In this motivational monologue, the speaker frames the daily "Moment of Yes" around the theme of embracing resistance and pushback as essential catalysts for personal growth. Using a series of analogies—from weightlifting and editorial feedback to partner resistance training and astronaut muscle atrophy—the speaker illustrates how external challenges force individuals to engage deeper with their physical, creative, and spiritual capacities. The talk critiques a comfort‑driven Western culture that seeks to eliminate struggle, arguing that without deliberate resistance, people lose clarity, precision, and fulfillment. Listeners are invited to identify the sources of resistance in their own lives—whether mental, physical, or professional—and to view those pressures as opportunities to align with their core beliefs and purpose.
Chapters
Good morning, everyone. Here is your A Moment of Yes for Friday, January 15th. We are halfway through the first month of 2021. Yeesh. Wow. All right. And it's a Friday. So hopefully, as you guys are moving into the weekend, there's some things that you're excited about, looking forward to, whatever that is. All right. So your moment of yes for today is— and this is showing up For me in lots of different ways. But the overall idea is, is to embrace resistance, to embrace that pushback. And so what are the different ways that we can do that? So if you're working out and you're trying to get stronger, you're going to the gym, you're lifting weights, the most obvious example of this would be if you're just doing this, not going to get very strong. But if you put a weight in your hand and you're doing this, the weight provides resistance. The resistance forces you to, to, to be stronger, to, to lock into your muscles, to use your muscles. That resistance is forcing you to use the things that are most important to you, the structure, the things that you actually believe in creatively as a writer. An editor is that resistance That pushes back on the writer to be better, to be cleaner, to be more clear, right? So that resistance, even though it's not always a fun process, the editor is the resistance that pushes back, that forces you to, to be clear and have a better understanding of what you're trying to do. And if we can look at every challenge that we're going through— there's that Michigan accent— if we can embrace every challenge that we're going through And seeing that the pushback, what is kind of pushing back up or against you today? Could be, it could be a health situation, it could be an injury. And what I've noticed for myself when I struggle with an injury or health, what that, the pushback is, the pushback on me forces me to kind of go to my spirituality, to go to my beliefs, And to kind of, you know, force me to think about what do I really believe in? What do I rely on? And resistance does that. Here, you know, just with the guys, the national team guys that are training every day, they do all this stuff where they partner up and one guy has a resistance band and it's around his waist and the other guy is just providing resistance. And the cool thing is, is that when you get that little bit of resistance, the form that you're trying to perfect is easier than no resistance. If we have no resistance, there's nothing that grounds us, there's nothing that pushes us, there's nothing that forces us to be more precise, to be more clear, to be more steadfast. You know, you think of astronauts who are up in the space station for, say, weeks at a time, if not months at a time. When they come back down, the amount of muscle and atrophy that has happened because they've been in zero gravity It's crazy. And so they've gotta go through this process of regaining muscle. Now we all see the cool pictures of people floating in zero gravity and how fun that would be, but you're now, you're not using, there's no resistance to use muscles to get stronger. And if life is that way, again, in Western culture, I think we live in a society that it's all about getting rid of struggle. Everything is built around comfort. And we all know comfort is great. And then you get to a point, you're like, all right, so now what do I do? What's the next challenge? What's the next struggle? What's the next, you know, thing that I need to do? Because if we just live a life of comfort, we kind of lose that fulfillment because we lose that pushback that is forcing us to get better. So this is a little bit longer today. I know I'm rambling, but Can we just think about, right? Think about what is pushing at you today, pushing back at you mentally, physically, professionally. What is pushing back? And it's not comfortable, but as you're pushed back, it's pushing you into what you believe in most. So let's go to that spot today. That's your moment of yes. Have a great day, everybody.
