It helps when you turn up the microphone. Hello everyone, welcome to the Daily Grateful. I am Michael Croes. I hope you're having a terrific day.
It's been a challenging one for me. I sat down and I prepared the motivational Monday podcast for today. And the subject of the podcast today was, what do you do when you're feeling down, when you're feeling, how do you handle that? How do you make it better?
And I had all these talking points. I did a lot of preparation. I sat out in the other room with my little laptop and I'm just coming up with all this stuff. And I came in here to record it in the studio and in the wonderful, it's absolutely marvelous professional home studio that this podcast is produced in every day here in West Central Florida.
I tell you what, this is a studio to behold. Anyway, getting it at myself. Getting back to feeling down. I had all this preparation done.
I'm looking at my computer screen and I'm saying, yeah, we can do all of that stuff. Let's, yeah. And the music starts. I push the button so the music starts.
And then I just shut everything down. I said, I'm not gonna use these talking points. Now in January, I'm gonna be speaking at an event that I speak at just about every year. And it's a podcasting convention big, podcasting convention in Orlando.
And I remember when I did this in 2019, one of the things I've always done over there is I've been the master of ceremonies for something called Pecha Kucha, which is a really strange thing. You have 20 speakers, people have signed up for this. Have to get okayed for this. And you have 20 speakers who show up and they get five minutes and they have 20 slides behind them that they can show, but they don't have control of the slides.
Okay, because the guy in the back of the room has control of the slides and it's gonna move right along. Cause he only got five minutes to get through all 20 slides. And believe it or not, that's a hard thing to do. And believe it or not, even more, it's how much stuff you can learn in five minutes.
I am telling you, little is better, okay? It is, it really is. So I'm sitting there with all the speakers coming up and I'm introducing them. And I'm just, you know, I introduce them.
I go off to the side of the stage and watch. And when they're done, if they stay longer, I have to walk out and gently say, you know, haven't I say goodbye? And I never have anybody that I had to take the cane to. All right?
I've had some people just be over excited. A speaker came up and actually someone had to assist him on to the stage. The guy's name was Maxwell Ivy. And he says, I need to talk to you before we begin.
I said, what? Well, I see he's got a white cane. So it's obvious to me that he cannot see. He says, I got 20 slides I gotta keep up with.
I said, I know. I said, how are we gonna do that? And that was the key thing I said, how are we gonna do that? And he said, I don't know.
And then all of a sudden in my strange brain, I said, how about if I stand beside you? You know, I'll sit next to you. I'll stand next to you. And every time the slide changes, I will gently touch your back.
And you'll know that it's time to go on to the next slide that you had prepared. He goes, you do that. Absolutely, I will do that. Off we went and he started talking.
The name of his talk was, what's your excuse? And he started off saying, are you down? Are you having a rough time? Well, you know, are you having a hard time achieving your goals?
Well, I'm not talking to you about that. But you know what? What is your excuse? Look at me.
I cannot see my hand in front of my face. I've been blind since birth. I don't, I can see nothing. And I cannot see the slides that are coming by.
I've got this nice guy tapping me on the back when the next slide comes up. And we're just going through the slides and he's just going on talking about, you know, when you're down, set smaller goals to do. Okay, but do something. Sit when you're down, get up and do something.
That wasn't on my prepared things. You can get up and do something. Even if it has nothing to do with your daily task, find something to do and accomplish it. Make it a short goal and just accomplish it.
It might be something around your house. It might be cleaning your bathroom. Who knows? But find something and do something.
Believe it or not, that's going to bring you up. And that made a lot of sense to me. And you know, he's going on and on, but then he got to the important thing, which was the last thing that he did. And it was his last slide.
And I looked at his last slide and it said, do not be afraid to ask for help. Wow, do not be afraid to ask for help. Now that sounds wimpy maybe, but it's not. It absolutely is not.
He said, when you ask for help, people, he says, like me, you know, looking at me, Michael, are glad to help me. And I said, yeah. And he goes, and by them helping you, you're actually helping them. And I said, yeah.
And he said, so when you get into a situation where you need help, ask someone for it. Everybody's going to benefit from that. I didn't quite understand that then then, but it did make sense. And as I was helping him off the stage, I'm sitting there thinking, man, do I feel positive about helping Max out.
Max is a cool guy. I'm going to hang out with him later. And I did. As a matter of fact, I hung out with him many times.
He's just a really cool guy. I made a new friend. But let me tell you what happened later that day, where I was in the same, well, not the same, but I was in a situation to where I needed to ask for help. I went for a long walk to clear my head.
And I came in and there's this area where a bunch of people were gathered and there was a long sofa. And I said, I'm going to sit for a little bit. And I grabbed a bottle of water and I sat down and I'm drinking on the water and I'm just going to get the gas out of my head type thing and everything. And then I was going to get up because I was going to go meet and we're going to go have an adult beverage.
So I go to get up and this sofa, as it turns out, is a lot lower than any sofa I sat on. It was the closest thing, as a matter of fact, to sitting on the floor because when I sat in it, the cushion just kind of sunk down and I said, oh, and I'm kind of in the middle of the sofa. I'm not next to the side where I can grab on to something. I'm over a few feet over and I can't get up and I realize I can't get up.
And I'm sitting there saying, I'm gonna make a fool on myself trying to get the hell off of this sofa. It was really rough. And then all of a sudden this couple, young couple, come walking up to me. And they had been to the event earlier and saw all of the speakers.
And they said, how do we sign up to be a speaker next year? And could you give us some advice? And I said, I'm more than happy to. And I could not sit down there on the sofa, way down below them and have a talk with them.
I had to get up. I realized I had to get up and I said, listen, this is embarrassing as hell. But I am stuck in the sofa and I can't get up. Both of them, great, each one grabbed an arm and a second and a half later, I'm standing up next to them and I was so grateful.
And I thanked them so much for doing that. And I looked at the looks on their face when I asked them for help and they helped me. And I thanked them. And they were genuinely motivated by that.
They felt better about themselves by helping me up out of that sofa, around the same time that this happened. I see another guy that you, what about younger than me? Sit down on the sofa. Anyway, I talked to this wonderful couple.
We had a great conversation. And then I said, hey, I'm gonna go meet my buddy, Doc for drinks. Would you like to come along? He's gonna be over at that cocktail area over there.
He said, you know, we can all sit together and you can hang out. And they said, yeah, we'll go. And I said, okay, just go right over there. And I look and I see that this young guy cannot get off the sofa.
He was in the same situation that I was in. And he's looking in, I could tell that he was a free to ask for help. And I walked up to him, I said, let me help you out, young man. And I reached down and I grabbed both of his arms and I pulled him up.
And the look on his face was just so surprised. And I felt so good for helping him. And you know, it was just really strange as I went back and I'm reflecting about this whole experience, meeting Max. And Max, last slide, don't be afraid to ask for help.
Because when you ask for help, he said, not only are you benefiting yourself by getting the help, but you are benefiting the people that you ask for help for a lot more than you are getting. And I thought about that. And I said, yeah, he's right. Because when I help Max get through that talk by giving him the gentle taps on the back, I felt so good about myself that I was able to help this wonderful man give a talk in front of 150 people.
It was incredible. It was just wonderful. So you know what? Don't be afraid to ask for help.
When you're feeling down, when you're feeling low, when life sucks, and believe it or not, this happens all the time, especially when you get older, like me, you look out and life sucks. And what do you do? Well, I took his advice and I, you know, set little goals and get those done and accomplished little things. And I kept moving, but I wasn't afraid to ask for help.
And you know what? When I asked for help, not only did I get it, but I help that person. It's just one of those things. Just keep this going.
When you're down, ask for help. You're gonna be helping those people more than they're helping you. We'll see you tomorrow.