Growth Comes From Pressure

And I wanna talk to you about growth today, but here's the thing: every person wants growth, but very few people want the pressure that goes with growth. You know, you know what I'm talking about? Like, everybody wants success, they wanna be confident, they wanna be strong, but the things that usually create that are difficulty. It's, it's discomfort. And the truth is, adversity is not the interruption that you have to your progress, it's actually the progress. It's-- I'm sorry, it's actually the process. So if you think about it, the moments that test you are often the moments that develop you the most. And people who achieve long-term success, they're not the people who avoid these challenges, they're the people who learn how to lean into them. So today [00:02:00] we're gonna talk about resilience and, you know, I hope this will help you to, you know, learn how to stay grounded under pressure, recover from setbacks faster, and even turn your obstacles into fuel instead of excuses. So over the last few weeks we've been talking and, you know, I'm, I'm hitting you midweek this week with this topic for a reason, but over the last few weeks we've been building your mental operating system. We talked about gaining clarity around your direction and how to focus your attention We've talked about building discipline through consistency and strengthening your identity through repeated behavior, and then last week we even talked about neuroplasticity. I guess that was probably Monday when we talked about that. But how the brain adapts and rewires itself, that is a topic that I encourage you to go back and check out if, if you haven't. So now, now we need to move on to something that every entrepreneur and leader faces, and that's adversity. And you, you, you know this because you've heard it many times, but growth is only [00:03:00] built through adversity. It's, it's built through resistance. It's built through pressure. And resilience is what allows you to keep moving even when things are difficult. But here's the problem everybody faces. What most people struggle with is they're mentally unprepared for the difficulty. So they, they expect progress, but they don't want the diff- the, the difficult times. The-- they want the results without setbacks or growth without pressure. So when challenges actually come up, they interpret them as signs that they're failing, and that interpretation creates a, a, a ton of emotional reaction. This is why you get fear and frustration and doubt and overwhelm. Look, we all, we all deal with it. But instead of adapting, a lot of times it causes people to shut down, and maybe you've experienced this. And over time, you know, when you repeatedly have these emotional reactions to situations, it creates patterns. People quit businesses too early. They abandon their goals too quickly, or they lose confidence. Confidence is one of those things that goes [00:04:00] away when you avoid challenges. But adversity is not abnormal. It's unavoidable. And the real issue is not the actual challenges you're dealing with, which is where most people are focused. It's the meaning that you attach to it. It's the meaning that you attach to the situations you're dealing with. So let's talk a little bit about what resilience is. Resilience is the ability to recover and adapt and continue to move forward under pressure. It's not meant to help you never feel stress. It's, it's not meant to help you never feel emotion, because resilient people still feel the fear and the disappointment and uncertainty. The difference is they just don't stay trapped there. So you've got to be asking yourself, "How do I recover faster? How do I adjust faster? How do I keep moving?" Because the pressure is either gonna strengthen you or it's gonna emotionally break you. And depending on how you interpret the experience, that, that resilience factor, it, it's not something you, you're born with, I can tell you this right now, but it's something that you will need to [00:05:00] build if you want to get through situations even better. So, um, think about this Without resilience, nothing's gonna grow. You know, your muscles don't grow, your character doesn't grow, your leadership, your confidence won't grow without it. And so difficulty is what's gonna force you in to become an adaptable, and your adaptability is gonna allow you to experience and deal with more. So, you know, you've got to learn to grow and build your resilience. And most of the confidence that you've built in your life, if you think about it, it's come from when you've overcome situations. It's not been when you avoided things. Your biggest growth has come, you know, the challenges. The challenges are the teaching moments that help you to problem solve. They build your perspective. They, they strengthen your emotional control, and most importantly, they, they give you evidence so that you can overcome situations, that you've survived the tough things. Think about situations in your life that you've dealt with that you've made it through. At the time, you may not have felt like you could, [00:06:00] and, you know, yet you kept going. So sometimes looking back at those experiences is what helps you to build that resilience because there's, there's sort of a pattern you go through with resilience, right? The first stage is you, you resist, right? This is your emotional reaction. You got fear and stress and overwhelm, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I don't wanna deal with this," and most people stop there. They literally resist reality instead of responding to it, and that emotional resistance is what amplifies all the suffering. You know, we choose to suffer when we just avoid it. But if you can move to that next phase where you learn to become adaptable, this is when you stop fighting the emotional situation, and you begin just accepting reality instead of reacting to it. You, you start to think a little bit more clear when this happens, and you focus on solutions, not the problem. And, and guess what? Solutions do become visible, and your nervous system starts to adjust to being able to handle pressure, and that's why, you know, professional athletes and individuals that are constantly put into pressure situations can handle it more.[00:07:00] So if you can do that, if you can sort of go through this resistance phase but become adaptable, then you can really get to that, that next step, which is growth. This is where the challenges become valuable to you. You learn the lessons because you've survived these difficult things, and, and you can get through the growth. So you have to learn in that middle to become adaptable, and this is what increases, you know, as you have more and more difficult situations, your adaptability. So how do you become more resilient? Like, what can you do to do that? And the, the number one thing I can suggest is to learn to control the meaning of the events in your life You've heard this happen-- y-you've heard this topic many times, but the event itself is not what creates emotional suffering. It's the meaning that you're attaching to the event that causes suffering. So you have to ask yourself, what-- when something happens to you, if you can just shift your brain a little by saying, "What can this teach me? How, how can I [00:08:00] learn from this? What, what-- how can this strengthen me?" And you go from dealing with it to actually analyzing it. What you'll do is you'll reframe the situation, and you learn to control the meaning of the event. So instead of it's like, "Oh, this is affecting me," you can say to yourself, "What can I learn from this?" And immediately, your brain starts to focus on how you can adapt and, and grow, and you're not as focused on the actual problem. And once you do that, you can separate emotion from, like, your identity because when you experience failure, you have to learn to realize this is not your identity. You know, struggling doesn't make you weak. It's a, it's just a setback in an event. It's not you. You're not, you're not weak. And, you know, what resilient people learn to do is they avoid attaching the situations to their own identity. And if you can do that, then you can start to focus on what you can control because you can't always control situations. You can't control what's gonna happen to you, but you [00:09:00] definitely can control your response, but only if you are being proactive and trying to figure out what you can get out of it. You know, your preparation, your effort, your attitude, your decisions, all these things you do control. And resilient people stop wasting time on things they can't control, and they start directing their energy into things they can. You know, I've had situations where things have happened to me, and man, it's tough. It's-- you take that situation, and it's like, it's really hard to deal with in the moment. But when you start to question, "Okay, what can I do here? How can I learn? What will this do? Will this make me stronger?" Then emotionally, you can disconnect from it, and you can start to find ways to focus on solutions. And all of that process I'm talking about is what builds your resilience. And, you know, one of the suggestions I have for you, first of all, and this might help you as well, is learn to prioritize your recovery Because this matters more than you realize. You, you can't sustain pressure all the time, and [00:10:00] sometimes when you haven't prioritized your recovery, y- you're, you're worn down. You know how like when you're feeling like you're overwhelmed or you're burned out, you're not gonna be able to deal with situations as much. So prioritize your sleep and your exercise and your mental resets because this recovery makes you more sustainable and adaptable. And, you know, here's the other thing. When you, when you focus on growing your resilience and, and also your recovery so you can deal with more, it's gonna build your confidence because the confidence is gonna come when you're pushing through adversity, when you're overcoming situations. So that's just a bonus of being a resilient person because every difficult season that you survive is gonna stack evidence for you that you can do it, you know, evidence that you can handle more. And confidence is rarely created through comfort. You know, all of your confidence is gonna come from overcoming situations. So you have to learn to shift your mindset. You, you've gotta shift the way you look at problems and adversity. Think of them as [00:11:00] your growth because pressure, it really does reveal the areas where you need to grow. And that's, you know, if you're getting these problems and they're coming up over and over, maybe it's a challenge for you to overcome. And so you're not gonna become more resilient by avoiding things, and you're not gonna become more resilient by facing them repeatedly and not learning. So the greatest struggle you have is the way you view situations that come up. And, you know, it's gonna take time, but here's what I would challenge you to do. I would challenge you to ask yourself when something comes up, "What is this gonna teach me? What is it gonna do for me? How can I grow from it?" And if you just ask those questions, you're gonna shift your, you're gonna shift your attention and your emotions to what you actually control, and I think that's gonna help you quite a bit. So, you know, protect your recovery habits. You know, spend time reflecting on situations when they're over so that you can internally process that. And, you know, overall, the, the message I just wanted to bring with you [00:12:00] here is that adversity will create your adaptability, which will build your resistance, and so you should want to face adversity and difficult situations. The people that sustain growth over time are not the people that avoid pressure. They're the people that lean into pressure. So if, if that helps you at all, I would like you to, you know, hit me up in the comments, by the way. Let me know what you're dealing with. I wanna, I wanna be able to give you suggestions, ideas. We all deal with stuff. And you, you've gotta remind yourself you're not alone But if you want to build that future version of yourself, and I believe it's never too late to live the life that you were meant to live and become that person you want to become, you have to lean into and, and, and expect and want and search for adversity. But don't go dealing with problems without also having spent some time trying to build your resilience. Resilience is the key. That's the topic for today. I hope it's something that will help you. Um, join me in our next episode because I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about confidence and, and self-doubt and, [00:13:00] and building up, um, your confidence. But I hope this is something that'll help you out, and please do me a favor and share the show. It'll mean the world to me. We can share the message and grow the community, and, um, and I'll look forward to talking with you more tomorrow. Let me know if you have any topics that you feel are things that you want us to bring to the Mastermind as well. We have some amazing interviews coming up. We've, we've really been going hardcore in our studio, and so we've got a lot of great, um