In this episode, we discuss the importance of knowing how to be miserable 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 financial planning with self-development coaching for Latino professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about the need to know how to be miserable. In life there are going to be a lot of things that are going to suck and to get past those sucky moments in life, you have to be okay with being miserable for a little bit.
As a Marine Corps Veteran, I know how to deal with being miserable. I went through Marine Corps boot camp and I spent seven months in Iraq. Both were miserable experiences from their own perspective.
Marine Corps Boot Camp was miserable because I was on a strict schedule with no free time at all for three months. I was told where to go, what to learn, and what I could do. If I didn’t do those things, then I would get punished with exercise or fire watch, which means you lose an hour of sleep. I also got pneumonia in boot camp and lost 20 lbs in two weeks. It was so miserable but I survived.
Iraq sucked because you’re in Iraq in the middle of the dessert. You can’t go out to the store, you can’t go out to the bar because alcohol is banned while you’re over there, it was hot, it got up to 125 degrees, it was dusty, you had to wear all this combat gear which would weight an extra 60lbs, and you had to work every single day over there for seven months. I was so glad to leave Iraq.
In the Marines, I had some of my best times and worst times in life. It’s cool to learn how to escape a helicopter that crashed in the water and to live in Hawaii for three years but there were some trade-offs.
So now I know how to become miserable. When I’m dealing with something that is less harmful than my time in Iraq or boot camp, then I know life is not that bad. When I have to write a blog post or reach out to folks to generate business, it sucks but I know it’s something I have to do to become successful.
To study to become a financial advisor, I had to pass my Series 65 exam, which required me to study for 120 hours. I did that studying in about two weeks and I put in some long days of studying. It was miserable but it was required to help me get to where I wanna go in life. I could handle that type of being miserable. It’s not that bad.
If I’m stuck in traffic, it’s okay because I can catch up on a podcast so I can learn so more and I can just tell myself that I live in a great city with tons to offer. It’s all about having the right perspective. You have to know how to be miserable in the short run. It can suck to study for that exam and it can suck to go through that workout, but instead of saying this is painful, and you start saying this is making you stronger, then you can go through the pain. When I workout and it sucks, I just tell myself that I’m getting stronger from this. So then this motivates me to keep on going.
If you take the perspective that this is going to hurt me, then your brain is going to tell you to stop because it wants to protect itself from pain. But the pain is temporary and necessary for your growth. So you just need to keep going and make sure you’re doing what is necessary for your growth. A lot of the stuff is our heads and it’s really not as bad as it seems. During boot camp it sucked, but looking back at it, you can find something that was fun and now I have stories to share with people of what it is like to go through boot camp. Have you ever hiked 12 miles a day, where you only have one meal a day, and you did obstacle courses in between on four hours of sleep a night? I didn’t think I could do something like that in high school but the Marine Corps helped me believe that I could handle that type of stress. You just have to go through it.
You don’t want to have chronic stress though. I could handle that routine every single day. After that experience, we ate a warrior’s breakfast and got to sleep for 16 hours. So we did have some recovery time. When I was done with boot camp, I basically slept for two days because I was so tired. So when you go through something miserable, make sure you take some time to recover. You can’t be miserable all the time. That just causes chronic stress which then can lead to high blood pressure and other chronic diseases. You can actually get stronger from acute stress, but long term stress is not so good for your health.
But you have to okay with that short term stress and feelings of being miserable. On the other side of that is where all your dreams are. Life is a journey and if were to watch a movie where there was no conflict, it wouldn’t be that interesting. You have to remember that your mess is your message and you shouldn’t be ashamed of where you came from, just enjoy your progress as a person. Life is to short to avoid doing things just because we’re afraid of being miserable.
If you want to start your own business, it’s going to be a grind. You’re going to be miserable and frustrated, but if you can embrace those feelings and realize they are only temporary, then that can give you the motivation to continue with your journey. I’m just starting out and it can be miserable at the time, but overall when my head hits the pillow at the end of the day, I know that I did what I was supposed to do in life. There is a lot of satisfaction knowing that I did what I wanted to do in life instead of not doing what I want to do in life. So the next day, I will continue to do what I need to do to help me become the person I am mean to be.
In life, there are two things you need to figure out, you need to figure out who you need to be in life and you need to be that person you want to be in life. To be that person you want to be in life, you are going to have to go through miserable points in your life. Right now I contact people one by one to try to convince them to sign on with me as their financial planner. It’s a grind and I hear a lot of Nos but it’s required to help me get where I want to be in life. Some days are better than others but I know how to be miserable and I will just keep pushing on.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode, to summarize it, you need to know how to be miserable in life. I would say the best way to become miserable is to hire a personal trainer that will push you to get stronger. Also, remember all those other times in your life that were hard and how you’re a much better person today for going through those things. Life is not all rainbows, so be ready for the storm and realize that all storms pass. And they will come back again so be prepared for them.
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.
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