Episode Transcript: I want to talk about growth personally, maybe in a business, in a family, in a job, whatever it may be, I want to talk about growth. Because in that multi-dimensional state, there are a couple variables that hold the same exact purpose for all of them. Being understanding your own system. So for me, I was told all my whole entire life that I needed to slow down. I was really hyperactive, had a ton of energy. 00:27 And really, you know, just being classified as, or labeled as ADHD and ADD, you know, it was, Grant, slow down, take your medication. See, I look back on those times and I really just, I think differently about them. I mean, obviously we love to trust our doctors and trust our psychologist or therapist, but yet at the end of the day, that surgeon is just as good as his practice. That psychologist is just as good as his theory. And in general, you construct all of that to then put in your backpack. 00:57 of your own or leave it behind. Trusting a system is knowing that you can take on great advice but maybe not apply directly as that individual wants you to or leaning so hard on others that you find yourself codependent and then you lose your system. See confidence comes from the root of knowing I'm okay in any circumstance. I want to be adaptable. 01:22 I want to adjust and I want to be able to make sure that no matter what happens, I'm going to be okay. I think a lot of it is social intelligence. I think a lot of it is grit. I think a lot of it is just persevering through something physical and then mental. It all corresponds with one another. So I want to talk about again, growth. Growth to me within a business is understanding what my morals are, my mission statement. And mine's a little bit different as I listened to others talk. See, 01:52 Bottom line is I just want to help. And what I mean by help is that from my journey, I found what grit meant to me. And through what grit meant to me and that definition, I was able to construct that in a way of physically persevering and mentally persevering through many obstacles. And then now my job is wanting to give that to everybody else. I have people ask me all the time, what do majority of your clients say or what do they want when they come in? 02:21 The real answer to that is everything. See, the point of it is is that while I stay unique, I provide something different for every individual. I want to be able to adapt to the individual in front of me. So there's no template being used. There's no end all be all, there's no same to everything else, or black and white. You see, the world is so gray, and really it's the shade that we wanna look at. 02:48 There's light at the end of the tunnel, period. So when someone comes in to me and they say I got limitations with my knees or my back or health issues, no matter what it may be, see, you either start physical than mental or mental than physical. But the bottom line is that at the end of the day, majority of us need to keep it physical than mental. If it's not constructive, drop it. Understanding that my mental is, most of the time, getting in the way. You know, if I'm very hyperactive and I was told to slow down, 03:18 I keep in mind that a lot of the time when I'm thinking and I'm listening to someone talk, you know, am I listening or am I hearing them? You got to step back and you got to focus on tuning up and tuning down. I think about it like NASCAR sometimes. You don't need a break. Really it's just you're pedal to the metal or you're leaning back. Even with the fighters sometimes it's more like when someone's trying to egg you on to think all red and to get really into your emotion. No you got to go green than red. 03:47 Understand that just the analogy and just the color of green to red shows you that posture up when I posture up It gives me a reminder to focus on slow it down Coast it and be able to gauge that pace know that I can just do it without hitting the brake I don't have to juggle ten balls at one time and I sure as hell don't got to drop them either It's knowing that I don't have to carry 200 pounds twice my max for my family and my loved ones But and get burned out 04:16 And then of course, when it becomes expected and it gets you dropped, well, then everybody goes, what the fuck, Grant? You know, you should have been carrying this stuff. The whole entire time, my pedal was to the metal. I was going full speed. Yet in times of those, I would look at those other people that would find that expectation of me to be able to hold that for everybody else. And then I'd look bad on myself. I'd look back on myself and say, dude, you're better than this. So I'd have to find redemption in myself. 04:44 this self doubt of trying to question who I am because I dropped the weight that was already 200 pounds by max and I just walked 100 miles in it. So now I go back and try to redeem it. So I have to get out of the habit myself to say, oh, I'm gonna carry 400, I'm gonna carry 500. No, I'm responsible to let others be responsible for themselves. So it gives me the freedom to be able to carry the weight that's desired that I'm comfortable with while still catering and helping to others. 05:15 I've said this same analogy or used the same vocab in a different way and from a different perspective to say, you don't have to give 100% empathy to love and respect an individual. A lot of us come from traumatic parents or a traumatic incident from our parents or from a friend or whatever it may be. Yet, I'm using that as an example to say, I can still love someone that did me wrong, but not give them the compassion and empathy that I learned to gain. 05:44 from that experience, from that individual. That's a hard thing to digest, especially when you're highly geared, you're highly empathetic, or you just are compassionate and you just care for others. The other version of that is majority of us going around the world, we're just floating. You know, we just, we keep our life consumed with distractions and go, go, go, go, go. So when these big issues come up, they're no different than the everyday. Everyday is just another, you know, stressful day. There's no wins in that. 06:14 I just want to numb it out, then I want to work hard and numb it out and work hard. See that cycle that comes with the making yourself grow and growth as an aspect to financially, individually business, just like I said to begin with. So you got to find the balance in between knowing I'm not going to be able to achieve my goals or find success with carrying weight way above me and or getting distracted with things I believe that are coping mechanisms yet they're just distractions. 06:44 I gotta be comfortable with my own system. So, when I say that and I listen to other people talk, you know, it's interesting because everybody has a different point of view. Other than the fact that you project the life and you talk about life as in, obviously, what you're feeling inside. So if I'm looking at life against me, obviously there's something I need to go through, there's something I need to get through. Grit comes into place in a lot of different ways in this. 07:09 And grit is the bottom line to the core of my company. It's the core to who I am. It's what I found during all of my journeys. Multiple different aspects of this journey, grit took a different meaning. And I go back to it in times that I doubt myself, in times where I'm overly tired, in times that I question. I go back to the word grit. And I really give myself a lot more credit because then I go back and say, you know what, I've been through it. I already got through it. 07:38 and look what I made because of it. So no matter how big, no matter how small, when I'm looking at those small wins, those small wins are what makes me successful. So if I'm already taking in those small wins, failure doesn't apply, you know, falling back doesn't apply, and then yet I'm already successful by looking at those successes. See, it's funny how we play with words and then we redefine them in certain sentences, or we give words different meanings and yet they project a completely different picture. 08:05 I want to, I get to, not I need to or I have to. Using those type of words in a terminology creates such a toxic environment. And a lot of us are just simply a product or of our surrounding. We all adapt. Some of us are working in DC in a metropolitan division or just go, go, go traffic every single day. You just wanna shut off that switch at the end of the day cause you've worked so hard and then they'll go take a trip to California, right? 08:33 realize that people out in California, there's a guy at 5 a.m. going and surfing, smoking a joint, and then in the back of his car, he gets changed up in a suit and he's off to work. And then that guy from D.C. looks at that and says, "'Damn, I never knew that that was possible, "'that that was okay. "'Man, I need to bring that back home.'" And what happens? What happens is you come back home with that idea of freedom, something a little bit different, something that was a little outside of your surroundings and you wanna keep it. Yet it holds for about a week, and maybe it tops too. 09:03 But really it's just like motivation. Maybe I tell you something motivational and you keep it for an hour and then you quickly forget it. It has to be constructive. So when I say constructive, I mean keep it in your pocket. Just like a small win, just like a piece of a success, and just like something that's gonna help me grow. Something that's gonna help me be better. So if I can't change my surroundings, I'm sure as hell gonna start from my internal inventory. Really base my whole idea of who I am and what my goals are on what my day to day looks like. 09:33 Building up an infrastructure physically so then I can wake up with more energy, that's where it starts. Keeping dedication and discipline to that is what momentum is. And knowing that idea of that piece of where you found some type of freedom outside of your zone to take a breath and you wanna hold on to it, the first two are what helps you keep it. You see, a lot of people have thoughts of, you know, just negativity. I mean, a complete just dwell and. 10:00 regret and pain and suffering and they ask for all these physical results and they want to they want to ask for freedom and happiness But what happens is if you don't do an inventory check If you don't go back to the roots of why you are the way you are and start to fix those smaller things and add a little Bit more discipline to your physical being to get a mental reaction afterwards to do something physically great to then feel good afterwards You're not gonna be able to change 10:27 So I always tell people, like I tell myself during this process of just my life and this journey was, it's easier to starve out the things that I know that don't help than looking for something and being hungry for something where I'm already over consumed. Meaning that if I got too much on my plate, man, I'm not going to be able to take in that amount of happiness because I got so much more filling up the table of regret and doubt and self shame and redemption that shouldn't be there in the first place. 10:55 I think a lot of us need to just do an inventory check. And an inventory check can look like a lot of different things. And here are some helpful tools that help me along the way. Ranting on my memos on my voice app. Every morning I just rant. Yet it turned into me wanting to do a podcast. It turned into me sending it out to a couple clients at first and being vulnerable enough to just say, you know, I feel like I just, someone else needs to hear this, you know? And then yet the feedback that I got was 11:23 That was exactly what I was feeling. You couldn't have said it any better. See, being vulnerable, but also knowing that we trust ourselves and are confident with our system and how we do things is so important to be able to then be uncomfortable to grow. If you're just uncomfortable, you're not going to grow. But anxiety holds a purpose. Having depressing thoughts even hold a purpose. They show me what I cannot carry along with me. 11:53 then just consume every single piece of food and just know that, oh, I'm just focused on the ones I do like. I gotta know what I don't like to know what I do like. I gotta know what negative thoughts to put away to know what happiness really is. Because at the bottom line, having good thoughts is just not having negative thoughts. How crazy is that? People wanna try to find balance with having a negative thought with a positive thought. Yet, both of which aren't constructive. And majority of the time, we use deflections and distractions to try to keep coping with that and use external 12:23 materials and adventures and or, you know, just short term positive thinking for the moment and yet just like motivation, just like anything short term, it leaves. There's no momentum getting built from that. It's a distraction. Some of us go to the gym because they want to go away from something. They want to fight against something. Some of us go to the gym because they want to fight for something. See, that's where we find grit. That's where we find our reason why. That's where we find our oomph into our life. 12:53 that little bit of that that grit your teeth, you know, like if I got hit with all the hardest punches in life, and I wasn't knocked out, then why am I afraid of who's going to be in front of me? If I have a look in my eyes that says I'm willing to die for it. What's scarier than that? What's going to tear me down more than that? It's signing a commitment with yourself that I'm never going to fail. So no matter what I do wrong in the process, it's a learning experience. So I'm grateful for it. Growth. 13:23 Being able to evolve, being able to use what we've had done to us and or what we've done to ourself on a positive note. Being mental resilient while being physically disciplined. Both of those have to correspond with one another. They both have to correlate. They go with one another. And understanding when you're talking with someone and no matter who it may be, our spouse, kid, etc. 13:51 To be able to listen to someone is a lot different than hearing someone. And a lot of that has to do with our own brain and how it works. So I heard from a wise one, 70-30. I'm going to listen 70% and I'm going to talk 30%. But here's the difference between listening and hearing. When I'm hearing someone, I'm not thinking about what I'm going to say next. My ego is dropped. Again, my ego is completely dropped. It's gone. So I'm hearing what they're saying. 14:21 from their shoes, and I'm detaching my own emotion from that. See, now listening to someone, I'm already thinking about what I'm going to say. Especially when I'm trying to outdo someone. Everybody wants to talk about what they've been through and all this trauma and all this and that. The truth is, is that trauma has to have strength attached to it, or it's just depressing and it's just trauma and it's just another excuse to hold yourself back. Period. It sucks. It's bold. It's transparent, but it's true. 14:47 I can't tell you how many people I listened to or met in my life that said this happened to me so I can't go forward with this or I'm deserving of this because I went through this. It's bullshit and you heard it from me first. It's fucking bullshit. So if you're not comfortable looking at yourself in the mirror, reiterate those thoughts and understand that even in my own head, am I listening to myself or am I hearing myself? Because if I'm listening, I'm already thinking about an excuse that's going to come right up out of it. 15:17 my back hurts, this and that, my family, my financial, no matter what it is, it's an excuse. You have to have certain things that keep you grounded, grounded rods, grounding rods. You know, like a four legged animal that's grounded to the ground. Think of one, pick an animal, something that resonates with you, gives you a warm feeling inside your stomach. I don't care, I do that stuff all the time. Because we're the only mammals that's walking around on two feet with a consciousness. So sometimes we just gotta go back to the hunter and gather. 15:47 If I gotta go hunt for my food and my bow breaks while going trying to hunt, I better learn how to fish. If there's no fish in the water and I don't have a fishing rod, I better learn how to graze. And by grazing, I need to know from others what to pick, what to eat so it's not poisonous and I don't have to go through the trial and error. Being able to use what you have. Having a million tools around your belt is great, but if you don't know how to use them, what's the purpose? See, my goal and my company's goal is to be able to use what you have. 16:14 is to be able to grow, to create a community to where you understand that grit is a lifestyle and it's your purpose in life, to be able to move with that as a primary forward. Everything else falls in line. So, for instance, if I'm gonna go forward into understanding I need to have more tools around my belt, great, let's start about using a screwdriver, because if I gotta paint my house, I'm sure as hell not gonna use a screwdriver. But if that's the only tool that I have to paint my house, I also... 16:42 got to be able to dig my hands deep in that and start painting with my hands and get a little gritty. You know, no pun intended, but just get a little dirty. Understand that people can build houses out of mud with their hands. Yet we try to focus on how many tools can we get, or we get distracted and think we have none. Understand that what you're acquiring as your arsenal to what you have, the best weapon is your mind. How to train it and how to sharpen it is your body. How to keep it 17:10 working and how to use those tools is pairing both together. How can I use my body to benefit me? How can I use my mind for growth? How can I give more without depleting myself? How can I carry weight that's desired by helping others by not burning up and not burning out? Keeping your consciousness, aware, but your subconsciousness as the primary focus. When I randomly smile, and I'm like, man, why am I even smiling? That's a question that doesn't even need to be answered. 17:40 But when I'm thinking negatively, it goes the same way. Why am I thinking negatively? Well, if there's no answer to it, which usually there isn't, guess what? It doesn't apply. It's not meant to be there. To be able to pair the physical and mental for growth internally, externally, there is no room for anything that does not help you grow. If it holds you back, find yourself comfortable with yourself first. Outwork the mental. 18:09 Physically persevere through something and physically have a task list to keep you oriented to know that no matter what happens in life I overeat or I over drink I got an argument no matter what it is my resets My reminders my defaults. I'm gonna get up in the morning and give it a hundred percent tomorrow I'm just gonna get one percent better no matter what happens today 18:33 but I'm gonna work every single day to end it on a good note, to think about my wins, to think about that day, and no matter how bad that day was, I'm thinking about the good that came out of it. Those are the thoughts that go through my brain in order of one, two, three, right before I fall asleep. So I'm comfortable without the noise, without the distraction. You find yourself having to keep the TV on, having to listen to something, having to have a distraction, be comfortable in your own thoughts, and understand that they're helpful. It's a helpful tool. 19:03 So when you wake up the next morning, I'm like, all right, I don't care about yesterday because maybe it was a horrible day, but it's all about today. Today I'm going to make it back and not redemption, but I'm going to be better than what I was yesterday. Keep it healthy. Keep it positive. Simple doesn't mean easy, but yet simple equals success. Being successful is already achieving success every single day. Keeping your mindset positive. 19:29 It's oriented to a goal. And if the goal is bigger than what you are right now, it's too much to digest, take it step by step. Understand that breaking it down doesn't mean slowing it down. It means just staying focused at a geared down pace. Maybe not put your foot pedal to the metal. Maybe not expect to go 200 miles an hour so fast right away. Straight out the gate. Understand that I'm slowly getting my groove. Let me find flow first and then let me be technical. It's the same thing with any other sport. 19:59 You know, if I'm competing in mixed martial arts, and I wanna be good on the ground, and I wanna be good standing up, I wanna find my flow in the midst of that moment where I don't think about anything. In that octagon, in that ring, in that sparring moment, there is nothing I can do to prepare myself other than repetitions that work my subconscious because when my body goes in survival mode, I better focus on adjustments and trusting my survival skills over survival mode. 20:28 I went to Canada not too long ago. And what's interesting is that because the second that I went into Canada, I started to realize that the deeper and deeper we went into the forest side and to the countryside, the trees were different. The pine trees, being able to look at the birch and look at how deep and how dense the forest is. Opposed from the East Coast, you can pretty much see in a lot of areas, right through it. You don't have to feel really as lost. The sun still comes down into it, just not as dense. See, I love this because it applies. 20:57 It's not off topic. If I were to walk 10 feet into the woods in Canada, yep, and specifically in Northern Quebec, I'd go into it, I could get turned around in a matter of seconds. Yet, I got two different options to focus on in that moment of feeling lost. Do I go into survival mode and say, oh my God, I need to get out, I'm freaking out, I'm getting more turned around and more turned around, I'm using other things as excuses of why I even got lost in the first place? Or, I simply... 21:26 Look at the moss. Where's north? I know my way out. So I trust my survival skills. And then at that moment, I wanna go a little bit deeper. I wanna go deeper into that forest. Maybe I'll find something. Maybe I'll find that animal that I refer back to as something that's grounded. Because whatever that grounding animal or whatever it may be that keeps you grounded in that peace in life, it approaches you. You can't chase it. It approaches you. 21:57 So see, when you're hungry for something, starve out what you know that your body and your mind don't need. That's a toxic trait. That's a parasite. And you'll find yourself getting fed and being filled and fulfilled in life, understanding that it's gonna come. It's just a part of the process. That's what success is and that's what growth is. Find yourself growth. Realize that in life, health... 22:24 physically and mentally, they come as the primary. So as the primary source to your growth, keep those two things as number one, and growth will come. There's no question about it. And find your grit, and that's just what we do. We pair both together. We operate as a system of a team and as a family. And as everybody's different, driving their own vehicle, instead of changing up your tires and giving you a fresh paint job and saying, oh, that car's gonna run faster, 22:53 My idea is let's pop the hood. You're telling me there's a check engine light on. It's not your engine. It's just a fuse that blew out. It's not anything serious. There's nothing to stress. Let's get that engine at a 500 horsepower. Let's get that thing rolling. Let's get rocking with it. Stay committed, stay disciplined, and keep grind, grit, and grace in your mind and in your life. Grit is a lifestyle. It's momentum and it lasts forever. Just commit and join us. That's all you have to do.