We’re here to prove it was never your weakness to begin with.
The Unbreakable Advantage is a leadership and performance podcast for those who have walked through adversity and came out sharper, not smaller. This is where lived experience becomes strategy. Where resilience becomes revenue. Where the parts of your story you were told to hide become the very thing that sets you apart.
Hosted by Misty Carson, this show is a raw, grounded look at what it actually takes to lead, sell, build, and rise when you’ve been forged under pressure. Through solo episodes and real conversations, we unpack the patterns most people miss, the beliefs that quietly sabotage growth, and the unseen strengths that trauma-forged individuals carry into every room.
This is not about motivation. It’s about recognition.
What you’ve been through didn’t set you back. It set you apart.
Your past may have shaped you, but it doesn’t get to define you.
Someone stole Misty Carson’s identity, opened 12 financial accounts in her name, and attempted to move thousands of dollars.
She had a choice: spiral—or take control.
In this solo episode of The Unbreakable Advantage, Misty shares what happened when a real-life crisis forced her to use her own Evidence Over Emotion framework in real time.
This conversation goes beyond identity theft. Misty explores how to stop overthinking, manage self-doubt, stay calm under pressure, and separate the facts of what’s happening from the stories your mind creates about what it means.
Because your circumstances are not your identity—and when life feels overwhelming, you don’t have to figure out everything at once.
You just have to make the next decision.
In this episode:
How to stop overthinking and catastrophizing
Evidence Over Emotion
Staying calm and taking action under pressure
Self-doubt and negative thought patterns
Separating circumstances from identity
Building self-worth and resilience
Why small decisions create big changes
Subscribe to The Unbreakable Advantage and share this episode with someone who needs the reminder to keep becoming.
Steve Carson here. Welcome to The Unbreakable Advantage. Today I want to talk about something that happened to me that was or could have been earth-shattering. I woke up a few weeks ago to 30 text messages telling me or asking me for a six-digit code to get my phone number. Panicked a little bit, had some panic rise in my heart and in my throat. Somebody was actively trying to take my identity in real time. So got me searching, thank God for Harry, my AI, started asking some questions, got on to my email, my Microsoft, and realized that somebody had been logging into my email. Not only logging in, but they had been doing it quite frequently while I was sleeping. Didn't really understand the extent of the damage that they had done until about a week later, I received an email from a company called Money Lion. And Moneylion had said that an account had been opened in my name and they would be sending a debit card. I immediately sent an email saying I didn't open up an account. That got me searching some more. Went into my Microsoft account, realized that somebody had put rules in place for not only Truist, Trusco, Fidelity, Money Lion, CoinSpend, Plaid, PayPal. So I started opening up all of these apps and realizing that they had opened up 12 different financial accounts in my name and attached them to my plaid account with my bank account number. And everything was pending, pending for thousands and thousands of dollars. I in that moment had a choice. I could panic and freak out and cry and yell, woe is me, and wonder what I'm going to do, or I could take action. And so I decided to take action, one small choice at a time. I didn't panic. I didn't freak out. I realized that this was the most important thing for me to do in the moment. Called my bank, froze my accounts, uh, went in, detached everything, went into plaid, canceled my account, went into PayPal, tried to cancel my account, but there was a pending um debit, so I couldn't cancel in the moment. Uh, continued to just work through it one tiny step at a time, looked up everybody's phone number, wrote account names, account numbers. Uh, this went on for weeks. For weeks. I had to prove I was me. And that was extremely time consuming. Uh, it was really difficult to be building a brand new business and also protecting what I had that was going to support me and my daughter as I was building. And I realized in that moment, this was a gift. And I know everybody who's listening is thinking, what in the heck? How in the world is this a gift? But I was building at the same time my online course called Leading Under Pressure. And in Leading Under Pressure, I talk about clarifying your priorities, what's important to you in the moment, what do you need to work on right now that's going to move the dial? And what else is just noise? I also talked about an evidence over emotion framework. What are the facts? Not the feelings about what you're going through, not are you going to get excited? Are you going to get motivated? Are you going to panic? Are you going to freak out? What are the actual facts and how can you use that to move your KPI down the street? And I recognized in that very twisted universal way that uh God or the universe has of showing up when you need them most in ways you least expect, that I was living the framework that I was teaching in real time. And I considered it a blessing. Not only was it a blessing in that way, but so many of the people in my life, the women in my life, own businesses. So many of them are entrepreneurs. And I was able to take what I had learned and what I had been through and provide value to them in that way so that they could protect themselves from going through something similar the way that I had. And we panic before there's ever actually anything to panic about on the horizon. And then when there are things to panic about, you have a decision to make. Are you going to allow yourself to spiral, or are you going to work through it and take control? So many of us will spiral. So many of us will lay down and play the victim in the moment. We'll think that the circumstances are beyond our control, that it's just going to be what it's going to be. And woe is me. And why does this always happen to me? What I recognize and realize is that cybercrimes are over a billion dollar a year industry. I am not a billionaire, which means that I am not the only person that this is happening to. This is happening to so many people every single day. We tend to catastrophize, and then we tend to attach some narcissistic tendencies to our pain and our challenges. We like to believe that this is only happening to us. It's only happening in this moment, uh, not recognizing that people all across the country, all across the world are experiencing similar challenges to you. The reality is you have a choice. How are you going to show up? What is that going to look like? And then what are you going to do with that information? Are you going to share it to support somebody else? Are you going to use it as information, not just knowledge, but turn it into wisdom so that you can make new choices, better choices? I've called a cybersecurity company. I froze my credit. I filed an OFAC report. I filed a report with the FBI. I sent TransUn all my bills and Equifax and Experian. I called my bank and put them on high alert. I have done so many things to protect myself moving forward for this to never happen again. Shout out to Arena who helped me put pass keys on a bunch of things. Also, if you're listening, don't use the same password for everything. And if you've had an email for like over two decades like me, probably should change your password every once in a while. So just a little tidbit for you. But I think it's really important to understand that when we catastrophize things, we lose complete control. Complete control. Uh, and when we lose control, life has a tendency to snowball what's happening to you. When you take control, it has a tendency to melt the snowball as opposed to growing into this monumental thing that's extremely difficult to either climb or melt or move, however, you want to look at it. When I talk about being calm, it's not what most people think. So I'm not talking about being an ostrich and sticking your head in the sand and just throwing your hands up and saying, oh, well, it's going to work itself out. That is not how this works. You definitely need to take action. Action in your life in many ways, it's interesting. I'll talk about manifesting a little bit. A really important thing to understand is that when you are desiring something or moving toward a goal, you can't just decide it's going to be so. I mean, that's part of it for sure. But then you have to actually do the work to get there. And I think that that's the piece that most people miss. Uh, most people decide that they want something or they're they're going to handle something or control something, then they're not actually willing to put in the licks that it takes to get there. Or if they do put in a little bit of effort, the first sign of catastrophe, to them, that's evidence that this was never meant to happen for them, that this isn't going to work, that they need to do something else. The best I can put this, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill. So many of us quit three feet from gold. And it's interesting as I say that, because even in this moment today, this morning, I was texting a girlfriend of mine who is the CEO of, actually, she was my guest a couple weeks ago, the CEO of a foster care placement. And I told her I didn't feel like I was getting very much traction very quickly on this message, even though I feel it's important and impactful. And the people who hear it tell me the same. And she was like, girl, you can't, you can't give up. Like, you can't quit. People need what you have. This is important. It's a message. And sometimes you need like a good group of people around you to remind you that your shine matters, that your voice matters. It's really easy to have evidence or think you have evidence because things aren't moving quickly enough for you that it's not going to work. But if you're truly aligned with your passion, not saying you're not going to have doubts, because I just told you I have doubts this morning, then you'll be constantly reminded that this is what you're supposed to do. So I have all these really beautiful notes on these cards about being hacked. And for some reason, I know that this was important. And we started out talking about that. Um, microdeposits, micro, whatever, how I found it, uh, next morning, all of the things. I've talked about this a bit already on social media, but I really feel like talking more about the doubt. Uh, so last time I had a solo episode. I talked about the alarm versus the whisper and how my whisper was screaming at me that I needed to do this, that I needed to leave my corporate job and leave it all behind and go all in on myself and this business and the message that I feel called and compelled to share with the world. I told a lot about my story, my adversity, what that looks like. And since then, I have had a lot of doubt creep in. And I have had to tell my brain to shut up. Uh, we talked about that a lot as well. You know, the loudest liar in the room is often our own thoughts. It's the voices from when we were younger, it's the conditioning that we had as children, and from our family, from our society, from our culture, from our geographic location. Everything that we are today has been a combination of nature and nurture, combination of our genetics and our predispositions. And then those things are either massaged or they're pushed down by the people who raise us. And I don't just mean your immediate family, I mean the schools you go to, the grocery aisles that you walk in, the county that you live in, the way that the politics are, the socioeconomic circumstances about where you're raised. I talk a lot about labels and I am really tired of the world deciding what my value is and what your value is. Uh, I refuse to be a Volkswagen Beetle that everybody is just going to slap bumper stickers on that decide what the circumstances in my life are and what that means as it compares to what I have to offer the world. I am not poverty, I am not sexual abuse, I am not a teen mom. I was, that was a circumstance, but that is not all that I am. Those are are not character traits. I am integrable, I am honest, I am authentic, I am impassioned, and I would encourage you to look at yourself the same way, not as the labels of the circumstances or the hard things that you've been through, but as the beautiful person that you are. Not the color of your hair, not your zip code, not the amount of money in your bank account, but how you show up in the world. That's the way that you start to make an impact. You start to look at yourself with the value and the self-worth that you have and that you offer to the world. No one can bring to this universe what you bring to it. Only you can. You're it. You're the light, you're the shine. You just have to decide what you're going to do with it. Yeah, I had no idea where I was going with today. Um, this is again, I mentioned this before, extremely uncomfortable for me talking about things just off the cuff, figuring it out. I am a planner. I love to have a script, I love a good teleprompter. And then I realized that was not authentic to my voice and uh who I am and why the people who are around me in person want to be around me. They like my quirkiness and my loudness and my big FU middle finger to everyone else's idea of what this and what growth is supposed to look like. So here I am challenging you once again. Look at yourself a different way. Instead of allowing society to decide who you are, what you are. And I know this has nothing to do with cybercrimes, but this is what's on my heart. I want you to look in the mirror and pick three characteristics about who you are, what you offer the world, and why it matters. But until next time, keep becoming.
