How to use stress to our advantage.

Many of us are wondering, how do I start again? Where should I go from here and when? How do I do ANYTHING the right way, now? Is my employment secure? Will I find work? Can I even afford to live? So many questions, in a consistent intensity, and at a length, that for most of us would take the mental toughness of David Goggins to handle this ass kicking era.

Trust me, if you feel you're not doing good enough, if you feel lost, you are definitely not alone. In fact, for the first time in centuries the entire global population is with you.

So really, what now?

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear”, isn’t a woowoo motivational phrase. It’s legit neurological science. Using our feelings of stress and agitation as the signal for it’s time to move into action is exactly what those feelings are for.

How can we turn everything that's happened, that is completely individualistic and varying to each life, into something good for us? How do we find the strength to keep striving forward, and find our way to take advantage of this forced growth?

Personally, I’ve learned something very valuable about being somewhere you don’t want to be, about adapting, and the value of uncomfortable situations.

How uncomfortable situations can be the key to our successes.

To paraphrase neuroscientist Andrew Huberman when talking about David Goggins, a man famed for having the strongest mindset on the planet.

- Adrenaline was designed to move us forward. David has found a way to tap into the neuroplasticity process, through a door, a portal of agitation and stress; he’s figured out the holy grail of science. Mother nature designed us to use stress and agitation not as feelings to hold us back and weigh us down, but to cause us to react and move, taking us into a new direction that’s more adaptive. -

Btw, if you’re looking for some motivation and aren’t opposed to a lot of colorful language, I highly suggest checking out David Goggins Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/iamdavidgoggins His book is great too.

So how do we modify and rewire our brain so that we can use our response to discomfort and stress as a tool we can pick up anytime? We do this by modifying how we react to how we feel. This is done by placing yourself into discomfort time and time again-yes intentionally doing the difficult things. Which is a bit different than going through difficult times; it isn't a lesson of course unless you know what you're learning.

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear”, isn’t a woowoo motivational phrase. It’s legit neurological science. Using our feelings of stress and agitation as the signal for it’s time to move into action is exactly what those feelings are for.

I’m no expert practitioner, simply sharing what I’ve learned most recently in my never-ending pursuit in self-development, along side the destructiveness of this year.

Goggins has figured out that it really doesn’t matter if you come at your goals from a place of joy and love, that would be wonderful of course. But there’s a whole other more impactful set of ways to approach this, that involve slogging through the discomfort, the doubts, and the wish for things to be different. Instead of focusing on changing your mind to a positive perspective, which can be really difficult to do at times, and easy to reject when we’re in the middle of a storm. We start with changing our behavior through our actions, which intern change our thoughts/perspective on life, changing our feelings, and thus creating a forward moving positively impacting cycle of growth.

Our feelings and our thoughts are very complicated, whereas our behaviors are simpler, and from what scientist like Andrew Huberman has taught me, our actions are the control panels for the rest of our system.

Whenever we learn something new, do something differently, or better yet difficult, the brain goes into alert mode by releasing adrenaline. This is also why this 2020 has been so exhausting, even if your life has been running "smoothly". We've constantly been having to course correct, adjust, and analyze information. Did I touch my face? Does it matter? Who are the experts? Should I be afraid? Should I even care? Are bodies have been experiencing a slower version of what happens when we experience trauma. On top of the new global ever-changing rules and information, many of us have been suffering an onslaught of negative effects that come with a pandemic. And for the many others, the impact hasn't been slow at all.

The early stages of creating change are naturally going to feel like agitation, stress, and confusion because of the adrenaline system kicking in. But, If we were to do something every day that made us uncomfortable, even the smallest things, like say you hate cleaning your house or working out, the impact of pushing through those sluggish feelings of I don't wan-na, actually builds new neural pathways in the brain, literally rewiring how we behave in the future, and therefore how we handle stress. Even using a smaller example of resisting the urge to check social media while you're supposed to be focusing on something else, is going to help strengthen the reactive mind. The micro and macro daily choices to lean into the things we're not used to is exactly how David became well-known for being the guy that is impermeable in the face of any challenge.

We are all capable of this practice.

As irrelevant as it may seem to just take that walk you keep saying you're going to take, to have that uncomfortable discussion, or to do that thing you know you should be doing; when you do move into action, you begin to hard wire change in yourself from the inside out. Because the changes start happening in the brain first, it can be difficult to feel the reward until the results start to show on the outside. Which is why, simply motivating yourself seems fleeting. But training a sort of mindfulness around the signal discomfort, stress, and agitation is giving you, and then leaning into those feelings through unfamiliar action-with a little practice you begin to surpass the dependence on self-motivation.

If you're like so many of us who don’t know where to begin again, start by making a list of all the big and small things you don’t feel like doing, everyday checking something off little by little, and keep that list going! Movement creates momentum and believe me, the how to begin and where to start will appear, seemingly out of nowhere if you just keep going.

When we can't see where we’re supposed to go from here, that’s ok-because the starting point isn’t after you come out of the fog, IT IS THE FOG!

As the retired Navy Seal David Goggins said after BUD/S training, “If it doesn’t suck, we don’t do it”.