I welcome author and motivational speaker Amberly Lago to the SoCal podcast studios to tell her amazing and inspiring story. Amberly is the author of True Grit and Grace: Turning Tragedy into Triumph. Amberly offers a message of personal potential, acceptance, and living life to the fullest. Unlike the next motivational speaker or peak performance advocate, Amberly comes across as authentic, vulnerable, and overall the real deal. She offers up empowering insights and in the next breath describes how tough it is to use the tools we know we have at our disposal in daily life. Her story is going to blow your mind and give you a fresh perspective about managing whatever challenges you face each day with a little more sensitivity and gratitude.  

One day in May of 2010, Amberly was coming home from another great day as a personal trainer and fitness enthusiast (hitting a PR for an 11-mile run that day!) and sustained a terrible motorcycle accident. She was T-boned by an inattentive driver, thrown 30 feet down busy Ventura Boulevard in LA. Her right leg was nearly shattered and the femoral artery was severed. Refusing the option to amputate her leg, Amberlyendured 34 surgeries and a severe complication of contracting the dreaded condition of Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. As Amberly details her story of suffering and recovering, beautiful insights arise from the nuances of the conversation and her speech patterns, so listen carefully! She talks about how her husband’s support carried her through the dark times, and came in different forms—including setting her straight when she was complaining too much. She talks about the “toolbox” she has developed to deal with her chronic pain and other life challenges, which consists of keeping physical, mental, and spiritually fit each day. She realizes that the chronic foot pain she deals with to this day serves as a natural governor for her to keep her Texas-tough competitive intensity in check, and emphasize downtime and stress management techniques.  

Amberly talks about the importance of mindfulness—staying focused on the present and redirecting any “coulda, shoulda, woulda” ruminations from the past, or stressing about the future. She talks about how her morning routine gets her into a healthy mindset to tackle her day, especially the practice of expressing gratitude for three things in your life as soon as you wake up. Amberly offers up some memorable quotes, but in her case, it’s not just a pithy quote, it’s how she really lives her life. “Start where we are, use what we have, do what we can.” Can it get any better than that for direction on how to live a happy, healthy life?!  

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