048 | -ABLERS (W3W) The Three People We Meet on the Path to Success with Toby Brooks

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Greetings and welcome back.

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It is Word to the Third, my reflections on purpose, life and growth.

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I'm Toby Brooks.

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I'm a speaker, author, professor and forever student.

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Each week on Becoming Undone I bring you guests who have dared bravely, risked mightily, and grown relentlessly.

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High achievers who've transformed from falling apart to falling into place.

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But every third episode, it's my turn to reflect, refine, and reprocess.

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Onward to the third.

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As I'm working on this week's episode, I'm also watching the much-discussed Colorado Buffaloes battle it out with TCU in their season kickoff.

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They just won, taking a program that went 1-11 last year to victory over the other that played for the national championship this entire offseason experts and talking heads have been just Absolutely obsessed with coach prime Deion Sanders and his efforts in Boulder as the new head coach at the University of Colorado Most likely the greatest athlete of my lifetime Deion is known as much for his confidence and his swagger as he has been for his sports accomplishments.

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He's brash, he's cocky, he's outspoken, but more often than not, he's been able to back it up.

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Such an approach may be unconventional, but it sure as heck invites his share of fans and critics.

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People seem to either love the guy or hate him.

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Some so-called experts have predicted that Colorado would immediately be relevant again on the national stage.

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Others seem to be hoping to see him fail.

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There's no shortage of love and of hate.

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And if we get real honest, some of that's undoubtedly linked to racism.

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Some of it is simply people hoping to see someone with that much confidence be humbled.

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Either way, Dion has a heaping helping of vocal believers and an equally big and loud group of haters.

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But for most of the rest of us, it's not really like that. It's different.

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I think most of us have three people that we encounter on our journeys to success. Let me explain. First, we have enablers. These are people who are clearly in our corner.

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They cheer us on to victory, no matter whether we deserve it or not. This is our squad. Sometimes we know without question who these folks are. For me, there's no doubt that my wife, my daughter, and my son are enablers for me. They are there in my ups and my downs, in my successes and in my failures. I know I don't deserve the love and support that they give, but I see it.

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Other times, these are silent fans who align with our vibe. Beyond the easy-to-spot enablers, we better believe that there are others pulling for us.

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Since I launched this podcast, I've discovered some enablers, like episode 2 guest, Carefry, who regularly checks in with me and encourages me with a kind word and a virtual pat on the back, or even people I've never actually met, like episode 29 guest, Katie Burkhart-Gooch, who, in addition to having a pretty hilarious social media presence that I've discovered, has inspired and encouraged me throughout this trip. In short, enablers are the people who help us as we work to make our dreams happen. On the other hand, the second person we meet on the path is the disabler, the hater, the person who either obviously or even secretly wants to see us and our dreams collapse. It'd be reassuring to think that all our disablers are distant and anonymous, or few and far between. Sadly, my experience isn't that safe or easy.

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Sometimes enemies sprout right in our garden.

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Jealousy, insecurity, and selfishness can all fertilize those disablers to take root in people that we would assume otherwise to be in our corner.

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Unfortunately, such thinking is just naive.

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The reality is that there are probably people you talk with regularly who would take pleasure in seeing you fail.

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Or worse yet, they contribute to it. But I'll admit it, I'm no Deion Sanders. It might be binary for him, fans, and haters, but it isn't for most of the rest of us. No. Instead, for most of us, there's a third group. I'll call them the Unablers. If Enablers are a positive force and Disablers are a negative one, Unablers are a neutral one. They aren't pulling for us, but they aren't sabotaging us either. Now I'm personally working to really embrace this notion.

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Just because I'm not on someone's radar doesn't mean they hate me or want me to fail. In reality, they probably are just simply indifferent. Now I've told this story before in a few places, but I'll tell it again here. I grew up on a 38 acre hobby farm in rural southern Illinois.

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My sister was all about the farm stuff, big into 4H and FFA and showing livestock and things like that, but not me.

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More than anything else, I wanted to play football, but my school didn't have a team, so basketball became my world.

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My dad made a court for me out of a small concrete pad that had once been a chicken coop, and the basketball goal could be seen from the two-lane road that passed by our place for a long way in either direction. I knew I wanted to play college basketball but I was attending a small school in Southern Illinois. I was just a kid. No one would come to my games to recruit me or anyone else. In my mind the only way for me to get a college scholarship was to impress a coach or a recruiter who happened to be driving down Illinois Route 145 some random day and for him to notice me practicing and hitting my shots. Now as funny as it is for me to consider now, I used to see and hear a car coming from probably half a mile away and I would spot up so that I could drill a jumper hopefully right as that unsuspecting passerby passed by our house. I know, great plan right? But nobody ever stopped. Not one car in all my years saw me playing, slammed on the brakes, and high-tailed it up my driveway to offer me the scholarship that I so coveted. Does that mean that every single person who drove by my house was an enemy? Hardly. I will guarantee you that 100% of those people never even noticed I was playing. They weren't enablers.

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They weren't for me. They weren't disablers. They weren't against me. They were neutral. They were non-impacting unablers. And considering the people of my world, I'd say it's downright pathological and paranoid to think that people are either for us or against us. Some people aren't even living in a common environment.

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We don't register in their world.

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Just because someone isn't my friend, doesn't mean they are my enemy.

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So the next time you're tempted to pass judgment on someone for not reading what you wrote, listening to what you've recorded, coming to your game or your show, maybe consider giving them a bit of grace.

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Because I can tell you, when I do that, I'm happier and I'm healthier when I simply assume that people are by default for me or neutral.

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And to that third group, good luck to you. I wish you well.

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But believe me when I say this, I'm going to find a way to win whether you want me to or not.

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Bricks and buckets.

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Each week on Becoming Undone I reflect back on the highs and lows of my week in bricks and buckets.

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Bricks are attempts that miss the mark, while buckets sail through the net clean and true.

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It's my way of considering the good and the bad of my week.

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Brick this week?

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My sweet daughter Brennan moved into her off-campus apartment last week, moving out of her childhood bedroom for the second time now.

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Making matters worse, she got COVID again this week.

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I hope she gets better soon, but I do miss my baby girl and the joy and the music she always brings to our home.

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My bucket this week, my son Tay made his senior season debut in game two of his high school football career.

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He suffered a broken hand during travel ball this summer that required surgery to fix and he finally got released by his hand surgeon to play on Friday night. It was a dogfight too.

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His Lubbock Christian team squeaked out a tight one, hitting a 37 yard field goal with less than 30 seconds left to snag a 17-16 victory. My voice is a little raspy today because I screamed my head off last night.

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Yeah! Fist bump! Fist bump is not in my fighting database.

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No, this isn't a fighting thing.

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It's what people do sometimes when they're excited or pumped up.

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VF of the week! A new segment on this week's W3W. I'm calling them virtual fist bumps, or VFs for short. This week's VF goes to none other than the enabler I mentioned earlier, Katie Burkhardt-Gooch. A world-class athlete turned into an incredible artist and jeweler, I discovered about two weeks ago that Katie signed on as my show's first ever supporter. My podcasting platform Buzzsprout offers a support the show functionality and I'd added it to the website when I first built it. If you go to undonepodcast.com there's a support the show link at the top. Well Katie saw it. She clicked there and she contributed. Now it's not about the money it's the thought that a world-class athlete who gave of her time to a complete stranger me for the interview was vulnerable enough to share some deeply personal things from her past and now decided that she wanted to support me. In a word, it's surreal. I'm looking forward to reading the book she's working on and in the meantime, Katie, you get Becoming Undone's first ever virtual fist bump which, coming from an Arizona wildcat to an Arizona State Sun Devil, is as revolutionary as it is groundbreaking.

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Thanks, Katie.

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Well, that wraps up another week.

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What about you?

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What are you working on?

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What are you waiting for?

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And what are you doing in the meantime to get better every day?

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I'd love to help, and I'd love to hear about it.

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Surf on over to undonepodcast.com and drop me a note.

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For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web.

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Simply go to undonepodcast.com backslash EP48 to see the notes, links, and images related to today's show. If you enjoyed the show or know someone you think might be interested, I have just one simple request. Would you be so kind as to share it with them?

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It would really go a long way in helping me spread the word about becoming undone. Surf on over to undonepodcast.com, click the contact tab in the top menu and drop me a note.

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Coming up, I've got former American Gladiator Darren Malibu McBee, friend and cancer treatment expert Dr. Phil Anton, and founding member of the legendary R&B group S.H.I., Dr. Garfield Bright.

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So stay tuned, this and more on Becoming Undone.

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Word to the third.

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Becoming Undone is a NitroHut Creative Production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for Becoming Undone, contact me at undonepodcast.com. Follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at becoming undone pod and follow me at Toby J. Brooks. Listen, subscribe, and leave us a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Till next time everybody, keep getting better.

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Thanks for watching!