Episode 440: Nina Sossamon-Pogue. Resiliency to Success

In this episode, Nina Sossamon-Pogue invites us to reframe our definition of resilience. Throughout this episode, you’ll hear Nina’s thoughts on using mental toughness and self-reflection to overcome setbacks and achieve success. Nina also talks about how she recovered from not making it to the US Olympic team, her career-ending injury, and being released from her job after winning Charleston’s Favorite News Anchor for the seventh time in a row.

Steve Shallenberger: Welcome to all of our podcast listeners, wherever you may be in the world today. This is your host, Steve Shallenberger, with Becoming Your Best, and we are so delighted to have a wonderful guest with us today. She is a sought-after speaker, two-time best-selling author, and podcast host. Hers is an extraordinary journey through elite athletics, television news, and corporate America that really defies the ordinary. Welcome, Nina Sossamon-Pogue.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Thank you so much, Steve, for having me. It is a pleasure to be here.

Steve Shallenberger: I’m delighted. Before we get started, I’d like to tell you a little bit more about Nina. She left home at age 13 to train, and Nina made the USA gymnastics team, which is like, wow, one of the best anywhere in the world, and graced magazine covers as an Olympic hopeful alongside Mary Lou Retton but failed to make the Olympic team. Later, competing for the SEC powerhouse LSU, Nina suffered an injury that ended her gymnastics career, but wow, what a sport, right?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: It was definitely a learning opportunity and a wonderful way to grow up.

Steve Shallenberger: Well, the moment became a catalyst for an esteemed 20-year career as an Emmy award-winning journalist and news anchor. Ever evolving, a transformative life event led Nina into a new path—from TV to tech and into corporate leadership. As a celebrated executive, she navigated the intricacies of a highly successful IPO. She’s got so much to share with us today. Looking forward to it. So, Nina, let’s just start out. Please tell us about your background, including any turning points in your life that have had a significant impact on you.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Well, thanks, Steve. That is an open door for me because that is actually what I talk and speak on. While I may have a lot of achievements—that resume stuff that you mentioned—I really try to focus my research and my speaking on my failures or the big, turning point moments in my life. People see all of those accolades, and they don’t realize all the things that went on, like the duck paddling under the surface. So, as you mentioned, I was on the US team, on the cover of magazines, and left home to train. Then, I didn’t make the Olympics. At the ripe old age of 16, I felt like I was a loser, and my life was over, and my life was ruined at 16. Then I regrouped, went to college, went to LSU—which is one of the top gymnastic schools—and competed for them. Again, happy, found my people, having big success, and then blew out my knee and had a career-ending injury. Again, “My life was over. I’ve ruined and wasted my whole life.” That kind of feeling. Regrouped again, got into television, found a passion there, and I loved being a reporter. I loved being a news anchor. Then, at the top of that game, I won Charleston’s Favorite News Anchor on a Thursday for the seventh year in a row. On Friday, the GM called me in. I thought I was going to get a bonus or something. I thought he was giving me a big attaboy. He said, “We are exercising our option in your contract to release you without cause.” I was let go in these big budget cuts in the middle of the height of my career. So then I picked myself back up again and went to another TV station. That’s where I actually won the Emmy for Best Newscaster in the Southeast. I think I did that because it was a little bit of a poke in the bear at the people who’d let me go. Then, in that chapter of my journey, I was involved in a really horrific accident that took me from reporting the news to being the news. That took me into a dark place. I had to figure out how to get myself out of it. Went through some real mental health challenges at that time and really didn’t want my timeline to go on, but I did, got good help, and all of the things, and went forward. Then I got into tech. I got out of television, got into tech, and had some huge success there for 12 years before I got out and wrote my book. So, mine’s kind of an up-and-down journey. I talk about how the things that aren’t on your resume—the stuff I call below the line—that’s what really makes you who you are.

Steve Shallenberger: Well, thanks for that introduction. That’s perfect. It helps me to appreciate what you’ve gone through. Everything isn’t always peachy. I just can’t imagine the disappointment, for example, of working so hard to be on the Olympic team and then, at the end, not being able to fulfill that desire and then later having your knee blown out. What a heartbreak. You just talked about these experiences we all have as we go through life’s journeys. And you call them plot twists?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Yes, plot twists. I call them the big “thises” in your life. It’s because you have a plan. You’re going down that road. You’re doing all the things you talk about in your book. You have a goal, you have a back plan, you’re looking at every Sunday, you’re setting your targets, you’re doing the thing, you’re doing the work, and then something big happens in your life that’s totally out of your control, and you have to figure out how to go forward. This can be for people who maybe aren’t elite athletes or not in some high-profile job where you get let go, and everybody knows because it’s very public. This can be a divorce; this can be a death in the family—just things that are not part of your plan as you’re going down that road. You just get this plot twist of, “Okay, obviously, the story’s not going where I thought it was. Let’s figure out a new path forward, and let’s make this next chapter good.”

Steve Shallenberger: So, Nina, how do you recover from these heartbreaks? Sometimes they’re emotional, and sometimes they can put us in a tailspin. We didn’t even anticipate being in the tailspin. How do you get out of it? How do you recover? How do you get back on track? How do you recover your happiness and focus?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: It’s different for everyone as far as the timing goes. I always say it’s okay to not be okay for a while; it’s just not okay to stay that way. Okay to not be okay, not okay to stay that way. So what I did when I stepped out of corporate, I became this person that people came to, to talk to about, “How did you do that? I’m in a funk right now, or I just got fired, or something’s happening. How do I move forward?” I stepped away to actually do the research and figure out, similar to what you did, but certainly not on your level. I did a lot of people’s stories. I loved being a journalist, so I got a lot of other people’s stories and did research to figure out why some people get stuck and can’t keep going and how other people not only keep going but thrive on the other side. What are the commonalities there for the people who not just survive something but thrive on the other side? Surviving means you got through it, and you made it. Thriving, this concept of resilience, means you made it, and then you have all the blank space ahead with all the future and what you’re going to do with what you learned from that. So, I came up with a four-part framework. It’s one of those things that I talk about from a stage, I’ve talked about in my books, and I can take people through it visually or just put it out there. I call it this framework because whatever you’re going through is your thing. It’s your “this.” I don’t know what it is. I can’t imagine it. I had my own “thises.” You’ve had your own “thises.” This thing that you have to deal with that was not part of the plan. This. “This is the end.” No, “this is not the end.” So, this framework has four parts. People always ask me for tips, so I use a really difficult acronym. I know it took me a long time to come up with this one: TIPS. This framework and tips—I’m real clever here—but the idea is you’re going through a tough time, and I don’t want to throw any more mental gymnastics at you. So, it’s TIPS: put it in your Timeline, Isolate it, Pull in the right people, and then craft your Story. It’s some neuroscience, it’s cognitive behavior therapy, it’s a lot of stoicism—it’s my own mash-up of all of that. But it’s the commonalities that I found through all of the interviews that I did and the people that I’ve both emulated and looking back in my own life to figure out how I had gotten through these things.

Steve Shallenberger: So, it’s the timeline, and the second one was to isolate, and the third?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: People. And the fourth is Story. Timeline, Isolate, People, and Story. So, picture a piece of paper and draw a line across it from zero to 100 because I’d like to think that I’m going to live to be 100. I need to drink less wine and take better care of myself, but that’s the goal. So, zero to 100 across a line, and you can take anything that you’re going through and just drop it onto that timeline of where you are in that moment. How I like to share this and talk to folks is when I lost my sport at the ripe old age of 19, I could drop that on that timeline and see when I thought my life was over. Back then, it was my sweatshirt and my bumper sticker. It’s not like it is today, where it’s their Instagram handle and their other things. It’s how they identify. But I thought my life was over; I thought I had just wasted my whole life in a gym. I can look at it and see, yes, at 19, that was 75% of what I knew in life. I’d been in the gym since just before I was five years old, so 75% of my life experience was gymnastics. Of course, it felt like everything. It felt big at the time because it was what I knew. Now I can play it forward with some perspective and, as we age, by the time I was 50 and my kids left for college, gymnastics was 28% of my life. I can look at my time in television, the percentage of that, and those 20 years, and then the 12 years in tech, and all those years parenting—those 20 years when I have three kids. I know you parent them for life, but those 20 years when they’re at home and you’re all in, living it, I can see that those were all bigger chunks of my life than gymnastics had been. If I look through and look at the percentages, it goes from 75% of my life to 28% of my life by the time my kids leave at 50. If I play it forward, like I said, and live to be 100, then it’s like 15% of my life. It’s not my whole life, but that concept of perspective. You can take any piece of your life, whether it’s a moment in time, a bad week, a bad year, or a bad few years, and you can put it on that timeline. It makes you to be able to see that a bad week doesn’t make a bad year, obviously. A bad year doesn’t make a bad life. Even a bad couple of years doesn’t make for a bad lifetime. That timeline concept helps us zoom out and see what we’re dealing with from our big, messy, marvelous lives that we’re building. So, that’s the timeline piece.

Steve Shallenberger: That’s so interesting. I love the TIPS. Nice job.

Nina Sossamon: So, that’s the timeline, and the “Isolate” is that on that same piece of paper, you draw a line before and after this dot that you just put on there, and all the stuff before and all the stuff after, you can’t look at—you’ve got to look at what you’re dealing with right then. It’s kind of like this: Is the glass half full or half empty? It’s not half full or half empty; it is just a six-ounce glass with three ounces of water in it. So you have to look at just the facts in that moment so you know what you can work with to move forward. Any good therapist will tell you, if you’re spending all the time in the past, going through the “woulda, shoulda, couldas” on that side of the line, that’s where depression lives. If you’re spending all your time on the other side, like, “Oh my gosh, what if?” and Doomsday-scenarioing things, that’s where anxiety lives. So, you have this magical moment in this space to actually do something. That’s the “Isolate” piece.

Steve Shallenberger: I love it. Good job.

Nina Sossamon: Thanks. And then the “P” piece is “People.” Because you know, when you talk about this in your books and your work that you’ve done, no one goes on this journey alone. We’re all in it together. You even started this by saying, “How can I help you? What can I do with you?” I find that both endearing and smart. But none of us go through these things alone. So whether you are going through a very difficult time, or trying out something new, or setting that big goal and maybe need somebody to talk it through with you in those moments, the “P” in the TIPS is pulling in the right people. And the picture that we’re drawing on a piece of paper, we have the line across, we have the dot, and then we have the lines on each side, which is the “Isolate.” I draw a circle around that dot, and I say, “Who’s in this with you? Who are your people?” Because it feels like you’re alone when something happens. Often, you feel like it’s all you—even the good things and the bad things. Even when these young athletes win the Olympics, some of these can be highs. You win the Olympics, and they’re like, “Greatest day of your life.” Then they’re like, “Okay, now what?” It’s the “now what” moments. It’s the greatest day yet; you’ve got lots of that timeline left to fill. So the “People” piece is that you feel really alone when something big happens, highs and lows, and then you figure out who needs to be in that with you to help you move forward, and maybe who’s in your circle and who needs to be moved out of that circle. So, it’s this: let’s edit our people. Who’s helping and who’s hurting? You can take all the people in your life and probably put them in one category or the other: who’s helping and who’s hurting. So, that’s the “People” piece. Let’s look at who’s helping and hurting.

Nina Sossamon: And then the last piece is the “Story.” You certainly know all about this, but I’ll share with your listeners how I think about it. This is the talk in our head that comes out of our mouth that becomes our story. This is the language that we’re using to talk about whatever happened. Is this horrible? Is this ruined? Is this never gonna work? Defining, over-generalizing—”This always happens to me” or that catastrophizing, ruined language—all that self-sabotage language that’s in our head that can come out of our mouth and become our story. So that’s editing your language and the thoughts around what we’re saying. So those are the TIPS.

Steve Shallenberger: I’m so glad that you went into it a little bit more, Nina. I love it. It’s a great mental image, and you painted it so well. Now, you talk about high achievers as well, not just people with challenges and the problem with the constant struggle to succeed. What’s your perspective on that, and why is that important?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: I think we’re living in a world right now of what I call “Uber achievement.” No matter how good we get, we are always setting a new goal, setting a new target. Goal setting is great. We all want to do that and manifest. We’re like, “What’s your vision board? Set your vision. Let’s manifest it. Let’s set your goals. Let’s check our goals. Let’s keep going.” We do this, and that’s how we be productive. I do that in my life, but we also live in this society of Uber achievement where no matter what we get or what we have, we see somebody on social media who has more. Even when we get home from a vacation—I don’t know when the last time you’ve flown somewhere, Steve, but I was on a plane, went to this vacation, which I’d saved up for and really enjoyed. Nice vacation with my husband. Our kids are grown, so it’s just the two of us. But as soon as I got on the plane, I got the little survey that said, “On a scale of one to ten, how did you like this?” I filled out my little survey about my vacation, which I loved, and then it populated on my screen: “Here are five more vacations that people like you are taking now. Don’t miss out. Book it today.” I’m like, “Wait, I just finished one.” So there’s always the next thing. And we do this. So what I call, and this is why I talk about high achievers, is this high achiever success cycle, stress cycle. You start, and you can see it as a wheel. You set a goal, and then you learn some things, and you try some things, and you get to work, you persist. And then, towards the end, it’s always hard, and you have that grit because you really want this goal. And then you achieve. And then what do you do? You set a new goal, and you go around again. So that’s the success cycle that we’re in if we are high achievers. Knowing that we’re constantly going to be in this stressful success cycle because we want more. We’re not the status quo people. The people listening to your podcast—there’s no one out there that’s listening to this that’s a status quo like, “I’m fine with everything just the way it is. I have everything I want. I’m perfect the way I am.” We all either want to be better, do more, or be more. So that’s the constant circle because we’re constantly setting goals. And then, even when we get all that work and we achieve them, we set a new one. So we’re constantly putting ourselves in this stress cycle. Now, with constant connectivity and all of the technological advancements and global connectivity, we’re seeing everybody else’s goals and things too, and we just feel like we’re never enough. So, that’s the stress that we’re all dealing with.

Steve Shallenberger: So, what do we do about it?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Well, a lot of it is this timeline thinking, like putting it into perspective, to look at our own lives. And I’m a big proponent. I mean, I raised my kids—our saying in our house. I know you share some of those sayings in your house and things your wife has said and things to your children in your book. But ours in our house, when the kids would leave in the morning from the time they were in kindergarten and headed out the door to middle school to running for the bus or high school, grabbing their keys and going out, or even when they left for college, and even when they graduated from college, my saying has always been, “Hey, go be you. Everybody else is taken.” Always, since they were tiny, “Go be you. Everybody else is taken.” So, you just have to get to the place where you create your own happiness. I use a great Lego analogy when I talk with kids, college kids, corporate leaders, or even at a conference recently—a cybersecurity conference with like 3000 mostly men, cybersecurity folks. I use the same thing. I talk about Legos because we all played with Legos. It’s generational. You played with them. I played with them. My dad brought our first Legos home, I think, in the ‘70s when he was in the Navy. When he came home from overseas, I got my first Legos, and my kids grew up on Legos. I talk about, if I hand you a pile of Legos right now, Steve, you would not build the same thing I built. It’s about taking your Legos, the Legos that you have, and building something that is your own magical future. It’s not just about building them; when you knock them down, or if they fall apart, it’s about picking them up and building them again. So, they’re your Legos. You build with them what you want. No two people would build the same thing because we all come in with our own gifts and our own talents. How we use those is up to us.

Steve Shallenberger: Thank you for talking about that. Now, you’ve had great success in gymnastics, being a journalist, the broadcast world, the tech world, and the corporate world. You talk about a reverse resume. What are you talking about on this, Nina, and why is that important for us?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: It’s important for everyone. Everyone listening has a reverse resume, and I mentioned it sort of at the beginning. If you draw your timeline and put all of your successes on the top—all your achievements—just put them on little dots above that timeline where they fit in. In my 20s, I did news. In my 30s, I was a successful news anchor. In my 40s, I was in tech. So you can put it across the top of there, and then take a moment and go down below that line. You can put dots in there and label them with the things that you have gotten through—the things that are not things you would find on LinkedIn or your resume. This is you parented a child with a disability. This is you lost a loved one. This is you went through a divorce, you had a tough childhood, you failed a class, you’ve been fired. All the stuff that is not on your resume that’s below that line that you’ve overcome, that’s your reverse resume. That’s on the bottom half of that page. Those things, I will argue, are much more defining of who you are than the things above. Your resume is the achievements, but your reverse resume—the things that you have gotten through—also is what you bring to the table. Every time you go up for a job, or you step into a room, or you’re part of a team and doing some work, that reverse resume is part of what you bring to the table. I will tell you, and I’ve worked with some executive teams, if you don’t have a few people on your team that have really been through a lot, you’re in trouble. You need some folks who have been through tough times to help you when things don’t go right. You need those folks as well. And your reverse resume, the things that you’ve learned and the things that have made you grow, are part of you and part of what you should lean into and both acknowledge, figure out what you learn from them, and then bring them to the table in every meeting and show up as your full self, not just your resume.

Steve Shallenberger: This was such an insightful thought. There are so many studies that show the power of reflection, and sometimes we’re just a little too busy in our lives to reflect. What you’re talking about is being able to step back and look at our lives. A friend of mine shared two really great quotes. He said, “Everything that we get in life is a call to growth. It’s not what life does to us; it’s what life gives to us.” In other words, there are these opportunities to grow from them. And that’s what’s so refreshing about what you’re talking about, is that there are opportunities. It’s an invitation, a call to growth. The second quote is this one: “We admire people who succeed, but we love people who have failed with a triumph.” It sounds like a lot of what you’re talking about is that spirit. You’re not just stuck. Everybody we admire, we think about historical people—it’s normal to get knocked down in life. That’s okay, but what’s not okay is staying there. So, you look at people that have overcome adversity, and it’s so inspiring. What are your thoughts on that?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: I did this, and people would tell me I was inspiring—using that type of language: “You’ve overcome so much.” I didn’t see myself that way. When I started my research and looking into it, I was looking for a word. I was like, “What am I even studying? What am I trying to put out into the world?” And this concept—I’m 100% in agreement with you—and the word that I’ve come up with is resilience. That word can be overused and used in a lot of different ways, but the definition that I really like for this—overcoming and thriving on the other side, not just surviving—the definition I really like is from the Center for Resilience. It’s to adapt in a positive way to whatever happens in our lives. It’s our ability to adapt in a positive way to whatever happens in our lives. It’s the adapt part that is really key because persistence is doubling down, going hard, showing up every day. And grit is when it gets really hard—heads down, let’s do this thing. But resilience is this adapt piece. And I think that is what is different. It’s this adapt piece. One way to think about this is to think about when the pandemic hit a few years ago. In January 2020, you and I got up, and when you probably set your goals for the year, you had a vacation planned, something you were going to do with your family—just from what I know about you. I did the same thing. I had a year of things I wanted to get done that year ahead of me. It was a year of my life, and I put those things out there. Now, when the pandemic hit, nobody had on their list of goals: “Hey, let’s survive a pandemic. Let’s let my business, my family, and myself survive a pandemic.” That was not on anybody’s goals. So we couldn’t just persist and double down and go hard. We all had to do things differently, and those who were able to adapt and figure out a new way forward in that change—that’s what resilience is. The ones who got to the acceptance, made the changes, and moved forward.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: So the resilience piece is what I think is really key in this conversation. It’s your ability to adapt in a positive way. What is “in a positive way”? A lot of different things go into that, but to adapt—and that ability to be adaptable. I mentioned Lego earlier. I use that as an example of a company that has adapted really well. In the 1930s, when Lego first came out in the late ‘30s, there were wooden blocks. Then they went from wooden blocks to plastic blocks. I call it from blocks to bytes. So they went wooden blocks to plastic blocks. Their factory burned down. They had to come up with something. They went back to plastic and went all in on plastic. Then they again started struggling a little bit. They stood up the Legoland parks, and those sustained them for a little bit. And then that started struggling. They had to rethink it and looked at the world around them. They did partnerships with Star Wars and other franchises. All those sets came out that all of our children bought. I still have some in a storage unit somewhere, still put together, that my son, who’s in the Air Force, put together. They kept adapting. Then they did movies. Lego did movies after that because the world went in that direction. Their first movie made $640 million. That got them out of the problems they were having. Then, they did VR games. They do video games and virtual reality games. Just recently, they came out with these AI education kits for all the schools. So, this is a company that continues to adapt to the world around them and figure out how to move forward as the world around them changes. I think that is the key to resilience—the adapt piece—because the world around us is changing so quickly these days.

Steve Shallenberger: Well, I’m glad you talked about the resilience and the adapting. Everything we’ve talked about has been so fun. Look at everything you’ve learned, Nina.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: I’m working on it. I’m trying to figure it all out. I’ve still got a journey ahead, I’m sure.

Steve Shallenberger:  We don’t have a lot of time left, but I would like to touch on mental wellness. It’s a big theme around the world. You’ve talked about that a little bit and have some thoughts about it, particularly about people being constantly connected and the FOMO culture. You say we’re hurting ourselves. I’d love to get more of your perspective on that.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: A lot of the work that I’ve done around that came from this fabulous book. I can’t take credit for this. Like anything, this has all been said before a million different ways. Greek philosophers were saying a lot of the things that I was saying that became stoicism, and then we just keep reiterating it in different languages. But a book that really spoke to me on this topic, specifically on how we’re hurting ourselves, and there’s a lot of them—there’s “The Body Keeps the Score” and different books—but there’s one called “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.” It’s a really interesting look at stress and what stress is doing to our bodies. The concept is a zebra is running across the savanna being chased by a lion, and it has all that cortisol and adrenaline and norepinephrine so it can focus—all the things are coming in that it needs to escape the lion. And it’s built for this. Through millions of years, it’s become this amazing animal that can outrun a lion. It outruns the lion, and then all of that goes back to baseline, and they go on with their day. Humans don’t do that. So, when I speak, I usually pick somebody from the audience and go, “Hey, what’s your name? Are you good at your job?” They say, “Karen,” or “Carla,” or whatever. “Yes, I’m great at my job.” So, I say, “Well, Carla, you’re going to be Carla the zebra.” I take Carla running across the savanna with the lion chasing her, and she has all that cortisol, that sugar in her body to increase her speed, and then all that adrenaline—her heart rate’s going up, and all the focus norepinephrine. Then I say, “Okay, now you outrun the lion because you’re great at your job.” You tuck away in some bushes, and your heart rate goes back, and you’re all going back to this nice level of “I made it. Look at me. I’m so good. I was such a good zebra. I’m so good at being a zebra. I outran the lion.” But then our friend Carla pulls out her phone in a very non-zebra, very human way. Carla the zebra looks at her phone and looks at social media to see what the rest of the animal kingdom is up to.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: She sees a flamingo on the beach. She’s like, “Man, I wish I was a flamingo. I wish I was sitting on a beach and not here in this hot savanna. And look, she gets to wear pink. I have to wear stripes all the time.” It takes us through what we’re doing to ourselves. One, because we’re humans, we don’t go back to baseline. We worry about, “Hey, what if he comes back? Where should I go?” All the things in the future, all that anxiety we build for ourselves that the animal kingdom doesn’t do. So, that’s putting all that cortisol and adrenaline in our bodies all the time, which affects not just our mental health but our physical health as well. These chemicals in our brain affect our body and are causing our illnesses—they’re causing high blood pressure, heart attacks, weight gain, diabetes, and all those things because we are putting our body under that stress all the time, and we don’t go back to baseline. Along with not going back to baseline, we also have this social media piece now where we can be in a really good spot, and this is something that I think we’re all challenged with and be really happy with what’s going on in our lives, and feel like we’re doing a good job being us. All of your categories, all 12 of the things, like we’re doing it. And then we could look at our cell phone, we pick up this computer in our pocket and see somebody else—the guy down the street who just got the new car, someone coming back from vacation, or their kid just got into some school my kid didn’t get into, or whatever it is. We start that comparison culture because of this constant connectivity, and we never get a chance to just be happy in our own success. So, that is causing this epidemic of unhappiness and stress, and it’s also affecting us, not just mentally—we are in a mental health crisis right now—but it’s also affecting us physically. So that’s the piece we all need to work on.

Steve Shallenberger: Amen. Well, that’s a good reminder to everybody, a great reminder to be comfortable in our own skin. Becoming your best really means becoming your best, not your neighbor’s best.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Yes, be the zebra. Don’t be the flamingo.

Steve Shallenberger: You are what you are. So, how do we make the best of this and be happy and find peace? Well, we’re at the end of our interview. It’s been fun. I’ve loved it. I know our listeners have probably gained some really wonderful things like I have. So how can people find out about you, Nina?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: They can follow me on social media. I’m on all the platforms. Connect with me on LinkedIn if you’d like me to speak at one of your events. Follow me on Instagram; Nina Speaks is the name of it. We thought we were being really clever. There are several speakers named Nina who are fantastic, so mine is Nina_Speaks, but you can find me on Instagram. I post there, and I do inspirational stuff and thought-provoking things there. So that’s a fun place to follow me. I think I’m hilarious. I put some funny things up there, too. But yeah, follow me on social. Connect with me on LinkedIn if you’re interested in me being a part of an event or something that you have going on. I do keynotes and workshops, and I really enjoy just putting a positive message into the world and helping people what I call “thrive through tough times.”

Steve Shallenberger: Great. This has been a wonderful interview. Thank you for sharing yourself, your experience, and being open about all the things that you’ve done. We wish you the best in all that you’re doing.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue: Thank you so much, Steve, and right back at you. All the best to you. Thank you so much for having me on.

Steve Shallenberger: You bet. And to our listeners, we’re always grateful that you would take the time to be with us. You’re such an inspiration. It’s why we do this show in the first place, and we’re grateful for you. We wish you each a great day. This is Steve Shallenberger, your host, signing off.