Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager

A Seemingly Invisible Disability - The Real Story Behind My Hearing Loss and How it Led to My Superpower

December 25, 2019 Heather Sager Episode 17
Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager
A Seemingly Invisible Disability - The Real Story Behind My Hearing Loss and How it Led to My Superpower
Show Notes Transcript

It surprises most people to learn that I have a hearing loss and often leads to a lot of questions, especially since I’ve built my coaching business on the topic of communications.

For today’s episode, I’m going unscripted and getting super raw *bring the tissues* to share with you the real truth behind my seemingly invisible disability (and how it led to my superpower).

P.S… did you know more than 5% of the world's population – or 466 million people – has disabling hearing loss. That’s 432 million adults and 34 million children. While you might not be one of them, you more than likely know someone who struggles with their hearing. I hope this episode gives you some insight into their world. 

[Stats from the World Health Organization]

Was I born with it? No. Am I deaf? No. How has it impacted my life? So. Many. Ways.

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Speaker 1:

You're listening to Finding Your It Factor. Episode 17. Today's episode, I'm getting personal, definitely getting vulnerable, let's say real, raw and authentic because I'm sharing with you the thing that has caused me so much frustration and pain in my life. Those why me moments of crying in a corner or not being able to let myself out of my room. I'm sharing with you the thing that's completely changed my personality for what I thought was for the worse. It's the thing that has driven so many bouts of social anxiety and it's caused me to turn inward more than outward and putting up walls and barriers with people that I meet. Today I'm sharing with you all about my hearing loss and more importantly why I've chosen that thing, that supposedly imperfect thing about me that I used to hate, why I've chosen to use that thing as a catalyst to find my super power, which is connecting and communicating with others. So if you want to know how a girl like me who has a business based around communication started it all with a significant and profound hearing loss, well, listen up.

Speaker 2:

Have you ever wondered how some people just seem to have a way with words. They have this spark that lights you up when you're near them. They have the it factor and while most people think it's something that only a few are born with, I believe that you can find it so it can become your super power to grow your business. It's about you bringing your brand to life by becoming a magnetic communicator in person and on camera, showing up with confidence, authenticity, and inspiration. So. Are you ready to become magnetic? I thought so. I'm Heather Sager and I'd like to welcome you to Finding Your It Factor. Welcome back to[inaudible]

Speaker 1:

another episode and Hey, I know you're not listening to this on the day that it came out because the day this podcast airs, it's Christmas. Santa came and brought you, add another podcast episode. You're welcome. Also, if you celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas. If you don't, happy holidays, happy Wednesday, happy almost end of 2019 guys, I can't believe that this season is already here and I am just, I have all the feels I have all the feeks for you and I just want to say how grateful I am for you for listening to the show. Today's episode, not going to lie, I'm a little nervous about because we're doing something totally different. Today's episode is not filled with an interview or tips and tricks and all the things. Today's episode, I'm just going to share my heart with you because I get a lot of questions asked about my hearing loss, and by the way, if you're a new listener to the show and you're like, huh, you have a hearing loss. Sure do. I have a pretty significant hearing loss and I've worn hearing technology for eight or nine years and quite frankly, I can't function without it and it surprises most people because I don't look like a typical person that you think of when you think of hearing aides. Most people think of someone with silver hair and far more wrinkly skin. No offense, but that's the mold that people think of when it comes to hearing loss. They think aging. And the reality is there's so many people my age or younger that struggle with hearing loss and it is a silent thing that um, no pun intended around uh, communication that a lot of people, one are not aware of, but two, they don't understand. And so my goal for today's conversation is twofold. One, to share with you maybe something that you might not otherwise know about me and hopefully if I open up my heart and become more vulnerable, I will inspire you to do the same with your audience because I think there's a lot of power and vulnerability and power with not always having your ish together. I think that can be really powerful thing. So that number one is my first goal of this conversation today. Number two, I bet that someone in your life also struggles with hearing loss. And I hope that today's conversation also gets you maybe thinking about things in a different perspective and it gets you hopefully seeing things from another point of view where you can be a support to that person because a lot of times those with hearing loss aren't able to articulate exactly what they need or exactly the pain that they're experiencing. And my hope is maybe I can shed a little bit of positivity, positivity, and a light into your world with your relationship with another person. I think that's a powerful thing. I'm already getting teary eyes thinking about this cause there's so much that I want to cover today. So let me just shake that off because what I want to do first is I would love to start acknowledging my incredible listeners of the show. Sorry, I have to wipe my nose. I don't know why I'm getting so emotional so quickly. You'll learn that about me. I am an emotional person sometimes and evidently this topic is just going to do that for me today. But what I'd like to do is I would love to start doing a listener shout out of the week just to say thank you for listening, number one, but also to encourage you that if you'd like what you hear on the episodes, please, please, please leave a review, especially if you're using iTunes, Apple podcasts, whatever that is. If you leave a review, it's really a really powerful way for more people to come off across the show. Also, if you liked today's episode or any of the other episodes that you've listened to, please share them with your communities. If you think others would find benefit in that too. So please share and tag me on Instagram. I'm at the Heather Sager. Uh, please share with me there. I would love to have a conversation with you, but today's listener shout out is brought to you by the amazing Sarah. And Sarah posted. Thank you Heather for breaking down the scary challenges of speaking, making it accessible and sharing easy to use tactics and advice for making. Speaking part of our journey. I enjoy listening and I feel you right there with me. Initially, I didn't think that speaking was a part of my gig at all. But following your lead, I think it is part of my online business future. I think that's so amazing, Sarah. I thank you so much for the kind words and I think you're so spot on. I think so many times many of us don't. They about speaking as being part of our business until we realize that we speak every day anyways and maybe doing it more intentionally and strategically in front of crowds. It might be a really great business driver. So like Sarah, if you find value of the show, please, please, please leave a review wherever you're listening to this podcast and share it as generously as possible. Big, exciting news. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw this a few weeks ago, this podcast broke into the top charts in the U.S. For a brief moment. It's backed down, but we're within the top 200 business marketing podcasts in the U.S. Which I think is incredible because there's like a Kajabillion. Yeah, you heard that right? Kajabillion podcasts in the world. And I think it's so great that we're building traction in this community, helping people leverage, speaking in their business as a way to draw more people in. So my passion and pursuit of helping you show up in a more magnetic way. Thank you so much for being here and pursuing that and helping others find their journey here in finding their it factor. I think is just so great. So with that, shall we dive in? So talking about hearing loss. So as I mentioned before, it, it surprises a lot of people that I have a hearing loss. And when you get to know me a bit, uh, it actually doesn't surprise you cause it's a perfect part of my story, of my career journey and also why I started my business. But I want to share with you, so two things. One, I have a list of questions here that many of you sent in on Instagram when I said a few weeks ago that I'd be doing this topic. So I have some questions I'll go through and then I also want to share with you some other insights and perspectives. And my goal of this, like I said earlier, is one is to share something vulnerable about me. So hopefully you open up the same with your audience, but I do actually have some tips for you around how the things that I've experienced, even though you yourself most likely don't have a hearing loss. Maybe there's some of you who do, but there is most likely something within you that you feel frustrated with or you feel like there's something wrong with you or you feel, I don't know. There's some, there's something going on. And I do think there's going to be interesting ways where you connect to what I'm talking about, even if your thing isn't a hearing loss. So I challenge you to see where the parallels all are in your life because I think the more that you can draw into this and have more empathy and understanding for how maybe you can exercise a little more grace with yourself. But again, you can model the same with your audience. So I'm hoping that even though this might peak your interest and you learn more about me, but I'm hoping maybe today you learn a little bit more about yourself and are able to use this. And by the way, if you do, please shoot me a direct message on Instagram cause I really would love to hear from you on this one just because this is such an out there topic for me to talk about on a quote unquote business podcast. Okay. So let me dive into the first question I got from one of our listeners and she asked, so were you born with a hearing loss or that something that developed over time? Did you have some kind of damage that happened? What's the deal? I love a direct and bold question, so thank you for asking that. I think that one came from Natalie. So a, was I born with a hearing loss? The answer is no. I developed a hearing loss right around when I was about 19/20 years old. What I was born with, however, was a rare genetic condition of my bones, and it's something called osteogenesis imperfecta, which sounds super fancy, but it essentially means I have brittle bones. It's a genetic condition, which means that a, there's a 50 50 shot of it being passed from generation to generation. My mom had it, my siblings there are six of us in my family, six kids, half of us have it, half don't. With my kids, one of my kids has it, one of them doesn't. So I grew up in a house where it was very normal for people to have broken bones. I myself, I have broken more bones in my life than I can even count. I've literally have no idea how many bones I've ever broken, which shocked some people, and it's a very strange for me, it's totally normal. I knew that if I was running down the street in the third grade with my shoes untied and I fell on my face and landed on my arm, it was most likely broken, which that happened multiple summers. I had a cast pretty much every year in grade school and beyond. I broke a lot of bones. Now for me, I consider myself lucky because I am a more mild condition of osteogenesis imperfecta. Some children are not even, they don't even survive past the womb. It's one of the most horrific diagnosis as you can get when you're pregnant to find out that your baby in utero has OI, especially the most severe case because their, their skeletal structure is so fragile, they can't even survive the structure that is in a womb. The next case of OI when people get, um, I don't know if there's like types that they're called. I don't even remember the different types names. It's terrible. I probably should know that. I know what type I have, but the next type of it is they're so severe that if a child is born with that severeness of OI, there's a high likelihood that they're not going to survive, um, for there for very long because again, their skeletal structural just can't hold up. There are horrifying and terrifying cases of this disease all over the world. And, uh, sometimes I Google it and I'm getting teary because I, there's a hashtag on Instagram and I see these kids, so living their lives with this disease and I'm so humbled that I feel so lucky because I have a case that's ultimately really mild. And for me, what happens with someone with my case of a why is the repercussion is, yeah, I broke a lot of bones. I still played soccer by the way, so I was kind of asking for it with the broken bones. But um, what it also meant meant was those three tiny bones in your ears, they stop working over time or working as well as they're supposed to. And so typically when you're in your mid thirties, someone with the type of OI that I have, uh, starts losing their hearing. It's called a conductive hearing loss. So not like your grandma or grandpa's hearing loss or that's a sensory neural hearing loss, which is a fancy way of saying the, there's damage within the cochlea. My cochlea is totally fine. I have a sexy cochlea. It's all good and well there. My issue is those three damn bones behind my eardrum and most people with this condition start losing their hearing in their thirties but for me it started happening when I was 19 and the interesting thing for me is growing up, this was totally a normal thing. My mom wore hearing hearing aides for as long as I could remember. I never knew my mom without hearing aides. My grandparents were hearing aides. My aunt all wear hearing aides, like hearing loss was a normalcy of my life. For those of us who had OI. And I remember as a kid I would run around and play games, uh, pranks on my mom, like silly stuff, right? We would, my siblings and I, if we wanted to get permission to do something, we would always ask my mom on a Sunday afternoon when she had nested away 25 minutes of the week to take a nap if she could. And in those moments she would take out her hearing AIDS and she'd be resting on the couch. So we would go over and we would ask the question while she was sleeping to wake her up. But more importantly we'd ask her when she didn't have her hearing aides in so that she couldn't really understand us, but it was too much effort for her to put the hearing aides back in. So she would pretty much say yes to any of our requests. I know so terrible. But as a kid who was such a smart strategy that I learned from my siblings, so we would do that, or I discovered what I was super little that when I stuck my hands over my mom's ears, they would make music, meaning they would whistle, which if you know anything about hearing aides, that's something called feedback and it is the most aggressive, annoying sound when you're the person wearing them. So essentially I thought I was making music, but I was just torturing my mom. Thankfully hearing aides have come a long way since then. But the point is, for me, I knew a lot about the normalcy of hearing aides. Technically I didn't really know anything about them, but they were just a, a normal thing in my family's life. They were also, it was common knowledge in my family that they were a pain in the butt. My mom didn't particularly love them. They didn't fit right. She always had issues with her hearing aides. Like she still had to have the television cranked up to volume 95. It's probably dramatic, but it depends on your TV, right? But it was always so loud. We could hear a law and order from every corner of the house or the, what's that doctor show with the really hot guy, not Grey's anatomy. Way before that, my mom would never watch Grey's anatomy. But what was that doctor show? I don't know you from like the late nineties whatever that doctor show was. And she loved that show, but it would be so loud and the rest of us couldn't sleep cause the volume was so loud. This was my childhood. Well for me, I lost my mom pretty early. My mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was in high school and she fought it for years. And, and she ultimately lost her battle. So right before I turned 18, I lost my mom. So what that has to do with this is no, not a sob story of bummer. I lost my mom to cancer. Um, it was a bummer. Conversation for another day. The bummer here is the person that I had to talk to when I started losing my hearing. The person who would relate and maybe be able to educate, help me understand what was happening. She wasn't there. And uh, her family, like extended family, my aunts and my grandparents, my grandparents weren't around anymore. Um, they had passed and my aunts lived in a different city and over time we just lost touch and things like Facebook didn't exist then. So I had to navigate this thing that was my hearing on my own. Now here's the thing about hearing, it's not like, it's not like I eyesight and granted I have great eyesight, so I, it's hard to make this difference. But here's what I do know is when you're struggling to see something in front of you, you can tell it's fuzzy. Like you can see the thing. But it's fuzzy and you know, you're having vision problems. I mean, this might happen just if you're, I don't know, having, you might have perfect eyesight and still have some struggle seeing things, but the thing about hearing what comes up is you don't necessarily notice that you're having a hearing problem because the difficulty with hearing is I could hear so many things going on around me. I could hear conversations, I could hear the background noise in a coffee shop. I could hear the table of people chatting next to me. I could hear my husband across the kitchen talking to me. I could hear what I thought. Everything. It wasn't an issue of that. I thought, Oh, I didn't have a hearing loss because I could hear, well, I couldn't understand. I thought everyone around me was mumbling. It was just everything was mumbling. My husband's voice, granted at the time, we hadn't met yet, but everyone's voices were mumbly like it was just everybody else had a, had a problem with pronunciation and being able to speak. I could hear them. I just couldn't understand. And it wasn't until so many years later that I understood that hearing is far more complex where that gap in understanding actually is a hearing loss. Hearing loss isn't simply about volume, it's a clarity issue. And now that I know that, I wish I would have known it so many years ago because I could have done something about it sooner, but I didn't know that. And so what I had to do was figure out how to cope. So here's 19/ 20 year olds, 21 year old Heather in college. I was going to school and I was at that time in school where it was, where the classrooms where the professor would talk for a bit, but then he'd throw the discussions out to the room and he would ask for you all to contribute into the conversation. You know those classrooms where it was essentially there's a big giant debate and discussion. That was a lot of college classes for me and I hated it. I hated it. I was a really good student and I felt like I had some really good, valuable things to add to the conversation. But once that conversation would get started, I became lost and I didn't know what the heck everyone was saying so I couldn't contribute at all. So I completely retracted and just became this inward loner where honestly I probably looked like the, the know it all of the class because either I would raise my hand and jump into the conversation first so that way I could actually contribute some kind of intelligent thing that made sense. But if the conversation went to two, three, four people, I lost what the whole conversation was about. And I didn't want to be the person to speak up and say something that had literally nothing to do with what we were talking about or be the jerk who repeated something that somebody else already said, but claiming the idea of who their own. Like I didn't want to be either of those gals, so I just went quiet, quiet for most every interaction. I went quiet and it doesn't help that I have a very neuro structured face. So I have permanent resting, not too nice person face. So I am pretty confident that I became the girl who thought she was better than everyone else. People must have just thought that either I had something to say or I was so disinterested or didn't care, or because I must've been so much better. And just thinking about that for a moment, like how many times in your life have you felt so misunderstood, but you don't know. You don't know how to change it because you don't really know what's happening in the moment. You just know that you're not acting in the way that you want to, but there's nothing that you could do to change it. Come to find out there's always something that you've been doing to change it. But when you're in some of those moments where you're trying to figure out how do you want to show up, but you quite don't quite know how it's hard. So for me, college was hard. It was hard because I'm a pretty social person. I love meeting people. I love building quality relationships. I hate small talk by the way, but I like getting to know people. I love being a little bit of the life of the party and having the jokes and telling the stories and I wasn't really able to do those things cause I couldn't get past the icebreaker stage because fun fact, this is why I hate small talk so much guys. I talk about this a lot. I hate small talk because it's so hard to hear people during small talk cause usually it's in a really difficult environment to listen and I don't know, the conversation isn't really that valuable anyways and it just requires a lot of effort on my part to hear and so I just don't, I just don't, it's not worth the effort. And I'll tell you this, that even still now to this day with exceptional technology that I wear, I wear like the best technology in the world. Side note, if you didn't know this about me, fast forward, spoiler alert. I worked in the hearing industry for almost a decade. It's actually why I finally started doing something about my hearing loss is because I started working with audiologists and doctors and my job was to teach them how to talk about technology with patients and help patients understand that yes, the things that they're describing, the things that they're experiencing are in fact a hearing loss. And more importantly, they can do something about it. Ironic, right? That became my job and it became this catalyst that changed everything for me, but it's just, anyways, I don't know where I was going with that, but I this whole thing, it's crazy that going back to those days in college, my personality was shaping. My personality but shaping, and I thought it was shaping down this road that I couldn't control that I thought I was becoming this inward, um, person who didn't like people, you know? Have you ever joked about that before? How people suck? Like, Oh my God, people are so annoyed. You know how we all kind of joke about that? I started joking about that a lot. I just thought I was a person not for people. And I started retracting and I struggled building relationships with friends and my best friends from high school. I didn't really talk to them as much anymore. And my closest friends that I had had beyond that, those conversations started going away over time. And it took me years to figure out how to build real meaningful relationships with people. And that's the truth. It's hard to say, but I think a lot of times when you're a really ambitious, really driven career focused primarily woman, I think this shows up a lot more for women. Um, you become really intimidating and add that intimidating factor to poor social skills. Let's just call it that. It was a challenge. It was totally a challenge for me. But I say this because, and uh, in the rear view mirror, it's so easy for me to go back and understand what was actually happening. But in the moment I had no idea. Like I wasn't reflective of the fact that I had a hearing loss. I didn't really understand what was happening. I just knew that I was different and I felt different and I had to have that inner battle of that difference was either going to be by competitive advantage or it could be the thing that held me back from doing the things I wanted to do and I chose to lead it and be more ambitious. Now at the time for me, I didn't know what that would look like. I didn't know that I would end up working in the hearing industry. I didn't know that I had a significant hearing loss. I didn't know all these things. I just knew that I wanted to have a successful career. So I chose to lean in that. So that that's part of I think why I ultimately ended up landing in the job that I was in in the hearing industry. But anyways, it's just, it's really fascinating how the experiences we have shape what's coming next if we choose to let them. And I think it's a really, really powerful, a powerful thing. Let me jump in and do another question. So another question that came in, I forgot to write people's names on these. So I'm sorry guys, a question that came in is, Heather, can you hear without your hearing aides? Okay, so I mentioned that I wear hearing technology. I worked in the hearing care space so, so you know I've worn probably 10- 15 different brands, types, fits, all of the things. I am super geeky and know a lot about hearing technology. Actually just this last weekend I was at my husband's company Halloween party and there was two people there that had just gotten hearing aides and they were frustrated and had a lot of questions and I ended up spending an hour at the party coaching them through acclimating to technology and answering their questions and helping them through that. So side note, I'm super geeky about that, but the question is can I hear without my technology? So I wear hearing aides every moment of the day. They are the first things that that happens when I wake up in the morning, they in my ears immediately and when I go to sleep at night, when my head hits the pillow there, they come out of my ears and go into, I have a charging station for my hearing aides that I put them in every night. I have to wear them all the time. Well, except for when I'm in the shower. I don't wear them in the shower. Can I hear without them? I mean, yes and no. My husband would say 100% no. Uh, my four year old, almost five year old child Owen, uh, with, he comes in to talk to me like if I'm in the bathroom getting ready to jump in the shower and I don't have them in, he has to put his mouth literally up to my ear so I can understand him. That's where I'm at. Can I have a conversation with someone without them? They'd have to be standing right in front of my face and shouting. It's not a fact of me not being able to hear. I can hear their noise, but I cannot understand the words. And the thing about hearing, like I said, it's the understanding that those sounds, that's what creates words and it gives them meaning and that's how we understand what's happening. So it's not just a volume thing, it's a clarity thing. So, uh, no, I would say no. I can't hear without my hearing aides. It's just not a thing that happens. And that for me there are, uh, there are moments that I have like sheer panic moments that what would happen if I'm at an event traveling, getting ready to go on stage and something happens and my hearing aides go out. Like that's a real tangible fear that I have. And luckily I do have a pair of backup hearing aides, which I know is a very random thing and most people are not as fortunate to be able to have that kind of access. But that's something for me is I have to think about that cause I can't function without them. Another person asked, can you read lips? This is a common question that I get and I think I'm surprised myself. Nope, not even a little bit. Can I read the lips? I can't. Uh, I, if you were to mouth, well maybe this is it. If you were to mouth something at me, I would have no idea what you're saying. Like probably worse than a normal person. I have literally no idea what you're trying to say. And maybe part of it is I don't want to work that hard, but um, I do, I do find it much easier to understand people if I can see their faces. So if I can see your face, if I could see your mouth and I actually think it's not necessarily me reading your lips, it's me reading your facial expressions and your, and your eyeballs and your wrinkling of your forehead or your raised eyebrows, your, all of the contextual things that go with it. I'm very much putting the visuals to what you're saying and that context clicks more for me. I think that's actually why I'm so passionate and also damn good at what I do, which is teaching people that communication is far more than just your words. Get your words down, but then practice more and more around how you deliver your words every day. It's that it's that communication pie that I've talked about so many times on this show and I have so much content around. By the way, I'll put a link in the show notes to a prior episode on that. I think it was episode number nine. Yup, totally. Episode number nine. Go back to that one cause I talk a lot about the delivery skills when it comes to communication, but for me that's so important. I need the context. I need to see people's faces because it helps me understand the difference between what I think I hear you say and what you're actually saying. And for me, a, that happens a lot. I actually have a running journal of, I know you didn't say this, but what I heard you say is X. And let me just give you a hysterical example of this that just happened last night with my son. We were driving home from his daycare and from the backseat. I hear my son, he's almost five people. He says, Hey mom, I wanna swipe right tonight. Hey mom, I wanna swipe right tonight. Okay? If you are anything into the world of online dating or know somebody there, you know what that means. Not what my almost five-year-old said, what I heard. I just immediately started laughing and my GoTo phrase, I know that's not what you said. Uh, but I had to write it down because it was so funny what he actually said. Again, I heard I want to swipe right tonight. He said, mom, I want fried rice tonight. Uh, meaning we were going home and making fried rice for dinner, which was, we had talked about that this morning or that morning, but I thought it was hilarious. But my life is filled with those kinds of statements where even with incredible technology that helps me not only get by, but thrive in so many different situations and actually connect and speak with people, I still struggle. I still struggle to hear what people are actually saying. And so that's why relying on context of body language and the tone that is so impactful for me. And I think that's a big catalyst for why I'm so passionate about teaching other people to do the same. Okay. Next question, Heather. How did you find the courage to start talking about something that seems so personal to you? Oh, aye. You know, it wasn't an intentional choice. It felt more like a, I had to do it and not I had to do it because somebody forced me to do it. It was more of, this is going to sound so cheesy, and guys, I am not a cheesy person, but it generally felt like I was placed in a position and it was a calling. I genuinely believe that I, I have this hearing loss for a very specific purpose, for a very specific reason to be, to build a platform to help other people. And 10 years ago I landed a job at a company which was a management company in the hearing care space. So specifically the company was a management firm who helps independent, uh, hearing practices. So ear doctors all around the country. It helped them run their businesses. The people who worked at the company really, uh, they were not specialization. Uh, Hope's a weird word, but they were not specialists in hearing care. They were specialists in their separate business functions. So marketing, training, human resources, finance, all the things they were specialists. And then they became trained and specialized in the hearing industry. So I started working in that company. I started doing their events. I ended up running the training department, teaching sales and leadership and operations and all the things for these business owners. And the moment happened for me is when I was promoted to a position to run the training department. And the flagship program was a program that they call patients for life. And that program was teaching doctors and their teams how to have more effective conversations and create experiences for their patients to help their patients understand how their hearing loss was impacting their life and choose to move forward with treatment. That treatment, 95% of the time was hearing aides. So when I was placed over that department, I, uh, I really, I didn't know anything about the training. I didn't know anything about training or adult education. My degree was in marketing and I had planned corporate events. That's what I had to bring to the table. And I was supposed to be getting on stage talking to doctors and people who had been doing their job for decades. So I had nothing to offer them except I happened to be one of their patients. I had been wearing hearing aides at that point just a couple of months and I had a real raw, authentic point of view that I thought maybe they would connect with. Well, I couldn't teach them all the things around how to do it better. I could remind them why they were there in the first place. So that's exactly what I did. I got on stage in January of 2012 I think. Yeah, it was in Tucson, Arizona at the Lowe's Ventana Canyon. I will never forget that day I got on stage and for the very, very first time I shared my story, it was probably a really bad story. I've become a much better storyteller since then. Uh, I cried on stage and a lot of people cried with me. And to be perfectly honest with you, it was the first time I'd ever said it out loud. I hadn't even practiced it. I hadn't even planned on telling it, but something came over me to me that day where I just needed to share it. And uh, that day changed everything for me because it showed me the power of story. It showed me the power of experience, but also showed me the power of vulnerability. And that has become the catalyst for everything that I do. It's why I get so many comments from so many of you every day that I show up and show you that it's okay to be real and authentic. I show you the, you don't have to be perfect. I show you the behind the scenes of where I'm sucking. I show you what I'm trying to do and sometimes it lands and sometimes it fails. But I just want to remind you and show you what it's like to show up. Even if you're not ready. Even if you don't feel, if you don't feel quality by it, you don't feel, you don't feel perfect with it yet. You don't feel like it's dialed in enough. It's just showing up and I think that's just such an important thing and when you can show up in authentic way that's vulnerable, God, it's just it. It's so powerful and I, and I hope that you felt that, but more importantly, I hope that you demonstrate that if that's something that you want for your business, with your audience. All right, next question. Okay. Do you still struggle? I think I've, I think I've become very clear that yeah, I do. I still struggle guys. I still struggle with my hearing. It's still frustrating. It's still, even though my husband is absolutely incredible and patient and he is such an advocate for me in social situations, he's such an advocate and has high empathy for things. It still is a point of contention for us. And I would imagine it is for so many people living with someone with a hearing loss or working with someone with a hearing loss, it's hard on both sides. It's so is. And uh, it's a constant thing. And I think what I want to talk to you with this about kind of goes into what I was just sharing with you is some people have a point of view that uh, when you're going through something hard and you're dealing with something, um, you shouldn't be fully transparent and share it when it's real and raw. And I think that sometimes that might be true. Like for example, if you're grieving something or uh, your, I don't know, you're experiencing a terrible piece of news that you just got or you're going through a divorce or there's some things that you need to choose to keep those things private with those who are close to you, those who connect with you and then later if you want to be authentic and share those things. And by the way, it's not inauthentic to not share those things. Those are personally do not need to share them publicly with your audience, but if you want to share those things, you can always share them later after you've processed. The heel has, this is super graphic, but scabbed over, I've heard this terminology, I was listening to a podcast, I think it was on, it was either on the Rise or a Goal Digger, I can't remember it, but there was a, there was a guest on there and she was talking about talking through grief and how it was important for her to talk about it after. That's one, that's one way to approach it. Another way to approach it is talking through hard things as they're happening. And I think there is value at doing, um, both of those. I mean obviously not on the same thing at the same time, but depending on the thing that you're going through, sometimes it's great to talk about it live in the moment because that's real and it's raw and it connects with your audience. Sometimes you need to process it first. And so I want you to hear this as you're hearing me in some of these things. I'm experiencing some real raw emotions that still come up for me. You heard me talk about how those painful moments back in college and just, let me say, college was awesome. I had great a great time in college, but when I remember some of those hard, painful things, it still gets me choked up. You heard that, right? It's, it's okay to share those things and be raw and vulnerable if that's how you want to be with your audience. That's how I want to be. That's, that's me. That's part of my brand is showing you that that's okay. If doing that with your audience is not for you that's okay too. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to share some of those, um, experiences with your audience. You don't have to share those big, big moments, the big crier moments, the big whatever moments like that doesn't have to be what you share or your version of that could feel, um, could feel different. So I think it's so, I mean over a lot of people say overused. I think authenticity, which if you're being truly authentic, I don't think it's an overused phrase. I think you have to do what feels right for you and share what feels right with your audience and I don't know, I'm going off on a tangent here, but I think that's something that's super important when you think about that question of do I still struggle? I sure do and a lot of the times I bring you on it. Now I will be honest with you, I don't share everything with you. I don't share. All of my struggle is behind the scenes because Hey, I don't want to show up as a big fat struggle and mess all the time because I'm not struggling all the time. There are some rockin' stuff going on in my business and I do know what I'm doing when it comes to communication. I'm still trying to figure out how to run a business. There are things everyday that I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but if I want to position myself as an authority, I have to make sure that the majority of the time I'm coming at you as an authority, not as a blubbering mess. But if I show up as a blubbering mess, five 10% of the time that feels okay with me and hopefully it doesn't. If that shifts your perspective of me, then you're not for, for me, we're not for each other. So just think about that is when it comes to sharing vulnerability with your audience, you want it to make sure that it balances out with also coming from a place of authority, if that's what you're positioning yourself out of. If you want to be the expert in what you do, you want to be open and share maybe the hard things, but if it's starting to tip the scale where you're doing more of that than serving and creating value and showing, um, how you can support them by teaching, education, inspiration, motivation, um, all those types of things. You have to think about that balance between the two is how do you balance those? Well, you have to weigh more on the education information, inspiration side, and then slice in moments of this vulnerability. That's how you become personal and that's how you don't become this walking disaster is the way that that came in my mind. Um, so many ways. How does that sit with you? I don't know. I'm probably going to get some notes on that of people getting angry over talking about that. I don't know, but I just know this is what feels right for me and uh, I hope it's helpful. So, uh, this, like I said, was a very unscripted, a very different way to go about it and I would love to hear from you, um, what resonated with you from today's episode. I think that's, uh, it's just an interesting topic and I hadn't planned on doing it and I just got so many questions that I figured, why not just have an episode dedicated around it? So, all right guys, this was my real raw, mildly incoherent rambling of a, this story that is my hearing loss. But I hope that me sharing with you the thing that I used to feel so embarrassed by the thing that I used to feel was so wrong with me. The thing that makes me completely imperfect has also become an incredible source of strength and power. For me, driving me to develop a superpower and I think every one of us has a version of that, then it might not be a hearing loss for you. It might be something different, but whatever that is, I hope that you lead in and explore it and focus on it and figure out what your superpower is because I am a firm believer that once you dial that in, that is a big leap towards finding your it factor. Thanks for tuning in guys. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas. Happy new year and uh, I will see you again real soon.

Speaker 2:

guys. Thanks so much for listening to Finding Your It Factor and Hey, if you have a talk coming up, you have to check out my free resource. It's called Nail Your Next Talk 10 must ask questions before taking the stage so you can show up as an authority and turn that talk into future business. These are the questions that I use myself to prepare for my life talks, and they're going to help you ask the right questions of the person who booked you for the event. So the meeting planner or the client, and it's going to help you serve your audience to the best way possible. It's going to help you anticipate potential tech AV snags. Turn the Q and A time into a strategic place for content and make this speaking opportunity, a lead generator for your business. So go get it now. What are you waiting for? It's over at heathersager.com forward slash 10 questions.

Speaker 3:

[inaudible].