Facing Your Struggle Makes You Resilient

To honor the struggle is to recognize that life wasn't meant to be served up on a platter of ease for you, nor that ease and comfort is how life is supposed to feel. 24 7. But rather, the struggle develops the strength. The struggle develops the character. The struggle develops our ability to be more resilient in the future. The struggle develops our capacity for kindness and compassion and thoughtfulness towards others. The struggle develops the mastery. The struggle helps us along the way.

I was journaling a little bit about.

Quality today and my intention for that. I thought I'd share a little lesson there.

You know, I was thinking about the quality of the community we're building here, the quality of the growth day app, the quality of the other ways in which we serve, from our products or to our courses, to our programs, to our social media. And I was trying to break down like, what is that? You know, we have that desire to build things that are great.

What is that?

We want to build something that lasts, something that's significant, something that adds value, something that's important. We all want to be part of that and we all want to know that no matter what we're doing, we're doing it well. You know, we want to have a high quality of excellence in what we do. We want to have a high quality of service in what we do. And so what does it mean really to have a high quality of anything? Well, the first thing I thought about when I was journaling today and again, I just use the growth day app journal every single day. I love prompts. You, hey, what's on your mind today? And I'm always trying to capture something and if I don't know what to capture or write about that day, I just hit a growth prompt and something pops up. But for me, today's intention was pretty clear. I was like, I really want to define what quality means to me this week. The first thing it means to me is care and attention. I really believe that a lot of people just slop their work together. They just bang through emails, they just throw presentations together, they just show up at meetings unprepared. But I've always thought that a quality contributor or a quality work effort, it's all about the care. You care about the thing that you're doing. You remember why you are doing what you're doing and it summons that emotion of caring. Like, it's important to you, it matters to you, it matters to others. It's important that you get it right and do a good job. I know those are old fashioned ideals. Especially these days. But I feel like the care that you bring into something really matters and it shows also that aspect of attention to detail. You know, if you really care about something, you double check your work, you notice the little things you care about. A high quality of craftsmanship or attention to the little things that maybe not everyone would notice, but you would. And I think when you can have work or contributions or art that have high levels of care and attention, there's a sense of quality and pride there for you. The second thing I think about, of course, with quality, just the straight up value, will what I'm creating here add new value? Will it be something that people think, wow, thank you for making this. Thank you for working on this. That made a difference in my life. I appreciate it. Listen, there's a lot of features in Growth Day. There's a lot of courses you can take. There's a live broadcast you can attend. There's tons of audiobooks and replays. There's all the tools from the journal to the life scores to the challenges to the plan. There's a lot you can do here. But what I really love about the Growth Day app is no matter what you want to do in your personal development somewhere, you can find it here in this app and I think that's cool. You can communicate with others who are positive from around the world. You can watch something that inspires you today. There's just something we're always trying to think of. What's the next thing that can add real value to you guys? And so far your feedback has been stunning in the App Store. So I appreciate that and I just hope that we keep doing a great job for you because we're really just getting warmed up. The third thing I think about is distinction. If you're going to create something, how can you do it in your own unique and authentic way? And how can you do it in a way that's different than what everyone else has or what everyone else does? How can you add your own flavor to it, your own perspective, your own passions to it? Like with the Growth Day app, for me, a big part of it was I'm a dork. I'm a geek, I'm a researcher, as many of you guys know. So I wanted to make sure everything that we did, kid has some type of research backed reasoning for what we're doing, whether it's the major features and why we chose them or it's specific courses that we select. Because I know that people do their homework or it's just even your Life.

Scores and doing the hard work of.

Correlating your life scores to the high performance habits or to other generalized studies in psychology that we know makes a difference. And so every little aspect we think, okay, does this drive value? And this is a little different than how other people would do it. How's our journal distinct? Oh, well, we're going to add these growth prompts, these evening reviews, we're going to add these, you know, morning mindset questions. We're going to allow you to hit a button and just bam. A research backed prompt shows up to ask you a question or start a sentence that you can complete. Just our own little way, our own little way. And it makes you feel like you're building something of quality when your distinction or your way of doing it is involved. The last big idea that I was journaling about was just the lasting nature of things. You know, we're kind of in a single serve society now where people create something and it's good for one time or it's good for one month or you know, it's meant to be something that swipes up and away and never returns the next day. We don't really think in a long term horizon, it's why we have so many problems in the world, why we take such terrible care of our own planets and homes and ecosystems. We're just shortsighted. But I always thought people who want to build something of quality, they're looking.

Out beyond the horizon.

They're thinking about the future and the impact of what they're making. They care about that old fashioned word that no one ever says anymore, legacy, contribution. And I just feel like maybe what you're doing right now, if you could lift your eyes up for a longer term view and be like, okay, if you're going to submit this thing, how can you make sure it's lasting? It's important. Even all of my content. If you go through the years and years and years of my YouTube channel or my podcast, what you see is you can listen to any of those episodes and they're timeless. And I specifically made sure that that was the case. So I didn't take on recent events, I didn't take on politics, I didn't try to divide us versus them. I tried to make sure I just taught in such a way that you know what, 50 years from now, if someone listened to this, it's still good. And I think that's important to me. That's my way of making what I'm doing have a lasting nature to it. It doesn't mean that we don't adapt, change, use new tools, technologies, different approaches. All brand new campaigns are branding, all the updating of things.

But when it comes to art, when.

It comes to your unique contribution to the world, could you approach it in a lasting manner? Wondering what would happen if someone listened to it a hundred years from now? Would you still be proud of it? Just a different way of approaching the art, I suppose. I guess I'm in a reflective mood this morning because I was journaling and it always puts me in more of a philosophical mood. But it also makes me proud of what we're doing here together at Growth Day. I'm excited for what our team's creating for you. I'm excited for the feedback you're giving us in the app stores. I'm grateful for everyone who recognizes how we're trying to do something a little different here in personal development. You know, we're trying to be bold enough to say we're going to help you make self improvement a way of life. Whether it's just listening to an audio every day, whether it's attending a live broadcast or using any of the tools here that are just available at your fingertips every single day. I just hope that we help you access personal development in a new and exciting, a fun, a useful and empowering way. We're trying to do our best for you because we even internally here, we believe every day is a great day to grow.

Hey guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter.

Because I have a resource for you.

Related to this episode and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way. Just go to progressmode.com, click on Private Group to apply to See you can get into Ultra and we can take.

It to the next level by getting.

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Struggle is to recognize that life wasn't meant to be served up on a platter of ease for you, nor that ease and comfort is how life is supposed to feel 247 but rather the struggle develops the strength. The struggle develops the character. The struggle develops our ability to be more resilient in the future. The struggle develops our capacity for kindness and Compassion and thoughtfulness towards others. The struggle develops the mastery. The struggle helps us along the way. I like to remind people, I say, did you know that there's this whole.

Kind of spiritual religion philosophy that has.

Emanated over thousands of years called Buddhism or Daoism, that both of those expect that there's going to be struggle? Did you know it's biblical? Did you know that every recorded historical spiritual text is really centered on a story of struggle? In other words, why did you expect the week to be so easy all the time? Why do you get so upset when there's an inconvenience? Why do you have so many pet peeves? Why do you get so angry about the inconveniences, the frustrations, the jerks, the people out there who upset you, the bad incidents and events I learned in college, don't be surprised by them. Rainy days happen when they happen. Adjust your attitude when they happen. Of course you didn't anticipate them. But if you bemoan the struggle, if you hate the struggle, you now become resistant to the real efforts of life that bring you abundance, joy, depth, meaning, fulfillment.

Because you know what?

There's a bajillion kids out there who.

Are given everything in their life and.

Never had to struggle or try or give effort to, who end up being little brats as adults, too. That maturity never develops without the struggle, that mastery, that willingness to contribute. And I can tell you, so many people who have abundance in their lives are terrified their kids won't develop that grit, that drive, that hustle in order to earn something. And that comes from a willingness that.

We kind of all hope.

Well, hope the kids will honor the struggle a little bit here and be willing to face it.

But you know what?

We got to role model that as a generation.

Because what I'm seeing out there, all.

Around the world, all on social media, is everyone gets so fired up and upset about every inconvenience. Oh, that website crashed for 0.00 seconds. Cancel them.

You know, it's like we. Every inconvenience we get so angry about, and it's like, oh, wait, if you learn to expect that not everything's gonna.

Be perfect and that you have to sort your way through that, change will always require a little bit of discomfort. The second you do that, you're in the honor the struggle mindset. Like, oh, of course this is gonna be hard. When I started a new business, I'm like, oh, yeah, right. Boy, those first months, that's me. Super hard. Got it. I don't Feel surprised by it. One way that I've done that in my life is to study exceptional human beings. I love reading biographies of the great historical figures who've been incredible leaders. So I think I've read everything I can get my hands on, on Churchill or Martin Luther King as two examples. And you read their biographies. You're like, oh, wow, that really puts my struggle in check here.

Gosh.

And I think that's important. Perspective helps you realize your struggles sometimes aren't as big or as crazy or as hard as you might be making them in the moment. And sometimes we just need a reminder. Got it.

Okay.

This isn't as big as I thought. And even if it is, I can handle it. The second thing about honoring the struggle is willingness to persist. The willingness to see it through, the willingness to have the completion mindset, the will, the willingness to like, okay, I started the race. I'm gonna finish the dang thing. I know my knees are gonna hurt a little bit in the middle. I'm gonna finish the dang thing. I'm gonna condition myself with the skills, the knowledge, the network, the community, the tools that are needed to keep going along the way. But of course, it's gonna be a difficult journey. But I will persist. I will endure. Because persistence and honor is core to who I am. Not because I was born that way.

Because I decided it. I said, you know what? Successful people are persistent people.

We know that from tremendous amounts of research, not only from grit, but literally from the last thousand years of recorded human history. We can clearly see that the greats persisted through tremendous difficulties. Don't hate the difficulties. Don't hate the struggle. Because remember, anything you apply hate to quickly dies and becomes unsupported. And so if you hate the struggle, then every time you face it, you're not willing to endure it or face it, you're conditioning yourself to be upset about it. That's why it's important for yourself to teach yourself to do the hard things in the little moments. Push a little harder at the gym once in a while. Work a late night once in a while. See a difficult challenge and keep working it through, even though it kind of breaks your brain. It takes five, six, seven days, evenings, nights, working on it. And then one day, bam, the breakthrough comes in the shower. It's okay that it's a struggle. If I could meet most of my clients around the world, the first thing I would do is give them a big old hug and just tell them it's okay. Hey, it's okay that it's hard. Just remember, don't expect it shouldn't be. It's okay that it's hard. It's okay that you're struggling. It's okay that you're sad. It's okay that you're depressed. It's like all of the emotions that come with facing struggle, uncertainty, change, difficulty, hardship, dude, that's totally okay. The difference is, do you let those emotions ultimately stop your emotion? It's okay to feel bad, but do you stop? It's okay to feel bad and stop for a minute, catch your breath, get some perspective, get some help. But then the next right actions of integrity. The next right actions of integrity. The next right actions of integrity. You can have pain and and learn and rest and still keep progressing in some small way that's honoring the struggle and finally having reverence for that. I believe the difficulties that have been placed before us sometimes are fate driven. Sometimes that was placed right before me, the universe, God, whatever. I feel like that was served up to say, okay, kid, you wanted success, Prove it. The obstacle was put there specifically to develop and hone a skill set that I didn't have.

Oh, I didn't know when I was.

Going to start a business that I was going to have to do all of these things. You know, from insurances and payrolls to.

You know, coding and websites and marketing.

To employees and contracts and legal and omg. And so when I saw that list of things was going to have to.

Do and I learned a lot about.

Them along the way in starting my first business way way back in 2006 or something like that, I didn't stop because of the challenge. I saw the challenge as a necessary hurdle to develop my business legs. And because that happened, I've been able to jump over hurdle after hurdle after hurdle at increasing speed, over speed, over speed, over time, over time, over time, over abundance, over abundance, abundance and abundance and abundance and gained all the skills and the masteries to develop and create and launch multiple businesses and brands at the seven figures, to consult and advise unicorns, to literally have the ability to be sharp in that area in which I had no education, no background, no training, no experience, no culture. That willingness to endure and to learn wasn't just quote unquote, a growth mindset and wasn't just quote unquote grit. It was honor. It was, I will take these challenges as honor, not honor just of my character, but honoring the fact that they've been placed before me so I could serve my highest potential one day.