S2 Be Better 1 · Series: Resilience Training

Hey guys, welcome back to the Virtus Performance Podcast. Now early on, I think it would have been within the first 10 episodes, I used to do a little series called the Be Better series. Now basically I just have a little topic where I'd riff for a couple of minutes on and rather than a long form, you know, 60 to 90 minute podcast, it'd just be a few minutes to kind of get an idea or a thought process across for you guys to digest on your own. So for the next couple of weeks I'm going to bring that back and see if it adds value and if it does please let me know and I'll keep on doing it.

So today's one, I'm going to riff on the idea that resilience is a muscle and it's something that we can work on and build up with if we use this thing called self-applied resilience training. So basically the simplest thing is just doing hard things and most of this stuff that I talk about and most of the things that I write about in my weekly email and on my social media, it's drawn out or it's painted as advice but it's really just information that I needed for myself. It's advice that I needed to heed needed and

need to heed myself but I put it out there because I know that if I'm struggling with something or if something's not working well for me then there's a very good chance that for a lot of other people that we're dealing with the same issues. So this one's an interesting one because I guess the balance between self-care and discipline is a thin edge. On one hand we should be showing our self-compassion, we should be looking after ourselves, being kind to ourselves and practicing self-care but on the other hand we're fallible, we're human, we're programmed, it's a natural thing to take the easy way out and to choose the shortcut rather than the right way.

Sometimes the right way is longer and it hurts but the bigger picture stuff, it gets us where we want to get to so to go that right way rather than taking that shortcut we need discipline, we need diligence, we need fortitude, we need resilience and we need a lot of it. If we were to take the easy way out over and over again we end up being incapable of actually doing those hard things when we're called upon and when it's actually necessary and now's a perfect example of that. If you'd been head down, bum up,

working on your resilience and working on doing hard things over the last couple of years then I guarantee you'd be cruising through this period of time but for most of us we get comfortable and we tend to lean the other way and when things really get tough it's harder to actually head down, bum up and get the work done. And yeah we're in the middle of a pandemic at the moment but we're also in the midst of an obesity and lifestyle epidemic so pandemic or not the more hard things we can do and the better

we can get at fighting those impulses to be lazy and to stop doing it, the better we can get at being resilient and showing up and doing the things and the fitter, healthier, happier we're going to be as individuals but as a society. I think to dive into one of the seven deadly sins, sloth is one of those, it's a habitual misinclination to exertion, it's to naturally choose to sit down and do nothing rather than leaning into what's hard but the opposite of sloth is diligence, it's an inclination towards exertion, it's doing hard things with discipline, with fortitude, with resilience and actually seeking out the hard things.

A great book that most of you guys I'm sure will get a lot out of is called The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday and it's a great book with a really simple paradigm that illustrates that that thing you think you shouldn't be doing or that the place that you're fearful of or the action that you know you need to take but don't want to, that's exactly the way you should go about it. Let's use an example, absolutely no one likes a cold shower, some sadistic people will say they do but that first blast

of cold water on the back of your neck or on your face or on your head is one of the least pleasant feelings in the world but if we learn to embrace that suck and the hardness that comes with the cold shower then we can kind of take a peek into who we really are inside and we can fight against that voice that's telling us to get out and say you know what I'm strong enough to deal with this and you know a couple of minutes into the pain and suffering that passes and we're kind

of left with that feeling of pride, that feeling of accomplishment, the self-confidence that we wouldn't have had if we'd chosen to sit under that stream of warm water instead. The same can be said for many of our daily activities, no one likes getting up early to train but when you see everyone's faces and connect with the people that you're training with then it gets a lot easier and no one likes doing the dishes but after dinner when you've had a good meal and cleaned up everything you look out over your kitchen it's a nice feeling to know yep I've cleaned this up and I'm holding myself to this standard.

No one likes doing a long run, I'm sure there's some people that do but that feeling when your whole body is screaming telling you to stop, that you push through that last little bit and you finish it's an incredible feeling of pride and accomplishment that you get. Same deal like for those of you that have been to uni or those of you that work really hard no one likes those long hours studying and putting assignments together but when you press submit or when you have a project that you turn into your boss or your workplace or whatever then like that feeling that you get at the end of it is because you did hard things.

I don't know about you but I certainly feel that enjoyment a lot more of sitting on the couch and watching TV or you know of doing something relaxing when I know I've done the hard work to allow myself to. Like I said at the start that balance between self care and discipline is an interesting one. You need to find the balance, you need to tip into both but you do hard things you can reward yourself after but if you reward yourself with an ice cream or something and you haven't done the hard things and you haven't really earned it and your chances of that self worth and self confidence slipping are massive.

But we all do like the feelings of accomplishment and confidence and pride that come with doing hard things and doing them well and we always, I know I certainly do regret the actions we don't take, we always regret taking the easy way out and I guess over the last couple of weeks with all the craziness that's been happening in our world we've all certainly been progressing through the stages of grief in different ways. I've certainly felt denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance at different times to different extremes over the last few weeks but now a

couple of weeks on most of us have been in isolation for 3 or 4 weeks it's time to step out of that depression stage to accept this new normal and start moving forward, start doing hard things to build that resilience and to be able to come out of this thing however long it may be and more capable and more able human whether it be health, whether it be learning, whether it be just your ability to do the task at hand, to be more headstrong and mentally resilient, we need to do hard things because the more

hard things we do the better we'll get, the better you'll feel, that sense of accomplishment and pride, knowing that you put in the work and you got some sort of result, yeah there's nothing better than that feeling and I'm sure all of you guys can attest. Be amazing.