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185 - Choose Hard Before Hard Chooses You: Building the Capacity for Life's Toughest Moments · Getting After It

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, so there's a version of you that knows exactly what you need to do.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It knows what race you need to sign up for.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: It knows the hard conversation that you have to have.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: It knows the thing that you've been circling, reading about, studying about, thinking about, and telling yourself that you'll get to eventually when the timing is right.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you feel ready.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have a little bit more information.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing that version of you is not waiting for the right moment.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's waiting on the other side of something uncomfortable.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the question I want to ask you today, and the in the question that the entire episode is based on, isn't whether the hard thing will eventually find you.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because it will.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Life guarantees that.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: The question is whether you've been training for it or if you've been hiding from it.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to another episode of Getting After It, My Friends.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Brett.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, this podcast is the goal of this is to do one thing.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's to get you out of your comfort zone and help you do hard things.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's really it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this whole thing is about.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And today's topic, I've discussed it before.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have uh I've done episodes on it before, but I've I didn't go into as much depth as I as I wanted to, and I I didn't really make it personal.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole topic of this is voluntary discomfort, which is something that has completely changed my life.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be thinking right now, wow, Brett, are you a masochist?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: You like to push yourself and you like to put yourself in hard con or hard situations?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because I know the value that they bring.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the whole idea that the hard things you choose on purpose are exactly what prepare you for the hardships that life will involuntarily put in your path.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's involuntary discomfort.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Things like, you know, you lose a job, you um get some kind of specific diagnosis that's not good.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or you break a leg.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, your house burns down.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Bad things, right?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Involuntary.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't choose any of that.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And before I get into it, I want to be up front about something because I feel like this conversation can get easily skewed into bro culture, um, which are things like, you know, you gotta wake up at 4 a.m., you gotta do a cold plunge, you gotta wear your pain like a badge.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not what this is.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: While those things do have their benefits, it's not what we're talking about.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I believe if you do a cold plunge, maybe that'll help you uh understand discomfort and be a little bit more okay with it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Train that muscle.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And there's another version that's kind of what I call the quote unquote hard things industry, um, where it's the aesthetic of difficulty without any substance to it.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not what this is either.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: What this is, is it's personal.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be sharing some experiences from my life.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be a little bit open about who I used to be.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you sit with me for the next few minutes, half hour, whatever this is, I believe that it'll show something about your own life too.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to take you back to when I trained for my first marathon.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was scared.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I ran it in 2023, and so that was about three years ago, but it was the Utah Valley Marathon.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I didn't think that my life was on the line.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't think I was gonna die, but genuinely uncertain about whether I could do it or not.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, a marathon felt like this massive commitment and such an absurd thing to do.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, 26.2 miles.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Even the most sane person would question if that is something that they can do, right?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's hard.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember looking at race plans, training plans, and thinking to myself, like, who the hell does this?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Who's getting themselves into this situation and trying?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, me.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing it, and I fell in love with running um just from a couple of half marathons that I did, and I I I really enjoyed the challenge.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And but still, I I was questioning whether or not I can do it.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I did is I trained.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I got up early.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: I spent hours on the road.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I ran when I didn't want to run, which here's a little uh Easter egg in this episode.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very important thing to learn how to do is show up when you don't want to.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: That helps build your discipline.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: It also helps you build this involuntary discomfort muscle that I'm gonna call it.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I dealt with all the aches, I dealt with the long Saturdays, and you know, those moments where you're out there running, you're only with your own thoughts and maybe a podcast or some music.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually race day came.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I was um the way that they took you up to the the race start was on a on a school bus.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're in a school bus driving up the canyon, and I just remember thinking, like, why isn't the bus stopping?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I thought for sure we would have hit 26.2 miles by now.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: How come the bus is not stopping?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to panic a little bit, but I got off the bus and it was freezing outside.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I wrapped myself in a little foil blanket and just sat there and hoped that I'd be able to get this done.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but here's the thing about races, and this is if you've never run a marathon, maybe this will help you understand if you want to prepare for that.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get there, when the bus drops you off, you're usually there for probably an hour or so.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that's the worst because you see everyone warming up, you see them shaking their legs or stretching or doing whatever they have to.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are obviously nervous, like myself in the first one.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And some people are just having a great time, chatting with friends and doing um what seems natural to them.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I started my run and I finished.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened next is something that I I didn't expect because in that moment I didn't feel relief, I felt hunger.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like I wanted to find whatever the next challenge was, and not for the not for the medal, not for the finish line photo, but I felt hungry for the next version of whatever the challenge might have been.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And because finishing that race gave me something that motivation books, hype videos, um, podcasts, they couldn't give me.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, it was evidence.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had evidence that, okay, well, I'd I'd questioned whether or not I'd be able to do this in the beginning.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know if I was gonna be able to actually be successful in completing the marathon, and I did.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had a little piece of real hard evidence earned through my body, and that taught me that I could do things that scared me.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided to raise the bar.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to run a sub-three marathon.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is I was big into following people like Nick Bear, Cameron Haynes, and I didn't understand the work that was going to need to go into running a sub sub-three marathon, uh, because that's a whole different animal.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're not just trying to finish, you're trying to perform.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And every run that I did for that training block had a purpose, and every mile had a specific pace that I needed to hit.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: The difference is when I crossed that finish line, under three hours, that same hunger came back.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what's next?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: What's the next thing that scares me?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because a sub three arath sub-three marathon scared the hell out of me.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea if I was going to be able to do it.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I had this lofty goal that, you know, I really wanted to put the work in.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: On top of that, it was Team Tim.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the race that we run in honor of my uh wife's father, who passed away from cancer, you know, I wanted to be able to do it for for Tim and to prove to myself that, you know, just because it's a hard challenge, just because it's a very lofty goal, that if I put in the work, if I trusted myself and walked into that fear that it was something that I could accomplish.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And luckily I did.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I felt great after that race and I was I was proud of my efforts.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then I started thinking, you know, what is the next thing that scares me?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I found trail running.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I saw people like Cameron Haynes running on the trails all the time on social media, same people like Sally McRae, um, David Goggins, he runs lots of trail races.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And again, didn't know much about it.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew that that was the next challenge.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I signed up for my first 50k, um, which was 31 miles through the deserts of Arizona in July.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Bad time to decide to run a 50K in July because if you don't know too much about Arizona, it's hot as hell.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the training for that race really tested me.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you listen to a couple podcasts ago, I talked about when I first started trail running, it was a grind.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh something that I didn't really expect.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, you know, because I had been pretty successful in road racing, that that would transition very well.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But again, I was wrong.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because the work that's required for a trail run is much different.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're going over elevation, you have to pay attention to where you step because there's lots of rocks, there's branches you can trip on, uh, there's sometimes holes.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be more aware.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um the distance alone was one that I was scared of.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, 31 miles.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I thought a marathon was crazy, and I didn't know if I could do 31 miles.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what was different from that first marathon.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I had evidence now.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Again, here comes the evidence piece.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had a track record that I'd built for myself.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Rep by rep, race by race, and the fear was still there though.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be clear about that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: The fear was absolutely still there.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this time the evidence was louder than the fear.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I trusted myself, and I knew in a way that I couldn't have known any other way, that I could do hard things if I if I prepared and put in the work.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Great evidence of that.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a different kind of knowing.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get it from a book, you can't get it from a podcast, not even this one, as much as I'd like to think that I could, but you have to earn that kind of evidence.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have to earn that track record, and it's not easy.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go back in time to when I was in high school because I want to tell you about a fully different version of myself.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is where it gets real.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I grew up avoiding discomfort like it was something that was disgusting and a plague.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like I did not want to do anything difficult.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I loved playing video games, I loved to read, I love to hang out with my friends, and the things I didn't love was exercising.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't love to eat healthy, and I didn't love to put in work.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't like that at all.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't mean I was a coward, but I I was creative about the ways that I would avoid discomfort.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: In high school, I played volleyball, and our po our practices were typically four hours long.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Four hours.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a long time to practice.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I know what you're thinking, like you might be thinking, okay, well, volleyball practice, how intense is that?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty intense because our coaches would work us into the ground.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I can't remember what the exercises were called, but if we ever messed up, we'd have to take our shirts off, put it on the ground and hold it there, and then we'd have to run with our shirts on the ground, pushing it there.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of like a weird bear crawl.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we would do stuff like that all the time.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: We'd be out on the track running and doing warm-up exercises.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to be honest with you, sometimes I would fake injuries just to get out of practice.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'd show up with a sudden tweak in my ankle, or man, my shoulder's acting up again, or ah man, I'm not feeling great today.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all these different types of things.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I would always I was creative about the ways that I would avoid discomfort.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd sit on the sidelines and watch my teammates put in the work.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and in that moment it did feel like relief.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, I didn't recognize that I was doing myself a disservice.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was not learning how to push through discomfort.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was simply finding a way that I could take the easy route and get out of it.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I treated discomfort as a threat rather than some kind of signal that was teaching me.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't just in sports.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: With my studies, I was good at at finding answers online.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I believe I was a smart kid, like I had A's and B's, but the when I was doing practice or homework, whatever, whatever you call it, I guess homework is the practice of school, um, I would go online and I would try and find all the answers because I I didn't want to take time to actually do it.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I understood that if I was done uh relatively quickly, then I could play things like my video games, I could go hang out with my friends, I could read a book.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like those are all things that I really enjoyed doing, or just taking it easy and watching a movie.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I told myself that okay, well, I just have to get this done.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like doesn't really mean anything, anyways.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um But I wasn't trying to grow.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: What I was doing was just getting by.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's at the end of the day what it was.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the quiet cost of that was that I didn't understand uh what I was capable of until years later.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I showed up to adulthood uh with less capacity than I was capable of.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have the evidence that I could do really difficult things.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, sure, I I would play volleyball and I was decent at it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I started my junior year.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then school, like I said, I got A's and B's.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you would never know that I was out there just researching everything online and going to Quizlet and finding answers that people had.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um and, you know, I'm I believe that I was smart enough to avoid suffering and not smart enough to realize what avoiding it was doing to me.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I I don't blame that kid.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I believe I I I understand that kid.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's really it.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a seductive pull of the easier path that is real, and it's always gonna be there.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've learned throughout my life that that pull for ease, it doesn't go away.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it must just be human nature.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of us feel that we want things easy, and the last episode I did was all about embracing boredom.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You have to embrace challenges too.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to understand this contrast because between the Brett who faked an injury to get out of sports or who would look things up online to take the easy route, and the Brett who signed up for a 50k race because the distance scared him, that contrast is the whole point of this episode.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two very different people.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the difference between those two people isn't some kind of talent or natural toughness, it's a decision.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a decision that's made repeatedly over years to choose discomfort instead of avoiding it, instead of running from it.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is the whole game.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a whole game we're playing in life.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the framework I want to give you today.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to sit with it because it's I think it's one of the most useful things that I've come across.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: There are two kinds of hard things in life.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: The ones you choose, and the ones that choose you.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: The voluntary ones.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: They look like the race that you sign up for, the business that you start, the hard conversation that you know you need to have, and the discipline you commit to when no one's watching.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can choose those.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can back out.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do them.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the involuntary one.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, it's you lose your job.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the diagnosis that you get at the doctor's office, it's your relationship that falls apart.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: The season where everything you built feels like it's starting to crumble.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: You don't choose those.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get opt out of them.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like the voluntary ones, you don't have to do them.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can drop out at any time, but with the involuntary discomforts of life, you have to learn how to deal with it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And here's here's what I know with absolute certainty after years of running and building and trying to become a better version of myself.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing that determines how you handle the second category is how much time you've spent in the first one.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is my own experience, guys.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: It might be very different for you, but I'm this is what I've learned.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Voluntary discomfort is the training ground for involuntary discomfort.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the capacity you build by choosing hard things on purpose is the exact capacity you draw on when life makes that choice for you.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Seneca, who's one of my favorite stoic thinkers, he put it this way, and it's something I always come back to.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to that again.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because things are difficult that we don't dare.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's because we don't dare that they are difficult.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: The hard things don't get easier by waiting around or waiting till you have all the information or the right moment.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you take the easier path, you're widening the gap between who you are and who you need to be when it counts.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing discomfort on purpose is an act of daring in advance.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is an act of daring.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because like I said, that fear is real when I signed up for my first marathon or when I decided to take a job and move up to Utah.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like all these things that I chose that were relatively hard, that's what trains you.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when life comes for me, I I will have already said yes a hundred times to other things that I've done.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what I believe is preparation.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to tell you about my friend, a friend of mine.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Braden Galbraith.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he's been on this podcast before, so you might remember him.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I met Braden through a mutual friend at a Ragnar race.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know what a Ragnar race is, it's a relay race.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, typically covering a couple hundred miles in around 24 to 36 hours.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: You switch legs all the time, but you run through the middle of the night.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of discomfort, there's a lot of suffering.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment I met Bray Braden, I knew that this was someone who had made the decision uh that most people avoid.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's he's gonna do hard things, but the guy doesn't stop.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most impressive things about him is last year he ran uh he had a full year run streak, him and a couple buddies, uh Jay Skidmar was another one, but he ran 30 365 days a year, every single day.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not when he wanted to, but every single day.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Most people, including myself, have not done something like that.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so very impressed already, right there.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember during the Ragnar, something was very different about him.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't just physically capable, but he had a great attitude.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: There was a moment on that race where our team, uh, we split our team up into two different bus or uh vans, and there were six in each van.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Brayden and my cousin Parker and I, we uh we slept in in the van while other people slept in like a grass field, but it was like he's a tall guy, he's probably as tall as I am, and so we're crammed into this little van trying to get you know a couple hours of sleep if we can before we have to run again.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember the whole time he was making jokes.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like he was like, Oh, great, like, hey, I'm at a five-star uh hotel right now, this is nice.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Braden, I don't know if you remember saying that kind of stuff, but it it kept me kept me in a positive attitude as well, which also is like that's a huge benefit from being around people like that, is their attitude becomes contagious and it you know helps you keep a positive attitude and keep going.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And not the fake kind of positive or the toxic positivity stuff, but he he was just genuinely engaged with the challenge, and because of that, his actions and his demeanor reflected it.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: He embraced the difficulty and you could see it in him.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And now Braden is training for the Leadville 100.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I need to paint the picture for you guys here because if you don't know what Leadville is, you need to understand what this man is signing up for.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is very intense.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: The Leadville 100 is a 100-mile race through the Colorado Rockies.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: You start at 10,200 feet elevation and it goes up from there all the way up to 12,600 feet elevation.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: At that altitude, the air is so thin that your red blood cells literally cannot move oxygen through your body fast enough.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And your muscles are starving for air.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's also side effects of this, which include headaches, nausea, lethargy, and the compounding effect of doing all this while running 100 miles.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: The course has over 14,000 feet of total vertical gain and loss.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: The last 50k I did in Moab, Utah, had a total of 4,000 feet elevation gain, and I thought that was a lot.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now Braden's doing it for 100 miles with a total of 14,000 feet of elevation at 10,200 feet.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Elevation, which is nuts.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a mountain called Hope Pass that you climb twice.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's an out and back race.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Once on the way out and once on the way back.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: The halfway point is a little ghost town called Winfield.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the worst climbing comes from when you reach that point and you turn around.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Braden is training for.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the part that gets me every time I think about it, because there's lots of excuses, many people say, on why they don't have time to train and why they can't do the thing that they want to.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Brayden has a wife.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: He has kids.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: He has a job.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: He does not have more hours in the day than you or I.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have fewer responsibilities, but he's just made a decision.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he's kept on making that decision to choose that voluntary discomfort rather than avoid it.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he's not training for Leadville.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I believe he's training for life.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: The lessons that he's going to learn during that race are going to be applicable to many things.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he's building through the voluntary suffering of a hundred-mile race in the mountains, the exact version of himself that his wife, his kids, and his job, and the unpredictable hard things of life deserve.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: He makes time for difficulty so he can show up better in other areas of life.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Braden's a wise guy.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would call that wisdom.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: People ask me why I run.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why I keep signing up for races that scare me or races that continue to get longer.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've had many conversations where my mom's like, come on, why are you doing that?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna hurt yourself.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Mom, I love you, but it's not gonna stop until I get 250 miles.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's my race goal.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: My big life race goal is I want to hit a 250-mile race.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't do it for the finish line.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do it for the medal or the accomplishment.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: I do it because it trains me for life.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I have too much evidence of that now to say otherwise.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: When things get difficult at work, and they usually do because it's work, I know how to sit with discomfort without panicking.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: When I need to grind through a few podcast episodes and I feel unmotivated or the content isn't flowing as well as I'd like, I know how to keep a positive attitude and keep going.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I have some kind of natural resilience, but because I've been out on the trail at mile 28 of a 50k race where my legs are burning and my lungs are on fire, and I didn't stop.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to say this to paint a picture that I'm some amazing guy because I believe I'm I'm not.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm regular.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it's because, like Braden, I'm making the decision to choose voluntary discomfort rather than panic when life's involuntary discomfort comes to me.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And my brain has that information now.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I call it real life training.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I like to call it something cool.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: So real life training kind of makes sense, so it's what we're talking about.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: I call it real life training.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And every hard thing I choose is a deposit in a bank account that pays out when life decides that it's gonna make a withdrawal.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: The races, the early mornings, the difficult conversations I try not to avoid.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: None of that is suffering for suffering's sake.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's about building capacity.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the compounding interest of a sm a thousand small decisions to do hard things instead of the easy thing.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: No longer am I that kid who would fake an injury to get out of practice.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's not me anymore.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've built myself into a man who actually enjoys the challenge, who knows the value of putting yourself through difficult situations.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can't read your way into this.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can't journal about it, you can't create a vision board, not alone, not without the actual reps.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: David Goggins, who I mentioned earlier, he is someone who I believe has some of the most experience with voluntary discomfort, but also involuntary discomfort, um, than anyone else I can think of.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he said it this way: if you're willing to suffer, and I mean suffer, your brain and body, once connected together, can do anything.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's a powerful line.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And when your brain and body are connected through real hard experience, not in theory, something unlocks.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you start to trust yourself in a different way.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your confidence begins to rise.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's simply because you have evidence.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here's where I want to land this before we we start to get practical, and I give you some tips.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Most people avoid hard things because of how they feel before the hard thing.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's always anxiety.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the night before a race, whew, that's tough.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: The pressure sitting in your chest before you have that difficult conversation, that's real.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Your heart starts to beat faster.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the fear that shows up as soon as you commit to a big goal, all real feelings.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And those feelings, I believe that most people treat it as a stop sign.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a message that their body is telling them, saying, hey, this isn't for you.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Go find something a little easier.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Something that, you know, we know that we can do.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel those things too.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: I feel them as well.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: I felt it before my first marathon, before my first 50K, before I hit my before I uploaded my first podcast.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I still feel it now when I look to what's next.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: That feeling doesn't go away.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think you just get better at learning how to deal with it.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Victor Frankel, a man who survived the Holocaust and who lost everything, but who came out having understood something profound about what human beings are capable of, he wrote this.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's the involuntary hard thing, the thing that you do not choose.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what Frankel showed is that the inner resources you need for those moments don't appear from nowhere.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: They are built in how you lived before, and the choices you made when no one was forcing you to choose at all.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Discomfort tolerance is a muscle.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was atrophied in me when I was the little kid who decided he didn't want to practice because he was tired that day.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it has been built through deliberate uh action and one hard thing at a time over years.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing about muscles.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know this if you've ever trained, but they don't grow when they're comfortable.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: You have to put some kind of stress on them.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you want a big if you want big biceps, you're gonna have to put them under pressure.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to work them.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: They grow when they're stressed, and when they're pushed uh past before they ever were.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: The anxiety you feel before a hard thing is not a warning.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's a sensation of the muscle being worked.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: The scared feeling before a big goal is not a sign that you're not ready.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sign that something real is happening.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's a territory where your growth lives.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Marcus Aurelius, who was a Roman emperor who had many involuntary things thrown at him, from famine to plagues to wars, he says this, and I think about it all the time.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of my favorite quotes from him.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: You have power over your mind, not outside events.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Realize this and you will find strength.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: The inner power that you build through voluntary discomfort is the only kind that travels with you everywhere.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't control what life throws at you, but you can control how you start training for that throw.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now let's get specific.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't want this to be one of the episodes that you listen to, you feel inspired, and then nothing changes.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want something to be different for you.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: So here are five things which are low barrier but actionable that you can do right now.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And number one is name something that you've been specifically avoiding.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not vaguely, but call it out.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: There is something, and I know there is, because there always is, that you've been circling about.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: It could be the race that you haven't signed up for, the career move that you haven't made, the conversation you've been postponing.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, name it, write it down, and say it out loud.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Unnamed avoidance has a way of staying comfortable.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Once you name it, it becomes harder to ignore.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, start smaller than you think you need to.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not asking you to go out and do a 50k or do a marathon if you've never ran.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's not what I'm telling you.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: You don't um you don't earn the right to the big challenge by skipping the smaller ones.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: You have to build the evidence incrementally.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, whatever the next level is for you, pick it.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not the summit, but whatever the next step is, commit publicly if that helps.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to make the decision real.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number three is track your voluntary discomfort for 30 days.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is a really interesting exercise because in my experience, I've done this before, it teaches me about the progress that I've made within that 30 30-day time frame.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: But every day, note one uncomfortable thing that you're choosing.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be physical.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, it could be anything that you're putting off that you know you need to choose.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: But make the invisible visible.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll be surprised what you find, and more importantly, what you build and who you become.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Number four is reframe what fear is telling you.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: The next time that you feel anxious, pressured, uh, or nervous and scared, don't reach for some kind of relief.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Don't distract yourself, but sit with it for 60 seconds and say out loud if you have to, this feels hard because it matters.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is the sensation of growth.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: You could say that out loud.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're not reprogramming yourself to have you know positive thinking all the time.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're accurately describing what's happening.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: The discomfort is real.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: So is the growth on the other side of it.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, number five, is find your braiden.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: There is someone on in your life, maybe you know them, maybe you need to find them, who is choosing hard things on purpose, who has a standard for themselves that pushes them, and who doesn't use the demands of life as an excuse to not live with intention.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Get around that person more.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Voluntary discomfort is contagious.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I love that concept because it is true, and I've seen that in my life.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: When I see someone who's getting after it and pushing themselves, I'm motivated by that person.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to also be that example.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I want to be that person who does those kind of things and and who believes in themselves just because of the actions that they've decided to take.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: So find your braiden.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, here's your challenge for the week.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna make it simple because the whole point of this episode is not to overwhelm you, it's to move you, to start helping you build that evidence.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Choose one hard thing.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just one.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Something that you've been putting off because it's uncomfortable, because it scares you, because you've been waiting for the right moment that never quite arrives.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And do it this week, not next month.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be this week.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be a hundred miles through the Colorado Rockies, but it just has to be yours.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that makes you a little nervous to even say out loud.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: I know that putting yourself through voluntary discomfort, it seems like, you know, some people think it's common knowledge, others think that it's crazy.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: But there are real benefits from doing so.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: The high school version of me that faked injuries to sit out of practice, you know, he's different than he is today.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's because I chose doing I chose hard things repeatedly.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: So choose hard before it chooses you.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole thing.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole game.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I appreciate you guys for listening.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I always enjoy um reading people's comments and seeing how you know these concepts do help you uh progress and grow because that's the whole goal of what getting after it is.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to get out of your comfort zone.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to be a little nervous about the goals that you set.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if they're not, if the your goals don't scare you, then maybe they're a little bit too low.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't yet, please leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: It helps the show grow more than you know, you know, just getting a little bit more visibility there.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'd also love to hear from you.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: So leave a comment or send me a message on Instagram.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's always really fulfilling and rewarding to me to see, you know, how you guys apply it, how you practice it.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because everyone's life is gonna look different, everyone's heart is gonna look different than mine.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And from Braden's and from Jocko's or David Goggins, everyone's life is different, and we should understand that.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: But if this hit home, share it with a friend.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do whatever you gotta do to help get this message out to more people.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I truly appreciate it.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And until next episode, everyone, choose that one hard thing and keep getting after it.