George Had a Plan ... Until He Didn't

Episode Transcript

Liz Moorehead (00:04.686)
Welcome back to Beyond Your Default. I'm your host, Liz Moorehead, and as always, I'm joined by the one, the only, George B. Thomas. Good to have you back, bud.

George B. Thomas (00:13.048)
Hey, it's good to be back. I'm happy to be hitting the record button this morning for sure.

Liz Moorehead (00:20.682)
my gosh, you know what, we're gonna get into why we're so excited about that in just a minute. Although I'm very curious to see what your answer is to this question because we always start with what were your highlights and your lowlights from the weekend? So, do you wanna go first or should I? Let's see, highlight from this past weekend was on

George B. Thomas (00:39.032)
Go ahead and go first.

Liz Moorehead (00:50.51)
Saturday, for the first time in, I can't remember how long, I did not have somewhere to be. I had no move or house sitting that I needed to coordinate. There were no boxes to unpack. There was nothing. I didn't have to be anywhere. And,

So I spent part of Saturday at a bookstore local here in Annapolis called Old Fox Books. And they have these big cushy leather chairs scattered throughout the store and has creaky old wood flooring and everything's perfectly disprayed. New books, old books. And it was fantastic. But would you like to know what my low light was?

George B. Thomas (01:29.912)
Mmm, yeah.

Liz Moorehead (01:46.862)
On Saturday, I had nothing to do for the first time in months. And I went to a bookstore and I sat down and I read for a few hours. And while it was simultaneously my highlight, it was also my low light because, George, I have never felt so much anxiety in my life. I'm sure that is a hyperbolic statement, but I've never felt so anxious in such a long time.

George B. Thomas (02:05.144)
Yeah, yeah, I, I.

Liz Moorehead (02:13.742)
And it made me reflect on the fact that, okay, if I'm feeling anxious when I have just a few hours of rest to myself, that means I'm not resting, which makes me wonder how close am I to burnout? What are my boundaries doing? Where are they? Do they even exist? And it was just this whole feeling of, you know, it's a low light that illuminated something for me that I needed to know, but

My gosh, I felt guilty. Then I started panicking. my God, did I forget something? What if George texts me and I've forgotten something and just all of a sudden I had this freeze moment where I had to meditate my way out of it.

George B. Thomas (02:46.968)
Hmm.

George B. Thomas (03:01.578)
Yeah, by the way, I wasn't gonna text you anything.

Liz Moorehead (03:01.934)
That's... No, I know that. That's just what panicking Liz thinks on. I know that. You are not the guy who ever does those texts. You know what I mean? So it was just one of those moments there where I'm like, who am I letting down? What am I letting down? I can't... There's no possible way I have time to rest. And I just thought that was something I needed to observe. And it's something I am still unpacking.

George B. Thomas (03:12.984)
Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (03:31.982)
It also made me think, we should do an episode about rest, but you know. It would be three minutes long. Please help us. We don't know how to do it. Thank you.

George B. Thomas (03:35.32)
Mmm, that'd probably be a good episode.

George B. Thomas (03:41.88)
Yeah, we're gonna do an episode on rest. So for the next 45 minutes, we're gonna take a nap. So just listen to this calming music.

Liz Moorehead (03:49.966)
Yep. So George, your highlights and low light from the weekend. Talk to me.

George B. Thomas (03:56.024)
I mean, listen, I had an extended weekend, I guess you could call it because all of last week, and this will be my my low light, all of last week, I was basically, well, Monday through Thursday, I was in the hospital. And so that kind of threw me for a loop for a couple different reasons. I think there's some psychological things that were going on. Emotional things for sure going on.

And then, you know, you're a business owner, you've got all these meetings, you've got this, you know, massive training that you're in the middle of doing with folks and you've got a team that's got to send out a bunch of emails and cancel things and you've got leads in the pipeline that now, you know, you're going to have meetings with and maybe close some deals and.

Those all have to get pushed off. So again, just emotional, psychological, and then you're in the hospital because of physical stuff that's going on that you have zero control over, which we could probably do an episode on lack of control or thinking we're in control, by the way, in the future. So that that that's. Yeah, and and and so so that some that would be the low light, although out of that.

Liz Moorehead (05:08.91)
As if we're not talking about that today. Nice try. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

George B. Thomas (05:18.616)
I forced myself to try to chill out a little bit over the weekend to give my body time to rest. I did do, you know, a couple HubSpot certifications. One might not call that rest, but I enjoy watching the videos. And so I did a couple of certifications, but.

Liz Moorehead (05:38.574)
You saw my comment to you, day two out of the hospital, you're getting a certification, please never change.

George B. Thomas (05:42.552)
Yeah, I did see that. I see I did see that comment. But I will say the highlight was actually sitting in the recliner, eating very mild foods and binge watching Reacher episode one and two, because that is just such a good show.

I love that show. And so I got to, I started over and I watched season one and season two over the weekend and just kind of let my body chill, relax and get ready for this week to be able to just kind of get back to normal, put the hammer down and go for it.

Liz Moorehead (06:24.654)
You know, I gotta say this. One of the things I love about our show is that you and I, I would consider us progressive folks and we try to keep things inclusive and not give into stereotypes. But my favorite part is you were binging Reacher this weekend and I was binging Bridgerton and I am fine with us leading into gendered stereotype norms for this episode.

George B. Thomas (06:36.12)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (06:45.848)
My daughters are watching that right now. They're like, you'll like it. And I'm like, mm, mm.

Liz Moorehead (06:49.518)
No, you won't. You will not like that. George, George, you will want to leave the room. You will ask for an adult. You do not want to watch the show. Good. You made it through one episode, which is usually where nothing happens. So like, leave it. I would just move along. Watch more Reacher. Watch more.

George B. Thomas (06:57.88)
I made it through one episode.

George B. Thomas (07:09.464)
Yeah, they need to release some more. I'd be happy with that.

Liz Moorehead (07:13.358)
So this week, we're gonna be doing something a little bit different in light of the fact that last week you were doing something a little bit different. And for the folks at home who have not figured it out by listening to these episodes, I mean, like most podcasts, we always prepare in advance. We have organic conversations in that I don't know what his answers are going to be or where the follow -up questions are going to go. But for every episode, George and I sit down.

George B. Thomas (07:20.216)
Just a little.

Liz Moorehead (07:40.686)
and he gets a preview of some of the questions that are gonna be asked. He and I discuss the scope of things that we want to be talking about, but we're not doing that this episode. In fact, I asked you if you wanted questions in advance and you said no. So this is one of the reasons also why I love this show is that sometimes we're gonna take a break from our regularly scheduled programming and we're gonna...

George B. Thomas (07:50.264)
Yeah

George B. Thomas (07:54.68)
Yeah. No. No.

Liz Moorehead (08:10.158)
take a detour into an actual beyond your default journey blip. So George, take us back to the beginning. Set the stage. What happened?

George B. Thomas (08:15.704)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (08:22.328)
Yeah, so it was Thursday night, Friday morning. All of a sudden I started having a lower left stomach pain. When I say stomach pain, I felt like somebody was stabbing me. I tried to, you know, when you're sleeping, you try to roll over to your left, try to roll over to your right, try to lay on your back, you try to get comfortable. And man, I just couldn't get comfortable. It's just a stabbing feeling. And I was like,

Hmm. What's going on? So I woke up Friday morning and I had to go to a rheumatoid arthritis appointment anyway. So I got up, got dressed, drove to my appointment. The whole time I'm driving, I'm like, man, this is like, like this hurts. And me and my infinite wisdom, I'm like, do I have to poop? Like, am I constipated? And so, so I stopped. I'm just telling you. And so I stopped by the,

Liz Moorehead (09:16.622)
If only it were poop.

George B. Thomas (09:22.168)
drugstore on the way back from my appointment and I got some of that like liquid stuff you can drink, you know, I got a couple bottles of that. I said, hey, let's try that. And so took a bottle of that and I worked through about half of the day Friday and got to about two o 'clock, finished a meeting, canceled the rest of my meetings, looked at my wife, which by the way, I never do this.

I canceled half of my day's meetings, looked at my wife and I said, I'm going to bed. And I won't. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (09:54.702)
Okay, actually, let's be realistic here. One of those meetings you canceled was another podcast recording, but I'm gonna call you out here and say, you were sitting, I was like, how are you doing? I feel like crap. And I had to cancel. We do not need to record.

George B. Thomas (09:59.544)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (10:06.744)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was those words that I actually canceled the rest of my day. I went and laid down. And so got to Friday night, Saturday morning, and all of a sudden I had this massive pain in my chest. I would try to take a deep breath.

and I really couldn't take a deep breath, it would just be excruciating pain. So now I have the abdominal pain, which by at this point, I'm on bottle number two of the, do I need to poop? Like I'm on bottle number two of that. I've got this chest pain going on and I'm like, boy, what's going on? And so I'm taking these short breaths just so I can get enough kind of air going on. And I lay in bed the entire day and.

My wife is like, are you okay? And my daughter's like, do we need to take you to the hospital? I'm like, no, let me rub some dirt on it and walk it off. It'll be okay. Just give me a second. And so then we get to the next day and it's Mother's Day. I'm not gonna ruin Mother's Day. So I hop up, I act like I'm fine. Everybody's like, are you good? I'm like, I'm feeling better. I'm doing good. And...

We take Kelly out for Mother's Day and do Topgolf and all sorts of fun stuff. And man, I'm feeling like crap. I didn't try anything. I did it. I went and I did Topgolf, but I was feeling like crap. And so as soon as we got home from Topgolf, which was, you know, in the evening, back upstairs, went to bed. And I was like, boy, I don't know how much more of this I can take. So I wake up Monday morning.

Liz Moorehead (11:35.629)
You tried to top golf your way through this?

Liz Moorehead (11:41.645)
You're such a man.

George B. Thomas (11:57.368)
And I'm like, OK, it's new week. Let's give this a try. And I drive to Smoothie King to get a smoothie. And I realize with getting ready for the morning, getting dressed and driving to Smoothie King, I'm exhausted. I'm I'm literally spent and my chest still hurts. My stomach is feeling a little bit better, but still pretty, pretty painful.

And so I'm literally like waiting for a smoothie and I text my wife, are you awake yet? And she, the text comes, I love these texts. I am now. And I said, great, I'm getting a smoothie. When I get home, I want you to take me to the hospital. So I get home, we actually call my primary care physician first. They can't get me into 1145. My wife looks at me and she can tell I'm just like, I'm in pain.

And she goes, do you want to wait for your appointment? I go, not really. And so we go to the hospital and the journey begins.

Liz Moorehead (13:08.781)
So I want to start off this conversation by asking you a question. A question that you ask me all the time, usually about marketing topics, usually about safe things.

George B. Thomas (13:21.816)
Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (13:24.461)
So you finally get in your hospital bed. You're laying there. All the text messages have gone out. Jorge and I have been activated. We're dropping everything. We're making sure all the clients are taken care of. You're at the beginning of your care cycle where you've had to relinquish control of everything. You're looking at the ceiling. You're thinking, where does your brain go?

George B. Thomas (13:48.6)
Well, I think there's a lesson before that actually. So hold on to that question. Hold on to that question. Because when we got to the hospital, they took my blood pressure. I have high blood pressure. Okay, I take high blood pressure medicine. They took my blood pressure and it was 100 over 61. In other words, way low blood pressure.

Liz Moorehead (13:51.691)
Hmm?

Liz Moorehead (14:17.674)
Yeah, that's not no no no

George B. Thomas (14:17.688)
Way, way, way. I'm like, this is not normal, ladies and gentlemen. So. All of a sudden there's like, we have cardiac blah, blah in blah, blah, blah ones, you know, so like people are coming and they're hooking me up to these things and. All of a sudden the the lady says. You know, they pull me in the back and they're checking me out and the lady says.

Well, we're probably going to have to admit you at least overnight. And.

George B. Thomas (14:58.424)
I'm not an overly emotional guy, but I kind of got teary -eyed and I got emotional and I looked at my wife and I said, I guess I should have came on Saturday. And I realized that there was this part of me that had done the man up, throw some dirt on it, work through it. You probably just have to poop.

And I felt just so stupid for not just making the immediate decision for my self -care through healthcare and to just go get checked out. And every time that I told my wife and my daughters that I was fine and I just needed a minute, like came flooding back to me emotionally of like, dude, why were you being an idiot?

Liz Moorehead (15:57.48)
Well, okay, I wanna interject here because I think, first of all, I love how you bury parts of your story. Because the other thing I will say, ladies and gentlemen, I'm hearing this story for the first time. I've known tangently about what happened from updates from your beautiful and wonderful wife, Kelly. You gave me a little bit of flavor of what actually happened when you came back. But this is something where,

there is a both and. And you know me, I'm a both and kind of girly. Like I criminally will always both and every situation. I agree that I think historically you have had challenges as many overachievers do. Maybe going and getting the help when you should be getting it, right? Or maybe, just maybe if you've listened to previous episodes, you've heard the story about George talking to his wife.

George B. Thomas (16:34.168)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (16:46.744)
Yeah. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (16:53.416)
while going to an ambulance, so I need to get on that meeting. How are we going to make that happen? So there's that piece of it, and I can understand that. But I also think we have this tendency to Monday morning quarterback ourselves when we have complete information at a time where quite frankly, let's, I mean, I didn't think this was going to be a pro poop episode, but let's be frank here. We've all had those days where it's like something bad.

The call is coming from inside the house in a very specific part of the house, and this is big bad. I want to remove the bottom half of my body bad. I think because at that time, there's no way you could have known what was to come. And the point is, is that eventually you did listen to your body and you said, when I get back, we're going to the hospital. So like, eh.

George B. Thomas (17:24.6)
Yeah, yeah.

George B. Thomas (17:31.288)
Yes, yes.

George B. Thomas (17:46.36)
Yeah, yeah. But still, like, because even because you kind of told that story, like, I think the reason I got so emotional is to me, it was almost like, did I not learn my lesson from last time? Like, like.

Did I not learn my lesson from last time? Why did I just not say, hey, let's go get checked out to make sure versus struggling through the pain and agony for, you know, two, almost three days before even being able to get started on getting the help that I needed.

Liz Moorehead (18:27.205)
Alright, then let's play devil's advocate here. George, why didn't you learn that lesson?

George B. Thomas (18:32.024)
I don't know, because I'm hard -headed, because I'm a guy, because...

Liz Moorehead (18:34.885)
Mm -mm. Mm -mm.

George B. Thomas (18:42.392)
It's funny because you know and I know how much of a...

how much of an issue I had with our self -care episode.

Liz Moorehead (18:56.1)
to the point where you did not even want to do it. Yes, I remember.

George B. Thomas (18:59.256)
Yeah. And listen, don't get me wrong. Like, I love myself. I like myself. But I've just been historically bad at taking care of myself. And I think that this is maybe all part of the journey of understanding that, like, look, you have to take care of yourself. And especially the older I get, like I'm sitting here at 52 and I'm

I'm on the first few steps of what is going to be a dramatic life change to the way that I act, eat, think, because of the four days in the hospital over the past week and having time to research and think and pray and just understand.

Cause we'll get to this. We'll get to what it actually was that was doing this and connect some dots. But like I have to, I have to take care of myself. Self care, especially self care through healthcare has to be a thing that I pay attention to moving forward.

Liz Moorehead (20:19.94)
I mean, I think, you and I were talking right before we hit record today, and I was telling you about a personal story about a friend of mine who just had a great impact on a lot of people. And I used your quote, and I said, you always talk about you want to be able to see the ripples and the impact of your life. There's a very fine line you have to walk with that, George. At some point, are you just a ripple factory? Are you just an achievement machine?

George B. Thomas (20:47.32)
Hmm.

Liz Moorehead (20:48.484)
or do you actually consider yourself, it's the other side of being a whole ass human. Do you acknowledge your humanity?

George B. Thomas (20:55.768)
Yeah. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (20:57.252)
So let's go back to my question then. You've gotten in, you've gotten admitted. You've already started answering actually, where does your brain go? And in a little zippy twist of fate, you started telling me exactly where your brain went, to regret, to remorse, to I wish I had done something different. But take me to that moment when you were first alone.

George B. Thomas (21:20.088)
Yeah. It's interesting because I was sitting there and you're right, there was remorse, there was regret, there was frustration, maybe even a little bit of anger of like, why is my body doing this? There was a little bit of fear of like, man, like how am I going to make it through this? Are my clients going to get upset? You know, is the team going to be able to cover?

Shoot, nobody really knows what's going on. I can't tell anybody what's going on because I don't know what's going on. How long am I going to be here? This is an inconvenience. And then I settled into. Dude, shut the F up. Like you are in the hospital, your body needs help. People are trying to figure out what's going on.

How about you just silence all the noise and sit here and take it for what it is and get it figured out and then make the decisions that you're gonna have to make. And so then Liz, what's really interesting is once I flip the switch of knowing that I was no longer in control and flip the switch of knowing that I was in a place where if anything was gonna happen, there were people that could take care of me.

flipped the switch of like nothing else right now really matters. It actually got really peaceful and it got really calm and I was able to just kind of sit there and go through the process and try to figure out what was happening with my body.

And so it was actually ended up being something that was highly stressful at the beginning, but actually really relaxing towards the middle to end of my hospital stay. And that sounds weird to be relaxed and at peace in the hospital, but I literally, morphine might've been helping. Okay, let's be honest. But I'm just saying, but I had this piece of like,

Liz Moorehead (23:32.004)
Hell of a drug.

George B. Thomas (23:37.528)
It's all part of the puzzle. This thing kept coming to my brain of like, it's all part of the puzzle. You'll understand. Like everything happens for a reason. And so I just I just sat there and went along for the ride and tried to be the best version of me that I could be in the situation that I was in.

Liz Moorehead (23:58.563)
Let's talk about the business side of it for a moment, because as you're going through this journey on the personal side of George, where you're acknowledging your limitations, realizing self -care needs to be more of a priority, all of these different elements, finding peace, I'd be curious to hear on the business side, how did it feel to relinquish control and have trust that the lights would stay on at the house, so to speak, yeah?

George B. Thomas (24:26.776)
I felt great. It felt great. Like watching my wife and daughter handle the cancellation of meetings. And we did it basically by the day before it needed to be done in case I got out and could actually do the work or the meetings. And so watching them handle that was, it just, I was like, okay, man, people got my back. It was almost like,

I would correlate it to a sense of love. Like, I don't know, other than like, I felt like I was loved because things were being handled. And I sat back, I never reached out to you or Jorge either, or Derek, another friend that helps us. And I never said, hey, this is what's going on and I need help. But I just could tell in emails.

that my wife was reading to me by the way at first, because for the first two days I didn't have a computer. I did have my phone, but I tried to ignore it.

because I needed to be there in the moment with what was happening. But I could tell that people were being taken care of. And even what's fun is people were being taken care of past my expectations. And what's really weird is people were being taken care of past what I thought even people had the understanding of doing. And so it really was an eye -opening experience of like, wow, okay.

So I can definitely see a future where I could have a business and completely trust the employees, contractors to like do what they need to do. And I don't have to be in the hospital for this. I'm learning the lesson in the hospital, but realizing I don't, I wouldn't necessarily have to be in the hospital, but this could happen just on a regular basis. Now,

George B. Thomas (26:30.584)
Would I expect anybody to extend themselves to the amount that they did in the need and necessity of me being gone? No. But there were still some very interesting future business lessons that were happening in my brain of enabling the right humans to interact and deploy themselves in the right way.

Liz Moorehead (26:54.273)
Did that surprise you? How little stress you felt about that?

George B. Thomas (27:01.656)
It was quite shocking. Because...

And I think there's two sides of this coin, right? Because we as humans, we want to believe that we're the ones that can do it the best or that we're the only ones that can do it that way, air quotes.

George B. Thomas (27:25.016)
Not really. Which is both a like, shit moment and a sigh of relief almost simultaneously, if you really think about it. And so I was a little bit shocked at how easy it was for me to just like, let go. And what's funny, because a lot of times in my life I'll be like, let go and let God.

But this was more of a sure from the health care part of it. Let go, let God. But from the owning a business side, it was like, let go, let humans just let humans do what humans are going to do and let the humans try to do and be the best they can be. And at the end of the day, when you get out of here, you'll sort it out, figure out and go from there. And that that didn't suck.

that just didn't suck to be able to be in that mental space.

Liz Moorehead (28:29.474)
No, it was, on the other side of it, it was, it felt good, I think, for both Jorge and I to know that, George trusts us, we've got this, we can do this. And I remember when I hopped on with one of our clients at the very beginning of the week, I'm like, guess what, guys, you're with me all week. We are gonna cram as many interviews into this week as humanly possible. It is going to be a big old content party. And everybody had a good time.

George B. Thomas (28:52.92)
Yeah, yeah.

Liz Moorehead (28:57.667)
You know, so it was, it was, it was really, the circumstances clearly were less than ideal, would have preferred the opposite for obvious reasons, but it felt good. Cause I know you pretty well. If you're not trusting a situation, you're finding a way to text people and buy around like Wednesday morning. I remember Jorge and I were talking and I just remember feeling like, man, George can actually be away.

George B. Thomas (28:57.88)
I love it.

George B. Thomas (29:16.248)
Yeah, yeah.

George B. Thomas (29:27.352)
Yeah, I didn't slack. I didn't text like. I was probably the most silent I have been for years. And what's really interesting, too, here's another thing that happened, Liz, that I was like. Hmm.

Hmm. Because you realize people are thinking in ways that they need to think. My one daughter, well, both of my daughters came to visit me. My wife came to visit me too, but I'm just saying my daughters come to visit me. And my one daughter says, hey, by the way, I haven't published anything on social because I thought it would be weird to just continue like normal considering you're sitting in the hospital. And I thought,

Liz Moorehead (30:13.378)
Yes.

George B. Thomas (30:16.344)
That's some smart shit right there. Like, that's... I said, yes, absolutely. Great job. Thank you. That totally makes sense.

The reason that to me that was important is because part of this journey has been creating the theme, the family team. Part of this journey has been trying to grow them into who they can be and how they can think and the way that business works. And to realize that her thinking without me interjecting anything, texting, slacking, mentioning,

Her thinking went in a direction that was a true human -centric way to use or not use social media in the moment of a life change, to me was like a magical, like it was a proud papa moment, but it was like a proud boss moment too.

Liz Moorehead (31:19.232)
Yeah, because she and I didn't coordinate on that. I only published one thing last week under my name because I had the same feeling of whether you know you're in the hospital or not. And I think this is something that I want our audience to think about, right? Whether you're a team leader or a company leader, when you need to be absent, what kind of culture and structure have you set in place where people understand,

this is how you need to act. Because what's fascinating about it is that you actually don't have an explicit set of rules for when Georgia goes in the hospital. But Maddie, Jorge, and I, all at different points this past week, were challenged to think, well, our tagline is it's all about the humans. So what's the most human thing we can do right now? All right, so let's step away from the business for a moment. Talk to me about when you found out what actually happened.

George B. Thomas (31:48.792)
Yes. Yeah.

George B. Thomas (31:55.224)
No, no.

George B. Thomas (32:08.344)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

George B. Thomas (32:19.992)
Yeah. Again, once I got past the, well, dude, you didn't have to poop, so that was stupid. When I got past that and they started telling me what was going on, I actually kind of giggled a little bit and then realized that I had been given back some control.

a little bit of control. So here's the deal. Here's what was going on.

I give you a little backstory. For the last four or five, shoot, maybe almost six years, but probably five years. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. It affects your joints, you know, it's painful. I'm on humera for it.

And it has everything to do with inflammation. That's what happens is your body's kind of attacking itself and you get inflamed and it's painful. And so come to find out what had happened is that there's these flaps in your colon and they had inflammation. They were inflamed.

And so that's what was causing the pain was they were just not feeling well. Literally what happens in my joints was happening in my colon. And the chest pain of me not being able to take deep breaths is that there's this sack of fluid around your heart and lungs.

George B. Thomas (34:12.664)
I'm not a doctor, I don't play one on TV. I'm just telling you what they told me. There's this sack of fluid and it was filled with inflammation. And so it was hard for me to breathe because of this inflammation. So here's the thing, the thing that has been attacking my joints and my body for five years decided to just head in different areas.

Now here's why I giggled a little bit. Because I had already been equipping myself with the knowledge of how I should be eating and what I should be doing for my rheumatoid arthritis. But over the last year or so, I had back slidden away from that and been absolutely loving burgers and pizza and things that I shouldn't be eating that cause inflammation, that cause me to actually like...

sure, the medication's there and the medication makes it so I don't feel that much pain, but these are things that I shouldn't be putting in my diet. And so I immediately knew the road to success that if inflammation is going to attack different parts of my body instead of just my joints, if it's going to cause me discomfort like it was over the past

at this point week, then I need to double down on the knowledge that I have, gain more knowledge, and start to live a life where I'm putting things in my body that are not creating inflammation, but helping to remove any inflammation. I need to start to pay attention to parts of my body that matter, like gut health.

and probiotics. And so again, while I'm sitting there, I start to do, you know me, I'm a frickin nerd. I start to do research. Yeah. Can I get a gut health certification? Exactly. And so I just start like nerding out on, you know, inflammation, suppressing diets and gut health and probiotics. And I just, I start like, okay, this is a thing.

Liz Moorehead (36:10.783)
Ooh, something new to learn. Can I be certified in gut health?

George B. Thomas (36:32.216)
that has to become, and I'm learning about fermented foods and the benefits of them for your body. And there you go. And so I just am again, now I'm sitting here, I'm on a couple of different medications to like over the next couple of months to like get it down and get it fixed and be able to like manage through the pain and stuff like that. But knowing with that,

Liz Moorehead (36:41.311)
Hello.

George B. Thomas (37:02.296)
I'm arming myself with the knowledge of I do have some control of what I actually put in my mouth that will cause my body to not react to those kinds of things. And so, you know, again, I'm on a journey. There's a new book that I'm listening to, so I can kind of put some more information in there. But the good part is I had some fear.

because of my historical high blood pressure, is this my ticker, right? Like, is this a heart thing? And so some fear of that was able to go away, because now I knew it was inflammation. You know, I was sitting there worried if I don't have to poop as like an intestine, like twisted, that fear went away. No, everything's fine there. Like it should work properly. It's just...

It's just this inflammation. And I'm not saying just inflammation, but knowing what it is, then created a plan of attack for how to treat, engage, and manage it moving forward. And so now, you know, talk about self -care and healthcare. I've got like three follow -up appointments with different doctors so I can let them know what happens so that they can tell me what...

you know, to do, not do. I literally, one of my doctors, I'm going to talk to them about this book that I'm reading and the diet changes that I'm going to be making and what that might mean to my medications over the next one, two, three, six months so that they're in line with where I'm going, what I'm trying to do. And so, again, we get past the fear, we get past the pain, we get we learn the lessons that we can learn out of it. And now I really feel like I'm sitting here in a

Let's let the body heal and let's start to move forward on this kind of new path based on the processes, pain and stuff that we just went through.

Liz Moorehead (39:14.078)
So talk to me for a moment here about, you know, whenever you do go through these situations historically throughout your life, you've always talked about the fact that there is a distinct before and after difference in your mindset. Because usually previously challenged or previously held beliefs were challenged. So I'd be curious to hear from you as you think about the George who went in before.

versus the George who came out after, who's sitting here with me right now on the mic. What were the previously held beliefs that have been challenged, if not outright reversed?

George B. Thomas (39:45.624)
I think there's a couple things. The biggest one I'll mention is I really was in a place of feeling like...

I had no space. And I've mentioned this on the podcast a couple times of like, I'm not doing the education that I like to do. You know, I'm not doing the walking that I like to do. I'm kind of running the business. And I was in this place of like, I had this freedom by being a business owner, but had this very much feel of lack of space.

to do things that, and by the way, I enjoy everything that I do for all the clients that we do, but like there's these education pieces and walking pieces and like everything just felt kind of like tight. That's the only way I know how to put it. Coming out of the hospital, I'm like, I need to make space. I need to make space in my life.

Like I need to make space for the things that I enjoy. I need to make space for the things that I know that will help me. And so that there's this big pivot of like.

create the space. I literally have it on my whiteboard by the way. It's like build the life you want to live. And in building the life that I wanted to live, I extracted some things that I enjoy out of life. So now I need to build a life that I want to live, but leave the space for the things that I still enjoy. Hopefully that'll make sense to somebody out there. For me, that's a piece of it. But the other part that I know a big piece was like,

George B. Thomas (41:58.616)
I had fallen prey to modern medicine. Meaning when I first got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, I was like out walking, I was watching what I was eating. Sure, I got put on medications, but I almost ignored the fact that I was on medications because I was hell bent to like do this the right way.

And as I just kind of got a little bit lazy and relied on the medications to keep me out of pain, I quit doing the walk -in. I quit watching what I was eating. And so if I wouldn't have stopped that, I don't know if I would have ended up here. To be...

Liz Moorehead (42:41.117)
So being an active participant in your own care.

George B. Thomas (42:44.696)
Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, there's this piece where moving forward, I know that those those almost need to become like, not no, not almost that's weak ass language. It needs to be non negotiables. You are going to watch what you put in your mouth because you do have this thing that is called inflammation that likes to just attack now different parts of your body.

Because I'm not excited to find out like what other pain feels like if another pain got inflamed or a piece of my body. I don't I don't need to know that. I don't know. Yeah, I don't need to experiment. And it needs to be a non -negotiable of like you're just going to go for a walk because it's going to a it's going to help you breathe better. It's going to help you lose weight. It's going to help you be active. It's going to help your mental state. And so these things that I was like hell bent to do previously,

Liz Moorehead (43:21.308)
We don't need to experiment. We've done that.

George B. Thomas (43:42.872)
there's like a resurgence of importance for that to just be like a long lasting piece that we're paying attention to as I move forward, which again goes back to the first thing I mentioned is that it's creating the space to be able to do that. And part of being able to create that space and make those non -negotiables is also leaning into a little piece that we talked about before of realizing the humans,

that I have surrounded myself with have my back. And I need to lean into them a little bit more to do the things that they can do to allow me the freedom to have these non -negotiables and to have this space in my life.

Liz Moorehead (44:27.964)
What time is your non -negotiable walk today?

George B. Thomas (44:31.256)
Here's another thing that so we may be moving the time in which we record these, by the way, on Mondays because I had a buddy reach out to me. Here was another very.

Liz Moorehead (44:36.441)
I was wondering about that.

George B. Thomas (44:44.312)
It's real interesting to me, the people who reach out.

the people who reach out and can continue to have conversations and the people who reach out continue to have conversations and then have follow -up action items in your life when you're going through this. Because I had good amount of people that reached out. I had a fair amount of people who've reached out and then also carried on the conversation while I was in the hospital. How you doing, bro? How you doing? Like every day. Still people.

are reaching out, hey, how are you feeling today? But I've got a buddy who was like, how are you doing? You know, checking in on me. And he goes, hey, by the way, I get back Tuesday morning. Let's start walking every morning. And I was like, yes, let's do that accountability. And so it'll probably end up being like a 7am in the morning or 730am in the morning walk.

probably 45 minutes to an hour, Monday through Friday for sure. And then I'll probably do something on my own Saturday and Sunday. But again, leaving myself the space to actually have a weekend.

Not everybody knows how important that statement is for me, but allowing myself to have a weekend or maybe it's sometimes have a weekend day and maybe sometimes it's actually have a weekend where I just don't do.

Liz Moorehead (46:11.961)
Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (46:29.721)
Yeah, because I was thinking about this as I was reflecting on my low light this past weekend. I was suddenly thinking about like.

Wow, George and I really enable each other because how many weekends in a row since March have you and I said, and I'll be around this weekend if you need anything. I'll be up, I'll be back, I'll be this, I'll be... We have somehow transformed into people who are working at least in some parts seven days a week.

George B. Thomas (46:57.016)
Yeah. And there's there's goods to that, but there's bads to that. It's like. And again, it gets real funny when you know how much you love what you do. But still, there's there's this layer of and I think I learned this for four days. There's this layer of.

Liz Moorehead (47:02.489)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (47:24.632)
It's interesting. I really didn't think about this before.

Four days taught me how to be comfortable. Four days in the hospital. Kind of taught me how to be comfortable not doing anything. I didn't have a choice, by the way.

And I just, I think that sure, there's work to be done, but there's also five days to do it. I think that we do have to, again, self care, take that time on the weekends to allow ourselves to breathe, live, relax, you know. So there'll be some level of like, what does that look like for me in the future? I'm sure there will still be some, yeah, I'm sure there'll still be some work happening.

Liz Moorehead (48:14.873)
In the now, the future is here.

George B. Thomas (48:21.016)
or some playing happening. But, you know, for me, it's, it really is just this idea of creating the space. I mean, listen, we're on a podcast about beyond your default, right?

George B. Thomas (48:43.448)
If I don't have space to rest, if I've put my body in a place where I can't even breathe, if I am in living a life with excruciating pain, whether it be emotional, physical, spiritual, like, it's going to be impossible to climb that mountain or reach that destination. And so for me, it's like, how do I how do I?

How do I re -envision this where I'm changing the tires, checking the oil, and making sure that there's enough coolant before we blow up the engine?

Liz Moorehead (49:25.945)
I want you to finish this sentence for me.

George B. Thomas (49:28.472)
boy.

Liz Moorehead (49:31.033)
It doesn't matter how much you plan.

George B. Thomas (49:42.944)
that's interesting.

George B. Thomas (49:51.768)
It's funny, there's a couple of things that immediately come to my brain and I don't know why. But as soon as, and maybe it's because of my previous car analogy, but like, I would say it doesn't matter how much you plan if you're broke down on the side of the road.

because like you're done. You got a flat tire, you blew your transmission, your engine, whatever. Like you could have planned to have the greatest of journeys, the greatest of days, but if you're broke down on the road, ain't nothing happening. You ain't headed in no direction. Second thing that came to my mind when you said that is, and I think it's a Mike Tyson quote maybe, like everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And yeah. And.

Liz Moorehead (50:35.224)
I've never heard that.

George B. Thomas (50:39.672)
And so for me, like Monday morning was that punch in the face because I had a whole week planned out, by the way. I had meetings and, you know, no kidding had two different sales calls for, you know, potential new clients. And like my whole week was planned out like, hey, OK, let's rock and roll. Punched in the face, broke down on the side of the road, whatever analogy you want to use. None of that shit mattered.

Liz Moorehead (50:44.184)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (51:09.272)
Immediately, none of it mattered.

because I had no control on what happened next. As soon as I heard the words, we're gonna admit you overnight. Houston, we have a problem. The next five days that I thought was gonna be, I have no clue if they're gonna be. And so like, you can plan all you want, but if you don't put in the safeguards,

If you don't make sure that you, the human, are giving yourself the love, the self -care, the, you know, exercise, the whatever it is for you, to make sure that you can mobilize that plan. If you're not watching out for the potholes that are gonna be in the way, which by the way, sometimes you just can't see them.

then your plan's gonna go to shit.

And by the way, when that happens, guess what? It's just time to make a new plan.

George B. Thomas (52:24.92)
Alright, let's make a new plan from where we're at right now. I think that's where iterating from where you're at in life becomes a superpower.

Liz Moorehead (52:37.559)
So this is your first day back, technically and fully. You were technically, technically and fully. You did make a small guest appearance on Friday afternoon, but we're not going to count that.

George B. Thomas (52:41.88)
Technically, yeah.

George B. Thomas (52:47.576)
Yeah, I wasn't missing that. I wasn't missing that podcast.

Liz Moorehead (52:51.447)
I know, it was so funny before you said you were coming back, I'm like, okay, I've got three different outlines here. By the way, we now have three emergency pod outlines if we ever need them. But let's count today, it's your first full day back. It's the beginning of a fresh week.

George B. Thomas (52:59.544)
Yes.

George B. Thomas (53:07.48)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (53:11.96)
Yep.

Liz Moorehead (53:14.263)
What mindset are you going in with today? Because, and the reason I ask this question is this, with a little context.

last year, what was it over the summer? I had, it was a different health scare, but I, I collapsed over the summer. I had to take, I had to take time off. And I remember that first Monday I came back. I'll be honest. I didn't handle it well. I was stressed out of my mind. I had missed an entire week. I mean, if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, we know this year, Liz is a bit different from last year, Liz. But when I think about,

the way you might be mentally coming back, you are sitting here reevaluating your relationship with self care. You are sitting here thinking about, well, I'm not, we talked about boundaries in our most recent work in progress check -in. You're reevaluating your boundaries. So how are you coming back today? What is the mindset, the mentality of this first day back where you could theoretically say, well, I'm a week behind. I gotta go, go, go, go, go, go, you know?

George B. Thomas (53:55.064)
Yep.

George B. Thomas (54:14.296)
Yeah, well, I know two things to be true. One, after we stop recording this, I'm going to walk my happy butt outside of my front door and I'm going to go for like a 30 minute walk because I just need to go for a 30 minute walk and I'm going to get some fresh air and I'm going to just get my wits about me. I also know at some point today, I'm going to drive down the road and I'm going to go get me some.

pickled mushrooms because I want some pickled mushrooms. They're yummy and they're fermented and I just want some. And I'm also going to get some aquarium water. So I already know that there's some things that I'm focused on that aren't work related. Now, with that said, I know that I have a little bit of ketchup to do, but I'm going at this ketchup in a mindset of I can only get done what I can get done.

Liz Moorehead (54:45.27)
So good.

George B. Thomas (55:10.36)
And so I'm going to try to just chop off as much as I can in the time that I have allotted. And I'm going to do it with some nice music playing. I'm going to do it at a what I would call a decent pace. Like I don't want to get in the, OK, let's go. Let's get it done. Like, no, I already know that I can get a lot of things that I get done, done quicker than most mere mortal humans.

So I'm just going to get in the paces and I'm going to start to do the work that I need to do. And the good thing is.

I have a lot of hours today that I don't have meetings. And so I look at today and I go, not a lot of meetings, good amount of time for work, good amount of time to keep me being me and who I want to be moving forward. So there's no real like stress right now or frustration in the day ahead of me.

It's just again, it's kind of that new plan iterated based on where I'm at. It's let's make sure I'm taking care of the humans. Let's make sure people know that I'm back. Let's make sure that I'm setting the team up for success and like asking where we're at or what do they need or things like that. And. And just going from there. Honestly.

Liz Moorehead (56:42.677)
Okay, last question.

George B. Thomas (56:45.3)
boy.

Liz Moorehead (56:47.637)
What are the questions you found yourself asking yourself during this experience that you want our listeners to ask themselves before they're in the hospital?

George B. Thomas (57:06.296)
Hmm.

George B. Thomas (57:17.304)
Now you have to remember, I wouldn't want any of the listeners to be as hard on themselves as I potentially may be on myself. So you can reverse engineer these questions to work best for you.

One of the major questions that I was asking myself at the beginning of this journey was, why am I so hard -headed? Why am I so stubborn?

Part of also what was in my brain, and I guess this is less a question, more of a statement, is I kept telling myself, you're smarter than this. You're smarter than this. And so if I go into why was I telling myself that, it's like,

I would ask myself and I would want the listeners to ask themselves, why do you continually ignore?

what is right in front of your face.

George B. Thomas (58:37.848)
Why do you expect it to just be okay when you're not actively doing something to make it better? Like...

George B. Thomas (58:54.328)
If you have the knowledge,

Why don't you have a plan? And if you have a plan, why aren't you executing it? Like, you know what I mean by that? Because by the way, I have the knowledge. This isn't my first rodeo with inflammation. Heck, I had a plan and I was executing it, but I still have the plan, but I wasn't executing it. So like you have to like start to dive in to ask like, why?

Like, why is it not important enough? And how can you actually juke your brain to make it important enough before it does end up in the hospital? Which, by the way, we're talking about hospital.

but this for you could be.

drinking and a DUI. This for you could be a spouse and a divorce. This for you could be anything that you can, bankruptcy and finances. Like this could be, how do you have the education, the plan and the execution and the self -awareness of the thing that is right in front of your face?

George B. Thomas (01:00:21.72)
before you get to the...

Presibus.

of falling down into what might be this canyon for me four days in the hospital.

George B. Thomas (01:00:45.912)
And the big question that's come into my mind right now is...

Why don't you think you're worth all of them?

George B. Thomas (01:00:59.64)
And I don't have an answer for that. And that actually kind of scares me right now. Like, why didn't I think for the last year to two years that I wasn't worth the plan? That I wasn't worth the education? And more importantly, that I wasn't worth the execution?

to keep me.

potentially away from having the last week that I just had.

George B. Thomas (01:01:33.88)
Why don't you think you're worth it?

George B. Thomas (01:01:38.424)
Because you are. If you're listening to this podcast and you're on this journey and you're trying to become 1 % better each and every day, if you're trying to be a good human along the way, if you're one of those folks that wants to see the ripples and you think about leaving a legacy, then just realize you're worth it. You're worth every piece of education, every plan, every execution on this journey for a life beyond your default.