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196 - No Time for Ease and Comfort: A Lesson from 1940 for the Life You're Living in 2026 · Getting After It

0:00
SPEAKER_00: There is a sentence that I cannot stop thinking about.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: It comes from Winston Churchill.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: He was given a speech in 1940 in January, and he was standing in front of thousands of people in the free trade hall in Manchester, and he said this.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: This is no time for ease and comfort.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: It is the time to dare and endure.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: He was talking to a country at that time that had declared war but had not yet been hit by it.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: He was talking to people who still believed that maybe the storm would pass them by.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they wouldn't have to deal with everything that he thought that they were going to have to deal with.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: And the more that I sit with that sentence, the more I think he's also talking to me.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: He's also talking to you.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: But he's talking to me, a guy in Utah, who used to wake up at 5 every morning and now wakes up at 8 or 7:30.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: A guy who has a race that he wants to run but has not signed up for.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: A guy who tells himself a story about why.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Gettin' After It podcast, my friends.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host Brett, and if you're new here, we talk about all things encouraging you to get out of your comfort zone, to do hard things, and to really push yourself.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: And I want to walk you through that one line from the speech that I started off with and what it has to do with the war that we all fight every single day with the version of ourselves that wants to take it easy.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm reading a book right now called Churchill, Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: And if you're interested at all in leadership, in history, in courage, um, the cost of being right when nobody wants to be, and I'd say pick it up because it's fantastic.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Um 900 pages, and I'm loving every single one of them.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I read it to our little boy Winston every night.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, he's not yet born, but you know, I don't think he'd want to listen to that when he's a newborn baby.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, he's getting it right now in the womb.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: Anyways, before we kick it off, you know what the rule is.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Cracking open a Coke Zero here.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Ooh hoo hoo! Listen to that.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually wow, it's fizzing real real good.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: I was actually very nervous about this.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: About 10 seconds before I hit record, I pulled over on my microphone and it's on a little table.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: It just throws the Coke Zero off.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: So that was actually maybe a little too early to open it, but who cares?
2:36
SPEAKER_00: We're going for it.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: But, anyways, so I'm in the middle of one of those speech sections in the book, and I came across that Churchill line that's just been sitting with me.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: So I had to do an episode about it because it's it for me, it goes deeper than just what I said in the beginning, and we'll go into that.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: But here's the context that I need you to think about because I think if you understand this, it puts a little bit more weight on the line.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: It's January 27th, 1940.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: Churchill is not yet prime minister.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: He won't be for another three and a half months.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: He is first lord of the Admiralty.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Britain has declared war on Germany, but the real fighting has not started.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: People in England actually called it the phony war or the Boer War.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, they're like, oh yeah.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Germany's doing stuff over there, but I don't think we're gonna go into it.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we're gonna actually have to fight.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: And Churchill knew better than that.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: He was from the start worried about what Hitler was doing in Germany and Nazism in general.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the army, British army, was in France at the time, just waiting.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: The bombers hadn't come.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: Most of the country was still hoping that this thing really wouldn't happen.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: And Churchill goes to Manchester.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: He stands in front of a packed free trade hall with the speech being broadcast broadcast across the entire country.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: And he gives a list of imperatives that builds and builds.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: And I want to read these because I think it's super one powerful, but two, you can kind of understand like how Churchill in this situation is just really thinking about like, how am I gonna amp up the country?
4:16
SPEAKER_00: Like, all these people don't think something's gonna happen.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: I need them to know that something will happen.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna um I'm gonna channel my inner Churchill as best as I can for this, and I'm gonna read this with a little bit of fire, like like Churchill would.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: So bear with me.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Fill the armies, rule the air, pour out the munitions, strangle the U-boats, sweep the mines, plow the land, build the ships, guard the streets, succor the wounded, uplift the downcast, and honor the brave.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: And then Churchill finishes with this line here.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: There is not a week, nor a day, nor an hour to lose.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: There is no time for ease and comfort.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: It is the time to dare and endure.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: That's the line.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: That's the one.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: That's the one that stuck out to me so much.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: There is no time for ease and comfort.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: It is time to dare and endure.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: I hope by the end of this podcast episode you are able to memorize this quote because it's powerful.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: And we'll go into why.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: The reason I'm doing an entire episode about this is simply because I mean, it's not World War II for me.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's about my 5 a.m.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: alarm that I let slip.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: It's about a race that I keep almost signing up for.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: It's about really the gap between the version of me I say I am and the version of me I actually woke up this morning as.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you what's going on with me a little bit right now.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it'll paint the picture better than just me telling you that I'm going through it.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, like if I'm gonna ask you to sit with me for the next half hour or so, I owe you the truth.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: And so I used to wake up every single day at 5 a.m.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: for a long time.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Five years, give or take.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Like it was not a problem for me.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Back in college, I listened to Jocko and he'd always say, wake up at 4:30 a.m.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, that's what I'll do now.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: And had no issues, really.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: But this has been the first time in my life where 5 a.m.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: alarm goes off, but my shoes aren't on, my clothes aren't on, and I'm not ready for the gym.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: The day was mine back then, before the world was typically opened their eyes.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Like I would go out and get things done and then start my day really strong.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: And I I loved that.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And that habit really changed me in many ways.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just like, hey, you know, I'm gonna go out and get an exercise in.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: That was the byproduct of my decision to wake up.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: The workout itself was the receipt.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: But the thing that actually changed me was the version of me who could keep a promise to himself at five in the morning when nobody on earth would have judged him for sleeping in, getting an extra couple hours of sleep.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: And this past month, that whole habit is gone.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't know exactly when it slipped.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: It probably happened slowly, like most things do.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Some of it is a season that I'm in, I will say.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Like I, you know, haven't had anything necessarily on the calendar that I that required me to be up in Adam early in the morning.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: That was missing.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And some of it is real life.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Like my wife is pregnant.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: She'll be 24 weeks at her Hyrux race, which I'll tell you about in a minute because I think it's super, at least for me, it's very powerful, it's very inspirational what she's doing.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: And so we'll get to that in a second.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: But I've got a new job.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: I have reasons.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: I have really good reasons actually to stay in bed, to get a little extra shut-eye.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: And that's the part that should scare you, and that scares me.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: Reason being is the slide does not look lazy on the surface, it looks reasonable.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Here's like my alarm now, it goes off at 7.30 or 8.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: And really there's no alarm, it's just me waking up because the sun's in my room.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, I guess it's time to get up.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: It's embarrassing.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: It's embarrassing to me because I I built my this habit for so long.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: I told you like five years, and now it's gone.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: Of course I know I can get it back, which that's what this whole purpose of this episode is, is to talk to you about daring greatly to endure when it gets hard.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: But again, we'll get more into that.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: And so I lay there in bed, next to my pregnant wife, with the softest pillow on earth underneath my head.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm so comfortable, I'm warm and in the blankets.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: It's still dark outside when 5 a.m.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: comes around.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: And one sentence runs through my head.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Every time, every single damn time, it is just five more minutes.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Come on, just five more minutes.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: It sounds nice, it sounds really good.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: And that sentence, guys, is the entire war.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: That is the entire thing.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Not just my war, but really yours too.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: The whole thing is right there in three words, a few words.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: Um and I love that feeling.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: I will be very honest.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: I love waking up and having my like a warm body next to me, the dark room, the pillow.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing on earth that's wrong with comfort, and that's the trap.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Like it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's not morally bad.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you have goals, then yes, it can be considered bad, but from an outside perspective, comfort's not bad.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: It is damaging, is what I would say.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: Comfort is damaging.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's the whole trap.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: The thing pulling me into ease is not bad.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: It is beautiful, and that is why it works.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: You're telling me if you're listening to this, you wouldn't want an extra few moments in the morning next to your wife in bed where it's comfortable, right before the day begins.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people would probably either agree or disagree with me, but I don't know.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: That's like that's a beautiful thing for me.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: And that is why it works.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: That is really it.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: Nobody gets seduced by something ugly, I'll tell you that much.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: They get seduced by something that feels good.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: And one month into it, and I can feel the erosion that I've put myself through.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: It's not in my fitness yet.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: My legs are fine.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, I still exercise every day, I still push myself a lot, but it's just this simple thing.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: That erosion is something quieter.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: It's in my quiet certainty that I am the kind of guy who does what he says he's going to do.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: And that is the asset.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: That is the whole asset.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Once that goes, every other goal in life gets harder.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: Because you're starting every morning from a deficit of self-trust.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Now, I also want to tell you about a race because the alarm is a symptom.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: The race is the bigger one.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: There is a race I've been wanting to sign up for.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: I won't name it on the show yet because I haven't pulled the trigger and I don't want to tell you I'm I'm doing it until I've actually done it.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: But I've been thinking about this race for weeks.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: I have the date, I know what it is.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: I have a rough idea of what the training cycle is going to require of me.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And every single time I sit down on my laptop, I ignore the thought to register.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: It comes up and it's there.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: And it's I'd lie if I said I wasn't there.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: But the story that I tell myself is something I'm sure a bunch of you tell yourselves too.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: I tell myself, oh yeah, it's it's the baby.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: We have a baby coming.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: September, you know, the race is in August, baby's in September, I'm gonna have to train a lot, like I want to be present for Allie.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: I just started a new job.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: The training would be intense, maybe now's not the right time.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: All of that is true, and almost none of it is the actual reason.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: The actual reason is that I'm nervous.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm a guy who calls himself a runner.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: I've run ultras before.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: I have a sub-three marathon under my belt, and every single time I sit down in front of a new race, I get the same nerves I had the first time.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Every time.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: That fear that I'll dare to chase the goal, and then on the day my body will quit on me, or conditions will eat me alive, or I'll have to drop, or I'll finish slower than I said.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Their nerves don't go away.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: I just have a new wallpaper to hide them behind.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: And that wallpaper this time has a baby on it.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: So here's where Churchill comes in and slaps me in the face a little bit.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: He says, Hey Brett, time to time to get back into it.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: If I read that sentence five years ago, I probably would have nodded, like, yep, that's a good one, Churchill, and I would have moved on.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: Reading it a few days ago, sitting in my bed at 9 p.m., completely difference.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: That sentence hit me like a bar dropping on my chest.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: There is no time for ease and comfort.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: It is the time to dare and endure.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Churchill is not talking about World War II to me.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about a guy who lets a 5 a.m.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: alarm slip and calls it a season.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about a guy who lets a race sit in his head for weeks to months and calls it being a good husband.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is where Allie comes in because Allie here is the cure.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Allie has a high rox in two weeks.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: She will be 24 weeks pregnant on race day.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know what high ROX is, picture this.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: It's an indoor competition, eight runs that are all a kilometer long, eight functional fitness stations, think sled pushes, sled pulls, skier rigs, um, wall ball throws, lunges, all that kind of hard stuff, all stacked back to back.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: It's brutal when you're not 24 weeks pregnant.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: It's a different sport when you are.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: Her body is changing underneath the training.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Some days her energy is great, and some days it's not.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: That plan that works on Monday doesn't work on Thursday.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: She has been pivoting and learning every single week on how she's going to get to the finish line on her high rocks race.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing she is not waiting for an easier season to do a hard thing.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: She is doing the hard thing in the middle of a hard season.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Watching her this month has been one of the clearest mirrors I've helped held up to myself in a long time, honestly.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm over here at 7 a.m.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: with the pillow and the excuses and everything that I talk about.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: And she's loading up the high rock sled with a baby on board.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: So what exactly is my excuse?
14:50
SPEAKER_00: Excuse again?
14:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't have one.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm just a little little baby, I guess, right now.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: I'll get after it.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: I'll get back after it in the mornings.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: That that 5 a.m.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: alarm is gonna be mine.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: That'll be mine.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: And that's the whole point of this episode is listen, we all go through different phases in our life where we wish we did something better, where we wish so that we knew maybe a little bit more about something before we did it, or we acted differently in a situation.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, is you cannot change the past.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: You can only influence the future by your current moment that you're in now.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: And I am committed and I am driven to get back on track with my schedule.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Because when the baby comes, I have that in the distance.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna change a lot of our schedule.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: And I have to be consistent with that 5 a.m.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: routine because I'm not gonna have time after work to go and go to the gym and leave Allie and the baby here.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: I want to be with them.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be at the gym.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: And that's just a whole slippery slope that leads me to not actually being an athlete anymore and putting up all my race medals on a shelf and having them collect dust over the years.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: It's not what I want to do.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: And then I don't want to be a hypocrite coming on the Getin' After a podcast and saying, like, you guys need to do hard things.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: When I I gained 50 pounds by that point, and uh I can only run a quarter mile without having an asthma attack or a heart attack.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's not gonna get there.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm just painting the picture on the things that can happen if you let things slide.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: You have to be careful with that.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me unpack what this Churchill quote means for us in 2026.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Because I think we have a particular problem with this sentence right now that they did not have in 1940.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing comfort seems to be the default a lot of the times.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: It is the gravitational pull on every single one of us in every single day of our life.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Think about what the seduction of comfort looks like in 1940 in Britain.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: It was geopolitical.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: It sounded like maybe if we don't poke Hitler, he'll be reasonable.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Hilarious looking back now that this is actually what the people thought.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: But that was the easy path back then.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: That was the ease and comfort Churchill was warning them about.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: That fantasy that you could stay safe by not engaging with the thing in front of you.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: And in 2026, the seduction has a thousand different rappers.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: It comes in many forms.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: The alarm can wait, the gym can wait, the hard conversation with your spouse, that can wait.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: The business idea that's been sitting in your phone for months, put it on the table again.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna wait.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: The doctor's appointment can wait.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: The next chapter of your book that you're writing, that can wait.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: None of these things look like cowardice from the outside.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: They look like reasonable adult time management.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly why this is the harder version of the war Churchill was talking about.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: The modern enemy does not show up in uniform.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: It shows up as a pillow.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: It shows up as a soft chair, it shows up as Netflix.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: It shows up as one more scroll.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't seem too bad, right?
18:11
SPEAKER_00: One more scroll?
18:13
SPEAKER_00: And every time you pick comfort, this is the danger.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: The muscle that does hard things gets one rep weaker.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: And here's the other piece, too.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: For most of us in 2026, real physical discomfort doesn't show up on its own anymore.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: We're not out chopping wood for heat.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to walk 14 miles for water.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to fight in a war.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: The only way that you encounter real friction in 2026 is you have to manufacture it.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: You sign up for the race, you set the alarm, you take the cold shower, you have that hard conversation.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: If you don't volunteer for hard things, you simply will not encounter them.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Sure, there's things that life will throw at you.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'll get sick.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Maybe someone that you love will get sick.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: And if we don't allow ourselves to step outside of that, we're never going to realize the potential that we have.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: It's a dangerous thing.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: You you cannot let comfort win.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Because we'll get into it a little bit more about what it does to your confidence.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: But the danger is that one day you wake up at 45 and you realize that you've been resting for two decades, and resting is what got you to where you're at now.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: You never really pushed yourself.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: You never really tried a little harder at work.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: You never were the example that your kids needed.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: There's a line from Seneca from letter 78 from his stoic letters where he says, Difficulties strengthen the mind as labor does the body.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: Plain English here, the endure part isn't the punishment, it is the mechanism.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: The reason hard things work is they reshape you while you're in them.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: You do not endure a thing.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: You endure through a thing into a new version of yourself.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: Allie isn't getting through high rocks.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: Allie is becoming someone on the other side of Hyrocks who I cannot wait to meet.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: She's gonna have her own battles that day.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And I know her.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: She's gonna push.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay, point number two.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: If you're driving and you can't write this down, just say it out loud right now because this is huge.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: Even if you're in your office, who cares what people say about you?
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Say this out loud.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Dare and endure are two halves of one coin.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: They are not the same skill.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: And most people fail because they think about one of them.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Dare is the decision, dare is the moment you click register, dare is hitting send on an email asking them for a meeting.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Dare is telling your wife that you want to quit your job and start a business.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Dare is setting the alarm to 5 a.m.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: on Sunday night.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: It is one moment.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: It feels enormous because it carries everything that follows.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing the dare is the easy part.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Taking the chance is the easy part.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: Endure is the next 90 days.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Endure is what happens after the dare.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Endure is showing up to the workout on a Tuesday in February when nobody is watching, when nobody would care if you skipped.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Endure is choosing the salad after a long day of work when there's a burger right there that's calling your name.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: But you have other goals, so you won't go.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: You won't cave.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Endura is having the hard conversation the second time because the first time didn't fix it.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Endura is the entire training block.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Every single mile, every single run, every single stretching session, every single early morning that does not feel epic because you didn't film it and you didn't put it on Instagram.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: The reason most goals die isn't that people don't dare.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: People dare all the time.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: They dare on January 1st.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: They dare every Monday.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: They dare on their birthday.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: They dare every time they hit their breaking point.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: The reason goals die is people thought daring was the hard part.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: They felt that surge of decision energy.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: They assumed it would carry them.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: And then 14 days later, when the energy faded and only the endure was left, they quit.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: I want you to understand this.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Endure is the cost.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Dare is the down payment.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: You don't get the goal because you wrote the check.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: You get the goal because you keep paying every month for the next year and you don't balance.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Dwayne Rocky Johnson, he always says rent is due.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Meaning you have to show up, you gotta pay.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Like he's a big dude.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: He lifts a lot.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: And he says that he has to pay rent every single time he lifts.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: Meaning he's got to put in the work.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: This is where I have to point at myself again.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Because when I think about this race, my mind keeps replaying the dare.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Sign up, click, card swipe, done.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: Simple, right?
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Very easy.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: Every time I model the dare, I get nervous and I close a tab.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: But the actual question isn't whether I can dare.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: I've dared before.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: I've signed up for ultras.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: I've signed up for sub three attempts.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: And the actual question is whether I want to enter the endure.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: Do I want to face what is going to happen over the next few months?
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Do I want to feel tired throughout the day because I'm waking up at 5 a.m.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: every single time again or every day again?
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Whether that's me waking up at 5 over the next 12 weeks or infinitely.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: Whether I want to spend my Saturdays on an early morning long run instead of in bed.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: That's the real cost.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: It's not just signing up for the race, it's the work that goes into it.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: And until I'm honest about the cost, I'm just lying to myself and calling it a baby.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: That's really it.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: This is one of my most honest conversations with you guys.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we are friends now, but damn if it's not hard to say.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: This is one of those things I'm doing.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm daring with this podcast.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: Hoping it lands.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: But, alright, let's go on to point three.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: This one might be the most uncomfortable part of this whole episode.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: So brace yourself.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: Get ready for it.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: The cost of not daring is not visible until it is.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: When you don't dare, you don't get a bill in the mail.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: You don't get that.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: You don't lose money.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: You don't miss a race because the race never existed for you.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Nothing dramatic happens when you don't dare.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: And that right there is the whole problem.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: What actually happens is erosion.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: It's slow.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: It's quiet.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: You won't notice it until you do.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Until you're 45 and you realize, man, I spent two decades resting, not pushing myself.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's the scary part.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't show up on a spreadsheet.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: It shows in how you carry yourself, it shows in the way you talk about yourself in your own head.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: It shows up the next time you stand at the edge of another dare and you remember somewhere underneath that you didn't take the last one.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: And the deficit compounds.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: You've heard me say consistency compounds many times on this podcast.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: The same thing goes for not taking the chance.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: That decision will compound.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: Every dare you don't take makes the next one a little harder to take because you've added one more piece of evidence to the case your mind is quietly building.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: The case is I'm the guy who almost.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: The case is I'm the guy who thinks about it.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you something that I believe in my bones.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: You cannot lecture or motivate your way out of that deficit.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: The only way out is to dare again.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: The only way out is to walk into a dare, do the endure, and finish a thing, and put a piece of evidence on the other side of the ledger.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: That is how confidence rebuilds.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: That is the only way I have ever seen it work in my own life.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: It's not affirmations, it's not vision boards, it's not journals.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: It's receipts.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: Actual, dated, finished, you said you would and you did receipts.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: There's a quote I want to bring in here too.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know it because I've shared it on this podcast, but some of you might not.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: It's from Teddy Roosevelt's speech in Paris in 1910 called Citizenship in a Republic.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: The most famous part and the part that I wear around my neck, right here.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: It stays right there.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: He says it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: The scoreboard is not perfection.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: The scoreboard is whether you got off the bench.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Roosevelt is saying that qualifying the qualifying event for any meaningful life is daring.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: The critics who never tried don't count.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: The guy who tried and got beat up, that counts.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: You face be your face being marred by dust and sweat and blood is not a punishment.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: It's the proof that you were in the thing.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: That you gave it a shot.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: That you tried.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: And when you ask yourself, what's the cost of not daring?
27:49
SPEAKER_00: The answer isn't that you missed the race.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: That's not it.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: The answer is you didn't get into the arena, which means the entire game stopped being yours to play.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: And you have to live with that every single day.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Be the man or woman in the arena.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sexist.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Be the man or woman.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: It's so stupid.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Those are dumb jokes.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: Last big point before we get into the practical stuff here.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Um, this one took me a long time to learn, honestly.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: So let me try and save you some years.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, confidence is downstream of daring.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: It's not upstream of it.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Most of us walk around waiting to feel confident before we sign up for the hard thing.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: We wait to feel ready.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: We wait until the timing's right.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about it.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: How many times have you done something like that?
28:36
SPEAKER_00: I've done it plenty of times.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: And we wait until we lose the five pounds, we wait until the kids are older.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: We wait until the business is more stable.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: We wait until we have more in savings.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: We wait and we wait and we wait.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: The whole time we're waiting for a feeling that is never going to arrive in advance.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Confidence is the receipt, not the ticket.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: You don't get it at the door, you get it at the end.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: You walk into the dare scared.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: You endure, you finish.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: And on the other side, you find out what what uh you find out you were made for more than you thought.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: That you're capable and ready for more than you thought.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: That feeling of I can do this shows up the morning after a race day.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Not the morning of registration.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Allie's going to feel a level of confidence after high rocks that she cannot manufacture right now.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: There's no amount of journaling she can do this week that would generate that feeling.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: The only way to that confidence is through the race.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: The only way through is through.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: That's the part nobody tells you when you're 23 and scared of trying to figure out what you're gonna do in life.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to bring in something from uh Andrew Roberts' book, Churchill Walking with Destiny again.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you something about Churchill that I had not appreciated, that I didn't even know until I started reading this book, reading his biography.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: Churchill spent most of the 1930s in what historians call the wilderness years.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
30:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, he was out of the cap he was out of the cabinet.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: He was unpopular.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: He warned about Hitler over and over and over, and the political class in Britain mocked him for it.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: They didn't listen to him.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: They called him a warmonger.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: They called him obsessed.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: They thought he was past his prime.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: He gave speeches in mostly empty rooms.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: He wrote articles that people didn't read.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: By every measurable definition of success, the man was failing in public on and on for a very long time.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: And he did not lose faith.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: He did not pause and wait for a more comfortable season.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: He kept writing, he kept warning, he kept showing up.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: He had this unrelenting confidence in his own purpose, even when the evidence available to him said that he was a politically dead man.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about that a lot.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Because I think most of us, myself included, probably would have folded somewhere around year three of being mocked in public.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: Of no one believing you when you say, Hey, there's a huge issue over in Germany right now.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: We need to handle that.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: And everyone's like laughing at him, like, haha, Winston, you don't have to think about that.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: Winston, what a goofy man.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: Stuff like that all the time.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: I guarantee you that's how they sounded too, almost identical.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: But Churchill went a decade in this wilderness years.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: When the moment came in May of 1940, he was the only person standing who had been right and who was ready.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: The receipts of his daring across the wilderness years were exactly what qualified him for that hour.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying you're Winston Churchill.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm not Churchill either, although I wish I I wish I was.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: But I'm saying that the version of you that you're going to need at the hour that matters is being built right now.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: In small daily dares you take or you don't.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: Confidence is not going to arrive in advance.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: It is going to arrive on the other side of work.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: Now let's get into some practical things here.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Five things that I want you to actually do this week.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: Don't just listen and nod.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: Like I think the whole point of this episode is to move you from listening to daring and doing.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: So number one, name your dare out loud today.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the thing is, it could be the race, the conversation, the business, the habit you let go, the book you want to write.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: Say it out loud to one person, your spouse, your friend, a voice memo to yourself, whatever it is.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: The point is get it out of the soft, safe corner in your own head and into the world where it can be held accountable.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: The minute you name something, you put a clock on it.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: Number two, take the smallest concrete step in the next 24 hours.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: Not 24 days, in 24 hours.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: If the dare is a race, then you need to register.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: If the dare is a business, you need to file the LLC.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: If the dare is the conversation, send the text and ask them to meet.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: The size of the step is irrelevant.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: The point is to make the dare physical in the next day before momentum slides you back to ease.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: Just like how doing hard things builds your momentum to continue doing them, doing easy things continues building your momentum towards doing easy things.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Number three is pick the daily price you're willing to pay for the next 30 days.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: Endure is a daily currency.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: So, what's the rep?
33:50
SPEAKER_00: For me, it's 5 a.m.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: It's 5 a.m.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: alarm.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: That's mine.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: For you, it might be 30 minutes of work on a side hustle before you open Instagram or you get distracted with other things.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: It might be one less drink at dinner or a few calories less throughout the day.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: It might be a walk every morning before your kids wake up.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter what it is.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: Pick one and just one and stop negotiating with it for 30 days.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: Number four is find your version of Ally.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Find somebody in your life who is currently daring and is currently enduring.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Don't compete with them.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: Your goal is to study them.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: Watch what they do on days they don't want to.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: Borrow what they do.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: I've spent the last month watching my pregnant wife train for HIROX, and it has done more for myself, my respect for her and my love for her than really anything could.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: Because I know I've trained for Hyroxis before.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: I've done one, didn't finish it because I had the flu or something.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: But I know what it takes to do that.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: It is hard.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: And I've been watching her, you know, she's like, man, my legs are so sore.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: And it's because her body is literally changing.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: But she keeps going.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: And that is a woman who I respect, love, and admire more than anyone else.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: Find someone like that who does the same for you.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Try and copy them a little bit.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: And then number five, track the receipts, not the feelings.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: This one is very important.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Stop checking how you you feel about the goal.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: Feelings about goals?
35:27
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you're gonna feel scared sometimes, and that's okay.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to start checking whether you did the thing today.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes or no?
35:34
SPEAKER_00: Did you set the alarm?
35:36
SPEAKER_00: Yes or no?
35:37
SPEAKER_00: Did you wake up on time?
35:38
SPEAKER_00: Yes or no?
35:39
SPEAKER_00: Did you do the workout?
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Yes or no?
35:42
SPEAKER_00: A row of yeses will rebuild your self-trust faster than any podcast on earth, including this one, unfortunately.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: But I believe that.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: Once you see that evidence come through, you'll realize that you're capable of more.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay, here we are at the end.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a challenge.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: And then you can stop listening.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: You can go about your day and hopefully dare a little bit more.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: But the challenge is simple.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: This week, one dare named out loud, one concrete step in the next 24 hours, and the first day of a 30-day endure window.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: That's the whole game.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: Not a transformation.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: This is not a new identity.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: This is not a 75-day mountain you have to climb.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: It's one dare, one step, and one daily rep.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: And we will talk about this again next week.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: And guys, I want to tell you something also before I sign off because I think it matters and I think that you do deserve the honesty.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: This episode is for me as much as it is for you.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm preaching to myself this whole time.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: I have a 5 a.m.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: alarm that I am rebuilding starting tomorrow.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: I have a race I'm going to register for this week.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: The only reason I'm doing it is because Churchill stood up in Manchester in 1940 and said the only sentence I needed to hear.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: The funny thing about war, about that war, when you read the history, is that Britain did not win because they felt ready.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: They did not win because the timing was right.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: They did not win it because they had a better hand than the Germans did.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: They won it because eventually enough of them dared, and almost all of them endured.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: The same thing applies to your training block, to your business, to your marriage, to your morning.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: There is no easier season coming.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: The work is on the side of comfort.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: It always has been.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: It's on the other side of comfort.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: So this is your reminder, and it's mine.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: If this episode hit me hit you pretty good, if it got, you know, you thinking about what you can be doing differently, please do me a favor and send it to one person.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Just one person who you think might need to hear it.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: And it takes 30 seconds to leave a nice little rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: That always helps.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: It gets the podcast in front of more people that I'll never meet.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: And uh that matters more than I can I can tell you.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: But seriously, I I appreciate your time today.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: It's not time for ease and comfort, it's time to dare and endure.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be the line I repeat in my head for a long time.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: And it should be yours too.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: Because if you know what you're capable of, if you've even got a gleam a glimmer of that before, you've seen that, you've seen it in action.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: Imagine what your life could look like if you continue to dare and you continue to endure.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: It won't be easy.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be easy.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm not promising it will be, but what I am promising is that you will be a completely different person on the other side of that.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: So thank you guys so much for listening.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate you guys.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: And until next episode, everybody, go out there and dare greatly, endure it well, and keep getting after it.