[00:00] Do you want to grow? That’s what I’d ask myself. You know, do you wanna grow? But you also want it to be comfortable? Well, you can’t have both. That’s normal not to have the motivation. Sometimes it’s normal for, like, for my friend who doesn’t wanna wake up early, like neither do I, but I’m willing to go through that suffering, that pain and suffering to get there, to get to the feeling that feels good later.

[00:24] Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic-Minded Man, real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. and today I’m bringing you an episode on pain and discomfort.
And the reason I am bringing you this episode today is because of this:

[00:42] Every once in a while I go back and I look at some of my old podcast episodes and I listen to them and I look at the different titles and see what’s working and whatnot. I found myself listening to a particular episode and I was like, man, this was a really good message, and it was a message, to be honest, I really needed to hear myself.

[00:57] It was a real kick in the ass that I felt like I needed. It was good for me to rehear this, re-listen to this.
I looked at the analytics and here’s what I found. Well, an average podcast episode, just in general, like all podcasts, when you have people listening to about 70% of the entire episode, that’s considered sort of a good benchmark. If you hit 80%, that’s considered really good.
This episode has a 127% retention rate, meaning people who listen to it, listened to the whole thing. Some of them went back and listened to it again, or at least portions of it again, and so I’m bringing you that episode.
So if you want some hardcore accountability as much as you can get accountability through a podcast episode, this is the episode for you.
Here we go. Let’s get into it. This is my replay of an episode titled, Welcoming Pain and Discomfort: Steps to Cultivating Your Path to a More Meaningful Life. Here we go.
Man, I’m excited for this episode ’cause it’s something that it’s been on my mind for a while.

[01:59] And a lot of these episodes, like as they pop into my head, I, I jot them down and I, I keep track of some notes, as other notes kind of pop into my head and I kind of develop the thought and the concept over time. And this is one that’s been on there, um, for a little while, a couple of months, month or two, I guess.

[02:14] And it’s this, this idea of welcoming pain and discomfort and this being the path to a meaningful life. And I think at some level we all know this, but I wanna go deep into this and help you get some insight into why you should welcome pain and how you actually structure your life so you can do this because you’re going, yeah.

[02:35] Okay. Jim. I understand that I have to go through things that suck in order to get to where I want to get to, whether it’s, you know, losing weight or building the business or the job or whatever it is. But I just can’t seem to get motivated to do it. I can’t. I can’t seem to get outta bed early in the morning or I can’t seem to keep the motivation whenever things get hard.

[02:56] There’s a friend of mine who I’m actually trying to recruit right now to do these early morning workouts that I do. It’s usually, we usually start at five 30 in the morning and, and that means you have to wake up at like. Five o’clock and it sucks to wake up at five o’clock. You’re tired. And, but you know, he wants the results, but he doesn’t want to go through the pain and suffering of, of waking up that early.

[03:15] Right. And we all know that that’s required. So we’re gonna talk about not only the how, but the why and the thought of this episode came to me. Literally after I was on a run with my neighbor as I was training for this recent Spartan race that I did, and the Spartan race was nine miles and 28 obstacles.

[03:34] It was really hard. It was really fun, but training for it sucked. Especially when I first went for my first long run. So I’ve had this story in my head for a long time that I’m just not a good runner For whatever reason, this story, I created this story in my head long, long time ago, and when I ran cross country for my senior year in high school and.

[03:54] You know, I just couldn’t keep up with my fellow wrestling teammates who were also on the team, and I thought, man, if I can beat ’em in wrestling and I must be in good shape, I’m strong. I’m tough. I can beat ’em in cross country. Well, I couldn’t, and I was always like just struggling and struggling to keep up.

[04:08] And so that kind of planted the seed in my head that I’m just not a good runner. And I, you know, because I thought that I was able to find all kinds of evidence out there, it’s that reticular activating system was turned on into like, okay, show me proof that you’re not a good runner. Boom, there it is.

[04:23] There it is. There it is. There it is. And I found it. And, and it just reinforced this thought over years. Well, I overcame that. I signed myself up for a half marathon a few years ago and, and overcame that or so I thought. And I go out for a run with my neighbor. He’s a runner. He like, he runs a lot and we go out for this trail run in the neighborhood.

[04:42] We were running, I think five or six miles and we get about two miles into it and I’m going, man, this sucks. And it’s dark. We’re running on these trails. My headlamps not very bright. I needed new batteries and I didn’t know these trails very well. Flying through these trails. I’m just struggling to keep up.

[05:00] I’m rolling my ankle a couple times. I rolled my ankle and it was hard. It freaking sucked. And literally at the end of it, I couldn’t keep up to the point. There was like a mile left and I said, listen, you just go on ahead without me. I’m just gonna slow down. I can’t, I can’t keep up. And he said, no, man, let’s go.

[05:16] And he kind of slowed down a little bit with me and, and, but kept pushing me and I made it through. I thought to myself during that workout, I’m just going to have to run and do my running training on my own because I can’t keep up with this guy. I don’t wanna slow him down and I just can’t keep up. And it reminded me of this story.

[05:33] Oh yeah, I’m not good at running. Here’s more proof. And I thought I had defeated that a few years ago and I, I actually had to go through this relearning process, though. The process a few years ago when I signed up for this half marathon was. But the first couple of weeks of training were like, oh yeah, I’m not good at this.

[05:49] Oh yeah, I’m not good at this. It was all this proof, right? Proof, proof, proof. I’m running on a treadmill and ’cause it was cold outside, I mostly started running on a treadmill and, and I got all this proof, you’re not good at this. And I kept getting it reinforced. And then a few weeks, three, four weeks in, I’m like, oh, I, I’m starting to feel better.

[06:05] Maybe I’m okay at this. Right? And maybe it just took some real significant training to get into this. And then, you know, it got to the point a few, you know, a couple, two, three months later. Ran in the half marathon, crushed. It felt fantastic. And I said, oh, it’s not that you’re not a bad runner, it’s just that you haven’t dedicated yourself to it.

[06:23] You haven’t failed enough times. You haven’t struggled enough times. Well, apparently I forgot this story, the relearning that I did there, because I’m out running with my buddy and. This story comes back, oh yeah, Jim, you’re not a good runner. Remember, you’re not a good runner. And I just kept pushing through and, and I, I wanted to tell this guy that I didn’t wanna run with him, but after I got home from that first run, I’m like, you know what?

[06:43] I talk about the environment of excellence. I talk about accountability. I talk about having people who can push you, and you’re about to quit on this. And so I stuck with it, trained with them again and again. Same thing. And listen, I, I talk about inspired action, right? I talk about how things that you really wanna do aren’t hard work.

[07:01] They’re actually inspired. Action. I go deep into that in episode 155, if you wanna check that one out. 1, 5, 5. But it doesn’t always feel like inspired action. I mean, I’m like huffing and puffing and blowing snot rockets and struggling to breathe and it. It was miserable and it was dark. And like I said, my flashlight wasn, my headlamp wasn’t that bright.

[07:22] It, it just sucked. But that’s part of it. I wanted to do this Spartan race. I wanted to succeed in it, and that’s how it goes. Do you want to grow? That’s what I’d ask myself. You know, do you wanna grow? But you also want it to be comfortable? Well, you can’t have both. That’s normal not to have the motivation.

[07:39] Sometimes it’s normal for, like, for my friend who doesn’t wanna wake up early, like neither do I, but I’m willing to go through that suffering, that pain and suffering to get there, to get to the feeling that feels good later. It’s not glamorous, like I said, you know, the pain is gonna be there, but it’s gonna end.

[07:55] There’s gonna be an end of the workout or end of the day, or end of the year, end of the season, end of the decade, whatever it is. You’ve gotta get through, it’s gonna come to an end. And along the way there’s gonna be respite, right? There’s gonna be laughter or sleep or, or a full belly. You know, think about if you’re like dieting or going through something hard, there’s gonna be, you know, that warm cup of coffee on a cold morning, whatever, right?

[08:17] The heated steering wheels, if you have a heating steering wheel, like there’s gonna be that respite. Right? And for me, you know, the respite came when, you know the workout was over. Or if we hit a downhill. Actually he ran fast downhills too. That kind of sucked. But there was respite along the way, and I knew it’s just a matter of minutes before this is over.

[08:36] So let me give you another recent example of welcoming pain and discomfort to get to a meaningful life and to accomplish something meaningful. Back when I did this TEDx talk back in 2014, in November of 14, it spawned eventually this, this podcast and my coaching curriculum and my speaking career. And over the years I built this business and almost nobody knew of the pain and suffering, the pain and discomfort that I had to go through that I chose.

[09:09] I didn’t have to. I got to, I got to go through. I chose to go through. In order to build this business. You know, people say, ah, you’re just good at coaching, Jim, you’re good at speaking. No, I worked at it. I have mentors and coaches. I paid a lot of money to a lot of different coaches to learn how to get better at this.

[09:25] I read a lot of books. I did a lot of studying. I invested in this. I invested in myself. I invested in you, the listener, right? You’re benefiting from it too. And all my clients are benefiting from it and, and all the people who they impact are benefiting from it. But I had to invest. I had to go through pain and discomfort.

[09:43] I had to wake up early. Lunch break, man. I’m recording podcasts. I’m doing coaching sessions, man. I fit it in every little nook and cranny. I fit this business, this in anything to be productive. I had no downtime, and guess what? I couldn’t complain. I couldn’t go home to Allie and say, Hey, this sucks. And ’cause she’d say, well,
[10:00] stop doing it.

[10:00] Right? So it was my choice. I chose it, but I knew why I had this vision for something greater, something greater for me, something greater for my family, something greater for the world. What about you? Do you have some pain and discomfort that you’re avoiding right now? Yeah, you do. We all do. I look back at Mark McLaughlin, he was episode 223, 223.

[10:22] Mark McLaughlin wrote a book called, uh, cognitive Dominance, A Brain Surgeon’s Quest to Outthink Fear. Fascinating Read, fascinating individual. I’ve been coaching this guy for, I don’t know, three years now, and I walked with him through this effort for him to write this book. It’s an amazing book. It’s not just a book.

[10:43] Some people just crank out books these days. It’s a really well-written book. I mean, he really invested in himself, but it was hard. Man. This guy’s a freaking neurosurgeon. He founded the practice. He’s a speaker, he’s a youth wrestling coach. He’s a philanthropist. This guy is busy, and he put writing a book on top of that pain and discomfort in order to achieve something meaningful.

[11:06] I look back at other examples in my own life, like the sport of wrestling itself or any people out there. You listeners who have wrestled before, you know. It’s suffering. It’s not a game you don’t play. It’s not that fun, but it’s very rewarding to the point where I actually chose, I was 22 pounds over one time.

[11:24] I chose to lose 22 pounds in two and a half days to make weight. Yeah, it’s an absurd story. And, and you know, I’ve talked about it a little bit before and you know, if, if you’ve never experienced losing water weight like that, you, you may not believe me and, and I get it, but it, it’s, it was a massive, massive amount of suffering that I put myself through.

[11:41] I know others who have gone through worse in terms of cutting weight to, to make weight, and those rules have changed, thank goodness. But I chose that. I chose no summer vacations when I was growing up as a kid and all my friends going on having fun. I remember when my, my family went to Myrtle Beach and I chose to go wrestle out in Fargo, North Dakota at the National Championships and put myself through pain and discomfort at the, at the Pennsylvania National Team camp.

[12:06] Oh, misery. Misery, man. And I, I remember, I, I used to skate, uh, skateboard when I was growing up. Had a half pipe in my yard and just had launch ramp and had a, had a bunch of cool stuff, you know, but didn’t get to use it all that much. I remember my buddies would always go to these skateboarding demos and I never went to a single one.

[12:24] I always so jealous, man. Like, I wanna go with those guys. But I had something bigger in mind, and thank goodness because it opened the door for me to go to a great school like the University of Virginia. Changed my life. Changed my life. You know, I have a fear of heights, but I have chosen to go bungee jumping.

[12:41] I’ve chosen to jump out of perfectly good airplanes more than once. I rock climb, like I choose this stuff and I fear it, but I choose it. I welcome the pain and discomfort so I can have a meaningful experience. You think about moms who have babies, gosh, we have four of those little things and, uh, they’re not babies anymore, but, but you know, once you have one, you go, holy mackerel, the pain, you know, never felt it, of course, but man, watching my wife go through that.

[13:10] And then just even, you know, the early days of having a baby and the sleepless nights and holy mackerel, you wonder like, how does somebody ever have a second child? You literally think that I, remind me, at least I did. I remember thinking it, my wife and I, Allie and I both thought it, but it goes away. And you kind of say, okay, I’m willing to go through that pain and discomfort again to have a meaningful experience.

[13:32] Right? And lo and behold, four kids later, we’ve had a bunch of those meaningful experiences, but it requires pain and discomfort. If you want to look back on any episodes, I, I’ve talked to a lot of other people who have gone through pain and discomfort. I’ve talked a lot about that on these episodes.

[13:48] Listen to any of my Navy Steel episodes. I’ll list them off right now. I also have these in the action plan, and matter of fact, you can go to JimHarshawJr.com/seals, S-E-A-L-S, and you can get all these episodes, so JimHarshawJr.com/seals. They are also, I’ll just give you the, the episode numbers if you wanna check ’em out.

[14:08] Episode 45. Episode 132, episode 163, 166, and 174. Again, just JimHarshawJr.com/seals. You can get access to all four of those. And then I urge you to get the action plan from those too. You can just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. I’ll have all these links in the, uh, action plan, so you can, uh, you can just download all the links to, you can get all the links to those, um, those episodes.

[14:34] I’m give you another one, Charlie Engle. Episode 213, so not that long ago, this guy suffered across thousands of miles of desert, 4,500 miles of running across the Sahara Desert. I mean, talk about a pain and discomfort. To have a meaningful experience for him, just, just climbing out of the pit of drug addiction.

[14:56] I mean, he was found by a cop passed out in his car, just totally wasted on drugs and that’s, that’s where he started. And that was pain and discomfort in itself. But the pain and discomfort of, of, he talks about it on the episode just running that, that first mile, that first two miles, he had no idea who was gonna be, you know, setting off to run 4,500 miles.

[15:17] He was just putting one foot in front of another. Andre Kali, episode 2 0 5. This guy passed out. He was hanging out with some buddies, got drunk somehow, got separated from them, passed out on train tracks, subway tracks. Woke up. In the hospital and his legs were gone. He got run over by a train amputated, he got his legs cut off by the train.

[15:41] And this guy, think about the pain and discomfort he had to go through. So then he starts going, you know, becoming an endurance athlete and, and he’s got all these world records. I mean, this guy’s a world class athlete. Pain and discomfort. Are you willing to go through pain and discomfort? Brian Ballin.

[15:58] Gosh, this is, this is just a friend of mine. He’s the former head men’s tennis coach at the University of Virginia. He’s now a Baylor, but episode 1 4 1, this guy talks about suffering through failures to eventually win the national championship. This guy came so close, this teams came so close several times.

[16:17] They could taste the national championship, but they failed. He had to go through that pain and discomfort. That’s part of it. That’s part of your journey. If you’re gonna aim high, guess what? There’s going to be pain. If you’re going to aim high, there will be pain. There will be discomfort, there will be failures, and there will be setbacks, but it’s worth it.

[16:38] I promise. This is inspired action. And again, if you wanna learn more about inspired action, go to episode 1 55 or just download the action plan. Go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. Grab the action plan for that. But that’s what it requires. And so how do you welcome this? I wanna give you a little bit of how to, I don’t wanna just talk about, yeah, make yourself suffer and, and great things will happen.

[17:01] How do we do this? How do we go about setting meaningful goals? ’cause you’re saying, okay, Jim, I’m in, I get it. But how do you make sure it’s meaningful as opposed to just. Okay, I’m gonna go do something that sucks. We have to identify something that you want, and not just the, the something that you want, but the why behind it.

[17:20] I’ll be honest, it’s hard to do that on your own. You, you’ve gotta get outside of your own head. You’ve gotta do the work. The first thing we start with in my, when I work with my clients is core values. We go deep, we go backwards before we go forward. But what is that meaningful thing that you want? The job, the lifestyle, the target weight, the relationship.

[17:38] The accomplishment, the achievement, the medal, whatever it is, what is it and why is it meaningful? That’s number one. I’m gonna give you four. Why is it meaningful to you? And by the way, if you wanna do that work with me, you can always sign up for a call with me. For starters, JimHarshawJr.com/apply. We can have this conversation, but that’s number one.

[18:00] Number two, welcome accountability. I told you about my neighbor. Jeff man, he held me accountable. It sucked, but it was worth it, by the way, I finished seventh in my age group. I was pretty stoked about that in the Spartan race outta 57 or 50 60 or something like that. So it was worth it, right? Performed at a high level.

[18:20] Felt good about it. I welcomed that accountability and listen, I know you don’t want it. I know, but you know that you’re gonna perform at a higher level if you welcome that accountability, if you choose it. It’s gonna be emotional. You’re thinking you’re wrestling with that demon inside of you right now.

[18:35] Okay. Well, maybe I kind of want, I kind of want it, but I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna tell other people, I don’t want, I don’t wanna join that group or sign up or make that commitment or, because if I do, then, then other people are gonna hold me accountable. ’cause I might just wanna back off for a little bit.

[18:48] I wanna, I might wanna just like, I’m a wanna quit part way along, you know, I might wanna, I wanna kind of take the easy route. I don’t wanna do it. With accountability. It’s your choice, but you know it works. You know it works. If you want that thing, welcome the accountability. Number three, commit to something hard.

[19:06] Commit to it. I mean, make the commitment. Don’t just say, yeah, maybe. Maybe I’ll do that. No, I make the commitment. I will blank. Sign up for the race, submit the job application. Have the hard conversation that you have to have. Commit to it. You will be amazed at what you are capable of. If you commit, you’re holding yourself back by not committing.

[19:31] I promise you. I promise you. There’s more inside of you. You’re not gonna find out what that more is unless you commit to something hard. And yeah, listen, you may commit to something hard and, and as you go down the path, as you go down that track toward that thing, you go, wait a second, this isn’t exactly the right thing.

[19:49] Maybe it’s actually, you know, one or two or three or five degrees over this direction, and that’s okay. You’re not gonna figure out what that adjustment is that you have to make until you
[20:00] take off. There’s the cliche story of, uh, you know, I don’t even know exact quote is, but pilots and, uh, airlines, airliners are, they’re off course like 99% of the time, right?

[20:10] They’re constantly course correcting. But guess what? You can’t get to that destination unless you take off. You have to make the commitment, I’m going to take off, I’m going to fly from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles. You can’t get there and make those mistakes and have to course correct unless you take off.

[20:30] You fill the gas tanks, you start the engines, you get everybody on board, the stinking plane, and you freaking take off. Then you go, oh, wait a second. We’re kinda off course here. Let’s course correct. Guess what? It’s your airplane. You get to decide. If you say, man, I don’t wanna fly to la. I actually, I’m gonna fly to Spokane.

[20:48] I’m gonna fly to Atlanta or Dallas, I’m gonna go wherever I, you can’t make that decision unless you take off. You can make the adjustment in the air. Maybe it’s one degree, maybe it’s five, maybe it’s 60 degrees, 90 degrees. That’s okay. But commit. Commit to taking action. All right, and then here’s the last one, fourth, and finally, reward yourself.

[21:08] Reward yourself. Whenever you have accomplishments along the way, reward yourself. Find little ways to celebrate. Give yourself a chance to celebrate and to recognize your victories. ’cause if you don’t, you don’t really have those, those small benchmarks, those small metrics to hit that are worth celebrating.

[21:29] I just remember, you know, when I was building this business, once the revenue started coming, the idea was just keep socking it away until you finally get to the point where you can go full time. But it was like, wait a second, let’s celebrate, man. So we took money outta the business, took the whole family.

[21:43] We went to Mexico, we went on a weeklong. Amazing, you know, lifelong memory, you know, vacation to Mexico, and it was awesome. We celebrated. We celebrated these victories. You can too, and you should too. So hope that helps, right? I mean, it’s a little bit of tough love. I know. Pain, discomfort, pain, suffering.

[22:05] It’s not fun. But as Joe DeSena said, back when I interviewed him in episode number 27, he’s the founder of Spartan Races. He said, if you take everything away and you’re fighting for milk every day. Then you could just be happy eating a cracker in the rain. This, he’s talking about happiness. He said, always knew that happiness was not an absolute.

[22:26] It was relevant. It’s really easy to make yourself happy by making yourself uncomfortable and then going back to comfortable. It’s hard to make yourself happy if you’re constantly raising the bar. First you get a new car. Then you get a new expensive gold watch and then you need a new house. And the ability to make yourself happier diminishes.

[22:46] But if you take everything away and you’re fighting for milk every day, then you could just be happy eating a cracker in the rain. Alright, enough said, man. That’s a great way to wrap up this episode.

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