, which I encourage you to do via my website and Andrea Backslash Wheel. But right now, just sit back, buckle up and listen in to my conversation with Veronica. And learn how she got the wheel rolling again.

Speaker3: [00:02:52] Hey, time to level up, listeners, I am happy to have you back on this week's podcast and I am having a great day because Veronica, who is my guest today and I have already started chatting, but I forgot to hit record. So now I'm hitting record and we're starting our conversation so you can listen in. Veronica and I met each other probably two years ago, right? Right. And she is going to introduce herself because she will do a way better job than I will. So, Veronica, tell everybody who you are, where you live, what you do about your children and dogs and everything else.

Speaker4: [00:03:32] Oh, goodness gracious. Ok. My name is Veronica. I live in Lebanon, Indiana, and I'm a mother and a wife, a mother of two kids. I've been in sales for twenty five years. I've worked for the same company. So that's a huge victory. And I sell janitorial supplies, packaging supplies, safety.

Speaker3: [00:04:00] He was like a COVID 19 hero. You know, the

Speaker4: [00:04:03] Micro hero, yeah, yeah, we saw a lot of COVID items for the hospitals. I have normally specialized in health care, so that's kind of my specialty. And yeah, I have a kid. I have two kids in college.

Speaker3: [00:04:19] It's crazy.

Speaker4: [00:04:20] Yeah, kind of craziness. I don't know how she loves playing pickleball. I do. I love playing pickleball. Like I just got into it. Like, it's been a year. Yeah, I, you know, that's probably something that I. I was the next tennis player, but I never would have liked went out just to kind of see about the ball like, OK, what it's about. But I did, and now I play it every day, I mean, pretty much every day. So it's my it's my stress relief. Basically, my husband encourages it because I'm a nicer person when I play just to move, get out of the house and is probably everybody knows COVID. It's kind of all hit us like different ways and I as being in sales and my husband being in sales as well, we were together. Twenty four, seven. I'm pretty loud, so he he's always like a coach, even though he has an office with the door doesn't matter. I'm still loud. So, yeah, being at home together is, you know, that's hard. It's hard, it's hard. But everybody knows that it's hitting so hard. I mean, it's hard, but we made it through. We're still married. You did great. You did.

Speaker3: [00:05:38] So we so we met. I forget like it was, it was before COVID.

Speaker4: [00:05:43] It was the way it was before COVID. Yes.

Speaker3: [00:05:45] A mutual friend. Well, Veronica called me and she said, my friend Jenny said, I need to talk to you. And so we started chatting and quickly we started working together and at that point. What do you think was happening, Veronica, how do you sum it up?

Speaker4: [00:06:02] This story goes even beyond that. Well, I would have never thought to get a life coach that would have probably been not even in this train of thought, obviously. So, yeah, my girlfriend called me some things that happened at work. I was in a very down position. I was not happy with myself, basically not happy with work. Like I said, some things had happened and. And it was like it was weird, I hadn't talked to this lady in probably a couple of years and she just called me out of the blue. And she's like, Oh my gosh, Veronica, I was going to see a counselor, a regular counselor, which was not helping me at all, by the way. And she explained to me, what you do? And I was like, Oh my gosh, I probably need to talk to her. So I did call you and then you and I had a discussion and I was like, Oh my gosh, you're exactly what I need. But in that moment of time, I was also like, OK, I don't know what I'm going to do if I can afford this. I mean, am I going to invest? You kind of have to look at it as an investment in yourself, right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's kind of hard to look at it that way when you're not feeling really great about yourself.

Speaker3: [00:07:23] I know. Isn't that ironic?

Speaker4: [00:07:25] Oh yeah, no, no. There's no looking at it like that. Like, OK, I basically just lost my income. And I mean, yeah, maybe I have a little bit of savings, but this really sucks. Like, my life sucks. And I mean, yeah, she'd be a great person, but I don't know. So it took a little bit of convincing. I mean, even convincing on your part. Basically, it was like, you really didn't know what I what I needed. It wasn't like I didn't need some lady delving into my like, Oh, you were five and maybe your parents. I mean, like, there was nothing like that. That's not the way it should have been. I would look. I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to like, this lady was just crazy. I mean, she wasn't crazy. She was doing her job, but I needed a, yes, the therapist. I needed somebody who completely understood what I was going through. No, and and I just said, screw it. This is what I'm going to do and I invest it in my life. And I've never been so happy, so my friend helped me, and it's yeah, that's what we did. That's how I got you and I got together.

Speaker3: [00:08:38] That's how. So at that point, so Veronica, you know, she's not any salesperson. I'm just going to back this up. Veronica has done amazingly well and won $50 million awards and like. She is the rock of the business. You know what you're doing. You know what I'm doing. You know, what are you doing? So when she lost her job of whatever that was, however many years at that point, it was, I mean, that was a job. You didn't lose your job job. It just you lost the

Speaker4: [00:09:12] You didn't lose anything. They lost an account. I lost some stuff and I lost my like my. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Speaker3: [00:09:18] They changed. The company changed structures. So thus. We got bought out. Right, so things change for you at work. It did not anything you did, which is the whole like. It was ironic part of this whole thing. You didn't change a thing. So anyway, Veronica wasn't in such a great space, I would say.

Speaker4: [00:09:36] No, no. Not a good space at all.

Speaker3: [00:09:38] Not a good space at all. So. What do you think changed when we what did you say, how did your thinking change when we started working together? Well, tell me if you think about it because you have reflected on this.

Speaker4: [00:09:52] What you know, my my reflection is this it was like the very first, very, very first time we met and it was the wheel. I can't remember it was the wheel. It was a wheel. It's the wheel. I'm like, What? And you're like, OK. Name. Name the things that are most important to you. And how are you doing in those like those categories? And you're like the wheel spins like. I mean, you were explaining this to me, but you didn't explain it till after. I like, did my, you know, my kind of. Yeah. And and. Well, I mean, I didn't have a complete wheel. I was not rolling. Yeah, it wasn't rolling. Like I was flat. Like every tire I would have had would have been flat. So I mean, that's what made more sense to me than anything. I mean, you and I have discussed a lot of things. Yes, but that's what I remember the most. Like you are, you don't have to be a 10 in every part of the categories that are most important to you. Hey, if you're a seven and all of them your wheel spinning, right? Yes. Yes. Well, I would like it. I mean, I might have been a nine to one and a one at one and a two at one, and most of it was job related. So I kind of feel like I got my wheel to become more round as opposed to.

Speaker3: [00:11:23] Not bumping along this wheel, and I have actually a free download for this, so if you are listening, people go to we'll have a link in the show notes. But if you go to my free download section on my website, you can download this wheel. And what helps you do is think about different aspects or areas of your life and how you are currently not like in the past, but right now, how you're feeling about each area. So if I said to Veronica and I probably did on that day, hey, on a scale of one to 10, how are you feeling about work right now? And you must have given it a very I don't know, too.

Speaker4: [00:11:59] I didn't even give it that.

Speaker3: [00:12:01] Yeah. And then I said, Hey, how are you feeling about your relationships with friends? I'm going to guess that wasn't a two. It probably wasn't a 10. But if you're nine, eight, nine, right, and then I'll say, OK, how are you feeling about your own health and wellness? Probably bad. It was bad. It wasn't a tube. Maybe it was a four.

Speaker4: [00:12:23] Anyway, a pity party for myself. I mean, like, I wasn't like, I wasn't doing anything to help it either. I mean, I was just laying on the couch feeling sad for myself.

Speaker3: [00:12:35] You were. Yeah. So the wheel, the point of this wheel exercise is that your wheel when you're it isn't rolling. It's bumping along because all of these spokes of the wheel are different lengths. They're twos and 10s and nines and sevens. And no wonder we feel the way we feel sometimes. Yeah. So it's it impacts one area of your life, impacts the rest and how things can be flung. So when we say like, Oh, I should be so great, I remember you actually saying this, I should be really grateful. Like, you know, my husband has a great job. My kids are healthy, like nothing's, you know, whatever but yet. You know, you felt the way you felt, right?

Speaker4: [00:13:20] Oh, right. I felt the way I felt there. I didn't know that anything can help me. I didn't know that right. I was grateful for that. Yes. Can I say something like, I don't know that you really the whole point of the wheel was you don't really do that every day. You know what I'm saying? You don't do that exercise. So you don't really know how you're feeling about everything because it's all kind of like clumped together as one big feeling. But then if you take them separately and divide them, it makes a lot more sense. Yep. So yeah, it was huge.

Speaker3: [00:14:00] It was huge. All right, so what started to change, what did you start to think about differently? And what do you think was getting in the way? What do you think was getting in the way of you changing?

Speaker4: [00:14:12] Well, my self-pity. My pity party, my like not having any self-confidence anymore. Somebody got ripped away from me somehow. You know, you're on top of the world, then you're like at the bottom of the barrel and then that's what happened. So I mean, like coming to you and. Learning more about my. I don't know if it was like, what's more important to me? I mean, obviously my job is humongous, important to me, right? Yep. But is that the center of my world?

Speaker3: [00:14:51] Hmm, that's a good question.

Speaker4: [00:14:53] Well, I thought it was I kind of like. But that was my world, you know? Why is it? No, not now, not now. No, it's not. Not, not at all,

Speaker3: [00:15:11] But you have I mean, you've risen back to the top at work, right? Things have changed.

Speaker4: [00:15:18] Yeah, I mean, I'm doing well, I'm not I'm not like back to like Queen B being like at the top of the world, but I'm not. I'm fine with that because I'm happy in other places.

Speaker3: [00:15:30] Yeah. So interesting. Yeah. So interesting.

Speaker4: [00:15:34] I strived to be number one. I wanted to be number one, I reached number one, I was number one for a long time. And no, I'm not number one. I don't even think I'm like, I'm at the half point, but I don't care. I'm actually fine with it. It's kind of weird. I feel like it's weird to me.

Speaker3: [00:15:58] It, but we're like, I mean, I ask you told me earlier today that, you know, you've gotten that fun, energetic Veronica back.

Speaker4: [00:16:09] Well, when you have to rebuild your whole entire territory, you can't be number one. I mean, like, it takes a long time. It took me 20 years to build that, so it's like I'm starting from ground zero again. Yes, when you start from ground zero, you can't hold yourself to the higher. You know, you can't hold yourself to this high ability when I'm literally starting from ground zero again. And you know what? That's just the way it is. I can't go down. You can't look at it.

Speaker3: [00:16:42] You know, it's what I want you to share, too, is you have to have a lot of hard conversations with people at work. Your people, your boss, the multiple boss, multiple ever revolving boss door. Yeah, lots of bosses. That was hard to.

Speaker4: [00:17:01] Oh, yeah. I think you made me you would ask me like, Veronica, you've got to do this now because I didn't want to have those conversations. I know you remember that. I do remember that. I don't want to have those conversations.

Speaker3: [00:17:16] You why do you think you didn't want to have them?

Speaker4: [00:17:19] I just feel like when your whole entire world just got ripped away from me. I didn't want to have him anymore because I was tired of being beaten down.

Speaker3: [00:17:32] But when you did have them.

Speaker4: [00:17:35] Now, I mean, it wasn't. They weren't the greatest conversations. No, but it helped me to kind of realize where they were coming from and where they were coming from, like the different busses was the fact that they're from a different company. Yeah. They don't know my history.

Speaker3: [00:17:58] Right, so you right, that was the thing.

Speaker4: [00:18:01] Yeah, they don't know me, they don't know me from Adam and Eve. They don't know me. And I was just tired. I was tired and beaten down, and I didn't want to have those conversations and eventually had them. And and

Speaker3: [00:18:14] Then. And that took self-confidence to have them. It took a lot of self-confidence and kind of being OK with whatever the not OK, but you knew

Speaker4: [00:18:24] That you say, well,

Speaker3: [00:18:26] They might not. They might not have gone as the way you wanted them to go, but you had to do it.

Speaker4: [00:18:32] I was pretty much thinking it wasn't going to go the way I wanted it to go at all, right?

Speaker3: [00:18:37] Ok. It was OK. You get worked and it all worked out.

Speaker4: [00:18:42] Imagine that and I'm still laughing and I'm still smiling. I'm sorry.

Speaker3: [00:18:49] Tell us about the little the little red book. Your little red book where you wrote stuff in, you remember, you

Speaker4: [00:18:56] Know, I have like three of them now, honestly.

Speaker3: [00:18:59] Three. Ok. So.

Speaker4: [00:19:03] The book of no, I write a lot of things down now like things that I need, I mean, like things that come to my brain like, honestly, the 15 minutes of like. And I'm not faithfully good at this.

Speaker3: [00:19:19] No one is.

Speaker4: [00:19:20] No, I'm definitely not faithfully good at it. But it does help and I'm telling you, like, so you're always like, OK, you gave you gave a book. And you're like, Veronica Wright, your thoughts, your feelings, you know, blah blah, blah blah down. And set a timer. Ok, five minutes goes pretty fast, and honestly, you don't realize all of the thoughts and feelings you have, right? You just don't realize. But you want to realize it, because in the middle of the day, you kind of forget what you were supposed to, what you were thinking in the morning. So that helped me out a lot. That's probably the second thing that I love the most was the whole like, take a few minutes and write it down. Five minutes in the morning, set a timer on your phone. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds like that's a long time. It is not a long time. I mean, you're talking like from cooking dinner to have to go to the grocery store. Oh, I need to call this customer. Oh, I need to, you know, reply to this reply to my friend about a party. Yep. You just forget about all this stuff during the day. Like, things come up, obviously all the time and I have I have lived by that.

Speaker3: [00:20:44] So. Yeah, I know. I know you have. So it's just like taking that pause to to write your thoughts down.

Speaker4: [00:20:53] It's hard, though. I'm not going to lie.

Speaker3: [00:20:56] It is hard. I I feel like it's hard to. But when you do it, you are grateful for like, it's like a gift you gave yourself

Speaker4: [00:21:03] For those and you can cross them off. It's like, OK, this is done, this is done. This is done. I mean, I did it the other day. I hadn't done it and probably like now, I don't know a couple of days and I'm like, I got every single thing done that I wanted to get done. Well, that doesn't happen every single day. No, I have that day it. And then the things that I still have left off, I can still go back and do because, oh, because it's written down. So wasn't written down what I forget about it. Of course I forget about it. Duh.

Speaker3: [00:21:39] And also take those things, take up space in your brain because they do kind of like pop in your brain throughout the day or the week. And then they just,

Speaker4: [00:21:48] Oh, I was just saying that that you always like space in your brain, like taking up

Speaker3: [00:21:54] Space in your brain, taking up space in your brain. I say it takes up space in your brain a lot. Yeah.

Speaker4: [00:22:00] And you don't know that it takes up that much space, but it takes up so much space like, Oh, this is my probably my favorite saying no. If you if it's sitting in your brain and you and you don't release it, basically you are meaning writing it down, right? And it's still taking up the space. It is. There's no more space in there to.

Speaker3: [00:22:23] Yes. Sometimes I have to say, you have to like park your thoughts. It's like their cars riding, rolling around, spinning around in your brain and you just want to park them somewhere. And if you don't park them, then you never get off the. You never get off for sixty five. You're just riding around in a car, right?

Speaker4: [00:22:41] Just stay there and be part. Yeah. Who knew? I didn't know. Who knew? I didn't know that.

Speaker3: [00:22:47] So writing your thoughts down, figuring out what parts of the wheel aren't the what spokes are not long enough to keep the wheel rolling. You have very short little spokes on your wheel. And how has this impacted me? So when you first came to me, really, the work thing was what was dragging you down. But how is all of this work that you've done impacted other parts of your life, like your relationship with your kids, friends home? Oh, I mean,

Speaker4: [00:23:17] It's

Speaker3: [00:23:17] Huge. You experienced a tremendous loss this past year as well.

Speaker4: [00:23:22] I did. And yeah, so I would say with my kids and my husband as well, like, no one wants to see their mother sitting there dwelling and self-pity because mothers are supposed to be on their game at all time, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So. It was huge. It was huge for them to see me get off the couch and, you know, to even put a smile on my face. That was kind of a huge thing. And and to just be be myself again, OK, I'm pretty energetic. Obviously you are. I am. And I like to. I have a lot of friends. I have a lot of things to be grateful for. And yeah, it just to get back to being myself was huge. You know, pickleball was getting so bad, but it's no big deal. It was such a big thing for me, like my kids and I go play my son and I go play. You know, he goes and plays with me in the mornings or whenever in the nighttime, and I'm just moving. Basically is is huge. I kind of feel like, you know, being healthy again, not only mentally but physically. I mean, yeah, I'm not like working out like I used to, but I mean, if I play an hour or two hours of a ball a day, I think I'm good. I mean, you know, this is what it is. I think you're good. Yeah, just not doing some of the self-pity, things that I was doing. I mean. Is is really it's it's ki- it's so important to me, so and did I not answer your question because you went off key? You know, I'm like, I forgot the question already. I'm like, No. Well, I think you talked to my husband too. By the way, I remember how he thanked you. He did. Like, we were having, like a webinar one day and he's like, I'm like, Oh, Kenny, come here. This is my life coach. He's like, He's like, Oh my god, Andrea, thank you. You brought my wife back to me, I think was his exact words.

Speaker3: [00:25:46] You're back. Yeah, you're back in full force. Yeah. Even better, yeah. Better than ever. So if you are listening and I know a lot of you out there have lots of energy and love for life like Veronica does, and you felt you're feeling like it's something took it away or you took it away. Just buy your yourself. By the way, you were thinking it's possible to change.

Speaker4: [00:26:13] It is possible. It is possible, and it doesn't feel like that. I thought my Earth was shattered and gone. And that sucks sucks, and it sucks, and I thought, like I said, I didn't know that I would go to a life coach for this. I went to a counselor. And that was not helping me at all. I'm like, Oh my gosh.

Speaker3: [00:26:38] Why do you think I always say that? I think, well, the job of a counselor is to just get you kind of understanding the past to the present. The counselor's job is not really to look forward into the future, and I think that's what you were craving like the way out.

Speaker4: [00:26:53] Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, I didn't need that. I needed to look to the future. And that was the the part that I was missing. And didn't know how to get to basically. I didn't know how to get to it. It was it was literally by some miracle of God that my girlfriend called me and told me about you. It was literally a miracle I. That's all I can say.

Speaker3: [00:27:23] It was a miracle. I love that. You are amazing. And if anyone wants to find out more about Veronica. Go Google, go for better on LinkedIn. She has a LinkedIn profile now, by the way. That was that.

Speaker4: [00:27:39] Yeah, I don't know. I was like, what?

Speaker3: [00:27:43] That was fine. All right. Well, this has been super fun. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you. I appreciate. I appreciate you.

Speaker4: [00:27:53] All right. I appreciate you too. Have a good day.

Speaker3: [00:27:57] Thanks so much.

Speaker4: [00:27:58] Bye. Bye bye.

Speaker2: [00:28:01] So. What did you think? How's your life feeling right now? Is it rolling or is it bumpy? Notice that sometimes when one thing happens, it affects all things, and all of a sudden our levels of satisfaction in one area of life impact our levels of satisfaction in all areas of life. But when we get our act together in one area, oftentimes other areas kind of come along and things start rolling again. So go download that wheel of life. Andrea Libros back wheel to give yourself a little assessment on how your life is rolling. And remember that sometimes you just need to make the phone call and get some help. And coaching is not counseling, as Veronica eloquently described. And sometimes we really do need to look into the future, which is exactly what coaching allows you to do. So I'm always here to help. Feel free to reach out and set up a call, because what if you could upgrade your life in all aspects, in all categories, not just work, but in relationships? Financial. How you organize your time. All of it. It feels really good. And you could tell, I think from Veronica's energy that she was feeling really good. Ok, friends until next week, remember? There is never a better time, what are you waiting for? Now is the time to up level and upgrade your life. And I'm here to help you do so. See you next week. Thanks for listening to the Time to Level Up podcast with me,

Speaker3: [00:30:05] Your host, Andrea Libros. If you know someone who could benefit from listening to this episode, I encourage you to take a screenshot and share it with them. Ok, now what about you? You've listened to the podcast, and if you now know that you're ready to upgrade your life, upgrade your business, upgrade, you then stop being only a listener and start being a liver living that upgraded life. Head over to my website and schedule a call right there on that call. We'll start changing the way you think and act so that you can have the freedom to achieve the impossible in life and business and have the resources to do it. You deserve an upgrade. Let's do it.