The Parts You Can’t See Might Provide Your Strongest Support

The Parts You Can’t See Might Provide Your Strongest Support - SuperPumped Life Episode 012

Ben Walters: [00:00:00] Is your physical or mental health not quite right and you just can't put your finger on why? Are you struggling and something critical feels compromised or broken, but you're not sure what that is? Today I wanna share a story about how neglecting the things we don't see could undermine our feelings of being strong, being healthy, and, of course, being SuperPumped.

Ben Walters: Welcome to the SuperPumped Life Podcast. I am your host, Ben Walters, and I'm coming to you from a bedroom, and some of you are probably saying, why in the world is this crazy guy in a bedroom? Guess what? I am about to tell you. So this bed that I'm standing next to looks fantastic. It has this fancy, custom, I guess you'd call it a quilt or a crochet, with all kinds of flowers and vines and it really is beautiful.

Ben Walters: And then there's a couple of nice throw blankets and a unicorn, and it looks like a handmade, I guess, rooster from my [00:01:00] daughter. So all these beautiful things. Then five pillows with matching pillowcases. So on the surface, this looks fantastic, right? Everybody would want to be in this bed. What if I told you this bed isn't going to be great. All this promise that you see on the surface is actually not what it seems.

Ben Walters: So I want to tell you a story. Couple weeks ago, actually last week, my daughter called me off at graduate school and she has been complaining about how her back's hurting and she isn't sleeping well. And a lot of that for me I've just thought I know you're in your toughest year of graduate school, sometimes our mental health and our physical health, they tie together and you're just in a grind right now. You just gotta suck it up and power through.

Ben Walters: But on this particular day when she called me, she was holding up a broken, she actually FaceTimed me, not called, and she was holding up this broken board and I'm like, okay, you're holding the broken board. I don't know. Did you join karate [00:02:00] class or I thought, should I be celebrating the broken board? Or was there a bigger problem? And I'm thinking, what kind of board is that?

Ben Walters: She quickly said, this is the board under my bed. And then she held up another one and she's like, both these are broken. And then she showed me, she panned over with her phone, and she showed me that the other two were bowed way down.

Ben Walters: She said, all of a sudden it hit me why my back is hurting, why I'm not sleeping. She said, my bed wasn't giving me proper support. She went on to say, I really need you to fix this because I got a big test Monday, a huge week. I can't keep not sleeping. All of a sudden, I kicked into high-gear as her dad.

Ben Walters: This is the kind of call you live for as a dad to be needed by your adult children. We kind of go out to pasture after a while, but when they need you, boy you wanna kick it into gear. So my brother and I, we cut up some boards, headed over to Columbus and it was cool because instead of a really skinny board, we got these really big, super over engineered boards and we decided.

Ben Walters: [00:03:00] We're gonna fix that bed. It's exactly what we did. We went over there and what we found was this bed that she had was, it was a great bed. It was really cool, and I guess she got it thrifting or somewhere. But somewhere along the way, these particular boards that had broken are called aftermarket boards. They are not the original boards that go with the bed. They weren't quite designed as well as the original stuff.

Ben Walters: I was thinking about that in our lives as we think about the beds we make and the support we need to uphold us and make us healthy and happy. Most of us, we come out of the womb with our factory support, and that's our parents, right? And they are responsible for everything of supporting us in those initial years of life. But over time, that factory support from our parents can go away. It can break if maybe we had a rift over politics, or sexual orientation, or any number of things parents and children can have rifts over.

Ben Walters: Or in my case, my mom [00:04:00] died about a year and a half ago. That lifeline of factory support that I had from the day I was born is no longer there. Then you begin to think, okay. What are my aftermarket options? How can I gain that support?

Ben Walters: What it made me realize was that the support we're born with often weakens over time. We have got to fill that need. We have got to figure out how to build that support system back up. So the first question I want you to answer, if you want a SuperPumped Life, is how strong is your support system? You can make everything look really cool on social media and to the rest of the world, but if that stuff is all just facade and the support below you isn't holding up, you're gonna be hurting, your back is gonna hurt. You're not gonna be sleeping well, you're gonna struggle through life, right? So ask yourself, how strong is my support system?

Ben Walters: Then the second question is, is that support system strong enough for my current needs? Because our need for support ebbs and flows over the course of [00:05:00] our life. I'll give you an example. This particular bed, if it's just my daughter and she's in it, probably sufficient, right? Just simple things. But if she has three big German shepherds and our rescue dog all in the bed, and they're jumping around and having a grand old, high energy, good time, guess what? Probably not sufficient. That's when that support system breaks.

Ben Walters: And it's the same thing in a more real sense in her life. The support she had maybe an undergrad or is a high school student that was sufficient, now that she's in graduate school in a really difficult year, that support system needs to be stronger. It needs to lift her up even more. I also wanna say that sometimes those around us who we might think are gonna be sources of support, if they're in the same soup we are, it's hard for them to both keep themselves in their own heads above water and support you.

Ben Walters: And when I think of my daughter in her situation, she has great roommates, [00:06:00] they're best friends, and they love hanging out together. But the reality is they are all up to their ears in a really challenging program. They can't really support one another. They can commiserate, but they each need to seek that support from somewhere else. So think about is your support good enough for your present needs?

Ben Walters: And then the third thing I want you to think about, 'cause support roles in seasons. There are seasons in my own life where I've needed a lot of support, but I'm in a season now where I'm in a position both with time and money and just emotionally, that maybe I can give more support than I need to be given.

Ben Walters: One of the things I was thinking about was, okay, my brother and I reacted quickly to support my daughter when her support system broke, right? We jumped into action, we drove to Columbus, we cut the boards, we fixed the bed. That thing is over-engineered. She could run the vac truck over that thing and it's gonna be fantastic, and that's great, right? And [00:07:00] many of us are good with that. But do you know what the SuperPumped Life does?

Ben Walters: The SuperPumped Life proactively seeks out. If you're in a season where you are able to give more than you need, seek out people who need support because so many people are hurting right now. They put up the beautiful facade and they've got all the matching things that look fantastic, but deep down they're hurting. How can we support them?

Ben Walters: I think about, people in our church who maybe need support, or in our neighborhood, or that coworker who's just struggling with a lot of things, right? How can we support them? Here's the cool thing. We don't do that because we are seeking something back. We don't do that because we're seeking anything in return. But if you've ever given in a meaningful way to others, you know what I'm talking about. It comes back to you a hundred fold. The feelings you have, and the goodwill, and just the joy that it brings you. The joy my brother and I had driving back from Columbus, like high [00:08:00] fiving, getting some QT Big Drinks on the way home, knowing we fixed that and we supported my daughter. That feeling is invaluable.

Ben Walters: So as you think about your SuperPumped Life, just three quick questions to ask yourself every day. How strong is my support system? Is it sufficient for my current needs? And if it's not, where can I get that additional support? Then if you happen to be in a season where you've got everything going on, how can you help fix the broken support systems of others, but also how can you proactively seek out others to support them?

Ben Walters: Thank you for joining me today. I am so glad you were here. I want you to make your beds really nice every day. That's an important thing. But every once in a while, pull that mattress up when you flip it and make sure those support slats are strong and sturdy.

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Ben Walters: Thanks for joining me today on the SuperPumped Life podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, I have two really quick next steps for you. First, [00:09:00] subscribe or follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube so you don't miss future shows. And second, jump on 

Ben Walters: over to superpumped.com where there are all kinds of great tips and tools for you to launch your SuperPumped Life.

Ben Walters: Keep well and I'll see you next time.