The Psychology of Resilience

What if the discomfort you’re trying to avoid is actually the thing that could make you stronger? In this episode, I break down the psychology of resilience and show you how to stop treating fear as a warning, push just beyond your comfort zone, and train yourself to handle hard things. I’ll give you four practical strategies to build resilience through small daily challenges, create evidence that you can do difficult things, and become the kind of person who doesn’t give up when life gets hard. Freedom Live is a 3-day live experience in Austin designed to help you break through what’s keeping you from your next level. Get $100 off your ticket: https://robdial.short.gy/freedomlive The Mindset Mentor™ podcast is designed for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life. Past guests of The Mindset Mentor include Tony Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, Lewis Howes, Gregg Braden, Rich Roll, and Dr. Steven Gundry. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• 1:48Speaker 02

  Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you want to learn how to stop procrastinating and take real action, I created an in-depth video lesson and workbook to show you exactly how to take action when it really matters. I call it the Get Off Your Ass Masterclass. If you want to get it for free, you can go to getoffyourassclass.com. Once again, getoffyourassclass.com, and you can get that lesson and workbook absolutely free. Today, I'm going to be talking about how to build your resilience in the psychology of resilience.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Because you already know that you have to get out of your comfort zone. That's a given. You've known it for years, and you've heard it a thousand times in a thousand different ways. But when the moment shows up, when you need to do it, when your chest gets tight, and your stomach drops, and everything in you says, "Not today," you fold. And so today, I'm going to teach you the actual psychology behind resilience, and not a motivational version of it, but the version of you that you can build that pushes forward when things get harder, instead of actually giving in like you have in the past. And so I'm going to give you four things that you can do about it to build your resilience. So let's get into it.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  So there's a researcher named Mark Siri at the University of Buffalo, and he studied thousands of people over many years, tracking every hard thing that ever happened to them in their lives. Death, illnesses, divorces, job losses, financial disasters, everything hard that goes through someone's life. And when he looked at how those people were doing in their mental health, in their overall life satisfaction, and how they handled stress when it came up, there's something that you would expect, right? Like, the more hardship that somebody went through, the worse outcomes that sometimes happen in their life. That's what you'd expect, right? That's not what he found. What he found was kind of odd.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  The people who had been through a lot of adversity, like more than normal, out of the thousands of people that he studied, well, some of them were struggling a little bit more, and some of them were not, and that part can kind of make sense. But the real interesting part about it is that the people who had been through no struggle in the time that he was actually researching them, like no hardship, were also struggling as well. So they had no hardship in their life, and they were still struggling in life. They reported more distress and lower satisfaction, and they were more knocked around by everyday problems than people who had actually been through real, real pain in their life. Think about that for a second.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  And then, as you might think, the healthiest group in the entire study were people that were kind of in the middle. They had some hardship, but not really hard hardship, but not no hardship. And so I want you to understand, like, everyone thinks they want an easy and comfortable life. They think that's what they're trying to build towards. But according to this research, that might actually be the worst thing that you could have, which is just an easy, comfortable life. A life with zero difficulty in it doesn't produce a strong person. It produces a fragile person. And you have to understand, our species wasn't built just to sit back and do nothing and scroll on their phone or watch TV on a couch.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  We were built for millions of years on searching, seeking, hitting challenges, meeting challenges, overcoming them, and then growing and getting better for them. That is at the core what humans are. And life has only become like, quote unquote, "comfortable" and "easy" for humans in the past like 100 years or so. Our species was built on struggle. Don't believe me? Go back and watch like any documentary on what they went through in like the 1800s, the 1700s, the 1600s. Like, you alive right now have a better life than any Roman king ever had 1500, 2000 years ago. Like, your life is exponentially better than theirs was.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  And if you listen to this show, I know the last thing that you want to be is fragile. So let's talk about how to not be fragile and how to actually build the resilience within you, okay? So when I read that study, it explained something that I had been kind of watching with my clients for over a decade. I've coached people who have built genuinely incredible lives. They have money, business, freedom, the whole thing. And some of them can get through almost anything. And then some people can get completely leveled by things in their life that really should be small and kind of are small. A hard conversation, a rejection, one bad quarter in their business. And what I found is because they have tried to like optimize their entire lives

• 6:50Speaker 02

  to never really feel anything bad, they basically removed every uncomfortable thing that they could from their life. And when you remove all of the discomfort in your life, it doesn't give you peace. You basically get a lower and lower threshold for basically what you would count as unbearable. And everybody knows that they have to leave their comfort zone to build a better life. They have to leave their comfort zone to get stronger, to become more resilient, to become better, to grow. Nobody has a problem with that in theory, but the problem happens in the actual moment when we have to get uncomfortable. Because in the moment, you don't experience that as growth. You know, you experience it as fear.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  You experience it as something that's actually wrong. Like, your throat tightens, your heart rate climbs, your chest gets kind of like knotted up. And that voice that's in your head that's talking to you is going, "Nope, not it. This is not the moment. We don't want to do this. We need to back away. Back off." And let me tell you what that feeling actually is. That feeling is not a warning. We see it as a signal of danger, warning, do something different. That discomfort that you're feeling is the physical manifestation in your body of your comfort zone. It's literally your body telling you, "This is the edge." Like, "This is the edge of what I'm comfortable with." That's it. That's all that it is.

• 8:18Speaker 02

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• 11:16Speaker 02

  And now, back to the show. I don't have any data on what is past this. And because I'm uncertain what is past this, I'm gonna throw up the signal and say, turn back, this is danger, this is danger. And that's when usually we fold. What do most people do when they feel that for a second? They turn around, they walk back to where they're comfortable. But if you can remind yourself, when you're about to do something, like if you're about to go speak publicly, and you feel the holy shit tightening inside of you, and you're like, hold on, there is no danger in actually giving this speech in front of four people that I work with. This is the edge of my comfort zone. And I know that I need to get out of my comfort zone just a little bit. And you remind yourself, okay, this, I'm not in danger here. I'm not gonna get

• 12:00Speaker 02

  killed by my coworkers that are sitting in front of me by giving a quick speech. You feel the edge of your comfort zone, and you actually push past it. Because most people, they feel the edge of their comfort zone, and they treat it as proof that they shouldn't be there. But that feeling is the only signal that you get from your body, that you're in the exact place where growth happens. Like, you will never expand your comfort zone by sitting in the middle of it. I promise you, and even it'd be so much easier, and we all think that we'd love to. You won't expand it by just reading a book about it. You won't expand it, and get a, you get a further comfort zone, and become more comfortable with discomfort by just getting

• 12:42Speaker 02

  a new hacker tactic, right? The edge is the only place where it moves. So we must learn to seek discomfort, to push the edges of our boundaries just a little bit. We don't have to blow past them, I'll talk about them in just a minute, but just, just get a little bit out of it, a little bit out, and just push it just a little bit more and more. Otherwise, you will never become resilient. You will never become resilient if you do not push past the edge of your comfort zone. You have to learn to be uncomfortable long enough for it to start to become comfortable where you are. Your body settles, your nervous system will settle, your

• 13:23Speaker 02

  mind will settle, you'll become more regulated, and then your body will start to normalize the feeling of being outside of your comfort zone. It'll realize that you're safe, it's gonna realize that you're not going to die. And then, and only then, everybody, will that actually start to become normal. Okay? And so let me give you the four things that you could do to kind of expand yourself and become more resilient, okay? The first thing is this, I want you to rename the feeling before you're in it. And what I mean by this is like, you cannot make the decision in the moment, when you're just outside of your comfort zone, and your fear signals are screaming at you. In the moment, your nervous system is way faster than your logic. And so you have

• 14:07Speaker 02

  to decide right now, today, sitting here, listening to this podcast, what that feeling of fear actually means to you. That feeling, when you're on the edge of the comfort zone, and your body's going, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, back away. Like, if you're about to make a cold call, you have to for your business, or you have to have a tough conversation, and you feel the feeling, you know what I'm talking about, the feeling in your body, don't you? You feel the feeling? What are you gonna call that? Like, what are you gonna believe about that? The old belief was, this feeling means stop. Turn around, go back, danger, danger, danger. That's what we all have the old feeling meaning, right? The new belief needs to be, that

• 14:47Speaker 02

  feeling means that I found my edge. It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. Like, we need to figure it out now. Because in the moment, when you feel all the fear, when you're full of fear, your brain just kind of clicks off. So you have to make it stupidly simple for yourself. Because when you're activated, you don't have access to complex thoughts. When your amygdala is activated, which is your fear center of your brain, your brain stops sending as much blood flow to your prefrontal cortex, which is your complex decision-making part of your brain. So we gotta make it stupid simple. So when it hits, I want you to say one sentence, when you feel the fear, oh my gosh, I gotta do this public speaking, I gotta make this cold call, I gotta have this tough conversation, you feel it coming up inside of your body,

• 15:30Speaker 02

  here's the sentence that you say. There it is. Right? That's it. There it is. Right? Because the second that you can bring it out and see it as something that's outside of you, as see it as something that's actually beneficial for you, oh, there it is. There's the feeling I've been looking for to show me that growth is on the other side of this. You go from being inside of the feeling, where it's terrible and it's scary, to observing the feeling. I want you to observe the feeling. Because you can't be run by something that you're watching. And I want you to notice that resilient people are not people who don't feel this feeling. They all feel it. Everybody feels the feeling of fear. I hate when people are like, oh, here's our fearless

• 16:15Speaker 02

  leader. Bullshit. That guy's full of fear. It's just maybe he doesn't listen to it like we do. So they feel it just like you do, they just stopped interpreting it as a red light. So that's what I want you to say. That's the first thing. The second thing that I want you to do is do not retreat, just go a tiny bit further. Here's the rule. When you feel that edge, you don't have to do something enormous. You just have to not go backwards. Because if you go backwards, you're going back to your old self. You're being loyal to the person that you're trying to grow out of. Just add a little, just 5% more, 10% more, one rep more, just 60 seconds more of sitting in the discomfort and allowing your nervous system get used to it. Just one more

• 16:59Speaker 02

  sentence in the hard conversation, instead of changing the subject. Stay in the, you know, the cold shower for 20 seconds more after the moment where you're like, get out. Right? Send the message that you've been drafting, instead of, you know, drafting it for the fourth time, just send the damn thing. Because growth is not in the things that we've done before. It's not in the, the quote unquote workout. Like, if you think of working out a muscle, your growth is not in the workout. Your growth is in the reps after the moment that you wanted to quit. Right? If you think about it like lifting weights, nobody builds muscle in like, the first eight reps of a set. The first eight reps of the set are just the price of admission to get to the two that actually change you, the two that actually

• 17:42Speaker 02

  start to destroy the muscle, so that it can grow back stronger. Growth happens in the little bit extra. The reps that build the muscle are the ones that are on the other side of I want to stop. Do you get that? The growth of a muscle are the ones that come on the other side of I want to stop. The growth in your nervous system, in your mind, in you, in your resilience are on the other side of I want to stop. Resilience works the exact same way. You guys get it? Working out resilience, they're so similar in many different ways. You feel the edge, you just go just a little bit further. Not a lot. Don't blow past it, just a little bit, just a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, a little bit this week, a little bit this month,

• 18:25Speaker 02

  a little bit this year, a little bit over the next five years. And if we talk about five years from today, if you just do this every single day, you have to understand how much this compounds in your life. You're talking about in five years, you being in a different place, being a different person, in a different body, with a different mindset, years down the road than you are right now. People want everything to happen right now. Life doesn't fucking happen that way. You have to do a little bit more for a long time, and then fast forward five years, and your life is unrecognizable. But people want everything to happen right now. No, you just have to play the long game. Slow and steady wins the race. Remember, when we were kids, the story, slow and steady wins the race. If you do this, you'll be unrecognizable in a few years.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  So that's number two. Number three, resilience is built by frequency, not intensity. This is where a lot of people screw it up. They hear like, seek discomfort, and they think they need to jump out of a plane or something. No, please don't jump out of a plane. Right? Jumping out of a plane one time does almost nothing for you. It will not change you, because you're not gonna repeat it tomorrow and the next day. Resilience is not built by intensity, it's built by frequency. Nobody gets strong by going to the gym and lifting their personal records one time. They get strong by going to the gym four times a week for two years, and doing a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, and then they become stronger. And so here's what I want you to do. I want you to pick one thing that's mildly uncomfortable, and do it every single day

• 19:52Speaker 02

  this week. Mildly. Not terrifying, mildly uncomfortable. The bar is, I don't want to do this, but I could do it. Right? That's what I want you to do. Like, here's some examples I came up for you, right? Have a conversation that you've been avoiding for three weeks. Or workout on every single day at 5:00 AM, because that's not normally what you do, and it's uncomfortable. Or, you know, sit by yourself for 30 minutes, bored. Phone in a different room, just sit with yourself 30 minutes today. And then the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and next day. And you'll start to notice you become more comfortable with it. Right? Start today, tomorrow, and the next 10 days, right? Say the honest thing, instead of the polite thing.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Make a commitment to yourself to do that. Or here's one of my favorites. Ask for a 30% discount every time you check out for the next week. A 30% discount. When you get coffee, when you go buy a bag, whatever it is, not because you want the discount, but because it feels uncomfortable to ask. Just do one of those every single day for a week. You're trying to become more and more and more okay with discomfort. Discomfort is not something to avoid. Okay. And then number four, maybe the most important part of all this is to keep the receipts. This is a step that a lot of people skip and it might be the most important one. Right. So your brain does not automatically remember that you did the hard thing. It'll forget it in three days. So you have to make it remember. So at the end of every single day, write down one sentence.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Today I did blank and it was outside of my comfort zone. So you're reminding yourself of what it is. Here's why it matters so much because on this podcast, I've probably told you a hundred times, your brain is like cosmic Google. Whatever you type into it, whatever you ask it, it goes and finds evidence for. And so if you ask like, oh, why do I always give up? It will pull up every single time that you gave up and it'll hand it to you like a report and you'll go, oh, I guess just give up. That's just who I am. But if you're writing down every single day, what it is that you're doing to get out of your comfort zone, it starts to build an archive that you do hard things. And now when something genuinely hard shows up in your life, the real thing that you've been working towards, right? Your brain goes, huh, can we handle this? And it searches into the past. Yeah, you know what?

• 22:05Speaker 02

  We can't handle this because you've got 200 entries over the past 200 days that say we can do hard things. That's what resilience actually is at a neurological level. It's not toughness. It's evidence. It's evidence that you've done it before. And that evidence, because you have the evidence, you can trust that you can get through something difficult again. And so here's what I want you to write down today, right? Just two simple questions. I want you to answer for yourself. Number one, where in my life have I become too comfortable? And be honest with yourself on that one. Where have you become soft? Right? And number two, what's one small uncomfortable thing I'm going to do every day this week? Write them both down and then go and do the second one today. Not tomorrow, today. Go ask for the 30% discount today when you go get your coffee.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Because if, if your life is going to change, you know, you know it, you know it, but you, are you doing it is the question? You know, you cannot remain the same. You know, you have to change. You have to grow. You have to seek discomfort. No one is coming to change your life. You have to be the one to do it. And I know you know this, but are you actively seeking discomfort to become resilient? Because that is what you need to do to change your life and to change yourself. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories, tag me in at Rob Dial Jr., R O B D I A L J R. And once again, if you want to learn how to stop procrastinating, you could get my free in-depth video lesson and workbook called Get Off Your Ass Masterclass.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  It is at getoffyourassclass.com. Once again, getoffyourassclass.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

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