My Mindset Failed Me. Here’s What I Learned

 

Each individual undergoes a unique life journey, where what may be considered a tragedy by one person could be perceived as a mere insignificant setback by another. Today, April Shprintz talks about one of the hardest weeks of her life when her dog, Cowboy, had emergency surgery. Tune in to learn the lesson she learned about the power of mindset.

 

Reach out to April Shprintz:

Email: april@drivenoutcomes.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprilshprintz/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aprilshprintz/

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Listen to the podcast here

 

My Mindset Failed Me. Here’s What I Learned

I am so glad you’re here. Sometimes when we look to people for advice on certain subjects, we tend to think that they never struggle. They never have a hard time with them. I am here to tell you that I feel like I just lived one of the hardest weeks of my life. When I tell you why it was one of the hardest weeks of my life, you might think, “That makes no sense. She’s crazy.” What makes things hard for people is different. Everyone has a different life experience. What is a tragedy to one person might be a minor blip to someone else. That is one thing that I’ve learned as I’ve gone through life.

Everyone has a different life experience. What is a tragedy to one person might be a minor blip to someone else. Share on X

For me, this week was so incredibly difficult because my bestie, my lifelong companion, my dog, Cowboy, my Shih Tzu, who is my ride-or-die chief dog officer, and candidly I’ll say it, soulmate had emergency surgery, was in and out of ICU, and was touch and go for days. Even once I brought him home, I was not sleeping. He was not sleeping. He was just in terrible pain. It was heartbreaking.

Like I said, for some people, “That’s just your dog. It’s not that big of a deal.” For other people, they’ll get it, but it doesn’t matter if you get why it was hard or not. You will benefit from the lesson I learned because it was incredible. The first lesson that I learned is, candidly, that I wasted a lot of my life wishing for things to be something else. What I mean is wishing that a goal had happened, that I was at a certain place, that I was at a point that I would be at some point in the future.

 

It was like I was ignoring the days that I had and the moments that I had that I should have been so much more grateful for. Even though I feel like I’m someone who practices gratitude, in those moments when I was so worried that he was going to die and tears were falling unbidden, that I could not stop, I realized that I would do anything for the problems I had yesterday. I promised myself on the other side of this that I was going to remember much more to be grateful for. I was going to enjoy that moment. I was not going to focus on the fact that Cowboy is slower than he used to be because I was going to be so happy that he was walking, come what may. That was the first big lesson, and that was crazy to realize but also huge learning. I was so grateful to him for teaching me yet another lesson.

 

The other one was this. Once I understood and integrated with this lesson, things started to turn around, both in Cowboy’s health and the way that I felt. A friend of mine, David Marlow, writes about Ikigai, both on LinkedIn and I think he has some things on Substack. He happened to post a message that was incredibly powerful. I needed to hear it so badly because Cowboy was touch and go. They were saying he might die. They didn’t know what was wrong with him. They still haven’t figured out what was wrong with him, but he’s doing better, so I’m going to let that go.

I read David saying, “When really tough hard things happen, what if it’s not the end of everything? What if it’s not a disaster? What if it’s just a plot twist?” I started thinking about how in our most favorite movies, the hero goes through some trial and it’s a plot twist. In the end, it’s where they’ve learned something. As I was falling apart, and I was, mindset guru or not, I was losing my cookies on the regular and trying to be better so I could be strong for him and show up in the things I was doing in my business.

I kept having to tell myself over and over again, “This is just a plot twist.” I got to tell you that when I wrap my head around that, he’s going to be okay. The more that I think that he’s going to be okay and the more I treat this like a tough thing, “We are going to get through,” the more it will be that. I know the day that I finally surrendered to the idea that this is what I was going to do. Within a couple of days, he had a marked improvement.

Lots of people are going to say, “That’s a coincidence. That has nothing to do with anything.” I’m telling you that your mindset is powerful. Even if he didn’t turn around, at that moment, I had peace with whatever happened in such gratitude for everything that he had taught me. Either way, I would’ve been in a better place.

 

I want you to take two things from this because goodness gracious have I. 1) I want you to find reasons to enjoy where you are right now and what is amazing about it because there’s so much. If everything tragically changed tomorrow, you would wish for the problems you had today. 2) If that tragic, horrible, hard, tough, whatever thing happens, at any point, I want you to remind yourself that it is a plot twist. You will get through it. It will pass. I want you to remember that I am there and I am rooting for you always. Here’s to your success.