In this episode, we discuss the importance of being tough in life and to keep going when you receive a setback in life.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how to be tough in life. I love following the stoic philosophy because it gives you a lot of great lessons on how to be tougher than life is. A lot of stoicism has to deal with focusing on the things that you control in life and to ignore or accept the things you can’t control in life. Once you focus on the things you can control and ignore or accept things you can’t control, that will free up a lot of mental bandwidth.
There is a great Marcus Aurelius quote that says:
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.”
A lot of what makes life tough is dealing with other people. You want to get to a destination or accomplish a goal, but you will have to deal with people along the way and you should expect everyone that you interact with to help you along. You have to deal with them and not get upset when things don’t go your way.
It is very tough to start your own business or climb up the corporate ladder because you’re going to be dealing with people, and they are just mostly just focused on their needs, which is fine but they might not be pleasant to work with. I just need to be tougher than they are, and I will be just fine.
Your body is something that you can’t control at times. I have had a lot of injuries in the past and it’s something that I can’t control. It just happened and now I have to deal with it. I could let a sprained ankle just ruin my month or I can be tougher and do other things that will make me a stronger person. I just have to be tougher mentally and emotionally, and I will be just fine.
To help you be tougher in life, you just have to realize that you can control your emotions and your actions. I could have a bad client meeting and then I want to just scroll on my phone and keep distracted, or I can start taking action to make my future brighter. Taking action is going to make myself vulnerable again but it’s required to get where I want to go.
It sucks when you go for something and it doesn’t work out, but you just have to be tougher than life and try again. I’ve bombed in front of crowds and I’ve asked people out and they said no. The idea is that I just have to take those events as teachable moments to become better in the future and not as a sign that I should never try again.
If I ask a girl out and she says no, I just have to say that it probably wasn’t a good fit and that I didn’t waste too much time on something that wasn’t going to work out anyways and I’m just getting one step closer to the relationship I want to be in.
I can’t tell myself that I’m a loser and that I’m undeserving of anyone because then I would be weaker than life. Things rarely workout on the first try and I just need to make sure that I’m aware of this and that’s not necessarily me, it’s just not the right time or I don’t have the skills yet to get where I need to.
I’m a big believer that you grow the most from your failures and those failures make you stronger as a person. If I was to go into business with someone else, I don’t want to go in business with someone that hasn’t been tested as a person because they don’t know how strong they need to be in order to succeed. When things get really tough, I don’t want a partner that is going to crack under pressure, I want a partner that will keep crawling towards their destination when they get knocked down.
I was in the Marines, and the idea of boot camp is that they break you down as an individual and build you back up into a Marine that can handle a lot of stuff. I’m glad I got this training because it makes me realize how can I handle life and how over adversity that comes my way. So to become tougher in life, it really is a mental game. So I would recommend that you start doing things that are uncomfortable for you. By doing uncomfortable things, it will make you more comfortable with being uncomfortable and whoever can do this the best will most likely win at the game of life.
If someone yells at me, I know that it is only temporary and that it’s not the end of the world. I just have to be strong enough not to get upset at it and be strong enough to stand up for myself. That comes from believing in and loving yourself. I know my abilities as a person and I know what is necessary to become a success in this world. I just have to be strong and handle life now. Do you know?
Thanks for listening to today’s episode, to summarize it, you have to be tougher than your life is. That’s how you’re going to start living the good life. If you’re tougher than life, then you can handle any obstacle that comes your way and while other people are trying to figure out how to deal with the obstacle, you just fly right by it and get to your good life faster. So be strong physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and you will be stronger than your life is.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
