10 Lessons I Learned After Falling Off a Stage

One year ago, I stood on the stage of a performing arts center filming footage for a new demo reel. I wanted to showcase my emcee style, so I had written a short sample opening for a fictional conference. I greeted the audience, told them we would be spending a lot of time together, and explained that there were three things they should know about me. One of those things was that I am spatially challenged.

I joked that before the conference was over, it would not be unusual if I fall off the stage, trip going up the stairs, walk into a doorframe, or plow into a garbage can. I told the audience that the best way to help me recover from such a blunder would be to laugh with me, complete ridicule and mockery. It was a joke I had written about a week earlier and rehearsed at least a hundred times, both aloud and in my head.

Next, I began describing three types of conference attendees. About two minutes later, I had somehow wandered toward the front of the stage. The theater was dark, and I thought I had about five more feet in front of me. As I made a joke about happy hour and began describing the third type of attendee, I took a step forward.

There was no stage there.

I fell around four feet onto the concrete floor landing on my right side. I remember the sudden sensation of falling and the jarring impact, whispering a soft “ouch” immediately after. Then, for the next 10 or 15 seconds, no one moved. The room was filled with other speakers, but because I had just joked about falling off the stage, everyone thought I had done it on purpose, completing the bit.

As I lay on the floor, I began breathing deliberately and checking my body. This was not my first high impact injury. I thought to myself, “Wiggle your fingers. Wiggle your toes. Make sure you did not break your back.” Everything moved except my right arm and shoulder. I assumed I had dislocated my shoulder. In my mind, I was going to the hospital, they were going to pop it back into place, and I would be back onstage within the hour.

Instead, I had multiple nondisplaced fractures in the upper proximal part of my right humerus, along with two small cracks in my hip. The next year would teach me far more than I ever wanted to know about helplessness, dependence, friendship, patience, and the emotional challenges of resilience and recovery.

These are ten lessons I learned after falling off a stage.

1. Manifestation Is Always at Work in the Stories We Repeat

I believe in manifestation. I have believed in it for decades, and my lived experience has repeatedly shown me that the thoughts, expectations, and stories we rehearse can shape what we notice, pursue, and create. But we often talk about manifestation as though it only applies to the things we desire. We visualize the goal. We picture success. We imagine the outcome we hope to create. What we talk about less often is that we also rehearse our fears, limitations, identities, and expectations. Manifestation works both ways.

For years, I had described myself as clumsy and spatially challenged. There were legitimate reasons for that. I have eyesight challenges related to diabetes, including astigmatism and difficulty with depth perception. I have also been clumsy for most of my life. I was hit on the head with a nine iron in sixth grade because I was not paying attention to where I was standing. I know my strengths, and I know my weaknesses, but there is a difference between acknowledging a real limitation and turning it into an identity through repeated self-talk.

For a week, I had practiced that story about myself falling, tripping, crashing into things, and publicly embarrassing myself. Did repeatedly visualizing those possibilities directly cause me to fall off the stage? I do not know. That is part of the mystery of manifestation. I do know that our brains are constantly looking for evidence that the stories we tell about ourselves are true. The thoughts we repeat most often about who we are, what we deserve, and what we expect from life can influence what we notice and how we move through the world.

Manifestation may be working for you, or it may be working against you. That does not mean every negative thought creates a negative outcome. It does mean we should pay attention to the identities and expectations we rehearse. I can acknowledge that depth perception is difficult for me without rehearsing the belief that I am destined to fall.

What story about yourself have you repeated so often that your brain now treats it like an instruction?

2. The Way We Cope with a Crisis May Not Match the Way Others Experience It

One of the ways I deal with pain and discomfort is by recognizing moments worthy of laughter. That is part of what I teach in my Stitch It Up! program. Humor can create breathing room. It can reduce emotional intensity. It can help us move out of panic and into a more manageable state. So as I lay on the auditorium floor in severe pain, unable to move my right arm, I began laughing.

I mean think about it! The timing was absurd. I had just predicted that I might fall off the stage, and then I had somehow made it happen. While we waited for the ambulance, I made jokes. I shouted, “Whoever is next can go ahead and take the stage! I’ll just wait here! You won’t even see me in the shot. “Despite my best efforts, most of the people in the room were not laughing.

A few weeks later, I had breakfast with the presenter who had gone onstage immediately after me. She had written a LinkedIn post about courage, perseverance, and what it takes to continue after witnessing something traumatic. That conversation made me realize that while I had been coping through laughter, other people in the room had been frightened and shaken. They had watched someone take a serious fall, waited while an ambulance was called, and then had to collect themselves and continue performing.

I felt terrible that I had not been aware of what they were experiencing, but I have also had to remind myself that I was lying on the floor with a shattered shoulder and cracked hip. While it may not have been reasonable in that moment to manage everyone else’s emotional response, the lesson is not that using humor was wrong. The lesson is that multiple emotional responses can exist in the same room.

I was laughing because I needed to laugh. They were shaken and they had every reason to be shaken. Both responses were real and valid.

Emotional intelligence is not always having perfect awareness in the moment. Sometimes showing up to listen later, understanding an impact you could not see at the time, and taking accountability. I apologized to Ginny and let her know how proud I was of her perseverance in getting onstage in the aftermath.

To every person that was in the room that day, thank you for taking good care of me and I’m proud of all of you for carrying on.

3. Sometimes the Clearest Evidence of Friendship Is Not Who Cheers You On, but Who Calmly Rearranges Everything When the Day Falls Apart

My great friend and fellow speaker Meredith had flown in from California to spend time with me and film our videos together. The night before, we had gone out for a wonderful dinner. The next day was supposed to be productive and creative. We were going to film, collaborate, and enjoy the time together.

Instead, I fell off the stage.

Suddenly our plans were derailed, and Meredith revealed exactly what kind of friend she was.

She stayed with me. She called my husband. She supported me through the hospital experience (some say quite fiercely). She drove my car over an hour to my home the following day. She handled what needed to be handled even though she was thousands of miles from her own home and none of it was what she had signed up for. She did not make my injury about what it had cost us. She simply started rearranging what needed to be rearranged…AND she went back and shot her video.

There are friends who encourage you, cheer you on, and celebrate with you when everything goes according to plan. There are also friends who remain steady when the plan collapses. Those are often the people you remember most clearly. Thank you, Meredith, for being that friend.

4. Independence Is Easy to Take for Granted Until You Lose It

For about nine days after the fall, I was largely chair bound. Because of the cracks in my hip, moving just ten feet to the bathroom with a cane was slow and painful. I also lost the strength of my pelvic floor, which meant there were times I did not make it to the bathroom. That was physically painful and emotionally humiliating.

There are certain functions we consider so basic that we do not even think of them as privileges: I had to learn how to eat and do everything with my left hand. I needed help showering. I could not do my own hair. I remember the first time I was able to scratch my nose and how genuinely excited I felt. Later, I could scratch my ear. Driving again felt like an epic victory.

When you have full independence, these moments seem so small. When independence disappears, they become enormous. Acceptance did not mean pretending I was not embarrassed, frustrated, or angry. It meant recognizing the reality of what my body could and could not do without turning that temporary limitation into a judgment about my worth.

I had never considered scratching my own nose an accomplishment until I could not do it.

5. Accepting Help Means Releasing Control Over How Help Is Given

My husband and I were three weeks away from moving into our newly built home when I fell. Normally, I am the packer. I have a system. I know how to organize things. I know what belongs together, how the boxes should be labeled, and how everything should be arranged. My husband is the type to dump a drawer in a box without even looking at what is in it.

Because I was chair bound, my husband had to do the packing, moving, lifting, and organizing. I got to sit nearby and listen to all of it happening behind me. Complete and utter chaos! It was hard. I wanted to tell him how to do it. I wanted to correct the system. I wanted things packed the way I would have packed them. Instead, I chose to allow him to do it his way and focus on gratitude.

6. Resilience Is Not Always Bouncing Back. More Often It Is Adapting Forward

I was determined to return to work as quickly as I could. I missed one event where I had been scheduled to emcee and keynote. Fortunately, a very good speaker friend had an open calendar and stepped in for me. He covered the event successfully, and the client was taken care of. Thank you, Steve.

When I first hobbled into my office with my right arm in a sling, I quickly realized that I would not be able to work the way I had before. I could not use my mouse. Typing was difficult with one hand. Basic computer tasks were slow and frustrating.

So I adapted. I figured out how to turn on accessibility options like talk-to-text. I learned to operate my mouse with my left hand. It was not elegant, but I muddled through and kept my business growth moving forward. In fact, that quarter I executed the busiest speaking schedule I had ever had.

I did not return to work simply to prove that I was tough. I returned because I love what I do. My work gives me purpose, energy, and connection. Finding a way to get back to work helped me reclaim some of the power the injury had taken away.

I did not need to function as I had before. I needed to become resourceful enough to function in the reality I had. That is one of the things we often misunderstand about resilience. We picture resilience as returning to who we were, how we worked, or what we could do before the disruption. Sometimes that is not possible. Sometimes resilience means adapting forward.

7. Expected Timelines Can Become Emotional Weapons

As soon as x-rays showed sufficient healing, I started going to physical therapy three times a week. My shoulder had frozen after a previous injury, and there was a real concern that it might freeze again. Progress came slowly and incrementally. Meanwhile, people would ask how my arm was doing. They meant well, but when you see someone on a semi-regular basis and they keep asking whether you are better, it becomes difficult to admit when not much has changed.

I had been given certain recovery estimates. Then I reached those milestones and was not where I expected I’d be. That has been psychologically painful. Recovery estimates can help us understand what may be typical and even give us a general sense of hope. But those same expected timelines can become emotional weapons if we subconsciously use them to judge ourselves.

A timeline becomes harmful when it stops being information and starts becoming a verdict. I should be farther along. I should be stronger by now. I should be able to do this. Everyone else would have recovered faster. Those thoughts do not create progress. They create shame around the perceived lack of progress we are already struggling to make.

This is true far beyond physical healing. Grief has timelines. Career growth has timelines. Business success has timelines. Confidence, relationships, and personal change all come with expectations about how long progress should take.

Timelines may guide you, but please don’t ever let a timeline be allowed to shame you.

8. When Progress Is Slow, We Have to Learn How to Recognize It on a Smaller Scale

Because my recovery was not moving quickly, I had to learn how to notice progress differently. I could not wait for a dramatic breakthrough. I had to celebrate scratching my nose, then scratching my ear, then brushing my hair, then reaching slightly higher than I had the week before.

These milestones would have sounded ridiculous to me before the injury. During recovery, they became evidence that my body was still responding. I had to stop measuring progress only by how far I still had to go and start noticing what I could do today that I could not do before.

That does not mean I denied the pain or forced myself to be positive. Some of those movements hurt. Some still hurt. A year later, I am still making small, painful progress. I’m still working on doing a single push-up.

When the larger goal still seems so far away, progress can become invisible unless you learn to deliberately look closer.

9. Perseverance Is More Than Trying Again. It Is Preparing Better for the Next Try.

I never doubted that I would return to the stage. Perseverance after all, is part of my personal mission statement. But the first time I stepped back onto an actual raised stage, I was acutely aware of where the edges were. I paid attention differently.

Now I ask more questions about stages before I arrive. How high is it? How large is it? What will the lighting be like? How can I be better equipped so this doesn’t happen again? Asking more questions, adjusting our preparation, and responding to what experience taught us are not signs that the setback is controlling us. They are strategies that help us be more proactive about preparation.

We often think of perseverance as simply getting back up and trying again. Push through. Repeat the effort. Prove the setback did not defeat us. But perseverance is more than trying again. It is using what happened to prepare better for the next try.

10. A Setback May Halt Your Growth, but That Does Not Mean It Has Ended It

Just before the fall, I had finally reached a place in my life where I was doing consistent strength training. I was lifting weights. I felt strong. It was becoming a habit. More importantly, I was actually enjoying my morning workouts. That had not always been true for me.

Then the fall happened, and it felt as though all of that progress had been ripped away. Strength that takes months to build can disappear remarkably quickly when the body is injured.

The progress I had made before the injury was interrupted, but I am still reminding myself that it has not been erased. A setback may halt your growth, but that does not mean it has ended it. It sucks. But I can rebuild. I can regain strength. I can continue making progress, even if the path forward looks different than the one I had originally planned.

One Year Later

One year later, I am still onstage. I am still growing my business. I am also still healing. I still have pain. I still have limitations.

Recovery did not return me to exactly who I was before the fall. It required me to become more resourceful, more patient, more aware, and more intentional. I am more careful about the identities I rehearse. I am more willing to receive help. I notice small progress. I ask better questions. I prepare differently. And I have a much deeper appreciation for the people who quietly rearrange everything when the day falls apart.

I still believe there is power in laughing at myself, but I am more careful now about the stories I repeat for a laugh. I know how quickly a story can become an identity, how easily an expectation can shape attention, and how suddenly the next step can arrive before I am prepared to take it.

I could not choose whether the stage would still be beneath my foot. I could choose what I did with every step that came after.

What story about yourself are you repeating? What timeline have you accidentally turned into a weapon? Where might progress be happening on a smaller scale than you have been willing to notice? And how could your last setback help you prepare better for your next try?

See Lena's fall at: https://youtube/ht8s7DWAaw4

About the Author: Lena Scullard is a keynote speaker, trainer, and consultant who partners with organizations to prevent and address disengagement by challenging people to harness emotional intelligence and own their power to choose. Discover more or get in touch at LenaScullard.com.