00;00;01;06 - 00;00;33;12
Speaker 1
Podcasting from Sacramento, California, The Big Tomato. This is the Iron Mine Coach Show, a weekly podcast about peak performers and the secrets they use to create success in business and their personal lives. Here, interviews with special guests, top performers from around the world. And now here's your host, coach, author and Iron Mind performance expert Rich Green.
00;00;33;21 - 00;00;48;18
Speaker 2
Hey. Hey. We are back for another episode of The Iron Coach Show. This is a winner. I got to tell you, folks, I've got a really interesting guest today. Your name is Joy Cooper. Say hi to the audience, Joy.
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Speaker 3
Hey, guys. How's it going?
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Speaker 2
Joe, Joy, I got the privilege of speaking, seeing Joy speak at a conference, and I was blown away with her story. I mean, I think you're going to be blown away with her story. You know, we we have guests that talk about overcoming challenges in their life and hurdles and catastrophe things and disappointments and things like that, because this show is about being able to push beyond that and find a winning in your life and a joy.
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Speaker 2
I tell everybody this at the beginning of the show, and I know that you're prepped anyway because you're just so put together. But but I'm going to ask you at the end, I'm going to ask you for your code and for our listeners, the code is your motto, your credo, your process, your belief. Whatever it is in life that allows you to push through the challenges that we all face, get to the other side and feel like a winner.
00;01;51;14 - 00;02;00;12
Speaker 2
Feel like you can keep going on no matter what happens. So Will Joy will be looking forward to hearing that. Towards the end of our time together.
00;02;02;01 - 00;02;03;29
Speaker 3
I'll be processing it back here for everybody.
00;02;04;17 - 00;02;10;10
Speaker 2
Okay. Sounds good. Sounds good. So you're. I see you lounging on your couch there. What's going on?
00;02;11;06 - 00;02;33;01
Speaker 3
Oh, so I just thought. Lazy Friday? No, I. I recently had to have surgery about six weeks ago, and I broke a titanium rod in my leg, in my left leg. So somehow I snapped it. You're not supposed to break titanium, but I did. And now I had to have reconstructive surgery. And I've got an enormous ring fixator on it.
00;02;33;10 - 00;02;50;14
Speaker 3
For those of you who don't know what it is, it's three pieces of metal that are strategically put around my foot and screwed into my bone fragments. And it's putting everything together. So the good part is my legs growing. It's doing well, but I have to keep it elevated because it likes to swell up and look like a football.
00;02;50;22 - 00;02;55;16
Speaker 3
So that is why I am the quarry is sitting on my couch and.
00;02;55;26 - 00;02;59;12
Speaker 2
I can't see but that probably some bullet chips on the side.
00;02;59;14 - 00;03;02;27
Speaker 3
Oh no, that's well out of sight. That's within reach. Don't worry.
00;03;04;20 - 00;03;24;01
Speaker 2
There. There's a story, I'm sure, about why you had surgery. Because. Because I know I heard it, and I don't want to just jump right into it, you know? But I do want to hear it. Definitely. And then you tell me a little bit about, you know, what is it you do? And I think that probably leads into an end of the story.
00;03;24;01 - 00;03;30;06
Speaker 2
You've got a career or a passion. You know, what would get you fired up?
00;03;31;15 - 00;03;59;15
Speaker 3
So I love aviation. That's that's kind of my my thing. I enjoy flying and working around planes and everything that goes into airline operations. My corporate job is as an operations manager for United Airlines at the Dulles Airport, and I sit in the tiny little room in the middle of the ramp where no one can find. And I basically coordinate, along with all my other coworkers, everything that goes into a flight.
00;03;59;15 - 00;04;25;22
Speaker 3
So catering, cleaning, costumes, security, people getting on the plane, people getting off the plane, all of those things, all the tiny little nuances that you don't think of. You think you just go check a bag, get on a plane and go to your destination. But there are all those little bitty things. And that's something that I love. I love the aviation aspect of it, but I also love the responsibility and the detail oriented ness and really just getting to see this whole magical piece come together.
00;04;26;06 - 00;04;42;28
Speaker 3
And then also learning how it all comes together so that when things pop up that don't work the way that we want them to. Like, you lose your bag. I get to track it down and try to find out where it's at, and then you're the one getting it back to, you know, I'm not the one, but I.
00;04;43;10 - 00;05;00;07
Speaker 3
I enjoy understanding how it works so that I don't have to send people on rat races and I could try to go find it myself. Or, you know, we had people leave a wallet on a plane, but the plane's already at the maintenance hangar. And so, hey, I know the people at the maintenance hangar, and so we'll find it and get it back to them.
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Speaker 3
And it's those little things that I enjoy doing, but I love learning all the different aspects of what I'm doing and then putting those to play, to be able to, you know, make the operation run the smoothest as possible.
00;05;13;27 - 00;05;15;13
Speaker 2
So you've been at United for a while?
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Speaker 3
I have. I've been I worked for an express carrier for about four years before I was a dispatch manager, and then I went to United for a little over five years now. So I'm almost at that ten year mark.
00;05;28;25 - 00;05;52;17
Speaker 2
While I I'm well, I don't work for United, but I've flown United for a long time. I just see United as my airline of choice. I fly and therefore I'm a a million miler, white and yellow. So those are really hard domestic miles. I didn't do a long, lot of long international trips till later in my my business career.
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Speaker 2
And so but you know, it, you know 30 plus years as a passenger so thanks you know that.
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Speaker 3
That's a lot of miles.
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Speaker 2
You know what I think I recall united and see if they're going to pay for a little ad in here for that.
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Speaker 3
But there you go. You should get a sponsorship right?
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Speaker 2
So you're so you're an operations. You're a pilot, I heard.
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Speaker 3
Yes, I have my private pilot. I got that way back when I was about 19 years old. I always wanted to fly when I was young. We grew up learning about World War two things and the like the birth of aviation through World War One, and then fighter pilots. And so and then Vietnam War. And I just thought, you know what?
00;06;35;18 - 00;06;51;10
Speaker 3
Pilots are the smartest, the most daring, the most adventurous. And so obviously, I want to be a pilot. And of course, as a kid, I thought, you know, I want to be a fighter pilot. But then I thought, oh, I'm going to have to run. If I go to basic training, I don't want to run and I get queasy.
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Speaker 3
And honestly, the thought of going into the military and not getting what I wanted scared me from pursuing that which I kick myself now, because I probably would have made it. But that's water under the bridge. But I wanted to be a pilot. So I went to school and I learned I couldn't afford to be a commercial pilot.
00;07;09;21 - 00;07;29;12
Speaker 3
It is incredibly expensive and I couldn't do it. So I got my private pilot and pursued air traffic control because again, I like the I like the behind the scenes stressful portions of it. And I thought, I'll get air traffic control and then I can pursue my career later and fund it myself without going belly up in debt.
00;07;29;23 - 00;07;50;24
Speaker 3
So I got my pilot's license in one semester. Actually, I got it over the summer between semesters. I just cranked out a bunch of hours and got my license, but I've flown ever after that. I'm a dispatcher also, so airline dispatcher, you can fly on the flight deck, jump seat. And I've done at least probably 60 flights in the flight deck jump seat.
00;07;51;05 - 00;08;18;28
Speaker 3
So a lot of observing. And there's only maybe two times I fell asleep up there because I just I liked observing and listening and doing what the guys were doing with. No, no, no. We just we sit in a seat. It's called a jump seat. So you're just sitting there watching everything. But since I enjoy it and that's what I do and that's what I'm I'm supposed to be making knowledgeable decisions about, I thought I need to ask questions, I need to observe and kind of be the best that I could be at this aspect of it.
00;08;18;28 - 00;08;30;08
Speaker 3
So I don't I don't have my instrument a commercial, but I have flown planes before and if I had to take one up now would be difficult because I've got broken feet. So that's hard to fly.
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Speaker 2
But it happens a lot. Yeah. And, and I like that. Add to that you have actually that was the thing that I heard that why I just really wanted to have you on the show because because of that, because you're very resilient person. And if if you don't mind, I'd love it if you would just tell the listeners The big thing that I heard and and I think a lot of people when they hear this, when they hear what happened, they say, well, why are you still flying?
00;09;09;15 - 00;09;26;28
Speaker 3
Yeah. So three years ago, back in summer 2019, I was in Alaska on vacation with my best friend who is out here. I'm from Virginia, so she was my housemate and friend and we went out to Alaska to visit her aunt and uncle. And we were at a small little glacier lake. You can only get there by air.
00;09;26;29 - 00;09;50;25
Speaker 3
See, we were out there spending the last three days hiking, boating, everything. It was beautiful. Clear weather. Best vacation ever. We're taking off to come back. We checked the weather. It was good. Seven miles, visibility, no wind, perfect day to fly. So we took off, came back around. We were flying up through the mountains and all of a sudden we hit smoke.
00;09;51;11 - 00;10;15;21
Speaker 3
There's a wildfire about 300 miles to the west of us. It was 10,000 acre wildfire, I believe. Wow. Had been uncontained for a long period of time. They they had been fighting it for a long time. And when we were in Anchorage, there was always this light haze. He could smell smoke and there was a constant haze, but it was nothing more than just, you know, like super early morning light fog.
00;10;15;28 - 00;10;20;13
Speaker 2
I'm very privileged to find joy in living here in Northern California.
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Speaker 3
Oh, I'm sure.
00;10;21;20 - 00;10;23;06
Speaker 2
We have, you know, fire season.
00;10;24;01 - 00;10;25;14
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah, it's fire.
00;10;25;14 - 00;10;31;20
Speaker 2
Seems like 10,000 acres. That's a lot. And uncontained for a long period. I guess in Alaska, that can happen.
00;10;32;20 - 00;10;55;25
Speaker 3
It happened relatively frequently. But this year was worse than like the last few years that they had had. And one of the most recorded or one of the worst recorded times, I believe, is what I was told. But we went from crystal clear skies to swoop like you couldn't see anything outside our window. And we were flying between mountain valleys.
00;10;55;25 - 00;11;15;06
Speaker 3
We were just shooting valleys. We weren't on top of the mountains. We were about 2500 feet. The tops of the mountains were 5000 feet. So you do kind of like the mental picture math there. It's not great. And when we hit the smoke, we couldn't see anything. So the pilots flying around, I'm thinking he's lived here 20 years.
00;11;15;06 - 00;11;33;02
Speaker 3
They've flown this route for 20 years or more. He knows where he's going. We're just going to probably continue going to Anchorage, even though probably should land this floatplane on one of these lakes around here. But the best thing I could do right now is keep my mouth shut because he needs to fly this plane and offer whatever I could do.
00;11;33;02 - 00;11;51;12
Speaker 3
But I like he doesn't know what I'm capable of and it's his plane. So we just kept quiet. He told everyone, Look out the plane for trees. And that was our collision avoidance was, Hey guys, look out. And if you see a tree holler. So we did and be allowed to go in just.
00;11;51;12 - 00;12;04;21
Speaker 2
A second here. Your picture. I got this picture. There's mountains, there's valleys. You're flying through the valleys between the mountains and close to the trees.
00;12;04;21 - 00;12;23;29
Speaker 3
Yes. So what I found later was he was actually hugging the side of the mountains so that we could turn around because about five miles up this road, we were flying over the top of a highway about five miles up the road. It's split. And there was a wider portion that we could do a 180 and get back out of the pass.
00;12;23;29 - 00;12;41;22
Speaker 3
And so he was intentionally hugging the side of the mountain to be able to make that turn, which he did. He made the turn, but the alarms were going off the whole time. The terrain avoided. System was just yelling at us like terrain, terrain, pull up, pull up. And they put the most obnoxious voice on that so that people will listen to it.
00;12;42;02 - 00;13;06;19
Speaker 3
But again, he knew what he was doing and so he was trying to clear the messages on his screen that kept popping up. We had someone else call in on the radio and said they were in the same exact area, flying over the same exact highway, but did not give their altitude. So we're like, we're we're in the same two square mile area and you're not going to give an altitude.
00;13;06;24 - 00;13;23;13
Speaker 3
We can't see anything. And so he's trying to communicate to this guy saying, hey, what altitude are you at? We're at I believe at this time we were like 700, 800 feet. And he goes, Oh, I'm only 100 feet. I'm flying the buzzing the highway because I can't see what we should have been doing. But if we would have, we would have hit the guy.
00;13;23;14 - 00;13;46;09
Speaker 3
So I figured all of that out. And then the next thing that happens is we hit turbulence and the turbulence pops the plane up, throws my door open. I reach out, grab my door, slam it, thinking, we're still 20 minutes from Anchorage. I can hold on for 20 minutes. Like you got this. But the turbulence didn't stop. It basically jackknifed straight into the mountain.
00;13;46;24 - 00;13;54;11
Speaker 3
He saw the mountain just before we had pulled up on the plane. And I don't know if you've ever felt what a stall feels like, but a stall.
00;13;54;23 - 00;13;55;27
Speaker 2
You don't want to dry.
00;13;55;29 - 00;14;14;18
Speaker 3
No, you don't. You don't. It gives you this pit of your stomach like everything's just floating and completely uncontrolled and falling out of the sky. And as a pilot, we practice those. Like we intentionally stall our planes, We learn how to get out of it because it's one of the frequent problems that can happen if you overcorrect things.
00;14;15;16 - 00;14;32;12
Speaker 3
But the way that you correct it is you put the nose down, you pick up speed and then you pull it back up. Well, we're in the mountains. We can't put a nose down, pick up any speed. We are just falling into whatever we hit as we were falling. I just kind of felt this piece though, kind of like you're going to be okay.
00;14;32;18 - 00;14;51;29
Speaker 3
And so I relaxed. I'm still holding the door closed and pit of my stomach is like 10 million butterflies in it. But I'm like, okay, we're going to be okay. The next thing I know, I woke up and we were on the side of a mountain and all I could see was we crashed. We crashed into the same exact mountain we tried to avoid.
00;14;51;29 - 00;15;13;12
Speaker 3
We basically just did this big circle loop and crashed back into the same exact mountain. And thankfully, we hit well, not thankfully, but we hit like nose in butt head up. So it wasn't upside down. It was a little bit crooked, but it was as it looked like we had almost intended to land there because it was mostly up.
00;15;14;10 - 00;15;44;05
Speaker 3
But the my friend and her aunt who were in the back, they didn't have a shoulder harness and unfortunately they they didn't know what hit them. They were gone on impact. And the blessing was that they didn't experience any pain, any anything like that. The engine of the plane was completely buried inside the mountain. When I woke up from the the right seat, the copilot seat, all I could see was like a few pieces of twisted metal from the engine cowling.
00;15;44;05 - 00;16;01;02
Speaker 3
That's it. And broken glass, of course, because the windshield shattered and there were trees everywhere. Like I thought we were in the jungles of Vietnam. And I thought, Oh, we're watching. We were soldiers. But then there was no Mel Gibson. And so that was my kind of like Wake up call to, look, you're not in a movie. This is real life.
00;16;01;28 - 00;16;25;00
Speaker 3
You have to wake up and, you know, make the next decisions and make good decisions. So I decided, okay, well, the pilot, I yelled at the two in the backseat and my yelling at them woke him up. But unfortunately, he was in such bad condition, he couldn't move at all. And I thought, well, the only one that's going to get help is me.
00;16;25;13 - 00;16;42;00
Speaker 3
And from what I could tell, I hadn't broken my neck yet because I could move it. And I reached up to push the door of the plane open and crawl out. And the bottom portion of my arm just kind of went swing. And it was like a pendulum. Like it was only held on by a small patch of skin.
00;16;42;29 - 00;17;02;09
Speaker 3
And my brain was like, Oh, that's not good, but that's my first injury. So I looked at him like, not bleeding too much, going a little bit, but not to where I'm going to like, worry about blood loss or anything. And I was still going to make it useful because at this point I'm like, I am getting out of this plane.
00;17;03;00 - 00;17;03;07
Speaker 2
And.
00;17;03;10 - 00;17;24;08
Speaker 3
Not dying here. It's not going to happen. Of course, my first fear was fire because we had fuel in the wings, but I sniffed multiple times and all I could smell was like the fresh dirt and clean air. So I thought, okay, that's good. But then and then Alaska and there's bears. And my friend had explicitly warned me not to get eaten by a bear.
00;17;24;23 - 00;17;26;10
Speaker 3
So.
00;17;26;10 - 00;17;27;17
Speaker 2
Or. Or was this like.
00;17;27;20 - 00;17;49;00
Speaker 3
Well, it was, it was half and half. It was just like, just don't get to get eaten by a bear. And I'm like, Don't worry, I won't. But thankfully, like, that was not an actual issue. But these are all the thoughts that are going in my mind is I'm stuck in this plane. So I started trying to get out and I thought, well, I could pull myself up if I could just get my arm around the portion of the windshield.
00;17;49;00 - 00;18;08;07
Speaker 3
So I looked at my fingers and even though, like the bones were all shattered and everything, I could still move my fingers. And so I looked at my fingers and I walked them up the buttons of the dashboard and then over the side of the dashboard until I got my the top of my arm, the connected good part around the side of the windshield.
00;18;08;07 - 00;18;30;07
Speaker 3
And I pulled myself up four times because each time I could only get so far before it hurt like heck and I would just relax. And as soon as I relaxed, I would fall back down and I realized I was just wearing myself out. I couldn't get out. My legs were trapped. The door was stuck. It's no good keeping trying to get out of here.
00;18;30;07 - 00;18;50;11
Speaker 3
I was wearing myself out, so I thought, when rescue arrives, I'm going to need to be 100% ready to go, 150% ready to go if it's even possible. So I had leaned over and I took a nap and I made sure I wasn't touching anything or anybody. And I leaned over and I was popped out and I just, you know, knocked out.
00;18;50;11 - 00;19;09;15
Speaker 3
The next thing I heard was helicopters. And that's what woke me up. And the National Guard has sent in their Pave Hawks, the 212, which are para rescue men and also the 210 and to 11. Now they all work together, flying and working that helicopters. But Brian walked around the corner and said, Hello, ma'am, we're with the National Guard.
00;19;09;25 - 00;19;34;14
Speaker 3
We're going to get you out of here. And in my mind, I'm like, again, this is like a movie. It's so cliche, but it's amazing. And my aviation turnover brain kicked in and I go, Hi, I'm Joy. The two in the back are dead. The pilot is seriously injured. I've got a broken elbow and a broken wrist. I found that out after I woke up and that's what we've got.
00;19;34;25 - 00;19;53;22
Speaker 3
And he just looked at me and blinked a couple of times. It was like, okay, we'll get you out of here. But that was mind is probably like for one, How are you alive for another, how do you know all of this? And you're giving me this normal saying, turn over. And my body said, okay, you did everything you needed to do.
00;19;54;02 - 00;20;24;15
Speaker 3
They're here. They're going to take care of everything else. And it shut down. And I went spiraling way down. The guys told me later that I would circling the drain just about to, you know, head on out of this life. And if it wasn't for their super fast action and everybody involved, like I was told that the pilots basically pulled the guts out of that helicopter, getting it to the hell to the emergency room in time for me to get much needed blood and everything else.
00;20;25;03 - 00;20;42;12
Speaker 3
I woke up about five days later out of after the hospital. I had a few lucid moments in there, but not too many. And I found out I broke a lot more with my elbow and my wrist. I broke my back and both of my legs and I broke my femur in two places. It just like, cracked in two places.
00;20;42;16 - 00;20;42;25
Speaker 2
Oh.
00;20;43;17 - 00;21;03;29
Speaker 3
Yeah. I don't know how you do that. And I broke a rib and punctured my lung, and I broke my back, which had the four spinal cord hairs associated with the bone fragments that were there and the spinal cord tears and the broken back. I was paralyzed from the waist down for the most part, and they told me probably never going to walk again.
00;21;04;16 - 00;21;25;07
Speaker 3
So just get used to it. Just be grateful that you survived and whatever you're going to get back. You have one year to get back, whatever you can get back. And then after that you have up to five years where you get a little bit of motion back. But one year, the biggest gap. So do what you can, figure it out for yourself.
00;21;25;07 - 00;21;58;19
Speaker 3
Not necessarily. They had physical therapists and everything, but it was this is the gap of time. You did not have a spinal cord cut, you had a tear. So in my positive mind, I went, Oh, great, it's just a tear. Like he repair the tear. It'll be fine. I'll be able to walk again. But I did have to slowly come to the realization that while I am able to get some motion back and I have feeling it's not the same, but one year after that accident, I did walk back into work and I can walk.
00;21;58;28 - 00;21;59;08
Speaker 2
That is.
00;21;59;08 - 00;22;00;13
Speaker 3
Not seen.
00;22;00;13 - 00;22;12;04
Speaker 2
You. I've seen you. I'm smiling. It's kind of weird if anybody's watching you while you're telling the stories. Because I've seen you. I've seen you walk, I've seen you jump up on stage. Maybe not jump, but, you know, you were pretty.
00;22;12;06 - 00;22;12;26
Speaker 3
I can't quite.
00;22;12;26 - 00;22;17;27
Speaker 2
Remember. So one year you walked back in one year?
00;22;18;16 - 00;22;41;26
Speaker 3
Yeah. And I mean, before that, I was walking. That was I was released to go back to work March of 2020. And we all know what happened in March of 2020. No one went to work. So of course, here I'm trying like I got the release, the return to work, and they said, Nope, nobody's coming back. If anything, we're trying to get rid of people because we want them to take voluntary time off.
00;22;42;09 - 00;23;03;05
Speaker 3
And like that to me was like I was so close. I got myself so far only to be like smack down again. And I had such anxiety that I actually got my cane and limped out to my back porch and had a hand stall and I trimmed my trees with a handsaw because I needed to do something to get all that tension out.
00;23;03;14 - 00;23;29;26
Speaker 3
And I greatly regretted it. The next two days I was so sore, but that it was just kind of like, you know, you come so far and you're almost like, my goal was to get back to work and then it didn't happen. But thankfully, a couple of months later and it was good that I didn't go back because I was able to focus on physical therapy and really getting stronger where I needed to be and I had no business going back that early anyway.
00;23;29;26 - 00;23;47;29
Speaker 3
I would have set myself back. So it turned out to be a good thing because when I did go back to work after work in those three or four days, I was dead. But I still I was able to walk in with a cane and very slowly but I met my goal.
00;23;49;00 - 00;23;58;14
Speaker 2
Absolutely incredible. I'm just I don't even know what to say. You know, I hear the story and you're a sole survivor.
00;23;58;14 - 00;24;18;03
Speaker 3
Yes. The pilot. I'm sorry I left that part out. The pilot did not make it. He held on kind of as a true Captain Wood until the last man was out and taken care of. And I know after that he just let go. But he was in no condition. He he. I don't even know how he made it back.
00;24;18;14 - 00;24;26;21
Speaker 2
I don't know how you made it with everything that you deal with. And and I guess you still deal with a little bit of some challenges.
00;24;26;21 - 00;24;47;03
Speaker 3
Yeah. This is a residual from from that. So with the the my left ankle was smashed so bad it almost was amputated and it was kind of only through prayer and doctors that we got blood flow back in it and I didn't have to amputate it. But in my mind, again, like I was thinking, you know, I've seen people walk around to be perfectly fine with amputations.
00;24;47;22 - 00;25;04;22
Speaker 3
I've seen people do that. I could do it. So whereas to one person it was that's the end of the world. If you lose your foot. To me it was like if I would have woken up with only without that, yeah, I would have taken some getting used to but wasn't going to stop me. So with that foot, they did get it back.
00;25;04;22 - 00;25;12;19
Speaker 3
But it was so badly crushed that they ended up securing it. The surgeon secured it with a titanium rod to hold it together.
00;25;13;00 - 00;25;15;29
Speaker 2
Is that the one that's operated on?
00;25;15;29 - 00;25;35;24
Speaker 3
Well, that's the one. Yeah, it is. They put the rod in it, secure it. But then there wasn't enough bone around the rod to secure the rod, and the rod broke around the screws. And so now, three years later, when what should have lasted me a good 15, 20 years broken, only three years, I'm having to deal with this again.
00;25;35;24 - 00;25;41;19
Speaker 3
So that's been another test of resilience. And you know, how are you going to deal with this now? Sort of a thing.
00;25;42;02 - 00;25;53;27
Speaker 2
You you you seem so calm and positive. What is what's that? What's that all about? How do you how do you do that after something like this?
00;25;55;05 - 00;26;21;24
Speaker 3
I do it by trying to keep an eye on the facts. So the term I use is grounded optimism. So having a grounded, solid idea of what's going on. So in my case, that is knowing that I have restrictions, knowing that I have limitations and knowing that there's possibility for future problems. So like I said, I kind of expected this rod to fail.
00;26;22;08 - 00;26;47;25
Speaker 3
Now I expected it to fail 15, 20 years down the road or, you know, if I gained £50, which isn't going to happen because I have a really fast metabolism. But anyway, I had those. Those are facts. Those are part of life. I have a spinal cord injury. I have the residual numbness and problems like that. And so to be optimistic and think everything's going to be great and perfectly fine, that's not realistic and that's not grounded.
00;26;48;03 - 00;27;09;12
Speaker 3
And so grounded optimism is having a positive outlook, but a practical perspective. So keeping that practicality of this is life. These are my unchangeable. These are things that no matter how hard I try, that's still going to be there. Like my ankle is fixed at a right angle. That's not going to change. But what can I do to fix that?
00;27;09;12 - 00;27;35;09
Speaker 3
I can go to our thoughts, I can get prosthetics, I can get things to support and strengthen that weakness to be able to go. And so having having that perspective of this is be like, this is life. This is what I can do. This is what I'm capable of doing. Now, that doesn't mean that when I found out that I broke this rod and I was going to have to have surgery again, that I did not sit on the edge of my bed and sob.
00;27;35;17 - 00;28;04;08
Speaker 3
I did. I totally did. It was not supposed to happen. I did not. It was messing up my plan for my life. I was supposed to get a new job in Chicago and, you know, relocate and this popped up. So, yeah, I had that moment where I let myself grieve. I let myself feel that pain and sorrow. And then I said, Okay, you've let out this grief and pain and sorrow.
00;28;04;08 - 00;28;25;22
Speaker 3
Now what are we going to do now? What can we change? What can I change right now? What can I do right now that will make this recovery better? And so I started like I cleaned my entire house. I decided, well, I need a refrigerator up in my room. I have a townhouse, so there's lots of stairs, and I'm not going to be able to put weight on a foot.
00;28;25;26 - 00;28;55;16
Speaker 3
So stairs are going to be kind of iffy for me. So I thought, I need a refrigerator upstairs in my room and fill it with protein shakes and healthy food and water and things that I need to eat because I also know a fact of my body is low blood sugar I like to pass out. So to combat that, because I know that's a fact, you know, I did all the prep that I could possibly do before surgery because now I know about it and got all of that, in fact.
00;28;55;16 - 00;29;15;15
Speaker 3
And then when I'm in the pre-op room, the surgeon comes in and goes, Well, instead of replacing the rod and just putting a cast on it, we're going to have to put this big fixator with the pins and the bulkiness. And it weighs about £7. You. And again, I had that moment of, Oh, dear God, no, I've had this before.
00;29;15;15 - 00;29;43;00
Speaker 3
I know what this means. It's it sucks. Like it's not what I wanted to happen and that, you know, that punch in your gut that threatens to double you over completely. But then you. You take the punch, You take a couple of deep breaths and you go, okay, I was prepared for a cast. So that means I'm closer to being prepared for, you know, screws around on pins and an extra £7 on my leg.
00;29;43;21 - 00;30;02;00
Speaker 3
But it able it helped me kind of make those steps so that when the next sucker punch came, I take another deep breath and make that next step. So it was a lot of making choices and being grounded and allowing myself to feel those emotions, not denying it, but then not letting them, you know, sink me down.
00;30;02;11 - 00;30;24;19
Speaker 2
I love that I, I love that grounded optimism. And I just wrote it down because I'm thinking about it here. It's like, you know, people tell you to be optimistic about life and yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. So hard to do, especially when you run into, you know, those those times in your life where you want to be optimistic.
00;30;25;08 - 00;30;52;12
Speaker 2
And I think it's it's it's almost unrealistic. It is so but just be optimistic. But the way you approached it here is well, there's a couple of pieces here that I heard. I want to make sure I'm getting this right. One that I thought was great was just accept it, deal with you know, if you're sad about it, be sad, get it out, but then get all the facts.
00;30;52;26 - 00;31;21;11
Speaker 2
Here's my situation. And I guess that's your grounding, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then and then when you have all of that, you can approach optimism from a different perspective. Then I have all this crap over here. I don't know how I'm going to do it. It's. I have all this crap over here. Okay, now what can I do to, you know, to to Go on, go on and go forward and be optimistic about this in life.
00;31;22;13 - 00;31;41;29
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, we're always going to have those things that come against us. And I've always been an optimistic person. Like if you had a a ruler line of pessimism and optimism, I definitely tended towards the optimism originally anyway. And this is kind of help because like you said, a lot of people will say, oh, just be optimistic.
00;31;42;21 - 00;32;09;17
Speaker 3
And I don't necessarily like that because I know plenty of people who are just like, That's not reality. You're living in a fantasy world, but that's not how it works. And so grounded optimism is my, you know, having reality, having a good firm grasp on reality and choosing to have that optimistic, positive outlook, to look for the good things, even if sometimes it's a it's a small, tiny little thing like, oh, I found a chocolate bar in my dresser.
00;32;09;21 - 00;32;41;21
Speaker 3
Hey, this is one good thing for today, because everything else is terrible. So, you know, accepting the fact that, yeah, life can be really bad and rough and difficult, but, you know, what are you going to do with your mind? How are you going to find either something to work for? So it may not be a positive, optimistic rose colored glasses, sort of a mind, but it'd be like, you know what, here's something I'm going to work for that I'm going to get my house completely ready for the surgery, even though I don't want it, but it's going to happen anyway.
00;32;41;21 - 00;32;49;12
Speaker 3
So I'm going to give myself something to do to work towards building back or getting back to that positive outlook.
00;32;49;26 - 00;33;16;04
Speaker 2
I love that. I love that. God. I just it it just turns this whole you know, a lot of people look upon self-help as a lot of jumbo and hooey. And you know what? Optimism is very powerful. But if you don't have if you don't have flexibility around that, it's not going to work for everybody. And it sounds like I just I mean, I just love this trademark.
00;33;16;04 - 00;33;17;15
Speaker 2
This is this a process?
00;33;17;18 - 00;33;20;15
Speaker 3
It's in process. So, yeah, it's going to be trademark.
00;33;21;03 - 00;33;30;15
Speaker 2
Excellent. Yeah. No, this is absolute. I can see a whole Greensill book out of this one. Joy.
00;33;32;04 - 00;33;55;14
Speaker 3
Well, I'm currently working on my excited about that, you know, then I can write books about all sorts of other fun things later. But yeah, know, when I found that term, I thought, you know what? This this is perfect because it for one it, it kind of describes who I am and my mindset towards yeah, I'm the only survivor of a plane crash and I lost my best friend and two other amazing people I had just gotten to know.
00;33;55;14 - 00;34;12;04
Speaker 3
And then, you know, physically also I had to go through multiple different struggles and, you know, four months in a hospital, continued therapy after that. So how do you not let that get you down? Because I know a lot of people who are just like, I don't think I could have done that. Like, I don't think I could have even gotten off the mountain.
00;34;12;21 - 00;34;30;05
Speaker 3
You know, I would have woken up, freaked out and gone. And I said, you know what? For one, I'm a Christian, so I believe God gave me a grace to go through that. That's what that's the trial that I needed to go through. But also, if that's the trial that you're meant for, then that's what you're meant to do.
00;34;30;13 - 00;34;51;24
Speaker 3
So for me, that's my trial. That's not your trial. You have your own struggles and trials, and guess what? You're going to have the strength to go through your trials. So I don't I always try to say, you know, don't take on the pain and struggle of other people because you're not meant to carry that. You can learn from it and you can get tips and tricks from it, but you're not meant to carry that struggle.
00;34;52;18 - 00;35;05;02
Speaker 3
You just you learn from it. And then when some when your struggle comes up, you go, Oh, okay, Rich did this, Joy did this. I'm going to pull from both stories and plug it in and then see what I can do.
00;35;05;13 - 00;35;29;27
Speaker 2
Yeah, You know, you just said something here that made me go back to think about how you described how you felt when you stalled. You said you had a a calm, peaceful feeling kind of wash over you and and and in my mind, I'm making the connection. And you just said you're a Christian. I'm making the connection that there was a higher power at work there.
00;35;30;01 - 00;35;31;05
Speaker 3
And definitely.
00;35;31;14 - 00;35;35;18
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. The signs are out there, folks.
00;35;36;14 - 00;35;56;14
Speaker 3
Yeah. No, it was definitely faith a lot. That kind of got me through that too, because it's like I had faith that I was going to be okay and therefore I was going to be okay, even though that's kind of blind because it's like, are you really though like and a lot of times I had to, you know, later when I started waking up, I started going, what part of any of this is okay?
00;35;57;04 - 00;36;16;03
Speaker 3
Like, this is not okay? Yeah, I don't know about your definition, but my definition of okay is not being immobile in a hospital bed with every limb broken. And, you know, I couldn't even get my sister's attention when she was asleep. I tried to throw a banana peel at her, and it hit me in the hip. I'm like, Well, that that's not going to work.
00;36;16;15 - 00;36;16;19
Speaker 2
Too.
00;36;16;22 - 00;36;35;25
Speaker 3
And it was, yeah, really bad throw, But I had to kind of come to that realization also of, you know what? This is okay, I'm alive. I have a story I can share with other people. I can encourage myself and I can other people. And hey, you know, on the physical side of it, I can walk, I can do things.
00;36;36;06 - 00;36;47;05
Speaker 3
You know, I went back to dancing again and I learned how to turn on my heel instead of on my toes. So. Well, yes. And you know how the ankle broke. But, you know, tomorrow.
00;36;47;06 - 00;36;53;17
Speaker 2
Tomorrow you're. Yeah, you're you're are you speaking? Are you doing more? Is sharing the story?
00;36;54;08 - 00;37;11;29
Speaker 3
I am, yes. Obviously, being down on surgery is kind of. Yeah, but you're losing that a little bit. But it's actually really good because it gave me some prep time. But yeah, I do keynote speaking and try to get out there and encourage people to be resilient and leaders and overcome and all those good fun things.
00;37;12;08 - 00;37;18;13
Speaker 2
And if enough people that are listening to this want to be able to book you to speak, I mean, how can they do that?
00;37;19;17 - 00;37;39;00
Speaker 3
It's actually pretty easy. You can go to my website it's Joy Cooper pilot dot com and the top little bar it says book join now or I believe it says speaker request form one of those two but you can click up there and also it's got all sorts of bio information podcasts media all sorts of stuff.
00;37;39;01 - 00;38;03;09
Speaker 2
I would make sure we get that in the notes so that people know how to contact you because again, you're a Joyce story, but it's it's just so powerful. And if you are looking for somebody that is inspirational, that can really, you know, make people think about the possibilities of overcoming horrible things that happen in life and how resilient.
00;38;03;18 - 00;38;20;13
Speaker 2
You know, I've just heard you with your story. Definitely go to Joy's website. I'll make make sure you have that as well. Joy. You know, I always ask the question, so I know you're are you could thinking about it the whole time? I have. Yeah. It's what's your code?
00;38;21;10 - 00;38;37;04
Speaker 3
We actually kind of already gave you my code with the the grounded optimism is really my code. Having a positive outlook with a practical perspective and not losing sight of either of those things. So keep your optimism grounded.
00;38;37;23 - 00;38;54;29
Speaker 2
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing us today. Sharing your story, sharing the process, the grounded optimism. I'm going to incorporate that in my life, because I know sometimes how hard it is to be optimistic. But this seems like a reasonable approach.
00;38;56;07 - 00;39;00;21
Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the best of both worlds. Yeah, it works for me.
00;39;00;21 - 00;39;07;22
Speaker 2
So is there anything else you want to you want to share with the audience before we before we part before we go?
00;39;07;22 - 00;39;42;20
Speaker 3
So if anyone's interested, I did write a short story and you're welcome to download that for free. It's a PDF on my website, so it's at Joey Cooper pilot dot com slash story. So it's, it's in a book that I wrote a collaboration book. Yeah. Joy Cooper dot com slash story any of my social media is also Joy Cooper pilot so I try to keep it easy but yeah if you want to if you love reading books that also has tips and tricks on like my journey to recovery as well.
00;39;42;20 - 00;39;45;13
Speaker 3
So go download it, enjoy.
00;39;46;00 - 00;40;03;13
Speaker 2
Joy, thank you so much for being on you. It was it was it was fascinating. It was gut wrenching. It was inspiring. So thanks again, folks. That's it for today. And it's a next time. No, your code, Right?
00;40;04;11 - 00;40;17;25
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the Iron Mind code show with Rich Green. Make sure to visit our Web site. Join us next time for another edition of the Iron Mine Code Show.