Hey, everyone. It's Emily coming in to your feed with the first installment of five minute Friday for season five.

If you are new to hurdle, if you need a little bit of a refresher on five minute Friday, I share a story, something that's going on in my life, I offer up a thought prompt to take you into the weekend, and then I finish us off with a few highlights of the week, some content picks that I want to share with you all. So this week, okay, this is a positive story, although it has I, it was a hard week for me.

I got many, okay, forward to be specific emails that were kind of a letdown, just like hit after hit of work related news, which just wasn't what I wanted to hear, whether it was, you know, one about a project that I literally poured hours and hours into over the holidays, no less.

That project on canned because of a shift in the company strategy that I was working with another guest at the cancel or recording that I was really looking forward to and worked really hard to secure this opportunity, and then just some others that I won't get into now, but it just felt like I this week, like I would be running and it felt like I couldn't get my feet under me and then I got knocked down and then I got back up and then I was moving forward and I finally felt like I was back

in my groove again and then I got knocked down and I just know that many of you can probably relate to this feeling. So I'm sitting at my desk and I was looking out the window and thinking to myself about like the two different mindsets that one can often have in this frustrating scenario, right?

There's like the first mindset, which is like, okay, let's focus on the positives here. Get your shit together. It's really awesome that you have earned your seat at this table that your name is even the ring for these things that your hard work is paying off.

And you know what, like this one thing not going as you had hoped it's okay because it's going to open up your energy and your time for like the thing that is going to be the thing.

Okay, so that's headspace number one, headspace number two, it's, you know, woe is me. Why is this just sucking? I'm crying. Like, can I just feel sad for a little bit? Yeah, like that one.

And I know I've told this story on the show before, but I feel like it's a great time to bring it back into the mix. When I was the fitness editor itself in 2016, I was working on a package for our Olympics themed issue and I interviewed a herdler, a serious herdler named Don Harper Nelson and Don talked to me about the world championships in Beijing in 2015 when she tripped over the second hurdle in one of her races.

And she was mortified and angry and understandably upset and she literally jumped a couple of fences so that she didn't have to go toward where all the media were waiting to talk to the athletes.

And I think she was in that process or thinking about undergoing that process when she finally like stopped for a moment and took a breath and she realized in that moment and something I come back to time and time again, which is why I'm sharing it with you, possibly again, that she had the opportunity in this moment to be upset for sure that she knew she didn't work that hard to quote unquote fail.

But she also understood that this was a teachable moment and that we have the opportunity in all of these moments when things aren't going as we had hoped to recognize the situation, take a deep breath and learn from it.

Talk about a growth mindset, right? And so as I was sitting here at my desk thinking about all this stuff, I had my moment, I digested what was going on, I talked it out with a friend.

And then I decided that headspace number one is just where it's at.

I am talking to you about this because lately for me, it feels as though the highlight meal is just in full effect.

So like everyone around me is succeeding and their life is all like glitz and glamour, even though they are also like working from home and everything is going right for everybody else.

And don't get me wrong. Like I love to be your cheerleader. There's literally nothing that brings me more joy.

I love to see people succeed. I love to cheer you on. I want to hype you up. But it's just hard to not fall into the comparison track. You know what I'm saying?

Still, I know that everyone is dealing with their own struggle, their own things that we're not seeing on social media.

And so I open up with you here because I want you to know if there is something that you are struggling with that you are not the only one in the struggle.

And you will never be the only one in the struggle. And neither will I. The fact is that we need to show up in the honest with one another so that we can destigmatize this idea that everything is supposed to be roses and flowers all the time.

Because I mean, don't get me wrong. Like I would love roses and flowers all the time. But life doesn't work like that.

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