Nothing will ever prepare you for that phone call that someone you love is hanging on by a thread. Tragedy does have an impact and plays a powerful role in changing one’s mindset. In this episode, Meridith Alexander shares the harrowing tale of how she journeyed to South America, praying that Schuyler, her daughter, is okay after being crushed by a boulder in Colombia. This experience was the inspiration for this mother and daughter tandem to write the book The Sky is the Limit: Sometimes the Limit is Just the Beginning. This shows tragedy can open up a world of brightness and possibility.
—
Listen to the podcast here:
The Power Of Mindset With Meredith Alexander
My guest is Meridith Alexander. She’s a bestselling author, motivational speaker, high-level coach and expert in mindset. She is a powerhouse entrepreneur with a fascinating story. Meridith, welcome.
Thank you for having me.
Please tell us your story.
Interestingly enough, for what I feel like has been my entire life, I have been immersed and fixated with what makes us our 1%. How do we be the biggest and best version of our self? I went to a top prep school. I went to Georgetown University and was immersed in things like Socrates, Hobbes and Plato. I did things that are more Eastern like aikido and tai chi. Never in a million years did I dream that the real and profound lesson in that area would come together, not in one of those amazing institutions, but in what many people would call the school of bitter experience. For me, that all came to head in 2016.
It was a Friday afternoon in the middle of my busy season in one of my businesses. At 3:15 in the afternoon, the phone rang. My youngest child was on a brief vacation before she returned to building schools and working with the population in Peru. She had taken a vacation to Columbia, South America and had gone on a little rafting trip. She and the group that she was with had made it through the treacherous area and stopped to swim together in this beautiful grotto with a little overhang. They played there, jumped and splashed. They had a grand old time for about 30 minutes. The guide had gone up on the ledge to take a picture. Before they knew it, this huge boulder came catapulting down onto the group. Fortunately, everyone escaped except, unfortunately for us, my daughter.
I got the call that Schuyler, who I connected with the night before, was in a tiny hospital in Colombia fighting for her life. She was in a coma. The injuries had been so massive that they had no idea how she had survived the hour that it took to get her there. There were four Colombian doctors, including one neurosurgeon, who happened to be in this town from Bogota. They were working and going to try to keep her alive long enough for me to come and say my final goodbyes. I won’t kid you, nothing prepares us for that call. There’s such a flurry of emotions. It’s a huge storm of negativity. Yet for me, part of the beauty of it was that it didn’t happen locally. I did have to make this incredible pilgrimage all the way down to Colombia. During that time, I did more soul searching than I think I’ve ever done in my entire life. Where it left me was a place of connectivity in a profound way. Looking back, not only at my daughter’s life but at my own life and areas in my life that I have been able to feel grateful for. I’ve been sometimes furious with God about that horrible time I had to live through.
As I looked at them, they became these elements in this beautiful web that left me in a place where I had the choice. I could look at them and change my story and change their meaning in the context of my life. I could either see in its potentially profound beauty and buy into, or I could choose to rebel against all of it. I could choose to believe that this was yet another example of life being unfair and horrible. I realized that if I went down that path, the worst emotion of all of them would be no way to help my daughter. I would be powerless. I would be victim number two in this and unable to give her any strength. I realized that a lot of these things that I studied, whether they be the Law of Attraction, which I prefer to call the law of attracting the right action. I look at the word attraction as a contraction. To me, it’s best at least inspiration and expectation.
When we’re really at our best, we’re focusing more on the areas of similarity than on the differences. Share on XBy the time I got to Colombia, I had invested in the power of our minds. More specifically, trusting the process of what I call God-universe, that I was diligently and homely looking back at all the stories of my life, looking back at all the stories in my daughter’s life and bringing them to this harmonic place of powerful expectation. I realized that with every story that we tell, every sentence, every word that we utter, there are paragraphs that are invisible. That spider’s web is completely invisible in the morning until you have that one spot where the light hits it perfectly and you see that it’s this amazing scope. For me, I realized that my mind had to buy into this. I genuinely have to get to this place of positive expectation that life began to almost look like it could bend reality. Life began to look like it had to conform to my vision. That’s when it seemed like a miracle in my daughter’s life and therefore in my own life became exponential.
It began with this acceptance, understanding and thought.
It was an investment and a choice. I realized more deeply than ever that the thoughts we think, we get to choose. We get to choose how we tell the story. For example, with Schuyler, it could have been that potentially this child that I loved so amazingly and that was doing incredible things for the world would not make it. Would that story become that she had lived her 22 years so I could complete the rest of my years saying that, “I was the mother of a child who had died at an early age and has been crushed by a boulder?” Did I invest in the belief that even if she didn’t make it, the power of the time that we had together had ignited something? It had been the catalyst for something that could only be erased if I focused on her end, her death. As part of great love for her as her mother, I could focus on the love, life, and laughter that we were both about. I could never lose her even if physically “the worst” happened if she had not survived.
You focused on her life, not on her death. It was a miracle. She did survive.
We were able to get her airlifted from Socorro to Miami about three days after the event, once they saw that her brain was stable enough to travel albeit at sea level. It was an interesting, bizarre flight on a tiny ambulance, heading as the sun set back to Miami. It was many months of her being treated. The first several weeks were for these intense operations. While I had been in Colombia, it had been difficult to communicate with people. We had virtually no Wi-Fi access and no place to plugin or phones to recharge them. What ironically enough ended up happening was that I wanted to keep people posted on how Schuyler was. At the same time, I was investing energy in much how it connects in the world of the law of energy, the law of attracting the right results and action.
She had friends around the world. When I say that I was thinking 100, 150 people, those people would have a vision at her strongest, most vibrant, most powerful and happy self. That is what she would return to. Whereas, if I let that image dip to a point where she was fighting this horrible death monster, I would be inadvertently empowering this monster and making her seem weak. Everybody would be feeding that challenge as opposed to feeding her growth, health and success. The post that I started writing virtually from the beginning was uplifting and focused on everyone being, “If you want to cheer Schuyler on, if you want to support our family, then you go out and you spread this positivity. You be the best version of yourself. You find that inner Schuyler and explode farther than you ever would have dreamed possible.”
Before we knew it, the media had gotten ahold of it. People began sharing it, reading it to people who weren’t on Facebook. Lo and behold, in a matter of a month or so, we had thousands of followers that I began to call the global family all around the world. Even now, it never ceases to surprise us. My daughter and I were in a restaurant with my mom as we took her to the airport. Someone walked up to us and said, “I don’t want to interrupt you. We’ve been following your story. We’re part of your global family.” It’s amazing to see how powerfully we can ignite each other when we’re willing to connect and be vulnerable.
This reminds me of your introductory video about it is personal.
February the 19th is the anniversary of that sweet boulder that came into our lives with such a powerful lesson. The relevance of how we have been able to share some of it and inspire other people has gotten to the point where I’m asked on a regular basis to speak and/or to train people. I teach people how to find these invisible stories that they’re bumping up against over and over again. It’s the old saying that it’s impossible to read the label inside of our bottle. When we’re stuck inside the bottle, we miss sometimes what’s right there in front of our face.
I feel that there has never been a more powerful and pregnant time when people have the potential to make a powerful positive impact on the world. It’s not only us individually “against the world.” It’s us as a global family, us having this wonderful technology where we can connect, ask questions and challenge each other. When we’re at our best, we’re focusing more on the areas of similarity than we are on the areas where there are still some differences to be sorted through and played with. People want more than just a promise of quality service and integrity. People want to know the why of the people behind these businesses. The businesses that succeed, the entrepreneurs who succeed, those who get out there and be heard are willing to be vulnerable and be personal. That’s such a gift.
I remember hearing that business had become automated. How often do you talk to a person when you call a business and that they would need to go back to that personal touch? I’m intrigued by this wave of positive energy you’re starting.
One of the greatest gifts in this whole adventure has been to be able to work with a number of people that I started working with. I helped them shift their vision of their own stories and those words, to start reading the invisible writing that they’ve implanted inadvertently within their own stories. It’s with the best intention most of the time it’s because we were spectacular students when we were young. We’ve got a lot of information. Let’s take it from the business of sales. It’s the difference between someone setting their goal at the beginning of the year and saying, “I can go out there and I’m going to make three sales this week.” That’s what you hear but the invisible dialogue can be one of two things. We still are energetically-based beings, we interpret and we can feel the invisible language.
If I came in and said to you or said to myself even, “I’m going to make three sales today,” the invisible language was, “I don’t know if that’s realistic because it’s always so hard. There’s so much competition.” We may not realize that is going on. Energetically, it’s big and bold. Whereas if we were to say, “I’m going to go out there and make three sales this week.” The invisible language is, “I’ve not only lived through these amazingly great things, but I’ve also lived through some things that knocked me down. I have risen so powerfully and so amazingly that I, single-handedly am the perfect person lined up to help that other person realize that I’m the one who can help them with a solution.” It’s the same sentence, but the invisible language is totally different. Therefore, the results that are going to be created are completely the opposite. Our words and our stories are what make the difference between whether we ever live and reach in our own 1% zone. Whether we wake up in the morning loving our life and feeling bulletproof and feeling like if an obstacle does come our way, we’re going to turn it into more rocket fuel. Bring it on. We’re an amazing planet, an amazing time and we’re amazing species.
For Schuyler and me, I’m still her 24/7 caregiver while I’m running two other businesses. We’re early in her physical recovery process. It should be more of her unfolding and evolution. When the boulder fell, the most severely damaged was the place that regulates her balance, her ability to stand. Even though physically she is powerful enough to stand, once she tries to stand up, her hips start weaving like she’s doing a hula-hoop. She can’t transport herself from a wheelchair to another chair. She needs help with anything and everything. She couldn’t get herself out of bed independently. A lot of people have asked us how that’s not devastating to us and how we don’t get on each other’s nerves. That goes back to the story that we’re telling each other. We’re genuinely buying into the fact that we have a lot of fun together.
It’s all part of this cool evolution for us where we still get to adventure. We are focused on the things that we can do and what we love doing, and of the joy that we still have being together. It’s not even looking on the bright side. People have asked me how we can look on the bright side. I tend to answer them by saying, “Because we’re not looking on the bright side.” To me, the fact that you’re staring and refusing to look away from the bright side amplifies your awareness of how big and frightening the dark side is. You may believe that you’re focusing on the bright side, but the bright side is not a bright side. The entire area is bright.
The fact that you’re refusing to look away from the bright side amplifies your awareness of how big and frightening the dark side is. Share on XThat makes perfect sense. If you say I’m focusing on the bright side, that’s acknowledging that there’s a dark side. I can see the power of this message for business, for anyone in business who wants to expand their reach and reach the top of their industry. I’m also hearing that impact on a family. My audience’s families have children with special needs, they have been built. You heard a diagnosis for your daughter. You had to decide and make a choice.
I used to say, “I would hear but I would not listen.” When we got to the hospital, the neuro ICU in Miami, we were with one of the best teams in the world. People were flown all over the world to this team because of their experience in “the worst of the worst.” They shared with me that they had done thousands and thousands of procedures. If Schuyler’s case was not the most complicated, it was one of the top three. We, as human beings, are able to read energy. This happened to have been a team of men. They walked into Schuyler’s tiny room in the ICU when we had just arrived. If you can imagine, I was in a place where I was not a weeping family member. If anything, I was in a place where I had a powerful expectation that everything would be fine whatever the new fine would be. I trusted the process. In trusting the process, that meant that I could be happy. I could be supportive. There was a power of expectation at that point, even believing has a crack in it.
They walked in and they looked terrified. They had just acquainted themselves with all the things going on with Schuyler. Not only did she have a cracked open skull, but she had also crushed lungs, a broken scapula and a fractured spine. Her right thigh had been snapped in half and her left ankle had been pulverized. There were tons of issues, any one of which could prove fatal to her any moment. As they were trying to brace me for the horror of it all, there was a friend in the room at the same time, who was the father of one of Schuyler’s friends. I stopped them at one point and calmly said to them, “I know that my daughter is going to be fine, whatever that means. You guys are the best at what you do. You have been given a special genius in this field. This is the best of the best hospital. All we have to do is figure out how we’re going to get her there.” It was interesting because energetically, you could see that stress and that worry almost slip off of them and their focus return on their genius zone, who they were.
We can all do this. We get sometimes distracted when we’re asked to be pushed away beyond our comfort zone. We’re asked to tackle something that we’re not sure we’re big enough to tackle. Whether this means caring 24/7 for a child or being the neurosurgeon that has someone’s life in their hands, we’re asked to do things that sometimes we’re not sure. When we can lovingly bring our focus back to who we are and where our genius lies, even if they’re only three areas of things that we excel in. When we can celebrate that and put those invisible words into supporting that, then like the title of the book, The Sky is the Limit, it’s amazing. We surprise ourselves what we’re capable of and how positively we can impact the world as one person.
Tell us a little bit more. How did you come up with that title? Tell us about your book.
My daughter had traveled the world in her four years at Yale, everything from Tanzania to Nepal and everywhere in between. Along the way, she started writing a travel blog for a website that was all about finding unusual things in your travels and looking at life differently. She called it Sky is the Limit, but spelled like her name Schuyler. It was Schuy is the Limit. In the flurry of things, we initially posted a couple of posts on her actual Facebook page. I was so inundated with friend requests. I realize I had no idea who these people were. Who were people that she would want to stay connected with after she was back on Facebook herself? I thought, “Let’s start a page and let’s use her title, Schuy is the Limit.” That’s where the page evolved and continues to run with updates these days.
I was out at an event. A couple of people came up to me and said, “When are you going to put this in a book?” I looked at these women and I went, “It’s on Facebook. Why would you want it in a book that you had to pay for?” They went on to say, “Our book club wants it.” I had it in my head, and I went home. The idea popped up again and I thought, “If I could be of service to more people, then why not?” I played around a little bit. I came up with a book cover and shot it out to one of the great artists on Viber.com and said, “This is what I want. Do you think you can do it?” Within 48 hours, he had it back to me. I wrote a couple of extra chapters. I completely got bogged down doing the dedications. I don’t want to forget anyone that I’m so grateful for in this journey.
I captured everything without changing anything. There were no edits, no changes, everything is absolutely real-time. From the first post where I had gotten a call and I realized I was so over my head. I posted on Facebook, “I’m finding out that my youngest child has been critically injured while traveling in Colombia. If anyone has experience with this kind of thing, please reach out to me.” Starting with that first post and covering the next four months until we finally got back to Tampa where we live, every single post was included in this book.
It had been submitted to Amazon within maybe three weeks. Shortly thereafter, I got the notification that it was published. I let people on The Sky is the Limit know. Within hours, it became the hot new release on Amazon in one of the motivational categories. Because many people had trouble pronouncing Schuy, people said, “You should change it to the traditional sky.” On Amazon, the book is called The Sky is the Limit: Sometimes the Limit is Just the Beginning by Meridith Alexander. I’ve had so many people reach out and ask if they could work with me a little bit more with mindset and to fine-tune again some the of invisible dialogue and some actual steps that are achievable. Not only woo-woo as some people call that but real, actionable steps to get them to woo-hoo.
We launched the Grit Mindset Academy. I wanted to give any of your audience who might have a question or might want to learn a little bit more about some of the steps. There’s a formula that has had amazing results with not only me but when I teach it to other people, it seems to make a positive impact on their life as well. I would like to gift anyone who’s interested a little fifteen-minute discovery with me after which I would give them a complimentary success in happiness blueprint which gives an outline of actionable steps of the three-part process of identifying and then rebooting, taking some of the things that inadvertently maybe we get in our own way doing. Rebooting them with things that are going to empower us when we encounter obstacles and then unleashing the kind of superpower within ourselves that allows us to make such a massive impact on the world. People could get that simply by texting the word grit to 26786. That will connect us. I’ll get back to them.
Our passion is we want to inspire thousands and hopefully millions to dare to believe that is totally within each and every one of power to live that top 1% version of ourselves, to be the best version of ourselves. A portion of our proceeds does go to benefit that little hospital in South America that first started working on Schuyler. While we were there it was incredibly humbling. I got there and it’s this little, tiny building that looks like a school, an elementary school here in the US might look. The ICU is an independent entity. Most small, regional hospitals in Colombia do not have an ICU. If Schuyler had been taken to any other regional hospital, her injuries would have been too severe for them to do anything about. There aren’t rooms for the patients. There are little bits of fabric in between the beds of the patients. You walk in and there’s a nurses’ area in the center. There are all the sounds of all these life support machines. It’s hard for them to get doctors. Of course, it’s tremendously hard for the Colombia people to afford it.
When I went to Colombia, my older daughter went with me. My amazing son stayed back in the US to try and help with some of those logistics. My older daughter and I had both exchanged some money into Colombian funds. When we realized we were going to be airlifting back to Miami, we thought, “We’re not going into the airport. Let’s pay it forward. Let’s gift this money that we had not used in Colombia to one of the other families that maybe is in most need.” We did. We were able to gift hundreds and hundreds of dollars to this one family. It was so powerful for this family that we vowed that if we were ever in a position to come back and support more families, we would do this out of honor for the Colombian people and how much they try to help us. If it gets even bigger, to start being able to purchase better and better equipment. If we’re ever in a position where we can get big enough and we can create a foundation or something where we can start helping more ICUs to be available around the country, that would be a dream come true for us. That’s where we’re starting.
I’m also touched that the people who work at that tiny little hospital were keeping her alive until you could come there. Those are good hearts.
We owe more to them because I could share hours of some of the crazy miraculous things that happened beginning the morning of her accident. One of the many miracles that happened was that the day that we got there, because they’re not the same privacy laws, these doctors were able to share some of the photos of Schuyler’s injuries at a global neurosurgery conference that was taking place that weekend. Ironically enough, one of the top neurosurgeons from a top hospital in the US advised them to do a procedure on her that would have long-term cataclysmic impact, however potentially short-term lifesaving value. It would be irreversible if they did this. There was such strong intuition not to do this, not to do that procedure on Schuyler that they decided to wait.
Each of us carry within us a limitless volume of potential miracles. We just have to be bold enough to tap into them. Share on XThe next morning when the hospital opens and we were able to come back in, the doctor that was overseeing Schuyler came rushing to us. He had her CAT scan from the morning on his phone. He showed me something which meant absolutely nothing to me other than the fact that he was excited about it. The translator managed to convey that the swelling in her brain had gone down to a level that they would have been excited to see within seven to ten days, not overnight. It was impossible for it to have one that overnight, and yet there it was. Had they done that other procedure, it would have been devastating to her cognitive skills. It would probably have left her, if she managed to survive, as a “vegetable.” There were many miracles where I did get to the point where I said that I would have been more surprised if we didn’t see all the miracles. I strongly believe each of us carries within us a limitless volume of potential miracles.
We have to be bold enough to tap into them, whatever that means. Whether that means having that religious connection that brings you into completeness, or whether it is for you and your version of tapping into the universal source that maybe we all are. It doesn’t matter, it is just there and possible. We’ve lived it over and over again. People can email me as well at Meridith@MeridithAlexander.com. You’re welcome to look on over for the constant updates on Schuy is the Limit on Facebook and come join our global family and be part of a massive, positive impact on the world.
That is exciting.
Thank you for having me, Emmalou. To all the readers, thank you for sharing your time with us and for daring to go out there and do what you do with your own family, including what I call the global family of the world. You’re amazing.
Thank you for sharing not only your story but your energy. It’s strong and it’s positive. That’s great. The world needs more of it.
We’re getting there, aren’t we? Little steps for little feet.
Important Links:
- Meridith Alexander
- Grit Mindset Academy
- Viber.com
- Schuy is the Limit – Facebook
- The Sky is the Limit
- Meridith@MeridithAlexander.com
About Meridith Alexander
Meridith Alexander is the best selling author, motivational speaker, high-level coach, expert in mindset and a powerhouse entrepreneur. Her amazing story began on February 19, 2016, when her youngest daughter was randomly crushed by a falling boulder in Colombia, South America. Against all odds, the world watched as a miracle after miracle ensued and Schuyler survived.
Her book THE SKY IS THE LIMIT shares posts from the first four months of the journey. The book hit the #1 New Release in the motivational category on Amazon the night that it was launched. Today, she specializes in empowering women to live life from their 1% zone so that they can find even more happiness and success. Her new GRIT MINDSET ACADEMY launches this month and is already attracting the attention of thousands of loyal followers.