Angela Gargano (00:00)
Hello there and welcome back to another episode of What If It All Goes Right, the podcast where we talk about navigating life's challenges with strength, grace, and resilience. I'm your host, Angela Gargano, and today's episode is about how to bend under pressure without breaking.
How to bend, not break. How do we handle life's pressures and challenges? whether you're facing sudden challenges in corporate or as a mom or just like in life, the truth is pressure is inevitable. Things will go wrong. Curveballs will be thrown and there will be moments when it feels like everything is literally falling apart. But here's the thing. It's not about avoiding the pressure. It's about how you respond to the pressure.
Today we're going to talk about how to feel the feelings without getting stuck in them, how to act and move your way through challenges, and how to take one small empowered step forward. Let's dive in. So pressure is something we all face, and it looks different for everyone. So maybe you're a corporate leader dealing with last minute project crisis, or maybe you're mom juggling millions of things while trying to keep it all together, or maybe you're just going through a tough season of life where everything feels super heavy.
No matter what it looks like, pressure has a way of testing us, testing our patience, our strength, and our ability to keep moving forward. But here's the key. You can bend without breaking. When things go wrong, suddenly it's natural to feel overwhelmed. And the first thing I want to say is, it's OK to feel the feelings. It's OK to be frustrated, sad, or scared. But what's not OK is actually staying stuck there. Now, I want to say real quick.
Someone I met at an event I went to not too long ago, they were saying to me basically, like Angela, like you're unbreakable. I'm like, what? Like you are unbreakable. And a word has come out was, is anti-fragile. You're not only unbreakable, you're anti-fragile. So if you think about what fragile is, it's like taking a really fancy vase and you tap it and it just like cracks, right?
When you think about anti-fragile, you think of that one vase that you literally throw off the counter and it literally does not break. It's literally still somehow, but you're like, how did that even happen? And I never really visualized myself personally as unbreakable, but I definitely fail a lot. But I also take a lot of very messy action. although my mind sometimes is definitely...
in all sorts of places and my team can tell you that there's times where I'm like messaging them like, don't know, like how are we gonna do this? Like this is not working, like what is happening?
I've kept going. Which means I haven't allowed it to break me.
And that's exactly what you need. You're going to go through these things. You need to be able to bend instead of break.
That's exactly what I love to teach my clients. It's exactly what I love to talk about in my keynotes. You can be unbreakable. You can be anti-fragile, right? But the first step to bending under pressure is giving yourself permission to feel.
I want you to acknowledge that what you're feeling, whether it's fear, sadness, or frustration, I want you to sit with those moments.
without judgment and really sit in that stillness. But here's the thing, you don't think your way through feelings. You act your way through them, right? Think about it. You're sitting there, you're feeling all those sorts of ways, you're yourself to feel whatever you need to feel, and then it's easy to feel stuck there if you're just sitting there constantly ruminating in your head about all these different things, right?
When we overthink, we tend to spiral. What ifs? The worst case scenario, instead of focusing on moving through the feelings by taking some kind of action, which is really important. So I want you to feel those feelings, but I don't want you to get stuck there. And I want you to move your way through the feelings and taking some kind of action so that doesn't leave you feeling paralyzed. It doesn't leave you breaking instead of bending.
And I feel like this can be really tough for people as well, right? Because also you might be at a point where something happened and you're like, I'm supposed to be the strong one. I'm supposed to be the leader. Everyone's looking up to me, right? I can't feel these feelings. But if you have to, you have to feel them. You just have to. I saw a really great quote, but I cannot think of it right now about like,
the idea of feeling those feelings and how you have to you have to feel them in order to move through and get to the next step.
you can't avoid that part of it, right? So this is me right now giving that permission, permission to feel those feelings and then reminding yourself that it's gonna be really tough if you're just sitting there and your head's spiraling. You start moving in some way, taking some type of action in order to help you.
So when you're under pressure, it's easy to feel small, stuck, or powerless. And that's why it's so important to step into the most empowered version of yourself as the first step of this. I want you to ask yourself, how would the best version of me handle the situation? What would they do, even if it's uncomfortable or scary? This doesn't mean you have to have all the answers. It means you show up as someone who takes responsibility for those actions and decisions, even during the tough moments. And a great way to do this,
is I have a podcast that you can listen to that literally can snap you into your highest version of yourself, which is really important. But picture a moment where you went through something tough and we all have gone through something tough and then you got through it. Go back to that. For me personally, I always, this is so vulnerable. I always, when I think about snapping into the best version of myself or the version of myself that I was like, yeah, I'm impressed by you. Like, I'm proud of you. I didn't think that you could do that.
I think about right before I was competing either in my Miss Fitness America and right before was competing in American Ninja Warrior, both the times I, this is like for fitness competitions, it was gonna be the last time that I competed and I knew that. But I put all the work in. I showed up every single week. I did all the things that I needed to do. And in that moment, I realized when I looked up stage, I looked up high, I'm like, won. I knew I won. I won even if I didn't get a trophy, right?
And I think about that person, I'm just so proud of her. I was so proud of her and how she showed up through all the tough times and how she consistently showed up humbly even when things were hard. And for Ninja, when I came back after tearing my ACL, I remember standing there, same thing, right before I was about to go up, looking up at the sky and being like, thanks, thanks, body, thanks, universe, I did this. I did this, I pushed through, and then I somehow went from tearing my ACL to crushing the course. Like, how? How did I do that?
So I bring myself back to that, because that feeling of that person is a feeling that I needed to come back to, knowing that person is within me, especially during these hard things. It's this way that I don't break, right? I instead bend. I instead go back to that. So the important part is making sure that you're taking one step. You don't have to fix everything right now. You don't have to know the full path forward. All you need to do is take this next.
small actionable steps. So for example, if you're facing a work crisis, I want you to focus on one task that it will move the product forward. If you're overwhelmed as a mom, I want you to take five minutes to breathe and prioritize what's truly urgent. If you're feeling lost in life, I want you to start by journaling or reaching out to someone you trust for support. Action creates momentum and momentum creates clarity. I'm gonna say that again, because it's powerful. Action creates momentum and momentum creates clarity.
I've had plenty of moments, like I said, where I felt like I was going to break under the weight of pressure. like I just said, when I tore my ACL on Ninja Warrior, in an instant, everything I had worked for really felt like it was slipping away from me. And I was angry. I was sad. I was scared. what this meant, like what did this mean for my future? But it's things stuck in those feelings. I allowed myself to move through them. So I stepped into that empowered mindset of asking myself, what can I control right now? What's one thing I can do to move forward?
And for me, that meant focusing on my rehab. It was focusing on literally instead of I'm gonna get back on the course next year, which obviously was my goal. I'm like, I'm gonna get back on here. My first step was, hey, I'm gonna get my knee to bend again after the surgery, right? One exercise, one step, next piece. Okay, cool, I'm gonna start walking. I'm gonna throw away this one crutch and walk on one crutch. And over time, those small actions added up to massive comebacks.
So if you're facing pressure or challenges right now, here's how you can bend and not break. Again, acknowledge your feelings. Take a moment to sit with what you're feeling and name it. Let yourself feel it without judgment. Step into the empowerment. Visualize that most empowered version of yourself and ask, what would they do in this situation? Three, take one step. Identify one action you can take right now to move forward.
and keep it simple and keep it manageable and reflect and adjust. At the end of the day, reflect on what worked and what didn't. Use this as feedback to keep moving forward. So here's what I want you to remember. Pressure doesn't have to break you. It can bend you. It can shape you. It can make you stronger if you let it. Feel your feelings, but don't stay stuck in them. Take action, even if it's just one small step.
and know that every time you choose to move forward, you're building resilience, strength, and confidence. So if this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might feel the weight of pressure right now maybe. And as always, I want you to keep asking yourself, what if it all goes right? What if it is already going right? Until next time, keep growing, keep showing up, and keep bending, but never breaking.
