E35: Gratitude and Adaptability in Your Life and Career

In this episode, Kelly and Andy speak with Green Beret and amputee Nick Lavery on the importance of adaptability in our lives and careers. Listen in to hear Nick's inspiring story and his advice for implementing gratitude in your daily life and deciding 'how' you will accomplish your big dreams. 

What is HigherEdJobs Podcast?

The HigherEdJobs Podcast is dedicated to helping higher education professionals find fulfillment in their careers and be the change agents that higher education needs in today's world. Join hosts Andrew Hibel and Kelly Cherwin, along with guest experts, as they examine job search strategies and break down the latest news and trends in higher education.

E35
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[00:00:00] Andrew Hibel: Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

[00:00:07] Kelly Cherwin: And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the Director of Editorial Strategy. Today we are honored to have Nick Lavery join us. Nick is currently serving the United States citizens as a special forces warrant officer, assistant detachment commander, and is widely recognized as an experienced subject matter expert in special operations intelligence fusion and mission planning and execution across all operational continuum.

In 2013 on Nick's second combat rotation to Afghanistan, he and his detachment fell victim to an insider attack, ultimately resulting in the loss of his leg. Following a year of surgeries and initial recovery, including the use of a prosthetic at Walter Reed National Medical Military Center, he returned to his unit.

Refusing a military medical retirement. Nick set his sights on returning to operational status in 2015 at the conclusion of a challenging comprehensive assessment designed to evaluate Nick's abilities to operate. He returned to his [00:01:00] detachment and it was subsequently deployed once again to Afghanistan conducting full spectrum combat operations.

Nick has considered the first Green Beret to return to combat as an above the knee amputee. Thank you so much, Nick, for joining us today. We are honored to have you as a guest.

[00:01:15] Nick Lavery: Thanks guys. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:01:17] Kelly Cherwin: So, to give our listeners a little bit of background about how we met you, we were at the NASPA Military Connected Symposium back in February.

Andy and I were listening to you do your keynote presentation and after the talk Andy said to me, we should try to get this guy on our podcast to talk about living your life comfortably, you know, being comfortable in your own skin as a professional with a disability. Andy I have talked a lot about this over the years, and Andy, I'm gonna turn it over to you. If you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit of your personal story and your background.

[00:01:49] Andrew Hibel: and Nick, I, I'd ask you to do the same. Um, I came to my disability at birth. I was five days old when I had my first surgery. I was born without a thumb on my right [00:02:00] hand, and there was a little bit of a nubbin that was hanging there, and the doctors and my folks needed to decide what to do with it.

And at five days old you really contemplate a lot what you might do with your child. So, um, they decided to save the nubbin and first surgery was done. And then we went on a journey as I was a, a young child figuring out what to do from there. My parents ultimately decided when I was four or five to start with a hand surgeon who was in New York and who was going to constructively make me a thumb.

And for my childhood, I went through about 20 surgeries to construct myself a thumb on my right hand. I will say it was a probably the, the single most formative experience of my childhood. It left quite an impression on my life and who I am. I have a younger sister, it left quite an impression on her life too.

We spent our lives traveling back to New York to have those surgeries and go through the the rehabilitation and do the follow-up visits and it definitely when I became a professional was something I had to [00:03:00] decide how I was gonna present myself. I remember towards the end of high school, part of the plan was to get myself a prosthetic hand that would slip over my hand.

I may have that someplace. I may have worn it once and never felt from a, I'd say a sensory perspective or being comfortable perspective, just in general, never really felt right to me. It's right for some people. Absolutely. It didn't take to me and I have gone through life with, with a birth defect in my right hand that that is obvious to people as I'm sure happens to you quite often, Nick, people will stop and ask, what's up with that?

In various ways, shapes and forms. Most of those times it's very well-intentioned, very curious people, and it's an opportunity to educate people on people's disabilities. I welcome it most times. Over the years I've seen folks with similar disabilities, in some cases, uh, in awe of how people with disabilities are really comfortable presenting themselves.

Uh, I think [00:04:00] I've grown comfortable. It was definitely an acquired skill and it's probably still at 55, an emerging skill. But when, when I saw you and heard your story, and I know your disability came at a different point in your life, it was something I, I took away from and really thought that if you're out there going through life with something that either physically or emotionally or in any sort of way as a, as a disability, finding your own comfort in that, I think people have something to learn from you and how you've come at it with such strength and conviction, and I thought you had a very unique perspective on it. So I was really hoping you'd be able to share some of your story.

[00:04:40] Nick Lavery: Yeah. And thank you for sharing that, Andy. Yeah, mine of course was, you know, was different. I lost my leg above the knee as a result of enemy machine gun fire in Afghanistan when I was 30 years old, you know, so I had lived the first 30 years of my life with two of them.

And there's of course challenges that come [00:05:00] regardless of, of when and what circumstances and specific injury or circumstances but I do recall the challenge that came with undoing 30 years of what has become reaction or immediate response, undo that. So essentially start wiping the canvas clean a little bit so I can start to relearn how to do just about every task there is, you know, sitting at a desk typing, okay, I didn't need to relearn how to do that, but getting to the chair it was so, you know, it's just as an example.

So, unlearning just to then turn around and relearn was certainly a challenge. So yeah, that I think is something that obviously differs if you were born with something versus not, and you know, you're born with a, with a circumstance or a disability, that's all you know. And, you know, maybe there's the, there's a curiosity of, wow, what would it be like if I had both thumbs or what would it be like if I had both legs?

And, [00:06:00] you know, the, the trials that come with that unknown and jealousy and desire to be able to experience that versus having lived X amount of time with it and then all of a sudden it's gone. This isn't easier or harder or better or worse type conversation. It's just different perspectives can open up different challenges, and then I think also can open up different opportunities for gratitude.

[00:06:24] Andrew Hibel: You're spot on there. Um, I think each person's path to their disability or, or journey with it is unique to them and the experiences of, of what happens at that point. It's also, I mean, when you go through an event that is profound as what you went through, the real trauma that you've gone through physically and emotionally is yet another obstacle to, to being able to work with your disability just from that standpoint. As you recovered if you could share a little bit on the recovery. 'cause the recovery was quite an endeavor. Just to get to the point, to be able to [00:07:00] get yourself functioning and going in the right direction.

[00:07:03] Nick Lavery: Yeah, it was a wild, it was a wild ride overall. I was at Walter Reed for a year going through kind of the initial phase or two, if you wanna call it that, of, of recovery.

And for me it was, it was really touch and go. I mean, I should have died on the battlefield when I was first hit. Uh, really there is no scientific explanation to how I was able to survive that. It's a case study that's studied in, in med schools all throughout the country, like, how does this make any sense?

And then once I got in front of some doctors, it really stayed within that state for a considerable amount of time, even by the time I got out of Afghanistan and got myself back to the States and got to Walter Reed Bethesda Maryland. And the surgeons began working on me there. I mean, I was still in critical condition for another.

You know, month, uh, in the intensive care unit, just going through countless surgeries a week as they were fighting infection and just incrementally amputating my leg piece by piece by piece a little higher every single time, you [00:08:00] know, for, for what ended up being about six, eight weeks of, of that, you know.

So by the time I kind of came to and came off of enough drugs to realize the true severity of what I was dealing with, I had gone through close to 40 surgeries and most of my right leg was gone. And it was just, okay, this is, this is where you're at and this is what you have to work with. And then beyond that becomes the more of the rehabilitation, right?

Like just learning how to live life with one leg, basic everyday living type tasks. And then, you know, learning how to use a prosthetic and just do again, basic tasks. And then that advances, of course, as you go and you, you, you start to challenge yourself more and you're doing more advanced stuff and more complex tasks and combining things together and you know, so it remained in a difficult state for well over a year and a half, really up to two years.

Before I returned back to doing what I had set my sights on, which was going back to doing what I do. [00:09:00] And that was the mission from the beginning and, and this is an important point, is even when I was in the intensive care unit at Walter Reed and the doctors were still very much concerned about my survival.

My mind was made up then that I would be going back to doing what I do. I didn't see I really as a choice at all. It was just, this is what will happen because this is who you are and this is what you do. And that enabled me in many ways, but I'd say most considerably, is I was able to answer the what are you gonna do question.

And that's one that a lot of people can get stuck on, whether that's on the backside of a traumatic event or a bad day, or a bad week or a bad year. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? And you can just get stuck there and go round and round and round and round. I was able to answer that question immediately, which allowed all roads to proceed to the how am I gonna do this?

And that's a different question, what am I gonna do versus how? I just saw this as an equation that could be solved because I knew the answer to the [00:10:00] equation. I don't know if I've ever gotten any use out of algebra ever in my life since I learned it in, I don't know, high school, but laying in the hospital bed it was three plus Xs five, so it's easier to solve for X when you know the answer, right?

It's a pretty easy equation. I knew the answer to this equation. It was much longer than that, and there were a lot more variables and a lot more unknowns. But in my mind, I just saw some constants and a whole bunch of variables. But if I plugged the right ones in in the right places, I could get the answer that I already knew.

That's really just the way I went about pursuing it.

[00:10:38] Kelly Cherwin: Looking for more conversations in higher ed. We invite you to join the HigherEdMilitary community as we discuss issues, best practices from campuses, policies, news and general trends affecting our institutions and the higher ed military affiliated community.

Inspired by the deep commitment to service that veterans and military connected faculty, staff, and leaders have towards the academic community. We at HigherEdJobs established HigherEdMilitary as a resource for both [00:11:00] original and curated news and information, as well as job opportunities from colleges and universities actively recruiting military connected professionals, find resources, thought pieces, tools, and other information you need to improve your institution's ability to support this amazing community. Visit us at higheredmilitary.com on Facebook and LinkedIn.

[00:11:18] Andrew Hibel: It's interesting, and I think it's one of the reasons I wanted to focus a good part of an episode on this. I think the mental approach to what you're going to do with your disability is probably the single largest challenge that I've had and I've heard others have had, which is once you decide, this is where I'm gonna live, I'm gonna go do it, this is how I'm gonna live my life.

If people decide that they want to doubt me, that's fine, but I'm not gonna doubt myself and I'm not gonna doubt my ability to do it. Now. I'll be honest, I'm never and I can tell you growing up, I used to play a lot of basketball with my friend. I'd fake to my right, but I never went to my right and [00:12:00] I'm never gonna go to my right when I play basketball.

I know there's a limitation there, but being realistic about that, moving on and not being somebody who's gonna sabotage yourself, I think is extremely important because there are gonna be other challenges that are presented to you, some in, in whatever the endeavor is. Some people are gonna look at you and say, there's no way you can do something like that because of whatever, you keep on doing what you're gonna do. Because I think the biggest reason I felt my limitations were there were the ones I put on myself.

[00:12:35] Nick Lavery: So true. And it's, you know, it's, it's really the same. Adaptation of the question. It's the the what versus how. And you know, when I was in the hospital, this got thrown around a lot and at first I like really stuck to it and it was, you're not disabled, you're adaptive.

It was just like changing the verbiage, which empowered me at the time. In today, today's world, I'm 10 years removed. [00:13:00] It doesn't really inspire me the way it did when I was first getting going. It's like you don't have a disability. You just need to adapt how you do it. But the thought process behind that makes a lot of sense because you're not asking yourself the what?

You're asking yourself the how, and you gotta change the how. That's what adaptive means. How am I gonna do this? It's not, I don't know if I can climb a mountain because I only have one leg. No, you can climb the mountain. That's the what you already decided what you're gonna do. I'm gonna climb the mountain.

Boom. Done. Now let's move over to the how. Well, you only got one leg, or you only have one thumb, or you only have like whatever you're dealing with. Now it's just how am I gonna do it? And I have to adapt perhaps what is standard practice or what quote normal people would do, or able-bodied people would do.

This is what normal looks like. Well, I need to account for that because I'm missing my blank. Or I'm dealing with whatever the circumstances are, and you modify that, that, that's adaptive. So becoming an just an adaptive human or an [00:14:00] adaptive athlete is another way of saying, of saying the exact same thing.

I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but there is a way I can do it. I have yet to find a task that I have been unable to do that I set my sights on. It hasn't happened yet. Is there one out there? I don't know. Maybe I'll see if I can find it. But throughout the last decade that I've lived with one leg, I have yet to find something that I can't do yet, just about all of them.

I have to change the way in which I would have done it if I had two legs. I think we're saying the same thing multiple times, but I think it's an important message. You can do whatever you want to do. There's the, what I just said. You can do what you want to do, what you choose to do. It is your responsibility to figure out the how.

[00:14:46] Kelly Cherwin: Thank you for that story. I actually have a question on the, the how part, and I know Andy, you referenced earlier how sometimes people will come up to you and they'll, they'll ask you, And Nick, I, I remember in your presentation, and if I'm remembering this wrong, please correct me, but you were saying for a [00:15:00] while, you know, a after you, you got out of the hospital and you had the prosthetic that you felt like you had to hide it.

Mm-hmm. You were wearing long pants. So, you know, kind of on the theme of being comfortable, how did you do that and how, like what do you recommend to other people to embrace that and, you know, get over that mental block, I guess.

[00:15:16] Nick Lavery: Yeah. Um, it was a funny rollercoaster ride. I'm glad you brought this up because the, at the time I was at Walter Reed, which is 2013, Walter Reed was packed with service members, people coming and going, which is unfortunate truth.

There are a lot of service members that were being wounded, and Walter Reed was jammed. Not only with patients, but with family and then nonprofits and other benevolent organizations and other units and chain of command and VIPs and celebrities and the president. It was just a happening place. So when you live in that environment for a year being wounded, having a disability, missing a limb, it was totally normal 'cause you're surrounded by hundreds of people that are dealing with all different kinds of issues and they've got adaptive equipment and tools that help 'em get [00:16:00] from point A to point B and do things. It's totally normal. In fact, that was really where, you know, I was able to weaponize perspective and gratitude because missing a single limb at Walter Reed at that place, this was a paper cut compared to what some people were dealing with.

I mean, this was nothing. There were service members that were dealing with traumatic brain injury so severe that they didn't recognize their spouses and kids. Like, that's a serious injury. Me, this is like nothing. I'm gonna get a new one and be good to go, which enabled me to do a lot of other things.

But my point is, is that it was just normal. Once you leave that environment and you kind of go into quote the real world, you're very much an anomaly and you know you're, you're different. You look different, you do things different. Well, I was going back to Fort Bragg. I was going right back to my unit, which is full of mostly hyper type A alpha males.

My concern from even prior to me getting there was that I would be seen as this weak liability because I was so different from all of my colleagues. And [00:17:00] again, keep in mind the goal was to get back to doing what I do from long before I stepped foot back on the Fort Bragg. So yeah, I was really scared.

Uh, it weighed on me quite a bit that people saw me, with a prosthetic and or saw me without it. That was more significantly for me, was being seen without it, my actual residual limb being exposed and me having to use crutches or hop around or scoop myself across the floor. Again, things that at Walter Reed are totally normal.

I didn't think twice about it. I didn't even think once about it. Walter Reed. It was just the way I did things. It was the way a lot of people did things. When I got back to Bragg, it was like, man, I don't want to be seen that way because I don't want this interpretation of me being this weak liability to spread like a virus.

I need my reputation to remain intact. I need people to see me as strong and capable and an asset, and that was what was going through my mind. So I refuse to take my prosthetic off. It didn't bother me so much if people saw me with the leg on. Like I could wear a pair of shorts and be [00:18:00] okay. I preferred if that wasn't the case, but I would not take my leg off around other people.

There was a moment in time when I was in the gym and I was training and one of my teammates came up to me. I'd been at back at Bragg for maybe a month or two, and one of my teammates came up to me and I was hurting and I had been sweating. My prosthetic was barely hanging on. It was just rubbing raw 'cause it was just so dislodged.

And dude comes over, he's like, listen man, we all see you're in pain right now. Like why don't you just take this thing off and, and like get yourself into a place of comfort because you're not really doing yourself any favors right now. You can barely walk around. We all know you only have one leg. This is him just telling me straight to my face, like it's no secret, bro.

But we all know you haven't shown anybody what your little tiny little leg there looks like within inside that little bucket you got on right now. But we all know that's the case. And that was really what it took for me to hear it from one of my brothers that I respected. And [00:19:00] I kind of look around to the rest of the guys who were all kind of half in the conversation, half not, and they were just like, dude, what are you doing?

We're not gonna look at you any differently. You know? You're really doing yourself and us a disservice because your ego is getting in the way from what you're able to be doing. You can be doing a lot more if you are willing to be vulnerable around us. And I was like, Okay. You guys are totally right. You know, so ripped the thing off and boom, I'm out there.

And sure enough you look at their faces and they're just like, yeah, dude, like this isn't anything we didn't already know about. Spoiler alert, you only have one leg and we all know, right? So, and that was a big moment for me. It was a huge moment for me because not only did I become much more comfortable, I became much more capable day to day.

And then it became a place of pride when I would need to go legless and still perform and still do things. It was just that much of a, of a more intimate glimpse into what my life looks like to those around me. And then that also just increased the [00:20:00] impact that I was able to create on those people. The motivation, the inspiration, by giving them that extra glimpse behind that curtain, it's like, oh man, you know, I can see it.

It's not a surprise to me, but I'm, I'm that much more amazed at what this dude's still doing. And that effect is what I became addicted to. It was like, oh wow. Not only is this enabling me to be better and and be able to do more and be more comfortable physically and mentally, emotionally, but it's creating a bigger impact on the guys that I love.

And that's really what enabled me to do it. You know, much, much easier and longer term.

[00:20:35] Andrew Hibel: Thank you, Nick. That's so phenomenal and I think actually whether you have a disability or you don't have a disability, that's the part of the adaptive part of it. Like that's part of the recipe, that working through it, working through till you feel like you can put yourself out there in a way that you're just you. It is who you are. It's part of who you are. And I wasn't, I mean, I can [00:21:00] stick my hand in my pocket and fool people for a little bit, but eventually I'm gonna get animated. Talk with my hands, and you're gonna see I have a different looking right thumb. So be it. It just is. I, I don't wanna lose it.

'cause we went over it really, really quickly. 'cause I think you hit something that I think is so very important, whether it's working on your disability at any stage, but also I think this is actually really applicable to a person who's thinking about their professional life and the work they do and what gives it meaning.

But you talked about gratitude and seeing how much worse. Other folks had it. And it reminded me not of that first surgery when I was five days old, but I was about five years old and I had my first surgery to go through, having the thumb made the room I was recovering in, had six children and I remember on my side of three I was on one end, the bed in the middle was a kid about my age who had had his father pour Drano his throat and he had a tracheotomy and that's how he was gonna live the rest of his life.

Hmm. [00:22:00] And I can tell you through the rest of my life, whenever I would look at my life and say, just for a moment, why, why me? Why, why did this happen to me? And what, what happens? I think of that, that poor young man and what he had to go through at that point, and I can tell you that it still today affects me thinking about when you look at what people have to go through life, that's so much worse than what you have.

It gives you a sense of that gratitude that, yeah, some days are rough, but my life's pretty good. And, uh, it's impressive to see in those situations, Nick, that you were able to see the same thing, because that's a hard view to look from and, and find that gratitude at that point.

[00:22:43] Nick Lavery: Yeah it is difficult, but it's also so powerful once you find it.

I mean, it's like it's, it may be the closest thing to a superpower. That I've, I've found yet. And you know, everyone wants the quick fix. Everyone wants the magic fairy dust to give them the thing, the abs or the [00:23:00] whatever they want, you know, all the money, whatever the dream is. Everyone wants like the fast thing.

Which of course isn't, isn't real, weaponizing gratitude, it may be the closest thing to a superpower that I've found thus far. And you know, for me, it, it began before I was at Walter Reed again. 'cause I'm supposed to be dead. And I know that. And according to science and biology and everything we know about modern medicine, I am supposed to die.

I was supposed to have died 10 years ago in the dirt in Afghanistan. So there's that, right? Like, wow, you're still alive, so you wanna call it being on borrowed time or, or whatever you want to refer to it as. That alone is enough for me to maximize and squeeze every ounce of value and love and progress out of every single day.

'cause every single one, not just for me, for all of us, really is a gift. However, I was just presented that gift square in my face by every doctor I've ever spoken to. You know about it. So there's that. And then, you know, you're at Walter Reed and it's, it's physically happening right in front of you.

Realizing you're supposed to be dead is [00:24:00] powerful, but that's kind of conceptual and spiritual. When you see with your own eyes a quadruple amputee who is dragging a 200 pound sled around a track, you're like, oh shit. Uh, okay, well I have wow, three more limbs than this guy, and he's getting after it. Like, what excuse do I have?

And there were a lot of people like that that were Walter Reed at that time. The the one I'm talking about now, his name's Travis Mills. He's an absolute animal then and now, and a hilarious guy. You know, this amazing sense of humor about being one of, I want think only like seven quadruple amputees to survive out of the global war on terrorism, an amazing human being.

He was one of my mentors, and I was at Walter Reed. You know, I had him and many other examples of guys that were hurt worse than me, I would put it, missing more limbs, having to deal with more issues. Mine, although it was challenging and almost killed me. Was pretty clear cut, no pun intended, but it's like boom.

You're like, leg gone. It's done. Infection's gone. You're [00:25:00] looking good. Let's get you a new one and get you going. It was quite simple. And being able to weaponize that gratitude, you know, and there there's this expression, comparison is the thief of joy. It's an expression I have a difficult relationship with.

And it really, in my opinion, it boils down to, to how you, you choose whether or not that's the case. If you wanna look at someone who has quote more than you, or better than you, or bigger than you, or like whatever it is, and you choose to let that destroy your happiness. That's on you. You chose to look at that and you chose to feel that way about this because gratitude through perception is the exact same thing.

You're comparing your circumstance to someone else's that's either right in front of you or someone else just in general. Just the idea of that, you know, wow, it could be so much worse. I am so thankful for what my circumstances are right now. Either way, it's comparison. You just decide. [00:26:00] How you leverage that comparison?

Is it for gratitude? Is it for jealousy? It's up to you. Choose your own adventure. I saw the power of, of leveraging comparison and perspective for gratitude and what that did to me. And I was flying at a thousand miles an hour because of that. Because these people that were around me gave me that gift and it wasn't one I was about to, I was about to waste.

So regardless of the disability, the circumstance, without question in his expression, my father would say, it can always be worse. Right? It's never as good as it seems. It's never as bad as it seems. Do you see things through that lens? If not, it's nothing more than a choice to do so.

[00:26:42] Kelly Cherwin: Your father was a smart man, and I was gonna say, adding to your superhero analogy, I think perspective is you, you have an amazing perspective and you have, obviously you have grit and perseverance and discipline.

I wanna kind of transition our conversation over to some traits and skills that you've learned in the military to [00:27:00] working in higher ed for our audience. Hmm. So I wanna highlight actually, that you are the author of the book, Objective Secure. Yes, ma'am. In the description it says, the intent is simple, ‘provide readers the tools necessary to achieve any goal, no matter how far farfetched, unlikely, or impractical it may seem. Period.’ I love that. So Nick, I wanna ask you, what are some takeaways from your book that you think our audience could implement either in their, their current higher ed profession or in their job search?

[00:27:27] Nick Lavery: Oh wow. Um, there's a lot, uh, there. There's a lot. You know, I'll just say,

[00:27:34] Producer: Join us in two weeks for the second half of our interview with Nick here on the HigherEdJobs podcast.