Mental Toughness Is Required When Life Tries To Kick Your Ass

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Never Stop Building, where we discuss all things business, growth and leveling up to become the most elite version of yourself. What is up everybody? Welcome back to Never Stop Building. I'm your host, sam Kaufman, as always, super excited and grateful to be here talking with you today. I'm recording this.

Speaker 1: 0:22

I'm the end of just kind of a tough week. I came back from a trip to Dallas. We were at JobTread Connect as a company and the trip was great. I got back and I felt off and I went through the weekend, went through Sunday, got plenty of sleep. Monday I went into train legs Monday morning and I got like five working sets into my workout. My workouts typically eight, 12, 15, 16 working sets. I got five working sets into my workout and I legitimately felt like I was going to die and not like normal, like this is a really good training session. I feel like I'm going to die, but like a holy shit, I might be not okay. I'm like six, something's wrong, kind of feeling like I have to leave. So left to talk to my coach. Pretty much took most of the week off. So like I didn't do any cardio last week, I trained, I trained I'll say two and a half times because I only did 30 minutes on one of them.

Speaker 1: 1:36

But it was just a weird week. It was just like out of routine. I felt out of balance, out of harmony with my typical which isn't always bad, you know. I want to like touch on the fact that, like sometimes God sets this up on purpose. Like sometimes I'm supposed to be taken out of the routine, I'm supposed to, and you know that's going to be part of the messaging of today's episode. So this one's going to be I feel like it might be a little all over the place, but y'all are going to get like a like pretty raw from the heart, like messaging on why it is so important that you take care of yourself, you learn to prioritize, you learn how to manage stress and stressors, you implement a championship day, you have positive affirmation in your life, like you take these things seriously, and so like there's so last week, so taking out of the gym for the most part, and what's interesting is again how God sets everything up, because last week was also one of the heaviest decision making weeks I've had, and that's saying a lot because the last few months, really the last couple of years, have been heavy on decision making. And so what's interesting to me is that I was taken out of my normal routine, which is a very packed schedule with a lot of output, a lot of exercise, a lot of energy expenditure, and I was placed seated and I was placed still and the stillness was required to manage through some of the difficult decisions and stuff that had to be handled last week. And so the real messaging of the episode is why you need to build mental toughness in your life and what that means from my perspective. And I will preface by saying I think that, like mental toughness and like I'm not here saying go be David Goggins and go be you know. Insert insert person who does insane things, go be that person. What I am saying is, if you are not doing intentionally uncomfortable, hard things, whatever that means to you, on a daily or very regular basis, to build resilience in your emotional state, your physical state, your spiritual state, your mental health, when life shows up to kick the crap out of you, you will fold, and I'm telling you this because I used to be a man who folded right.

Speaker 1: 4:16

I was a drug addict. Drug addicts are folders, man active drug addicts, not recovering drug addicts those are some of the most resilient, strong humans on planet Earth. But active using for me and for many addicts is the inability to keep it together at the slightest inconvenience, at the slightest hint of happiness, at the slightest hint of success. So I used to be a crumble. I was. I was King crumbler and in order to stay clean, I had to learn resilience in my mindset that I could get through the feelings of discomfort when they show up. For me for many, many years, discomfort was I have to get high and I was discomforted, whether it was negative or positive. I didn't like emotions period, which is honestly hysterical. Thank you for this, god, because I'm a very emotional guy. I feel things really deeply, I think things really deeply, I connect to people really deeply and, like my decisions are not nearly as emotionally driven as they used to be. I took a lot of work, resilience, mental toughness to get there, but I've always been an emotional man and I have no intention of not being an emotional man. What I had to learn how to do to stay clean was to stop making decisions based on how I felt and start making decisions based on what was right and true and correct and real, and what was real for many years when I got clean, was if I used drugs for any reason, my life was going to spiral out of control and I would end up dead or in prison. And I believe those two things wholeheartedly and those two beliefs, those truths that I still believe today, almost 11 years later, and will believe, god willing, for the rest of my life, but I believe them today. Those truths are what created the resilience, the way with a backbone to give me the fuel I needed to create the resilience to learn how to cope with my feelings.

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Not everybody, not everybody's going to be recovering drug addict. In fact, I strongly do not encourage that for you. What I am encouraging for you is figure out a way to become tougher, because life is going to come and it's going to try to kick your ass and sometimes it's going to work and it's going to kick your ass. And in those moments there are going to be times where your back is against the wall and it is you and God and nobody else, and nobody can decide for you and nobody can comfort you and nobody can coach you through it and nobody can make you feel better and nobody can coddle you and nobody can save you and nobody can tell you everything's going to be okay. And in those moments that will come, will come. You have to be able to lean on the resilience, the toughness that you have built in your own mind to survive, because there are seasons of life where survival is what you are focused on. There are seasons for businesses where survival is the scoreboard. Marriages, where survival is what you're doing, parents with their children, for survival is everything. This happens. This is real.

Speaker 1: 7:22

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and I'm not saying when in every category, but when. At some point in some category, there will be a survival season. There will be survival moments and you can prepare for them, to survive them. Maybe they still don't feel good. Actually, I guarantee you there's nothing you can do to prepare for them, to have everything perfectly lined out from a decision perspective. There's nothing you can do to prepare for them where you're not going to feel like absolute garbage during the season. There's nothing you can do to prepare for them, to completely prevent them from happening. But what you do on a daily basis, when things are good, when things are easy and maybe you're in a season now or maybe you're in a situation where you're looking at me or listening to this, or going easy, easy and for some of you and this is the truth, and then you're not going to want to hear this, but for some of you this is the easiest season you're going to see for a while. For some of you, the decisions you made over the last couple of weeks are the easiest decisions that you'll have to make for a while, because you don't know what's coming. That's not some conspiracy theory jargon. What I'm telling you is life is unpredictable.

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I have a very close friend of mine whose father passed away last year. We were talking last week and I had to make some decisions and I said to him I said, man, I just sometimes, when I have to make decisions for things that were unplanned, it just feels like you get. It's like this. I never thought I'd be sitting here deciding this. And he said, man, when my dad passed of brain cancer out of nowhere, that was the exact feeling he felt, and I'm not comparing, but let me tell you the perspective that that statement put me back under, to realize how much I have to be grateful for because I'm not making decisions about parents dying and for those of you that also aren't. You're winning. You're winning in that bucket in a big way, but these really hard seasons are going to show up.

Speaker 1: 9:22

So how, how, sam? How do I prepare mental resilience to do that? Or what does that look like? I'll give you some examples. Like I've talked about it very openly on this podcast about being an emotional eater, having all eating disorders and binge eating, and so, for me, like the past, in moments like this, I typically go for some emotional eating, and sometimes I do it. But over the years since 2019 to now, my years of training myself and of avoiding foods that aren't good for me and making good eating decisions and eating less and have led to what emotional eating looks like for me today is completely 6,000% different than what it was in 2019. Or 2020, 2021, 22, 23, even. What it is today is the result of resilience built up over five years of making decisions when things were fine. I'm going to eat right right now, even though I don't have to. I look good. I'm going to eat right right now, even though I'm out with friends. I'm going to eat. If you can make those decisions consistently, day over day, year over year, when the shit hits the fan, it's easier to make those decisions. And when you make it, man, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna indulge a little bit, I'm gonna have this cake I can eat. It's not what it used to be. The resilience keeps you grounded. And so in those moments so again, what do I do? What do I do to build toughness so I become more resilient when life shows up and kicks the crap out of me? First and absolute foremost, I'm just gonna is exercise.

Speaker 1: 11:01

If you are not exercising on a regular basis, you are doing yourself such a major disservice because it is the simplest way to build resiliency mentally. There is no simpler way to learn how to push yourself out of your comfort zone than physical activity. And, on top of that, people who are physically active are less likely to die. All cause mortality drops significantly for people who exercise, whether they eat well, whether they smoke or not. Usually, look at the numbers. It's insane. Exercise is literally the fountain of youth. Muscle mass is literally the fountain of youth. This is real, but the ability to push yourself out of your comfort zone almost every day of the week with exercise is unmatched by almost any other task that you can do. And so I'm not saying get big, be a bodybuilder, but I don't care what or how, but it is almost a requirement, if you can do it, to get it done, to start becoming a more resilient person. Other things you can do.

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One of the most important things that has changed my life forever is my relationship with God. It is actually the most important. Let me stop under. Let me stop trying to pander to people who are offended by God. My relationship with God is the most important relationship in my life and the one that has changed my life more than anything, not just here on earth, but eternally, forever. That relationship makes me more resilient, gives me more courage, gives me more strength, gives me more of what I need Than anything else on planet earth could ever, has, ever or will ever deliver on.

Speaker 1: 12:42

I'm not saying we're telling you to believe in my God. What I am telling you is that a faith, a belief and a spiritual foundation is so important for resiliency in times of difficulty, in times of good, in good times it gives me something to give glory to, so that my ego doesn't get out of control. And In hard, bad times, it gives me something to rely on and lean on so I don't become a shell of myself insecure and wounded and scared, I I Continue to maintain strength and courage through a power greater than myself and no one and nothing can ever take that away from me. That is more important than exercise. That is more important than anything else I'm about to talk about For me. Do what you will with that, but I can tell you that I will no longer talk in a way that Undervalues that or softens how important that is to me or sounds better for people who don't believe I don't care. I don't care, I can't care. It is my responsibility not to care and is my responsibility to tell the truth about that.

Speaker 1: 13:49

God, physical fitness, fueling your body with good, clean food Absolutely, absolutely a game changer. The amount of energy, like I when I, when I went from eating garbage to eating clean and not drinking energy drinks and quitting smell like me, like we get so used to operating at a deficit that we don't even really know what good Performance feels like for some of us. If you're drinking for eight, twelve hundred milligrams of caffeine every day and you have been for years your adrenal glands Are so overworked and shot out. At this point you don't even know what healthy adrenal system feels like. The adrenal system, controls, quarters all response like you don't even know what, not to being in a stress chaos. Internal working feels like it's been so long.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Overuse of caffeine, over work, under sleeping all these things attribute to shoot, being shot out on the adrenals. Which is why, like, I increase caffeine intake when I need it, but then when I notice I'm do, I will decrease it and I will reset the adren. I will reset the quarters all response. I'll reset my sleep. And it's hard, it's not easy. I'm nothing I'm saying here is easy. But if I keep myself the least caffeinated I can, if I keep myself the most Streamlined I can, energy wise, the least quarters all response I can.

Speaker 1: 15:02

When the quarters all response shows up heavy because in tough times Let me tell you something you're gonna be stressed. You can't escape that. That's the body's natural reaction to feeling like things are about to fall apart but you're gonna die. You've ever been so stressed about something that it felt like you, you were gonna die? Yeah, that's real. Your body does that on purpose. God designed it that way on purpose. If you induce that 365 days a year, every year, year over year, you induce the stress, you induce the cortisol, you induce that reaction constantly, your body's ability to regulate it disappears and when something big shows up, the elevation of that bigness you will be somebody who can't handle it. You can control that now. You can prepare to be able to handle that big, terrible thing if you you streamline your internal health now and you calm down and you learn stress management and you pray and you meditate regularly and you do things that bring you back to baseline, to homeostasis, to a place when your body naturally wants to be.

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Reading is a big one for a lot of people. That's a big one for me. It just helps me learn and bring my brain that what's much bigger than that is healthy relationships. Healthy relationships build resiliency. Serving others builds resiliency. Doing what you say you're going to do builds resiliency. Telling the truth builds resiliency. Having integrity builds resiliency. Abiding by living by and upholding your core values builds resiliency.

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Setting and maintaining boundaries Builds resiliency why? Because all of these things are hard and anybody listening that's like oh, I do all that. It's very easy, you're lying, you don't do it, you probably think you do or you talk about it, but you actually don't do it to the level that you may believe. Because high level boundary setting, high level, core value, adherence and accountability high. These things are very difficult, emotionally wrenching, relationship altering. It's not easy. It's not easy, it's far from easy. Makes life simpler, but it is certainly not easy when these things show up, when life shows up in a bad way. You can be stronger and tougher and faster and smarter if you are studying and training and learning and properly planning and preparing when things are good. This is how I have survived every difficult thing that I've been through Over the last since I got clean, and I've been through a bunch with my wife, with my children, with my businesses, with friendships. I've been through a bunch and they all came back to I was only able to handle it because of the daily actions I was doing and they've evolved over time.

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Like I got clean when I was 22 years old, like I wasn't reading every day, I wasn't training like this, I would work out intermittent, I wasn't eating like I am now, I was smoking cigarettes. Like it's evolved over time and as it's evolved, what God has given me to handle has also evolved, meaning the stronger I've gotten, the more resilient I've gotten, the more God has allowed me to care for, for people, for problem solutions. God has given me more, as I've been able to carry more. He has qualified me to be able to carry more, to help more people, to save more people, to provide for my family better, to show up as the man that I am called to show up for, that he designed me to be, but that required me to put in the action.

Speaker 1: 18:46

God didn't come and tell me hey, man, I'm gonna need you to handle this in 18 months, which means I need you to start working out more. I need you to lose 100 pounds, dude, like I need you to be healthier and faster. I need your brain to work better, because you're gonna have some really hard shit coming up in a year and a half, two years. None of that happened. What happens is we get these ideas in our heads, these feelings man, I really, I really should work out and we ignore it. Hey, I really should eat better than I ignored. Hey, I really I need to read, I want to learn. Hey, I want to be better. I want to be a stronger man, I want to be faster, I want to.

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And we ignore it. You ignore it. I don't ignore it anymore. You ignore it and when you ignore it, you're ignoring a preparation. You are ignoring the universe telling you it's time to prepare for something. You're ignoring the preparation. Life is gonna show up and kick the shit out of you one day, not because you're not preparing, because that's what life does. If you prepare and you can develop some toughness, some resilience, some strength, some courage, you learn how to do hard things and sit in discomfort.

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My, my wife said something very profound the other day and she, she just finished up a book About faith and in the book I don't remember what the book said, but my wife said was so often we Look forward to the next season. Man, when I get on the other side of this man, the mountain on the other side, man, the what's really happening is we are supposed to learn how to sit in this one. So maybe you're already in a bad, hard season and you just keep imagining the next one, the next one, the next one. But I think you may be missing what's required of you in this one. You might be missing the lesson from this one. If you are only obsessing about what's next, because only today Is promised, you could not wake up tomorrow, and so if all you can be grateful for is what's next, you're missing everything from today, and that is so hard.

Speaker 1: 20:51

It is so hard to sit in what feels like an awful moment and think I'm supposed to be here. I'm supposed to feel this, this anxiety, this pains, frustration, this anger. This is supposed to be happening. I just need to sit in it Instead of constantly searching for how to get rid of it. How do we learn to sit in it? Well, it's no different than learning how to sit in cold water or a sauna, or run for a long distance or have a long training session or push past failure, listen to a crying baby longer. It's resilience. How we learn how to sit through that pain and that anger and that frustration and that hurt that life is going to dole us one way or another, one day and another day and another day, is by building up the mental toughness, by doing it a little bit on purpose every day.

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I don't want you to be hurt, I don't want you to be sad. I don't want anything bad to happen anybody, in fact. I Love people and I constantly worry about their feelings more than my own, to my own, to my own detriment More often than not. But I do need you to understand that until you start to practice being uncomfortable, practice sitting in that discomfort, practice not seeking and searching for something to change how you feel, Not trying to force an outcome to happen because you don't want to be uncomfortable anymore. The next time life shows up to kick your ass, it's going to win. The next time life shows up to kick your ass, it's going to win. I can't let that happen. I need you to be stronger for you. I need you to be stronger for your spouse. I need you to be stronger for your kids. I need you to be stronger for the people in the supermarket that you walk by. I need you to be stronger for your employees or your teams or your employer. Maybe your employer needs you.

Speaker 1: 22:51

You never know this whole mental toughness thing. For me, it used to be about wanting to look tough. What it's about for me now is wanting to be strong enough. Needing not wanting needing to be strong enough to protect my loved ones from anything that could come their way to harm them permanently, which means that it is my back that it needs to sit on. It is my responsibility to be tough. It is my job to be a role model. It is my role for my loved ones to be that man that can handle anything Not pain-free, not sadness-free, not hurt-free but it is my job to be able to make the hardest decisions so they don't have to. It's like one day my son's gonna have to be a part of what I'm doing for my family. One day my son's gonna have to do what I'm doing for his following, whoever he's influencing, whoever he's around. One day my daughter's gonna have to make hard decisions for her kids, her husband, maybe me. When I'm sick and old, god willing, I get there. It's my job to teach them what that looks like. It's my job to teach them what it looks like to be hurt and show up anyway, to feel pain and make hard decisions anyway, to be unhappy and exercise anyway, to have a really rough day and sit down on the couch and play Fortnite with them for a half an hour anyway, that's my job.

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I take that job very seriously today, and I didn't always. I used to be entitled. I used to feel like, oh, it was a hard day and everybody owes me something. It was a hard day and I was left alone. It was a hard day and I'm not entitled to a single thing and everything that I have. I deserve good and bad. I am excluding things from that like again, if a loved one is sick or dying. That's the worst thing that could happen to any of us losing a loved one and nobody deserves that, but it is a part of life. I need you to get stronger because life is common and when it hits, it hits hard, and you have the opportunity today. Whether today is a good day or a bad day, you have the opportunity to do something today that builds strength and resilience that will help you protect you and your loved ones when life shows up to kick your ass. Thank you all for listening. I'll see you guys next week.