Embracing Life's Resistance 198

0:02 Today on Share the Struggle Podcast, we have an in-depth conversation on what holds us back the impeding, slowing or stopping effect known as resistance. We explore worst-case scenarios, what role perfectionism plays and what your busy schedule says about you All that and more. On today's episode of Share the Struggle Podcast, let me tell you something Everybody struggles. The difference is some people choose to go through it and some choose to grow through it. The choice is completely yours. Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life.

0:47 If you find strength in the struggle, then this podcast is for you. Do you have a relationship that is comfortable with uncomfortable conversations? Uncomfortable conversations challenge you, humble you and they build you. When you sprinkle a little time and distance on it, it all makes sense. Most disagreements, they stem from our own insecurities. You are right where you need to be. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

1:39 What it do, what it do Hot diggity. Damn, am I so excited to be back again with you? Look at you, baby boo. You look great, baby. Yeah, but you've been working out, eating better, taking care of yourself, saying your prayers, eating your vitamins. Is that what you've been doing? You look great. I just want you to know that you look really good. I mean, I'm married, so don't take it the wrong way, y'all okay, but I just feel like it's important for all of you listening to realize you look great and you should be feeling great. And I appreciate you for coming on back to episode 198.

2:22 See what I did there, you know. I mean I said you look great and great and eight. I mean they rhyme right. Yeah, you should be proud of me, I'm proud of me. I mean I'm proud of you. So it's only fair, you can be proud of me. Anyways, that's probably the most awkward intro I've pulled off in quite some time. But as I was saying 198 and feeling great, I arrived at the obvious conclusion that I am surprised I had not previously realized we're so close to 200 episodes. Can you believe that 200 episodes is coming right on up? If we should do something special, I feel like we need to do something special together, y'all.

3:06 So I'm going to open the floor for discussion. All right, this is the Montel Williams portion of the show. I'm going to ask all y'all beautiful people, because you know, what should we do. What should we do to honor Share the Sparkle Podcast, episode 200, vastly approaching. I can't believe it. So, without further ado, get your ones up all my day ones, as we have this talk of potentially reaching attaining the super awesome goal that we never thought possible the goal of 200 episodes. I didn't envision 200 episodes when I started the podcast back in July of 2020.

3:49 So, for all of you with your ones up my day ones, I appreciate you. I thank you to everyone out there that this is your first one, then welcome, and I hope you tune in and listen in, and I hope you stay along in this journey. This builds your ride to Valhalla. I appreciate you. I talked to quite a few folks last week that were getting prepared to give Share the Struggle podcast a listen for the first time. So if you have stumbled upon this episode as your first episode, I welcome you and I appreciate you. I'd like to let you and everybody else know you can find all things podcast related over at wwwsharethestrugglepodcastcom. Go on over there, pay us a visit, leave a review, say how do you do?

4:31 Why should you do that? Well, because I pay for it every damn month. If I'm gonna keep paying for a website, somebody better use it. Golly. You can find share the Struggle podcast on all major podcast platforms. Please, please, please, please, please, please, leave a review, hit, subscribe, grow the tribe, share this show with someone important to you. I hope there's going to be a message here today. I feel real confident about the message today, so I hope there's something that resonates with you. And I hope there's something that resonates with you and I hope there's something that you say huh, you know what? That old redneck had more wisdom than I thought. I bet old backyard Bill would benefit from some information here, from this positive vibe that exists with this positive tribe.

5:20 And then you go ahead and send that link on over to Bill. That's what I'm getting at here. That's what I'm hoping for. All that aside, I might be rambling a little bit and I might be nervous, just a little bit, for a couple reasons. Number one episode 200 is fastly approaching. But before that, y'all, a major milestone moment and the life of yours truly is fastly us, because when this episode drops on a winning Wednesday, I am just a few short days away from finding out just what gender old baby Liberty is about to be.

6:00 Oh my gosh, I'm nervous. Y'all, I'm shitting bricks, sorry, rocks. Anyways, that was a Christmas vacation line right there. Can you believe it? Yes, I know I shouldn't be trusted with small, impressionable children. It's a miracle? I can't believe it either, but as of Friday, the Liberty family will be finding out just what we're going to be welcoming into this world. I'm excited, I'm nervous. I'm just going to put this out there. I'm pulling for a boy and I don't want this to sound cheesy over here.

6:41 I don't want this to sound selfish. You're ultimately praying just for a happy, healthy child, right? Let's be honest. My reasoning for pulling for a boy is that my dad talked so much about wanting a grandson. I just hope and pray that this is part of his wish coming true. And for those of you that don't know, or if I haven't already said this, if we are going to have a boy, we're going to name him Carter, because my dad's name is Art and you can put Art right in the middle of Carter and I think it just makes oh so much sense. So I'm really hoping and praying that we can have a little boy that can carry on my dad's legacy and my legacy and the whole family name.

7:27 So that's something that I'm hoping for. But if it's a girl, we have her beautiful name already picked out as well, and we're going to be just as happy and excited to welcome her to this world as well. So, man, just the pressure's on, right. The pressure is on as to what we're going to have. We're going to find out on Friday and since how? Y'all podcast listeners, you're on this journey with us and we feel obligated to tell you, folks, some things before we tell the rest of the world. So I'm going to let you know On Friday when we do our gender reveal. I'm going to spill the beans right now and just what that gender reveal is going to be. Okay, not the results, because I don't know the results.

8:08 I just told that to you. So quit being bushy, would you. What I'm trying to say is we are going to announce to you, or I'm going to announce to you, how we're going to reveal said gender. We had planned a skeet shoot scenario, which I think is pretty damn cool it was my wife's idea and I thought it was great where you actually purchase a skeet and they send you two of them, a pink one and a blue one. You have somebody that knows the identity, and they take that skeet and load it up and then pull, launch, I shoot, explodes, colors happen, tears happen, all those awesome things. We were excited about that.

8:48 But upon further reviews and emphasis on reviews we realized that a lot of people say they're not that exciting or they ruin the surprise because some of the powder is leaking out before it even happens. And anyways, upon further review, that wasn't the way he wanted to go. Now I must rewind this story a little bit to let y'all know, if you don't already know, I am a sports fanatic. I have been raised very competitive and on sports and I am a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan, an absolute sports junkie, if you don't already know this. And this week just happens to be one of the most important and exciting weeks in the lives of any football fan, because this week is the week of the NFL draft.

9:34 It is like Christmas around my house. I get all jacked up about the draft. I just work my life around the draft. I know that's depressing, but there's a lot that goes into it. I think it's the realization of a dream for so many that I really get excited about, because as you start watching the draft stuff and you're learning about these prospects along the way, you'll learn amazing stories of hope and success for all these young men that are looking to enter the draft, and it's just a realization of the dream for so many, and a lot of that is just fantastic. And the more you learn about these people, you start to pull for some, you start to hope for some, and sometimes you're fortunate enough that those folks that you really like and enjoy oh my God, I just about broke my kneecap.

10:21 Oh, funky butt loving, ah ha ha. Ah, son of a. Oh my God, oh, mama Shit, oh, that's hot. Oh, oh God. Oh, you know you do a lot of pain when it burns. Ah, oh my God, talk amongst yourselves. Ah, if it's bleeding, it's internal. Oh my God, that hurts so bad I can't walk. Oh, baby, oh Christmas, oh Christmas, ah, oh, kelly Clarkson, ah, oh, mother Teresa, oh, mama say, mama say, mama say, oh, starting to get some feeling.

11:16 Oh that feeling, oh that burning feeling. Oh man, oh God, did you guys hear that? Holy funky butt loving? Oh my gosh, wow. A more professional host would take this out of the recording, but I'm going to leave it because you guys should know why I'm limping the next time you see me If I'm walking with a limp, because you guys should know why I'm limping. The next time you see me If I'm walking with a limp it's because of this episode of the podcast. Oh man, I hit my knee so hard my back hurts, holy caca. Oh, wow, that takes me right off subject.

11:57 Man, all right, here's the deal y'all. I'm standing in the kitchen recording. I got the dogs out on the porch and I was just deep in thought and conversation and I just thought I had an itch on my leg and I picked my leg up in a violently pace, like a violent pace, a ferocious pace. Okay, I don't know why I was so aggressive about picking my leg up. I could have just been punching a football from here to the neighbor's house. That's how aggressively I picked my leg up. I don't know why. Maybe I was still motivated about the football talk, but when I did, I literally smashed the top of my kneecap into the countertop in our island, in our bar here. It literally felt like I shifted my kneecap, like it was the pointy part of the bar might've got on top and behind of the knee cap.

12:45 It felt like I shifted it. Okay, and I'm just going to say this I got this tremendous burning feeling in my knee that literally right now is radiating from the top of my knee all the way to my scrotum yes, that's a technical term, because I didn't want to say anything to offend the children, and putting pressure on my leg is just nearly about impossible. Oh my God, does this hurt. Wow, get yourself together. Have you ever hit your knee so hard? I'm going to talk to the fellas right here because I don't know if this is medically possible or if I really hurt something. Have you ever hit your knees so hard that your testicles cramp and your lower back cramps? I have got a burning and an aching and a pulling that you would write to your mother about and she would find offensive.

13:31 Wow, my leg is so hot right now. If there's bruising or bleeding, you won't see it because it's tattooed over. Anyways, mylanta, am I going to try to get back on subject here? I had a very motivational, inspirational message planned for today and I've distracted all of y'all already with just personal abuse, but I'm going to leave it in there. This episode is going to be longer than it should have been because I just had a 10-minute injury recorded live on the air, oh God. But I'm going to leave it. As I was saying, it's the draft this week. Okay, I get excited about the draft and I hope the people that I enjoy the most in the draft wind up on my team.

14:12 Sometimes they get lucky enough, but it changes the direction of your team and it gives you people to root for, to pull for and just stories that you like to hear, some feel-good realizations. So I love the draft. I've been obsessed with it since I was a kid and because of that it's a real big day in my household. And just being as the calendar would have it, as luck should so see fit, I'm fortunate enough to find out about just what we're going to be welcoming into the Liberty household. Is it going to be a little boy? Is it going to be a little girl? What we're going to be welcoming into the Liberty household, is it going to be a little boy? Is it going to be a little girl? So we're going to take the birth announcement and we're going to turn it into a draft day announcement. So the ultrasound tech is going to fill out the paperwork on what we are having, put it in an envelope and the wife and I will do a gender reveal, nfl draft style.

15:01 So look forward to that man look forward to that. Man look forward to that. Now that we got the pain portion of the show out the way, we're going to discuss a little thing called resistance, a force such as friction that operates opposite the direction of motion of a body and tends to prevent or slow down the body's motion. Fun little full circle moment here. This countertop just acted as a serious source of resistance towards my kneecap because it definitely prevented my body's motion. But that's not what we're about to talk about when it comes to resistance. We're going to take a better look at resistance and the impact and role it plays in our lives on day-to-day, our relationships, our businesses and how we live.

15:47 All that to come. Gotcha Resistance the impending slowing or stopping effect exerted by one material thing or another. In business and in life, I feel that we manufacture resistance. The definition of resistance that I just used the impending slowing or stopping effect exerted by one material thing or another material.

16:31 We're identifying a material thing, something that stops our movement, like this countertop on my kneecap. But in business and in life, I feel like we manufacture resistance. Material resistance could be the fact that, hey, we don't have the finances to move forward. We don't have the finances to make that decision. But oftentimes it's not just the material things that we find as resistance, because we're manufacturing resistance. Material resistance could be those finances that I can't afford to make that choice, that decision, to make that move. But a lot of times we manufacture resistance. We create an emotional resistance, an emotional resistance that holds us back, that keeps us from moving forward, that paralyzes us and prevents us from believing and achieving the dreams that we have for ourselves.

17:24 Now these things can imply to personal relationships. These resistance, these emotional resistances that we create in our own minds. It can prevent you from a happy, healthy relationship. If you're listening right now and you've been in and out of relationships, or you're in a difficult one right now, or you're're single right now, and you start to think about these things, you can start to run a parallel and identify some emotional resistances that you've created that have kept you from being happy, that have prevented you from being in a loving relationship. There's going to be some things as we talk today. I'm going to focus this a lot more on business today, but I also want to be conscious of all the people in the room that don't own a small business, that aren't an entrepreneur.

18:14 This resistance it's about life y'all, it's not just business. This resistance is in your personal life, in your emotional life and maybe your business life. You don't need to own a business, but maybe there's some inner working conflicts that you're having at your place of work. There's some resistances there, some relationships there that are preventing you from enjoying the job that you have as much as you should. Maybe they're preventing you from applying yourself for that promotion, for bettering yourself in your current situation. So you might hear me have a little bit more of an entrepreneurial focus today, because I'm going to be talking about this resistance and part of the impact it has on my business.

18:54 Because the only way for us to learn and grow from this and this particular topic, I feel like, is for me to share some things that are personal, to relate to what it is that I know and that's myself and my current situation and where I'm at. But I feel like, as is the name of the podcast, share the Struggle as we share our struggles. There is strength in the struggle and there's room for inspiration in everybody's story. So when I'm saying things, I'll do the best I can to drop in some similarities here where we can connect the dots between a relationship and a business scenario. But I just want everybody, as always, to listen to these conversations with an open mind and an open heart and realize that there might be things that we can run a parallel to in our life, even if we don't own our own small business.

19:42 So I just kind of want to put that little disclaimer out there. Now I have this ongoing thing where I'll have conversations throughout the week with a lot of my friends that are business owners and we share a lot of our struggles, and you guys have heard me talk about conversations that I've had with Matt and Sarah from Ledgeway Farm, scott from Freedom Designs, pam and Paul from Walson Woodcraft. I have this whole select group of folks that are business owners that we tend to bounce ideas and thoughts and things off of each other, and Kyle from Underdog Metal and my man, ed, that owns Main Street Barbershop.

20:28 I have all these different business owners that throughout the week I often have a conversation with at least one of them, and one of the conversations I had this week was actually with my man, darren Clark, finnegan, owner operator, lost Valley Brewing Company, dcf, a brother of mine. We've worked in the trenches together at Harley-Davidson. When I left Harley. He did it the exact same time, the exact same day, and he went and chased his dream of opening his brewery or his brewery was already open, but he committed himself full-time to that. And I've had Darren on the show. He was my first guest and one of my only guests, but, uh, we often just touch base with each other and have these conversations.

21:09 He doesn't know that I'm going to share any of this, um, but the conversation that we had yesterday was that in a matter of 30 days, in a matter of the last 30 days in the state of Maine, four breweries have gone out of business. Think about that for a minute. In the last 30 days in the state of Maine, four breweries have gone out of business. Think about that for a minute. In the last 30 days, four breweries have gone out of business. I'm not going to name all the breweries and get into all of that, and there's a lot of things that we can think about and analyze. As soon as you hear that, number one, you can look at the industry and the trends and you can start asking yourself how many breweries are around. Is it a saturated scenario?

21:50 You can look at that and you can make that connection and that analysis. You can also think about the economy and where we are in business currently and you can start thinking about holy shit, four businesses out of business in 30 days. And then you start hearing of other businesses that you know of that are gone out of business and it starts to have this compound effect. I was just talking to Scott from Freedom Designs both some friends of yours that are in the mortgage industry and how the housing market has cost a lot of those folks to leave real estate and to close businesses and start new jobs. And you just start to think about all these things and it's really easy for you and for me or anybody that is a small business owner, to all of a sudden manufacture some emotional resistance here, because I can start to think about this and I can draw the conclusion that this economy sucks.

22:50 People are sitting on money. I've had these recent events where I'm breaking, eating or losing money. I start to think all the way back to last year when, if you guys are day one listeners and you've been listening for all this time you know that probably 90% of my events last year were down by at least 50%. So you start to think about these things and you say is there a sign here? Is there a connection here? That's telling me that you're going to be the next one, that's telling me you're going to be out of business. That's telling me maybe you should make some different decisions before you are out of business. That is what I consider emotional resistance, because you start to manufacture resistance in your mind based off of what's going on around you, based off of outside circumstances and forces outside of your own control.

23:42 That, in turn, a lot of these things don't have any impact on you whatsoever, but we start to create this emotional resistance and what can happen by doing this is we can create a doomsday theory. A worst case scenario comes into your mind. So let me just kind of give us a little bit of an example as to how this can go. Last week the wife was on here. We had this conversation about being in Connecticut and our event not going the way we wanted. We talked about day one of our event, working 14 hours and then making $80. You start thinking about 42 hours of work per person, so 84 hours invested, to then lose a few hundred dollars.

24:27 You hear these breweries going out of business. You read about all these other businesses, you hear the conversations at the convention about people not making money. You can create a doomsday theory. You can come up with a worst case scenario and I'm telling you, on Saturday, me and my wife ran through every potential possibility scenario of that worst case scenario. Because you go from I don't know if we're going to break even to we're going out of business. I can't provide for my newborn that I'm going to be bringing into this world. We're going to lose the house. We're going to lose everything. You start to draw all these parallels. I'm going to lose everybody close to me.

25:08 I'm going to have to reinvent the wheel, I'm going to have to change my life. I'm going to have to do all these things. That's a doomsday scenario, folks. That's a worst case scenario. Those things can happen because you are manufacturing resistance in your mind. I mentioned a few weeks ago about a book that I've been reading and it's taken me a lot longer to get through because I just haven't dedicated the time to it. And, in all honesty, I listen to books when I'm at the gym and I kind of let the gym lax for a couple of weeks, but this morning I was there when the doors opened and I got back to it, and I just think it's fitting when messages find you at the right time for the right reason. And in the book the Mountain is you by Brianna West, I learned some whole new perspectives on resistance and I gained an entirely new perspective on a doomsday, worst case fear scenario, which is something that I was certainly living with last week.

26:08 And when you have these conversations that I've had this week, it's very easy to let those conversations and theories creep back into your mind. So I want to share with you a quote from the book the Mountain is you Irrational fears are safe placeholders Projecting what we fear on what we know won't happen, creating a fear cycle. Okay, let's crack this egg a little bit. Irrational fears are safe placeholders. So let's think about irrational fears for a second. Just because I'm having one bad event doesn't mean that I can't raise a child, doesn't mean that I can't provide for a child, doesn't mean I'm going to be out of business, doesn't mean I'm going to lose my house.

26:53 I'm manufacturing resistance, I'm building a doomsday theory, I'm creating a worst case scenario and I'm projecting what we fear on what we know won't happen, creating a fear cycle. So I might know that this one event isn't going to have this end result, but I can begin to manifest in my mind that all these events are going to have the same result, that I'm going to create this cycle of events that has this continued result, that everything I do, if I continue to do it, is going to have the same result and that's going to end up in this doomsday scenario.

27:36 For me to understand this, I tried to dig into what exactly a fear cycle is and I found a few different examples of fear cycles on the internet, which is a scary place to do research, but it just happens to be where all of us go for research. Now let's try to paint a picture to pave the road. So I'm going to do the best I can to create this image in your mind. So imagine a circle, because it's a circle, right, fear circle. So we need to create a circle first off. So if you're creating a circle, I want you to think about word circle with an arrow, word circle arrow, word circle arrow.

28:18 You understand what I'm saying. This word leads to the next word and it all creates a circle. This is an awful way of me explaining to you that I am not an artist. I'm just trying to draw a circle. Let's crank out a few examples of a fear circle. The first one I want to use is everybody listening right now that are thinking about a fear cycle and relationships. All right, so imagine this for your fear cycle and relationships. The top sentence that we're looking at is you do something not nice. That circle, that line and arrow, leads to they feel bad.

28:59 There's an arrow that goes from they feel bad to they do something not nice. Then, when they do something not nice, it leads to you feel bad. And you guessed it. You feeling bad leads to you do something not nice. So here's this fear circle that you have in a relationship you ready, you do something not nice, your partner feels bad, they return the favor by doing something not nice and in turn, you feel bad, and then you decide I got to give it right back to them by doing something not nice. That's how one of these fear circles works in a relationship. I found a small one that I liked when it comes to just everyday life, and at the top was pain.

29:42 Pain leads into fear and fear leads into inactivity. That's a great one when you think about just everyday to-dos, everyday failures and obstacles that we run into. You have a fear to do the unknown, to get out of your comfort zone. That fear results in inactivity. That inactivity is you not applying yourself, not going for your dreams and your goals, and the result of that inactivity is pain, because you continue to do the same things, you're not believing and achieving all the things that you want, and that's just that vicious cycle. It's fear, inactivity and pain.

30:25 You're fearful to take the chance. That results in a paralysis of inactivity. You're sitting around doing nothing and then the pain sets in when you realize you're just unhappy, you're not living the life that you want. That's a nice small example there, one that I really like overall and I feel like really relates to small business, or I feel like it relates to where I'm at currently with my business is. The words in the circle for this one are as follows Excuses lead to negativity, negativity leads to purposelessness, purposelessness leads to paralysis and paralysis leads back to excuses.

31:07 That is the vicious cycle, if you ask me, of a small business owner. That's this vicious fear cycle that we live in, when everything around us seems to be going to shit, when this economy sucks and people are sitting on their money they're not spending. When you have these businesses going out of business in drastic numbers, that creates negativity, right? This negativity comes into your mind and it starts to weigh you down. It starts to cloud your vision. It starts to take away your hopes and your dreams. It can create excuses in your mind. You can start to use the economy and the finances as excuses. By doing this, you start to create a paralysis effect where you're just constantly analyzing your next move, your next moment, your next decision.

31:54 All of this can result in a purposelessness where you feel like you're not living a purpose, you're not fulfilling your purpose, you don't have a reason for being. All of this can eat you up. It can destroy you. Excuses, negativity, purposelessness, paralysis, back to excuses. That is that fear cycle. That's that vicious cycle that crushes and collapses businesses and individuals alike. As humans, I think we really need to realize and accept the fact that failure is inevitable, but we just need to make sure it's for the right reasons. It's okay to fail. I've heard many times to fail forward. It's okay to fail.

32:35 We need to accept failure. I have accepted that my last event was a failure, but it was for the right reason. I took that opportunity for the right reason. I embarked on this event for the right reason and I truly believe that we failed forward and we'll give it a shot again. And I don't want to just keep harping on this one event, I'm just using it as an example so we can kind of follow along here and dig into the story and draw a connection here. There was another quote in this book that I really freaking love, and it is that life isn't about what you could have would have done. Life is measured by outcomes, not intentions.

33:18 It's whether you eventually did it. When you think about these fear cycles, the excuses, the negativity, the paralysis, the purposelessness, at some point you need to realize life isn't about what you could have would have done. Life is measured by outcomes, not intentions. It's whether you eventually did it. If there's one thing you guys can take from this episode today, I would put a heavy emphasis on the fact that life is not measured by intentions. It is measured by outcomes. It's not whether we want to do something, we would have could have done, something.

34:01 We've always dreamed of doing something. It's whether we did something, and that failure might be inevitable. But if failure is for the right reason, then it's justified. You might have the best of intentions, but this life is not measured by those intentions. It's by your outcomes, your results, what you did it comes down to whether you eventually did it. All the failures in between, all the events you lost money, all the late nights, sleepless nights, painful nights that's not what's going to define you. Whether you eventually did, it is what's going to define you. You eventually did, it is what's going to define you. You value your doubt more than your potential.

34:44 Man, that line hits me right between the blinkers because I certainly put a higher priority and emphasis on my doubt than on my potential. I spend more time analyzing what could go wrong over what will go right. I seem to put a much higher value on my doubt. I focus on my doubt. I focus on those businesses that are going out of business. I focus on trying to be the provider for my family, trying to create a legacy, more than the potential, more than the opportunity that's in front of me. I had to write this passage word for word from this book and I want to share this with you because this, I feel like, changed my day today and I truly feel like I do the same for you.

35:32 You don't realize how far you have come. You are not the person you were five years ago. You are not the person you were five years ago. Give yourself credit for everything you overcame that you never thought you would and everything you built that you never thought you could. You've come so much further than you think and you are much more closer than you realize. I don't know who out there needs to hear that, but I needed it this morning and I'm so glad and grateful that it came to me and that I received it, and I'm so excited to share it all with you. You don't realize how far you have come.

36:15 You are not the same person you were five years ago. Give yourself credit for everything you overcame that you never thought you would and everything that you built that you never thought you could. You've come so much further than you think and you are much more closer than you realize. Everything about that was a motivation for my soul and it was encouragement that I needed, and it was something that I really needed to focus on the lines in here that you're not the same person you were five years ago. For me, back in 2019, I left everything that I knew, everything that I built, everything that I dreamed for that person that I was in 2019 and who I am now.

37:02 We're not the same people. I couldn't go back and do the job that I once did. I'm no longer equipped for it. But that person in 2019 that left that job that I loved so much, he's not the same dude standing here and that dude wouldn't be prepared or equipped to handle what it is I do each and every day today, because it took the trials and tribulations. It took that time, it took the ups and downs, and now I'm standing here realizing that I need to give myself credit for everything that I've already overcome, because there's been so many obstacles, there's been so many times where I've had my business account down to single digits and I've come roaring back.

37:46 I remember the first time I went to the Freiburg Fair and everything I did for the first two days went into the red. That I just kept losing money. That, before the fair opened, my account was overdrawn multiple times just to rebound and to have the most successful event of our career. Up until that point. I think about all the things that I've overcome making bad investments, bad decisions, the trials, the errors, the spending thousands of dollars on product failing to make it work. I remember that learning curve. I just recently threw away a bunch of my mistakes because I thought I needed to hold on to them for taxes, that they were just misprints and just mix-ups and mess-ups right Cases of clothes that were ruined, stacks of this paper, these products that I used to use.

38:42 I spent like $12,000 on a printer that wasn't the right fit for the business. I learned over time that it wasn't durable enough, didn't get the finish that I wanted, the production time was way too long. I still have that printer. I used to beat myself up over that printer and that decision for the longest time until I made the decision in my mind to no longer look at that as a mistake but look at it as an investment, as a college education that many people would spend thousands of dollars to enter college to have an education in the business that I'm in. My education was that printer and making that mistake and learning through that.

39:22 But where I was when I was doing all that learning and where I am now, we're not the same people and I think about when I was making that product with that printer. I'll just kind of give you an example. My printer would print off this image on a sheet of almost like a plastic. It would put ink on it. That one sheet might have cost me three to five dollars. And there's another sheet that's basically an adhesive, which was another, you know, two to five dollars, and you would marry them together. And by doing that I mean you take this heat press that I spent a few thousand dollars on, you put these pieces of paper together in there and you heat them up and then you have to pull it apart and hope that everything goes correctly.

40:06 Now, in doing this, your humidity needs to be perfect, your temperature needs to be perfect, everything static needs to be low all these crazy things. Every time I would do one of those and it wouldn't work and I had no money coming in. As I just launched my business, I was throwing five and $10 bills in the trash constantly as I was trying to make this process work. Now, each time you do one of these, if that finished product is five or $6 and I peel it and it doesn't work and I throw it in the trash, I'm creating a new one of those every, let's say, two minutes. Can you imagine, over the course of an hour you're trying to make something work and every two minutes you lose $6 because you're not understanding what the process is.

40:50 But you need to fail your way through it and then you would take the product. Once you got that perfect press, you would put it on your garment of choice. Then that garment would have to cool. Then you'd have to remove that print from that garment and repress it again. But oftentimes when you go to remove that print it was stuck to the shirt or the hat and it would damage it or you would destroy the design. Then not only did you lose that $6 or $10 print that you made, but you lost that $10 item that you were printing on. So now you're throwing you know $15, $20 in the trash. It added up and it was a dark, depressing time for me, for me to see where I am now and to be at the point that I'm at.

41:35 If I look back to where I was, I could never believe where I am. Everything that you built, that you never thought you could. You've come so much further than you think and you're so much closer than you realize when I go to these events and I see other people doing better than me, and I aspire to do those things and I have these grander visions and hopes and dreams for me, and I'm not there. I can beat myself up for not being there when instead I should be giving myself credit for the fact that I am where I am and that I need to realize that I'm much closer than I think.

42:18 It's a whole different reframing of our mind and our thoughts that I think can make a big difference. When I think about my man, darren Clark Finnegan, I hope that something resonates with him, and I know that he's going to be listening. So, mr DCF, I want you to know that I'm proud of you and I want you to know that you should be so incredibly proud of yourself. It's not about boasting the fact that you're in business and four others are not. It's about giving yourself credit for the lean times, for the hard times. You know it's difficult times ahead, but this too shall pass. Give yourself credit for your dream outlasting the dreams of others.

43:01 Give yourself credit for the fact that four businesses, friends and competitors are no longer in the industry. But you, my friend, live on, and I know the big challenges that you're facing. I know some of those based off our conversations, and I'm proud of you, Number one, for those obstacles arriving at your doorstep, because you earned them. I'm proud of you for doing everything you can to overcome those obstacles, to take them on and to move on and to become bigger and better and to see it that your dream continues. I'm proud of you, dude. Give yourself some credit and keep on keeping on.

43:44 Getting back to this resistance, it's not about just talking about resistance. It's not about just understanding resistance. It's about learning the aspects of it. It's about finding the underlying reasons, finding those contributing factors to resistance, and there's a few of them from the book the Mountain Is Me that I have pinpointed, that are me, that are a thousand percent me, and I think some of these most of you could relate to as well. So the first one is perfectionism. When you think about perfectionism, I always think that it's a good quality, right Like hey man, I'm doing the best I can to make the best I can.

44:26 I have this big, bold, beautiful vision of what is to be. The book says that perfectionism is not wanting everything to be right. It's actually hindering me from unrealistic expectations and holding us back from trying. Think about that Our vision for perfection, our quest to make things perfect, is actually holding us back. It's preventing us from applying and trying, because we're so hung up on something being perfect that we won't bring it to market. We're so hung up on a design being perfect that we won't print it and show it. We're so hung up on our presentation being perfect that we would rather skip the event and not show up because we aren't perfect, because we aren't ready.

45:15 When I first started this business, I had this vision of what I wanted everything to be, and I remember the first time I showed up at an event it was at Bentley Saloon and I felt really proud of what I brought to the table. I had a professional tent and fixtures and grid walls and a beautiful presentation and everything about that was great and it wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was damn near close to what I saw for myself. To start with, what I can tell you is I just drove three hours to an event using a single cab pickup truck with everything stuffed in the back just piled high, and I went at something like the absolute clamp.

45:59 It's because it's what I needed to do to make something happen. I didn't have the courage to try that four years ago. I would never have done that four years ago because my quest for perfection was holding me back. So, as much as I've overcome some of that, I'm still paralyzed by that, because there's a lot of perfection that's preventing me from doing things that I want to do. There's, maybe bigger events that I want for myself that I haven't done for myself because of my perfections, because it's not wanting everything to be right. It's actually hindering me. These unrealistic expectations are holding me back from trying Another one, and I know this one, this one I know oh so well.

46:45 It is so close to me, it is a relative to me and I know it to be true for so many of you. This one's going to pop you in the blinker, sir, because you're too busy, right, you're too busy. You're too busy, right, you're too busy. Being busy overwhelms the body and it distracts you from the real issue. Busy is the ultimate distraction. I'm going to break this down in a couple of ways. For us, there's so many things that you need to do. There's these tasks that should be done, but they're not getting done because you're justifying it with how busy you are, because you have 600 things on your to-do list.

47:28 You don't worry about the most important five things on your to-do list because you're just getting things done. I'm too busy, dude, I'm too busy. Have you seen my to-do list? There is so much shit on here and I'm crossing things off and I'm doing things, but I'm just too busy. I'm too busy to handle that big task. Let me just accomplish the ones that are in front of me. Being busy overwhelms the body. When you have so much to do it'll paralyze you from doing what's important and it'll paralyze you from doing things that are healthy. I find when I'm too busy I forget to eat. Well, when I'm too busy I don't dedicate time to the gym because I'm just too busy to go to the gym.

48:10 It overwhelms you and it distracts you. It distracts you from what's important and what is difficult. Busy is the ultimate distraction. This line from the book just popped me right between the blinkers. It hit me right between my beady little eyes because I've always been able to justify that I'm trying, that I'm applying, that I'm important, that I am somebody, that I'm succeeding because my schedule is busy. T ouch, that one really stings.

49:04 Oh my God. Busy is not a virtue, just a sign you can't manage your task. I'm highlighting my show notes right now and I'm going to type that one up that's going to be hung in the office. Every time I look at that list and all the things that are on there and I justify what's not getting done or the things I'm not doing because I'm just too busy. I'm going to call my own bluff. Busy is not a virtue, just a sign you can't manage your task. Next time I tell myself I'm too busy, I'm going to have to realize that I'm not good enough at managing my time. I'm going to have to realize that I don't delegate. I'm going to have to realize that I don't prioritize.

49:46 I'm going to have to take a big old glass of accountability. I'm going to have to buck up, grow up and figure it out. Buttercup Busy is not a virtue, just a sign you can't manage your task. I know there's a lot of you listening right now that that one hurt you as much as it hurt me. There's a lot of you listening right now that that one hurt you as much as it hurt me. God bless you. Safety in numbers. Brianna went on to say that your willpower is limited. You only have so much, so prioritize it. This is epic advice, y'all. Our willpower is limited. You only have so much, so prioritize it.

50:26 And her advice on prioritizing things is to prioritize the task on your to-do list. Target the top five. Take your to-do list, identify the top five priorities and hit those first. We only have so much willpower. Our willpower is limited, so you need to prioritize it. Prioritize the willpower and your tasks. Take the top five must-dos to-dos to get them done today what is going to have the most impact on your day and get them done early.

51:11 I've had many, many conversations and episodes in here on being productive and having accountability and writing up our to-do lists and all those things, but I've lost sight of a lot of those things and I have several different methods for being productive, but I'm really enjoying this one and, I think, just her framing things out. As our willpower is limited. We only have so much to use. We need to prioritize it. When I think about that, I go into the day headstrong and full of confidence, right? Don't you guys all come out of the gate strong like bull? He's strong like bull. Look at him. Oh yeah, very, very strong boy, very strong. I come out of the gate full of willpower. Right, when that first jab comes across your face, pow.

51:53 You can counterpunch, you can block, you can get back. After it's when the second, third and fourth and fifth jab start to land that you start to lose that motivation. Right, mike Tyson says everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. We start the day off with plenty of willpower. You might take a few punches to the face, but by the time punch five and six starts to land, you start second guessing yourself and your choices. It's not always big things, people. It's not always big failures, mistakes, mess ups and obstacles that come our way that defeat us in the day. It's the little ones, the little things that rob us of our willpower.

52:33 Think about this If you have these tasks, you have these five important tasks. Or if you're like me, you got 55 tasks you're trying to do today. Instead of focusing on the 55, let's move to the top five. If I start my day off feeling optimistic and I'm full of willpower, the first thing comes my way. I might be able to avoid it. Let me try to explain this. Maybe you get a phone call that you end up on the phone call and you're in the middle of one of your tasks, you end up on a call. You're having a great time having a conversation, maybe it's 20 minutes, whatever it is, maybe it's two minutes, I don't know but it distracts you from your task. Oftentimes you might get off of a phone call and that phone call might have inspired a different thought, and if you're like me and you see a squirrel, you start to chase it.

53:22 So maybe you are removed from whatever that task is for you. But maybe you're still full of willpower and you get back on track. Oh, nope, this is what I got to do. And you get back on track. You're doing something and this email pops up and you look at that email and you've still got a decent amount of willpower. You see the subject line come by and you go oh, that's a customer waiting for something. I got to respond to that, but let me get this task done first. Now that little bottle of willpower is starting to get used up. Right Now. You're sitting there and your phone goes off and it's a Facebook notification Ooh, a little shot of dopamine. I wonder what that's all about. Do I go look at that?

54:03 Nope, let me use another shot of willpower and I'm going to defeat that. Okay, Now somebody comes over. They ask for something. You have an appointment, you have to go somewhere. You have to stop that task that you're working on because you have to go to an appointment. You have to do something, you have to be somewhere. That little bottle of willpower is just getting used up and used up and used up. Now you're at your appointment. You're waiting and you say, oh, maybe I can cross something off the list and I can get back to that email. Oh, wait, but didn't I get a notification on Facebook from a friend? Let me see what that's all about. Your willpower is going out the window Before you know it.

54:45 You get back home and you look at the clock and you say, man, I just don't have enough time today, not for that big task. I'm not going to get that one done today. Let me find something else. Your willpower is gone. Your ability to be productive and proactive is gone. You only have so much. We're only given so much in a day. Prioritize those tasks and attack those tasks. You only have so much. We're only given so much in a day. Prioritize those tasks and attack those tasks. Now the next thing on here that I think really reframes life for me. This changes a lot about the way I think and feel, and it sums up so much about the ongoing battles that I found myself in.

55:28 Let's talk about resistance. Right, let's get back to resistance. You want to know what I've been taught about resistance my entire life. Deal with it, push through it, fight it. You can beat it. Resistance was always something that I pushed back against. Resistance is always something that I pushed through. Let me break this down for you. If you're in football as a young man growing up, we're going to connect our sports analogies here. If I'm playing football and I hit you face to face and you counter me with resistance, I run into you.

56:09 You are my resistance. You know what I'm going to do Push through you. I'm going to run over you. I am going to abuse you. That's how I react to resistance. If I'm on the offensive line and I'm blocking somebody rushing me, I'm going to come at you with resistance. I'm going to keep you from my quarterback. I'm going to put you to the ground. If I'm on the defense and I'm blocking somebody rushing me, I'm going to come at you with resistance. I'm going to keep you from my quarterback. I'm going to put you to the ground. If I'm on the defense and I'm trying to get through, to snack the quarterback, and you're trying to give me that resistance, I'm going to run you the truck over. You understand what I'm saying. That's how I counteract resistance by pushing through it. My dad's always taught me.

56:51 My mother's always taught me, that when something's trying to hold you back, when something's trying to hold you down to keep on fighting, to pull through, to push through, that you will get through. I've always been taught that with resistance, I can push through it. So every time I've had these negative thoughts in my mind, every time I've had these doubts in my mind, I've pushed through it. And every time I've had these negative thoughts in my mind, every time I've had these doubts in my mind, I've pushed through it. And I've been pushing through this resistance, through these fear cycles. For what is it? Four years or so that I've been in business, I've been pushing through them, but I often find myself right back at the same position with the same resistance. This advice, this new way of thinking and looking at things, has opened my eyes to a few things that we're going to go through and grow through together.

57:36 Because Brianna West says resistance, you can't just push through it. You will keep hitting the same wall and only strengthen your self-sabotage. Everything that I've been taught, the way I've been raised, the way I live my life just keep fighting, push through it. I'm realizing when I heard those words today that you can't just push through it. You will keep hitting the same wall and only strengthen your self-sabotage. Because I come back to the same spot it happens maybe twice a year at least the same spot when you're down on your luck, you're out of finances and you're feeling stuck.

58:21 I come back to the same spot and every time you do this, that self-sabotage strengthens. Every time you hit that same wall, that self-doubt creeps in. You start to create those doomsday theories, those worst case scenarios, and they only get stronger. Because now you have repetition, now you have a track record, now you've been doing this year after year after year. You find that resistance and you just push through it. You don't change it, you push through it and you find yourself right back here. So if you keep on coming back here, then what gives Cinderella? When do you give up? When do you change? When do you throw in the towel?

59:02 That's what self-sabotage, starts saying to you but Brianna says you need to ask yourself a few questions when you're faced with that same resistance. Number one why do I feel this way? Number two what is this feeling trying to tell me? Number three what do I do to honor my needs? Number three what do I do to honor my needs? Number four why do I want this? And then, when you answer those questions, make a change. I'm not going to dig into these too much, but I want to focus on a couple of things. First question why do I feel this way?

59:43 Why am I doubting myself? Why am I self-sabotaging? Why am I in this fear cycle? The next question is the one that I've been hung up on, and you guys have heard me talk about this what is this feeling trying to tell me? I have been in this rut, in this fear cycle, this pain cycle, where I keep asking myself over and over what are these feelings trying to tell me? And this is when I let analysis paralysis kick in, because, as I sit in this moment and I have these questions, that self-sabotage version of me in the back of my mind says hey pal, these are all signs to shit and get.

1:00:31 These are all signs that you're going to lose everything if you don't quit. These are signs telling you it's time to close your doors. So many of you listening these questions, whether you're in business it's a relationship, it's a coworker. It's a relationship, it's a co-worker. It's a career, it's a job. We all begin to build a cycle around analysis, paralysis about what are these feelings trying to tell me that right there can cripple you, that right there can corrupt you, that right there can corrupt you. When you're asking yourself these questions, it is important to ask yourself what is my inspiration, what is my motivation and the one that I really love that you've heard me talk about so, so many times.

1:01:33 What is my reason? What is my why? I'm not going to go down a power trip again right here, all over again, about the power of why, the golden circle. If you want to learn more about the why, I want you to look up Simon Sinek. You can go on YouTube. I think he even had a TED Talk on it. I want you to watch the video of him in front of a dry erase whiteboard and he's drawing out the golden circle, the meaning, the power of why, that everything starts with why. So when you're faced with this resistance and you ask yourself why do I feel this way? What is this feeling trying to tell me? What do I do to honor my needs? Why do I want this when I get into? Why do I want this?

1:02:15 I want to think about what is my inspiration, what is my motivation, my reason, my why? Because your motivation needs to be greater than your resistance. When your motivation is for a different or better existence, you're going to find your resistance fades because your vision is greater than your fear. The answer to your resistance, the answer for you to keep going, the reason for you to keep trying to keep applying, whether you get denied, whether you fail, the reason why you get back up, that reason is your, why your motivation.

1:02:57 You overcome this resistance, you beat these obstacles. You don't push through that wall, you burn it down. When your motivation is greater than your resistance, when your motivation is not just to make money, when your motivation is not just because I want to do something, when your motivation is for a different or better existence, you're going to find your resistance fades because your vision is greater than your fear. The answer to your resistance, folks, is making sure that your vision is greater than those fears, you beat and defeat your fears. When your vision is greater than your fears, when your motivation is greater than your resistance, when your motivation is for bigger and better and beautiful, it's not just a financial gain, it's not just a small windfall.

1:03:51 When your motivation is for a better existence, for a different you, you're going to find your resistance fades. That is how we beat our resistance. Let's close this little rodeo with some highlights from today, some inspiration from today, some quotes from today. Life isn't about what you could have, would have done. Life is measured by outcomes, not intentions. It's whether you eventually did it. You don't realize how far you have come. You are not the person you were five years ago. Give yourself credit for everything you overcame that you never thought you would have, and everything that you built that you never thought you could have.

1:04:37 You've come so much further than you think and you are much more closer than you realize. Being busy is not a virtue, just a sign you can't manage your task. Find that reason today, find that why today, and make today your best day. Thank you for supporting my American dream. Now go wash your fucking hands, you filthy savage. That's it and that's all. Biggie Smalls. If you're a loud, proud American and you find yourself just wanting more, find me on YouTube and Facebook, at loudproudamerican, or the FacePage, as my mama calls it.

1:05:39 If you're a fan of the Graham Cracker and want to find me on Instagram, where all the kids are tickety-talking on the TikTok, you can find me on both of those, at loud underscore, proud underscore, american. A big old thank you to the boys from the Gut Truckers for the background beats and the theme song for this here podcast. If you are enjoying what you're hearing, you can track down the Gut Truckers on Facebook. Just search Gut Truckers. Give them motherfuckers a like too, I hate to say.

1:06:40 Supporting my American dream. Now go wash your fucking hands, you filthy savage.