Not long ago, when I’d just begun writing this book, something horribly embarrassing happened to me. It was the kind of thing that makes a person want to crawl under the covers and never come out.
Two separate times, I’d gotten an infection that put me in Urgent Care. The second time, the doctor laid out my choices: I could be admitted to the hospital for IV antibiotics, or try a different prescription I took on my own.
She did not recommend the second option.
“I’ll take the prescription,” I said.
“The side effects are really bad,” she countered. “You could rupture a tendon.”
I assured her I would be fine. I have grit, I thought. I know how to push through physical pain and discomfort. After all, I live every day with a nerve disease that’s ranked highest on the pain scale—I get through days when it feels like there’s an ice pick jabbing me in the foot and fire ants covering my feet all the time. I knew I could just keep going.
The doctor didn’t look happy, but I smiled and did what I could do comfort her and set her mind at ease. “I have a big day ahead,” I said. “This is going to work.”
Boy, was I wrong.
I got my meds from the pharmacy and swallowed them on an empty stomach. I’d skipped my morning workout to go to Urgent Care; I’d skipped my morning ritual of reading, writing, and asking God to walk with me through the day. And there was no time for food. I had three virtual events to deliver a keynote to, a client, and I was going live on Instagram to help another client promote her new book.
I was off to the races.
Thankfully, adrenaline kicked in and my pain seemed to disappear for a bit. I gave those three keynotes every last bit of my energy. One more thing to do, I told myself, and then I can come up for air. I’d eat something, maybe even rest. My mind agreed with the grit in my work ethic, pushing right along with me. My body decided, nah. It couldn’t push anymore.
But I had no time for giving myself grace. I logged on for the live Instagram event, where thousands of people were waiting.
And crashed.
It was almost like I was blacked out but still conscious enough to know everything was going horribly wrong. Come on, brain! I told myself. WORK! But my words weren’t even coming out right. I cut the event short and passed out. I didn’t even make it to the bed—just collapsed right there on the sofa and slept until morning.
As horrible as that might sound, it was far worse when I woke up to dozens of concerned messages from clients and friends. The particulars varied, but the main concern was pretty consistent: they could all tell something was off. I hadn’t been myself. One person even thought I’d fallen off the wagon after years of hard-won sobriety.
Well, I hadn’t. I was still sober as they day was long. But what had happened seemed far more damaging. I felt like I’d fallen off the wagon emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
I was beat.
I was embarrassed.
I was scared.
Going Bankrupt
The day of that fateful IG Live, I reminded myself, I had just gotten out of urgent care. But long before that I’d begun to let my workouts slip so I could take an extra coaching call if one of my clients had an “emergency.” I’d started skipping the 12-step meetings that fueled me spiritually so I could help promote someone else’s podcast. I’d made a practice of skipping meals so I could stay on Zoom just a little longer. Forget “falling off the wagon.” I’d become mentally, physically, and spiritually bankrupt.
Something had to change.
After apologizing for my actions and behavior on that Instagram Live, I took a good hard look at the part I’d played in that potentially career-decimating outcome. Of course there had been warning signs, like when I missed a recent appointment for the first time in 20 years because I was feeling sick enough to lay down in the middle of the day—and had slept right through my alarm. At the time, it worried my client, because it was so out of character for me.
Truth was, it had worried me, too. So did the fact that I’d been feeling anxious enough to tell my sponsor, “I feel my heart beating all the time—almost like palpitations—kind of the way I feel sometimes before I get onstage.” The difference was, when I got onstage, adrenaline always kicked in when I stepped into the spotlight and everything felt awesome. But these anxious palpitations happened nonstop from the moment I woke up through trying to fall asleep at night.
“You’re not taking care of yourself,” my sponsor had responded.
“I know,” I told her. Not for the first time, I was funneling all my energy into taking care of other people. I knew it. But I still couldn’t quite shift gears enough to take care of me.
I thought back to that Instagram Live. When I got on that interview and wasn’t myself, I thought, What am I doing? I’m going to destroy everything I have worked so hard to build if I keep pushing this hard. I remembered what my friend Jessie told me once, years before, when she’d seen me doing the same thing. “Amberly,” she’d said, “your impact is only as strong as you are healthy.”
It hit me hard when she said it—hard enough to stick. So why had I continued to push so hard? Why had I chosen to grit it out instead of giving myself grace? Why did I always seem to put others’ needs before mine to the point of nearly destroying everything I’ve worked for years, decades, to achieve? Yes, I love helping others.
But why wasn’t I helping myself?
Limiting Beliefs: The Little Girl That I Was
It took some soul searching, but I had my answer. When it came right down to it, I didn’t feel like I deserved help. And let me tell you, that limiting belief was deep-seated. I had long ago convinced myself that my needs were secondary (if they even ever rose as high as second on my list of important things). And in supporting others, I had lost sight of my own self.
But sometimes we have to get to such a low place—and get real humble—so we can remember what’s really important. For me, in that moment, it took looking at why I had those feelings of unworthiness—why I felt everyone else deserved to feel safe, taken care of, and worthy of grace and compassion—in the first place.
Eventually I realized that those feelings, and the certainty they’d grown into, came from a moment when I was a little girl. If you’ve read my first book, True Grit and Grace, you know a little of my background. You know that my stepdad hurt me for years, and that when I gathered enough courage to tell my real dad about the sexual abuse I was routinely subjected to, Dad did nothing to stop it. He had his reasons, and when I was an adult, he explained them to me. But when I held that experience up to the light, I understood how it made me feel like he didn’t protect me because I didn’t deserve protection.
That little girl I was, who felt like she wasn’t worth protecting or loving or being taken care of, was still with me as an adult. In other words, my spectacular Instagram fail had begun long, long before I started feeling sick or even missing appointments. It started that day at my Dad’s house.
I couldn’t have known that or seen this particular, public consequence coming. But, as I said, all this unfolded while I was in the process of writing a book about joy. The irony didn’t escape me. If I’m going to write a book on joy, I thought, well my gosh—I better spark some.
Like so many things in life, I couldn’t change what had happened. I couldn’t change that I’d gotten caught up in the momentum of my career and, as a result, wound up stuck in my little office for 12 or 14 hours a day, with no sun, no breaks, no exercise, doing back-to-back Zoom calls. What kind of life is that?
I wasn’t doing it anymore.
Instead, I recommitted to practices that would help me come into realignment with my own wellbeing.
Reflect and Recommit
Without your health, you lose your relationships, business, reputation, and even your mind. Even worse, you could lose your life. It’s not like I didn’t know all that, and you would think that going septic once after a kidney infection and winding up in the ICU—and hearing a doctor tell me that if I’d waited one more day to come in, I would be dead—would have scared me enough that I would’ve paid attention to the alarms going off in my body. But I’ve always been good at grit, to a detriment. It was only when I realized I couldn’t make an impact and help others if I was unhealthy that really got me.
“You know what, Amberly?” my sponsor said. “I want you to do something every day that’s going to take care of you the way you take care of other people. I want you to do something to take care of yourself.”
Of course, she was right. I could—and needed to—tell that little girl in me that I am worthy of being taken care of and doing things that bring me joy.
Right out of the gate, I also had to let go of the shame I felt over making a fool of myself in front of thousands of people. So I shined a light on it. I made apologies, faced every text from concerned friends. Heck, I thought, I’m glad they cared enough to reach out. I returned phone calls and assured everyone that I was going to take care of myself—and this time, I meant it.
I decided I would even do an episode on my show, “The Amberly Lago Show,” and share all the lessons I had learned and what I was doing to improve. Sure, I did this to help listeners, but I also did it to hold myself accountable.
I also looked at the at the part I’d played that day of the IG Live to see what I could change. I couldn’t unmake a fool of myself, but I could show up differently from that point on.
If you’re reading this and have experienced this kind of embarrassment from your own hand (the worst kind, isn’t it?), get radically honest with yourself. Take a good hard look at what isn’t working. Ask yourself, “How’s that working for ya?” and accept the fact that everything you do is either helping you or hurting you. It’s either moving you closer to your goal—moving the needle on your business and your health—or it’s hurting you. Get objective with you and call it like it is.
Me, I wasn’t doing myself any favors by skipping all the practices I’d cultivated to help me live a full, joy-filled life. So I recommitted to reading out of my daily reflection books, writing in my journal, and doing what Mel Robbins calls “brain dumping,” so I could get all the negative feelings out of my head and tame that inner critic. When you read, you learn about the world and others, but when you write, you learn about yourself.
I also made another call to my sponsor, who always makes me feel better. “We can do good on the outside if we’re working on our insides,” she reminded me. In other words, when we focus on improving our inner selves—our mindset, emotions, and values—we are better equipped to do good in the world and positively impact those around us. Whether it’s a sponsor, a mentor, a good friend who’ll risk calling you out, or a therapist, have people you can confide in. For the record, I have them all. She’d also asked me to write down the things I did each day to take care of me, and having the accountability helped. I started making it a point to check in with someone, usually a sober sister, every day.
Mental practices, check.
Within a week, I had my first day without feeling like my heart wasn’t beating out of my chest. I still determined to address what was going on with me physically—I wanted to know why my body was trying to tell me something was wrong. I saw a functional doctor and had bloodwork done.
Listen, people—numbers don’t lie. When I got the results back, so many things were off. They explained why I’d been feeling anxious to the point that my hair was falling out. The doctor recommended supplements, drinking more water, sleeping more, and keeping my workouts in check. I made those things part of my new business strategy, and I’m already seeing more consistency in my workouts and I’m more intentional about how I move my body.
Holistically addressing my health also helped me set healthy boundaries around my time. I started saying “no” to things that would drain me— zoom meetings, podcast guesting invitations, and even three different event planners who approached me about potential speaking gigs. I’d finally recognized how important it is to take time for my mental and physical health, and I was committed to protecting them. If I didn’t, everything would come crashing down around me. After all, I was living proof of that.
