Latest / Impact Ready / 193. Embrace the Suck: Building Resilience Through Discomfort

Transcript

193. Embrace the Suck: Building Resilience Through Discomfort · Impact Ready

• 0:02
  Welcome to Impact Ready, a show dedicated to helping you elevate
• 0:06
  your impact in the world. I'm Steph Safra, your host.
• 0:09
  Let's explore the power of showing up with intention and
• 0:12
  energy each day. This is for those who seek to
• 0:15
  make life truly meaningful. Get ready for impact.
• 0:22
  Hello. Welcome to the Impact Ready
• 0:24
  podcast. Welcome to a new week.
• 0:27
  Before I get into the episode today, I wanted to let you know
• 0:31
  that I'm starting a new project. It's called Proof of Light, and
• 0:36
  what it is, is a collection of real stories that I'm trying to
• 0:40
  accumulate from people about moments in their life when they
• 0:44
  felt the light existing in their space.
• 0:47
  When someone made a difference in their life.
• 0:50
  A small or big act of kindness, maybe someone showing up at the
• 0:52
  right time, something that was just totally unexpected.
• 0:57
  Maybe something that reminded them of the good in people.
• 1:02
  Because when you start looking for light, you begin to see more
• 1:05
  of it. And you also start to realize
• 1:06
  how even the smallest actions can create massive ripple
• 1:10
  effects in people's lives and beyond.
• 1:13
  So if you have a story like that, I would love to hear it.
• 1:16
  I would love for you to send me your proof of light.
• 1:20
  You can send me the story through my website.
• 1:23
  Just go to the contact page. There you can use the link on my
• 1:27
  Instagram page, it's in my bio, or you can send me an e-mail
• 1:30
  directly at steph@stephsaffer.com.
• 1:33
  And I'm going to be sharing these stories here on the
• 1:35
  podcast and also on my social media channels so that we can
• 1:39
  start shifting what we notice and remembering how much impact
• 1:43
  one single moment can have in somebody's life.
• 1:48
  So now on to the episode. And today, I want to talk about
• 1:53
  something that plays off other episodes that we've done in the
• 1:56
  past. Today we're going to talk about
• 1:58
  this idea of resisting the urge to quit when things get hard,
• 2:02
  sticking it out when things are uncomfortable or circumstances
• 2:06
  just kind of suck. There's a couple of ways that I
• 2:10
  think about this. We've talked about the value of
• 2:13
  being comfortable in discomfort, getting practiced at that.
• 2:18
  My coach always reminds me that this is a skill to hone and that
• 2:21
  I have to keep building it if I want to level up in my
• 2:23
  leadership. There's so many times in life
• 2:25
  where things are just going to be uncomfortable, and when you
• 2:28
  can expect that that's the case, instead of being derailed or
• 2:32
  surprised or thrown off by that discomfort every single time,
• 2:37
  you just become a lot more resilient as a person.
• 2:40
  The other way I think about this is the idea of tolerance to
• 2:44
  extremity. Purposely and intentionally
• 2:47
  choosing activities that push you out of your comfort zone,
• 2:50
  things that feel hard or challenging on purpose, so that
• 2:54
  you can build up your tolerance to things that are uncomfortable
• 2:57
  or suck. An example of this might be
• 3:00
  exercise your habits around deep work, dealing with boredom,
• 3:06
  maintaining a healthy bedtime routine, practicing open
• 3:10
  communication, etcetera, etcetera.
• 3:13
  My coach calls this type of work dark work.
• 3:17
  I call it practicing for the level up.
• 3:19
  You might have your own way of thinking about this, but a
• 3:23
  couple days ago my daughter who is a freshman in high school and
• 3:27
  just joined the flag football team, she experienced this idea
• 3:31
  first hand. She experienced the discomfort
• 3:34
  and the challenge of sitting in the suck and not quitting.
• 3:39
  Just this last Saturday she had her first two games.
• 3:41
  She was really nervous, especially because the roster
• 3:44
  hasn't been split up into JV and varsity teams yet.
• 3:47
  Do you remember how intimidating it was to play against varsity
• 3:50
  players when you were in high school?
• 3:52
  Oh my God, I, I remember this so clearly.
• 3:55
  And she was so nervous going into the game and she was making
• 3:59
  up a lot of excuses of why she didn't really need to go.
• 4:02
  She told us it was optional. She said that she wouldn't get a
• 4:06
  lot of playing time, so it didn't matter, yada, yada yada.
• 4:10
  Something to note is that she hasn't really played sports in
• 4:13
  her life except for one season of softball and like a month of
• 4:17
  fall softball, which is really casual.
• 4:20
  And that was when she was in fifth grade.
• 4:22
  So this is one of the first times that she's been on a team
• 4:24
  exposed to the dynamics of playing and proving yourself on
• 4:29
  a roster. So Saturday comes around.
• 4:32
  Like I said, she's really nervous, doesn't say a word in
• 4:35
  the car on the way to the games, and we're sitting there watching
• 4:38
  her and watching the teams. And true to her expectation, she
• 4:41
  didn't get a lot of playing time in the first half of the game,
• 4:44
  but it was a blow out. Her team was winning by like 30
• 4:48
  points. So the coach started cycling in
• 4:51
  the JV players, most of them freshmen, most of them without a
• 4:56
  lot of experience. And to be fair, they did pretty
• 4:59
  OK. She got some plays, she pulled
• 5:02
  some flags, had a few almost catches.
• 5:05
  It's pretty much what you would expect for a first game from a
• 5:08
  freshman who has no experience in the sport that they're
• 5:10
  playing. But after the game, before the
• 5:13
  second game started, she came up to us and told us that she
• 5:17
  didn't want to stay. She said she wasn't needed, that
• 5:20
  they had a lot of people, that she wasn't going to get to play
• 5:23
  anyway, that they really didn't need her to stay.
• 5:26
  And you could tell she was pretty uncomfortable and really
• 5:29
  wanted to leave. But we told her she needed to be
• 5:32
  part of the team and stick it out.
• 5:33
  The whole time we were explaining that that was part of
• 5:36
  sportsmanship is being on the line and cheering for your team
• 5:39
  even if you weren't playing. Let me tell you, team, the girl
• 5:43
  was not happy with us. She stormed off, went off to her
• 5:46
  team. It was very unlike her.
• 5:49
  And when she got home later that afternoon after her second game,
• 5:53
  she immediately started telling us how she didn't have the
• 5:55
  opportunity to play in that second game.
• 5:57
  Besides the last 30 seconds. There was too many people.
• 5:59
  They weren't even going to put her in.
• 6:01
  She's just a freshman. They don't even know her.
• 6:03
  And there were tears, frustration, a lot of exclaiming
• 6:08
  that she's not getting a fair chance.
• 6:09
  And it was a perfect illustration of what we do as
• 6:14
  humans when things get hard or uncomfortable.
• 6:16
  Her reaction was not unlike any human reaction when you are in
• 6:21
  the suck. The only difference is that she
• 6:24
  hasn't had many experiences to teach her how to tolerate that
• 6:29
  zone. She had no context for what it
• 6:32
  means to sit on the sideline and earn your stripes or earn the
• 6:35
  respect of the upperclassmen. Earn her spot on the field.
• 6:39
  She had no previous knowledge of what it was like to be a
• 6:41
  freshman in high school sports. And most of all, she hasn't had
• 6:46
  a lot of experiences in her life where she's had to persevere and
• 6:50
  push through the discomfort even though she didn't want to and
• 6:54
  even though it sucked. She just hasn't had many of
• 6:56
  those. She's only 15.
• 6:58
  She hasn't had a lot of opportunities to exercise that
• 7:01
  skill. And so her tolerance to
• 7:04
  extremity was pretty low and her comfort and discomfort pretty
• 7:09
  non existent. But what strikes me is that we
• 7:12
  all do this even as adults with plenty of life experience under
• 7:16
  our belts. We might not have meltdowns or
• 7:18
  tears or times when we storm off, although actually that
• 7:21
  could be a reality for some of you.
• 7:24
  But we do have distracting ourselves with screens and
• 7:28
  scrolling and low priority tasks.
• 7:30
  We have procrastination. We have blaming.
• 7:34
  We have giving up on things that we really want to do in our
• 7:38
  lives. We have a tendency to quit when
• 7:41
  things are hard and uncomfortable, even with the
• 7:45
  knowledge and wisdom that we've gained over however many decades
• 7:49
  of life we've had. And this situation with my
• 7:52
  daughter was such a good reminder to me that this is a
• 7:55
  skill that we have to keep working on.
• 7:58
  We have to keep up our fitness in terms of managing discomfort.
• 8:02
  It's why it's so important to continue to choose things that
• 8:06
  get us out of our comfort zone to do the things that are hard
• 8:09
  for us on purpose. You've probably heard the saying
• 8:14
  life happens on demand or when shit hits the fan.
• 8:18
  It basically means we can choose the challenge and do things on
• 8:22
  our own terms, or we can react to it because it's going to
• 8:26
  happen anyway. And it's always a good reminder
• 8:28
  to me that if I can choose the hard stuff that I experience and
• 8:31
  build my resilience and tolerance to extremity on my own
• 8:34
  terms, maybe that's a pill that's a little easier to
• 8:37
  swallow. Our daughter came home from her
• 8:42
  game super frustrated, sitting down at the kitchen counter with
• 8:45
  tears in her eyes, ready to complain and vent about the
• 8:49
  injustice of the flag football system.
• 8:53
  But what we shared with her is that you don't just get to quit
• 8:57
  when things get hard. You don't get to bitch or
• 8:59
  complain when things don't go your way.
• 9:02
  You don't say things are unfair when you haven't been putting in
• 9:05
  the work to change the situation.
• 9:09
  And we told her that people don't know your value.
• 9:12
  They don't know your skill. They might not even know your
• 9:14
  name until you make it known. Because if we do those things,
• 9:19
  we miss out on a lot of growth and opportunity.
• 9:22
  We miss out on a lot of fun in our lives.
• 9:25
  My wife started asking her, what is it that you want to be
• 9:28
  different? And she said, I want to play.
• 9:32
  I want to be good enough to play.
• 9:35
  And then we started getting to the root of it, which is she
• 9:38
  doesn't want to be embarrassed out there on the field.
• 9:40
  She wants to go out there and do a great job.
• 9:43
  She wants to have the skill that's necessary for her to be
• 9:47
  playing and playing well. And once we got to that, we
• 9:51
  started to be able to get to the solutions around it, which is
• 9:54
  practicing, doing footwork, running, sprinting drills,
• 9:59
  playing catch, all these things that you could actually do
• 10:02
  something about. And you could see in her eyes
• 10:05
  that things started to feel a little bit more achievable and
• 10:07
  the heaviness started to lighten for her.
• 10:11
  We all have the urge to quit sometimes.
• 10:14
  Nobody wants to be bad at something.
• 10:18
  Nobody wants to be perceived as letting down your team.
• 10:21
  It's uncomfortable, it can be embarrassing.
• 10:24
  It's a very human thing and it's hard to push through the
• 10:27
  discomfort sometimes. We can acknowledge that.
• 10:30
  But what we can also say is that the growth and the reward on the
• 10:34
  other side is so much greater than choosing small rewards or
• 10:38
  easy comfort in the short term. These experiences that we go
• 10:42
  through shape us and turn us into a stronger version of
• 10:46
  ourselves because we get to build the confidence and the
• 10:50
  competence through the act of doing and persevering.
• 10:55
  We want that for our kids, but we also want that for ourselves.
• 10:58
  And this weekend was such a great reminder for me to model
• 11:01
  to my daughter what I want her to embrace in her life.
• 11:04
  It's we, the adults who have to walk the walk and help the
• 11:08
  people around us and our kids be able to have the courage to do
• 11:12
  the same. So my hope for you this week is
• 11:15
  that you might be able to embrace the suck a little bit
• 11:18
  more to be able to sit in the discomfort and hang out there
• 11:23
  and build up your tolerance to extremity.
• 11:26
  I guarantee you're going to be better for it and everyone else
• 11:29
  is going to benefit from it too. That's all for today.
• 11:33
  I'm so glad you're here. I hope you have a great week.
• 11:35
  And as always, team, thank you for being ready to Impact.
• 11:39
  Thanks for listening to Impact Ready.
• 11:41
  I hope today's episode inspired you to own your impact and
• 11:44
  recognize that you are powerful. By elevating our energy and
• 11:48
  awareness, we can create exponential change in this life.
• 11:51
  If you enjoyed today's insights, share them with a friend and
• 11:54
  subscribe to the show for more. I truly appreciate you.
• 11:57
  Thanks again for being here.