Mindset Monday - What is your worthy opponent?

This is episode 170 of the Empowered Team podcast. Psst. The zenith is coming. The most incredible life changing retreat in Sayulita, Mexico. That's right, the Zenith is coming. To learn more, head to www.theempowered.ca zenith. Learn more. It is life Chang. Welcome to the Empowered Team podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now, your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. We are going into Mindset Monday with a powerful topic called Worthy Opponents. And the reason this came up is because I was thinking about all the things, all the things that I'm being faced with right now, all the things that are challenging right now. And it's come up a lot over the last month. And I decided that instead of looking at everything as something not going well or a setback or a massive obstacle, I started looking at it as a worthy opponent. And what came to mind when I started doing that is the story about my daughter. When she was playing soccer and her team had worked really hard as the underdogs to become the best in their league. And in doing so, they got to see greater and greater competition as they went along. Now their skill set had grown so much, but they were still seeing players that were often better than they were and teams that were gelled more than they were sometimes. And at one particular tournament, they were always a very physical team. But in this particular tournament, they were up against another team who was just as physical, which they weren't accustomed to. Not only that, up against this physical team, this other team had more skill than they did and it didn't look very pretty. And it was even worse when they got back in the locker room because once back in the locker room, the team went on and on about this other team and they were calling them names and they were, you know, just saying how this happened and that happened. They wanted to beat them up and all this stuff until finally I'd had enough of hearing all this and I just said, hey, stop, stop, stop. And they paused and they were still all riled up. But what I said in the moment was, look, that other team, they were pretty awesome. And if anything, instead of trashing them right now, they probably deserve a little bit of respect. They are your worthy opponent. They're the ones that are going to teach you more. They're the ones that are going to challenge you more. They're the ones that are going to make you a better team and better individual athletes from being up against a hard challenge that's what a worthy opponent is. And when we talked about that, it all seemed fine and good in the moment, but it had them stop and ponder. It had them stop and think. It felt easy. It felt good to trash the other team. It felt easy. It felt really good to make the other team wrong. It does the same thing for us when something goes wrong for us or we have a massive challenge in front of us. It feels easy. It feels good to trash it or make it seem like it's the worst thing in the world. But the reality is, is that it offers us so freaking much. We when it's something that's a real worthy opponent. So here's what I created as a definition of worthy opponent. What is a worthy opponent? It's number one, having sufficient merit or value that's challenging. So for instance, when I was in university for my undergrad, the C that I got in the human biology course meant so much more to me than the A that I got in the math course. Why? Because the biology course was a worthy opponent. It was so hard for me. It was such a challenging class, I didn't want to do it. So it's that thing that has sufficient merit or value that's challenging to you. It might not be challenging to the next person. This is subjective. It's challenging to you. Number two, the challenge from the worthy opponent is great enough that it elicits personal growth when you face it. Not when you turn away from it, not when you trash it, but when you truly face elicits your own personal growth. So for example, for me personally, facing being a single mom, and when I say single mom, I didn't have family around for six several years. I didn't have my daughter's father around for several years. It was just me and I was working full time. And so that was a hard challenge for me, but it created, it elicited a ton of personal growth. Number three, facing it causes discomfort, major discomfort. But, you know, it's either necessary or worth it. So when I say necessary or worth it, sometimes when we're facing a worthy opponent, we don't want to. It's a worthy opponent we don't want. We lost a family member a few years ago, and it was a situation where I was in a responsible position of organizing the whole family and organizing the funeral. I didn't want to do that, but I felt personally that it was necessary and that caused a lot of discomfort. But I faced it and moved forward. And even though it was an unfortunate scenario that we didn't want to have anything, any part of. We didn't want that to have occurred. It still caused growth because all that discomfort had us step into being who we needed to be for the people that we really, really love. And that was huge. So, examples of worthy opponents. Back in university, I had a. When I was running competitively for track, I had a teammate who we didn't train together because we trained at different times of the day, but we were in the same event. And we usually only saw each other at meets other than day to day. We'd see each other in the lab occasionally, and when we'd see each other, we'd check in on how the workout went, how the training went. Did she do it on the track? Did we do it outdoors? What was the scenario? We checked in with each other, but she was so important for my growth because she was always either right on my tail or maybe she just beat me. We were always usually neck and neck. We were so close in our ability and that it challenged me to work harder on every single workout, because I know she was too. I knew that when she showed up to the meet, she put in that time because we'd been communicating, and I knew that she was right there to keep pushing me. It's the thing. It's that positive rivalry in that worthy opponent that caused me to grow more. Another one might be startup. For a lot of people that I know they're in business, and I know that startup or fundraising that has been the most challenging time for a lot of business owners. And for me, right now, in a different business, startup is really challenging. Another one is, and this is ongoing for most of us, it's our brain, it's our own freaking brain that can be our worthy opponent. The thoughts that come up repeatedly that don't serve us can be our worthy opponent that has us grow personally in order to overcome either negative thinking or thinking that doesn't serve the direction that we want to go. Our own brains can be our worthy opponent. How about COVID I'll bet Covid's stepped into being that worthy opponent, that thing that's been necessary to face even when we don't want to. It's brought up so many different things for so many different people. It has to be a worthy opponent. And the last example I want to give is marriage. I know that most of us go into marriage with, you know, these high hopes, these great aspirations of deep and true love that's everlasting and long term. And then we hit some of the roadblocks that come with raising a family, being married, challenges that we each both have personally, but bring into the marriage as well. And that's been a worthy opponent for me to face and cause massive, massive growth for me personally. So those are just some examples. But what I want to leave you with on this mindset Monday to really ponder for yourself is what is your worthy opponent right now? Not what is your obstacle. What is the thing that really sucks? What is setting you back? Not those things, but what is your worthy opponent? When you reframe it as your worthy opponent, then it becomes this thing that you can face. And you know you're gonna grow. You know you're gonna step into being your best self and you know it's gonna cause something that's worth it in the long run, no matter how awful the worthy opponent may seem. So what is your worthy opponent? It's time to face it with respect and challenge you to grow. Have a beautiful rest of your week. If you want more of this kind of stuff, it's all in our Empowered Team. This is our monthly group coaching membership. We want you as part of our team. So if you want more of this, let's do it. Have a wonderful week. Love to you. 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