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What If Life's Tough Moments Are Your Secret Weapon? · Harder Than Life

• 0:07
  I'm Kelly Siegel, and this is Harder Than Life, a podcast about self-love, self-awareness, business, and health. We tell outrageous stories and boil everything down to simple, practical advice you can start using today. Let's get living.
• 0:23
  Welcome back to the show, Heart of the Life Nation. It's your boy, Kelly Siegel, back with another Harder Than Life Thursday edition, where we don't just face adversity, we crush it with raw grit, unshakable purpose, and radical intention. Today, we're diving into the storm with a plan that could change your life forever. The Harder Than Life plan. For when life gets hard,
• 0:46
  And trust me, it will. Mike Tyson said it best. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Life's punches are coming. Business failures, personal issues, romantic failings, moments that shake you to your core. But here's the truth.
• 1:09
  Your greatest growth, your biggest breakthroughs, and your most powerful moments are born in those hard times. I've been there, Heart of the Life Nation. Knocked down, but never, ever out. Today, I'm giving you the exact blueprint to rise stronger every time life hits. Strap in, grab a pen, let's get after it. I'm going to start with a personal one that I always say to everybody.
• 1:37
  Don't stand on the tracks where the train is coming through. I'm the train and here's the other one. Whatever knocks me down had better not be standing there when I get back up. Let's start with the raw truth. Life is going to test you. It's not a question of if, it's when.
• 1:57
  A 2023 study by the American Psychological Association found that 76% of adults face significant stress from life's challenges like financial loss, health issues, or personal crisis. Life doesn't play nice, and if you're living bold enough, it's going to hit back hard. I know those punches. Growing up in Warren, Michigan, I faced neglect and chaos that could have broken me.
• 2:27
  Damn near did. Building national technology management? That wasn't a smooth ride either. Losing major clients. Navigating lawsuits. Battling addiction. Battling the economy. The marketplace. Employees' families. Every hit hurt. But every hit taught me something. Your response to life's punches defines who you are and the legacy you leave.
• 2:56
  As Maya Angelou said, you may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.
• 3:04
  Life doesn't get easier. You get tougher, wiser, and more resilient. As a matter of fact, I've said, life is filled with magic and resilience. That's what the Heart of Life Plan is all about. Here's the core of that plan. Three principles, three to guide you when life gets tough. These are non-negotiables I've leaned on through every storm and they'll carry you too. When life hits,
• 3:32
  The first step is to face it head on with radical acceptance or as they call radical ownership. This isn't about giving up, it's about owning reality. During my battle with drinking, I had to look in the mirror and say, this is killing me. It's creating collateral damage, this is spilling all over everybody. I can't change the past, but I can change me now.
• 3:59
  Same with losing temporary custody of my daughter, Ari. It gutted me, but I had to accept it and move forward and pick myself up one step after the other. A 2021 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that accepting difficult emotions, accepting difficult emotions reduces stress by 28%. Just accepting it. Ask yourself, what's the reality right now?
• 4:29
  What do I need to accept to move forward? Radical acceptance clears the fog and sets you free to act. None of this, why me? Why is this happening? Woe is me. That victim mentality has no place. Number two, we need rapid responses. Once you've accepted the reality, don't sit with it. Move.
• 4:53
  Rapid response means taking decisive, intentional action fast. When NTM lost the $2 million client, we didn't wallow. Within days, we restructured our strategy, doubled down on new markets, and pivoted hard. We streamlined processes, we cut costs, we got more efficient, and we amped up our marketing strategy. That quick action turned a loss into a 35% revenue increase the next year.
• 5:21
  Your rapid response doesn't need to be perfect, just clear and immediate. Write down one actual step you can take today. Speed builds momentum and momentum builds victories. As Tony Robbins says, the path to success is to take massive, determined action. So number one, accept what's happening.
• 5:45
  Number two, rapid response. Number three, relentless discipline, aka intentionality. Hard times demand discipline, not just motivation. Motivation fades, discipline endures. My daily rituals...
• 6:05
  45 minutes in the gym, 10 minutes of meditation, journaling my wins and lessons, are my anchor when life gets rocky. They keep me grounded through sobriety, business crisis, and personal loss. Remember, we fall to our standards, not rise to our goals. These to me are non-negotiable all the time. I said hard times demand discipline.
• 6:31
  All times demand discipline. But if for some reason falling out of discipline is what caused it,
• 6:39
  this chaos, this challenge, then you need to double down on discipline. In fact, a 2024 Harvard Business Review study found that consistent daily habits increase resilience by 40% during stress. I'd argue that you don't feel the stress and it doesn't feel like resilience because it's become such a habit that you just do it daily and you don't think about it.
• 7:07
  Pick two to three non-negotiable habits, exercise, meditation, reading 10 pages, and stick with them, especially when life gets hard. So discipline is your lifeline. If you guys have followed me for any amount of time, you know this is my real life. So I have, by doing these daily habits,
• 7:25
  I don't experience the low lows. I do experience high highs, but I don't experience the low lows. The low lows are probably just kinda like even in life. Let's make this real with three times the harder than life plan and how it pulled me through the fire. I'm gonna tell you personal stories. This one is always personal.
• 7:46
  Example one, how I overcame addiction. I struggle with saying this, because was I addicted? At the end of the day, I'm saying this for you guys, the audience, it could be alcoholism, it could be porn, it could be just keeping yourself stuck, but I'm gonna tell you today the story about how I just was on life's hamster wheel of drinking too much. I radically accepted, I admitted that alcohol was destroying my life, my health, and my relationships, my purpose,
• 8:13
  I didn't deny it. No excuses. Just said I've had enough. My rapid response was I committed to sobriety for 90 days. I removed all alcohol, not really from my environment. I tortured myself. I still keep alcohol around, but I sought support from friends. I said it out loud. I told everybody I was doing it. I was loud and proud. And man, if I wouldn't have fall through that, that would have been disastrous. But I did it.
• 8:41
  And my relentless discipline was I poured myself into the daily workouts, the meditation, the journaling became my foundation. I listened to podcast after podcast like this of other people that have been through it. Found it just kinda cool because really all my friends
• 9:00
  Thought I was crazy. Sobriety didn't just save me. It unleashed me. It unleashed the heart of the life movement impacting thousands. Now for me, that was the one decision that changed my life. The one decision. You have one too. It could be cutting out alcohol. It could be start working out. It could be to get rid of that toxic person in your life, whether it be a romantic relationship or a
• 9:25
  personal, a friend or even worse, maybe it's getting rid of that job. So overcoming addiction was my one decision, your one decision away as well. Another example I want to say is leading NTM through crisis.
• 9:41
  This was 2020 during the pandemic. It was just the whole world was falling. This was a personal and professional time. I wrote about it in my heart of the life book. If you guys want to read more about it, it's just like on March 20th, 2020, my entire world crashed down. And man, was that a pivotal day that I'll remember for the rest of my life.
• 10:03
  The whole Michigan closed down, which was preceded by the entire country and the world. I had to shut down the business. I got sued. Biggest customer left. My ex-wife and my ex-girlfriend got together and filed some police support to take custody of my now. I mean, it was one thing after another, all on the same day.
• 10:25
  And mind you, I'm about 15 months into my sobriety and I still keep alcohol in my house. And man, that was a tough one. So what did I do? I just accepted it. I accepted it was out of my control, but within my power to fix. I let go and let God looked up and said, I know what you're teaching me a lesson here. This is a little bit rough.
• 10:46
  But I accept. My rapid response was within a week. We pivoted our strategy. We focused on new markets. We invested in new team strengths. I also met with my legal team to fight back personally. I mean, I'm talking, this happened Friday night, Monday morning. We were actually on the phone Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. But Monday, we put everything into action.
• 11:10
  Then I enacted relentless discipline. We executed in a new plan, consistent client outreach, system upgrades, team training, NTM didn't just recover, it thrived, growing stronger than ever. And then...
• 11:23
  Needless to say, the same thing happened in my personal life. I kind of interwove two stories there, guys. I apologize. That's how I did it in the Heart of the Life book. So if you haven't read it or listened to it, you guys can listen to the Heart of the Life book on Audible. It's me narrating it in my handsome voices ever.
• 11:40
  There's a third one was building this heart and life movement, man. It literally started off as just me sharing my journey during this tough times. So my plan A was just the business. It just didn't feel like my true calling. I accept that I was meant to inspire and lead beyond just IT and cybersecurity. And,
• 11:58
  During that same time that I was talking about, my lawyer said, do not post anything. And I said, no way, no how. I'm gonna continue sharing my inspirational journey. Started off with 10 views, and now we get it up to millions.
• 12:15
  The radical acceptance was understanding that I was meant for more. The rapid response was to shared my story, the sobriety, the struggles on social media, launching it during the pandemic when I was told not to. And then the relentless discipline, again, see what I'm doing. I've showed you guys how I followed my exact blueprint I gave you through three times in my life that was very difficult. So we created daily content, we made community engagement, I messaged everybody back.
• 12:44
  And we just kept the movement growing. So today, the Heart of Life Nation is a force proving that hard times birth, epic comeback. So the worst time in my life, who almost lost the business, almost lost my daughter, turned out to be the best day of my life. It was a test, guys. I could have grabbed a drink.
• 13:07
  grabbed a drug and numbed the initial pain, but I didn't. I used those three paths that I just shared with you and I'm staying here stronger, more at peace, more successful than I've ever been in my entire life. You too will be tested as I've talked about in this entire podcast.
• 13:25
  So your action plan to thrive when life gets hard, follow these steps starting today. Number one, step one, immediate radical acceptance, pause, breathe, journal the situation, write, this is my reality right now, write that. This is my reality right now. I am being tested, accepted fully, no denial, no resistance. It is what it is.
• 13:50
  2022 study in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine showed that acceptance-based journaling reduces anxiety by 30%. And when I found that out, I was amazed. I don't know what it is. Every time I just write down the facts, I feel better. So step one, radical acceptance. Step two, create your rapid response. List two to three immediate actions you can take.
• 14:12
  If you lost a job, maybe it's updating your resume and reaching out to one contact today or better yet, posting it on LinkedIn. Radical acceptance, lost my job. Rapid response, post it on LinkedIn that you lost your job. No pride, let's just go. If it's a personal loss, maybe it's scheduling a therapy session. Act fast, hesitation kills momentum. Step three, commit to relentless discipline. Otherwise, AKA known as selfless
• 14:42
  consistency. I've said before, we apply intensity when consistency is what we really need. So commit to a relentless discipline, pick two to three daily habits to anchor you. It could be a 20 minute workout to build your physical strength or just a 20 minute walk around the neighborhood. If you remember the gyms were closed, I had no gym. I did pushups, sit-ups,
• 15:05
  and a walk around my neighborhood. That was my workout. I adopted a 10-minute meditation or gratitude practice to clear your mind. This is very hard to do when your mind is spinning, but that's when you want to do it. And then I also journaled and read 10 pages to feed your soul. I journaled one and a half, maybe two pages, and then I read 10 pages.
• 15:28
  And during the pandemic read more and more. Today, I do this over and over. It is like habits, like riding a bike. Commit to these for 30 days no matter what, even if life is good right now, because you will build this track record. You will build a track that it will be hard to get off of when things get tough. Track them for accountability. This is a hard one, man. Share your plan with somebody, a friend, a coach, or me.
• 15:56
  We'll post it in the Heart of Life Nation. Post it on Instagram. Tag me at kelly.segal. So we're here to support everybody. I didn't come this far to only come this far. And I always say, if you want to go farther, go together. You want to go faster, go alone. So I want to take all of you guys with me. So adjust these steps as needed, but never stop moving forward. Your mindset, the six inches between your ears is your superpower.
• 16:25
  Here's three more shifts to carry you through this storm. These are important. So if you haven't listened and you're sick of my repeating of the three steps, these you're going to want to listen to. Shift from victim to victor. Life's punches don't define you. Your responses do. Every setback is a setup for a comeback. As Viktor Frankl said, everything can be taken from a man but one thing.
• 16:54
  the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. If you haven't read that book, by the way, Man's Search for Meeting, that was the first book, the first personal development book I've ever read. My uncle gave it to me and I didn't understand it. This was 30 years ago. Great book, Man's Search for Meeting. Step two, shift from control to surrender.
• 17:24
  Let go and let God, some people say. You can't control life chaos, but you can control your response. Surrender to the reality, then act with purpose. So step one, shift from victim to victor. Step two, shift from control to surrender. Step three, shift from scarcity to abundance. Your hardest moments.
• 17:49
  Hold your greatest blessings. A 2023 Stanford study found that optimistic leaders are 45% more likely to overcome adversity. Believe your breakthrough is coming. Believe in invisible progress. Remember, if you think you can or you think you can't, you are right. Bonus.
• 18:12
  Number four would be shift from a fear to a love mindset. Everybody fears, well, what's gonna happen? Or let's call it this one, shift from to a faith over fear mindset. Both believe in something in the future, why not believe in something positive, which is faith? Harder-to-the-life nation, life's gonna hit hard, it's guaranteed. But with a harder-to-the-life plan, you're not just surviving, you're thriving.
• 18:39
  You're a warrior built to rise stronger, wiser, and more powerful with every hit. As Nelson Mandela said, the greatest glory in giving lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fail.
• 18:55
  Take action today. Accept your reality. Respond fast. Stay disciplined. Share your plan with me on Instagram at kelly.segal.71 and keep the fire burning. Until next time, Harder to Life Nation, face adversity with courage, pivot with power, and always live harder than life. Let's go make the impossible.
• 19:18
  And remember, if this episode lit a fire in you, share it with someone facing a tough moment. Subscribe to the YouTube channel at Harder Than Life for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday, and follow me on Instagram at kelly.segal.71. Let's turn adversity into victory, and together, we're unstoppable. Let's do this. Be harder than life. Thanks for listening, y'all.
• 19:38
  Please rate and share this podcast. I'm active on all social platforms and love to hear from my Segal supporters. Each and every episode is sponsored by my company, National Technology Management, the easiest and best IT company to do business with, delivering peace of mind with technology every day, even simplifying cybersecurity. Visit TrustNTM.com for more info. Until next week, be harder than life.