Wealth Is The Result Of Your Relationship With Challenges
Life compels us to move forward and to grow, although there’s uniqueness and variety. We may not know what tomorrow is going to bring, but we can still choose to show up to the life we are given and strive to rise despite the challenges. After all, strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. In this episode, Patrick Donohoe explains the importance of understanding the principles of growth through embracing challenges. He discusses adversity, obstacles, struggles, challenge, and friction. This is the perfect time to encourage yourself to embrace challenges when they come. Recognize the opportunity to do it strategically so you could unleash your potential and even create successful investment decisions.
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Wealth Is The Result Of Your Relationship With Challenges
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Every individual of humanity lives a unique life. There are similarities but ultimately, each life is distinctly different. Billions of people are all distinctly different. We have these uniquely defining characteristics that then show up to new sets of circumstances and experiences on a daily basis. The nature of which is continually compelling us to move forward and grow. Although there’s so much of this uniqueness and variety, there are constants. There are these universal laws or principles that govern the results we get from growing.
You’re reading a wealth and personal finance show and that has been the focus for years. To me, that signals that you’re compelled to grow in some way, going from where you are financially to a new level. It’s natural to be compelled to grow continually. Growth requires a path of following these laws and principles. Following these constants cannot be circumvented. You can’t go around it. In this path, some of these principles and laws are the riddling of pressure, adversity, obstacles, struggles, challenges and friction. It applies in pretty much all finance but to this audience, to your earning potential and also to successful investment decisions.
You have to push through these obstacles in order to grow to success. Napoleon Hill, a great quote along these lines says, “Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” To me, what this means is strength, in essence, amplifies your efforts. The degree of your efforts is going to determine how you face the specific challenge friction in question. It determines whether you embrace it as something that’s part of growth or rebel against it because you don’t understand the law or principle.
I’ll give you a physical example. I’ve worked out at the same CrossFit gym for many years. CrossFit is relatively rigorous. This applies to just exercise in general. I’ve come to understand that there’s this crossover point that people that do it for the long run have to push through a threshold. It’s the point where you go from, “I can’t stand up. Every part of my body is aching. My body is telling me, ‘What the heck are you doing to me?'” You can’t walk down the stairs. You can hardly get out of bed.
The individual of humanity lives a unique life. Each life is distinctly different. Click To TweetWhen you break through that threshold, do you look at workouts the next morning and your body wants to do it. It’s like, “I can’t wait to get the kick out of me tomorrow.” When you hear someone say, “I hate working out. I can never get up that early. I don’t have time.” To me, these statements signify rebellion from a challenge because that threshold has not been crossed. They’ve not understood these principles or laws of growth.
In CrossFit, I’ve come to realize that a new person must do it for at least six months until they break this threshold. Typically, that’s eighteen months where they go from hating it to loving it. Typically, that threshold is not crossed because of the pain and ultimately, no one is able to experience the other side. I believe you can grow from those same laws and principles applied to psychological growth. Like a physical muscle, you can grow that same type of mental strength. You can come to love the challenges of life, frictions of life, difficulties of life, as well as the subsequent pain. The principle is almost identical.
The feelings are what’s processed in your mind both physical and mental. All of that is processed. I believe you can continually develop mental strength through consistent and ongoing exercise. It’s not physical exercise. Let me give you some examples of exercise. Psychological workout is done through personal development whether it’s reading books, listening to podcasts, taking courses, training, having a personal coach or business coach, going to seminars, events and so forth. Things that push you to those thresholds.
When those muscles are exercising strong, you can show up to life and embrace those challenging experiences. Hope for them because you know what’s on the other side. There are mental obstacles but ultimately, you embrace every moment of the experience because you know what it’s going to lead you to. For those of us in the last few episodes, I participated in an endurance event called 29029. That number symbolizes the elevation of Mount Everest.
This event consists of a pretty crazy feat. You have to hike up and down a mountain numerous times until you reach that 29,000 feet of elevation and you have only 36 hours to do it. The event took place at a ski resort about an hour from Salt Lake called Snowbasin. The elevation gain of each hike was roughly 2,300 feet, with a distance on each hike of 2.3 miles. It’s a straight uphill hike and you do it thirteen times. I started at 6:00 in the morning on Friday. I ended at about 1:00 PM on Saturday but I had until 6:00 PM on Saturday to finish.
On the first day, the adrenaline and excitement were there. I completed ten hikes on the first day. I hiked from 6:00 in the morning to 1:00 in the morning. It was 6:00 AM all the way through the evening to 1:00 PM. You hike up. You take a fifteen-minute gondola ride down, where I got in the habit of eating and getting some food in my body but went through ten straight. It was brutal. I was seeing things at the end like hallucinating. I had to go to bed, wake up the next morning and then complete the final three hikes on Saturday.
I’m going to open you guys up. I was reluctant to do this but I recorded some audio notes of actual videos during the event. The second part of this episode is going to consist of that compilation of those few videos when I was right in the thick of it. The reason why I did this event is that I knew I was going to face extreme pain and threshold where my body was going to tell me, “Stop. You need to quit. This isn’t normal. You can’t do this to me.” It happened multiple times. You’re going to read about it in these videos that I recorded while doing the event.
The reason was personal growth. I wanted to grow or face these thresholds because I understand the principles of growth. I would be lying to say that I always look forward to challenges, obstacles and friction because of these unique experiences that we have on a daily basis, you don’t know what life is going to throw at you to grow. I’m not saying that I completely embrace all the difficulties of my life but here is a time and an opportunity I had to do it strategically where I knew I was going to face these challenges.
I knew it was going to be a struggle. My body would signal my mind, “Stop. You can’t do this. What are you doing to me?” I wanted to, number one, push through some additional thresholds because we all have a threshold. It’s like this continual threshold. Once we’re there, there’s going to be another one. That was one of my goals but I also did it for my kids, who, as you’ll see in some of the videos, we’re able to walk across the finish line with me. I wanted to demonstrate to them that inside of them are the same genes as mine but also human genes that can overcome challenging things and difficulties.
I have two teenage daughters. There are lots of emotional things going on in their life. I did this event because, even though it’s not the same challenge, there are parallels. I also did it for you, whoever is reading right now. I’ve seen amazing things in people. Those that are in CrossFit make it through the threshold and it changes their life. It changed my life. I’ve also seen it in business whether it’s with employees or clients. Seeing thousands of people face some extremely difficult circumstances but push through it and grow and then start to connect the principles and laws of growth to those challenges and what they became because of it.
Life compels us to grow, and it's going to give us obstacles. Click To TweetThe purpose was to encourage and inspire you to not just embrace challenges when they come because we don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring or the next day. We just know that life compels us to grow and it’s going to give us obstacles and challenges. Start exercising the muscle so that when you show up to these challenges, you don’t do it out of shape and malnourished. You do it strong and when it comes, you can pivot. You can be agile. You can embrace them even though they may be challenging at first.
I did it to inspire you to take some action whether it’s signing up for one of these physical events. They’re all over the place, marathons, half-marathons and 5Ks. You can find them anywhere. You have endurance races and obstacle races. I believe that these physical challenges parallel well with the psychological challenges that we face. In the end, if you get strong physically, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to be successful financially but there is a parallel because what led to a strong physique and body, the same principle is applied to strong psychology, mental wherewithal.
That allows us to break through to these levels in which we can create massive value for people. We can show up to life happy, fulfilled, motivated and ultimately achieve and continue to achieve the levels of wealth that will create a rewarding life. It was rewarding. I’m very blessed to have been able to participate in it. I’m glad you guys are reading. I hope you learned something. I hope you were now inspired and motivated to go find something that physically challenges you whether it’s an event, hiring a coach or it’s something business-wise. Continue to push those limits and strengthen those muscles. I know you can do it. We’ll see you in the next episode.
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This is journal entry number one. I just completed my sixth summit. The event is you have 36 hours to do thirteen summits. Each summit is 2.3 miles and 2,300 feet of elevation. It’s pretty rough. It’s a lot more difficult than I thought. There are these super steep parts of the trail. I’m on a gondola. I’m playing on my strategy. What I’m thinking is doing another 2, maybe 1 at dinner and then try to get 10 before the end of the day, which will leave me a good amount of time so I can get 5 to 6 hours of sleep. That’s the plan. I’ll do another journal entry when I’m done now.
This is journal entry number two. It was impossible. Nothing is impossible but I finished at about 1:00 AM in my tenth summit. I was super exhausted but I had two lessons from yesterday. In the first trail, my body was feeling it big time. I was feeling undernourished. In every step, I was feeling it in my calves and hip flexors. Something happened going through the sixth time, where I got a second wind. What’s interesting in our body is it’s not biologically designed for the life we get to live. It’s meant to be stressed. It’s meant to push limitations. We’re meant to walk and run. We’re meant to deal with physical strain. I felt that it was incredible and I did three.
After the fifth summit, I did three more before dinner and then I had some dinner. I think I ate too much and then I did two more before I went to bed. When I was finishing the final summit, someone had this little board where each time you summit they have this hot iron that you brand this wooden board every time you summit. Someone had mistakenly put my tenth summit there already. As I was going to put my brand, I saw it and then I was like, “That’s not right.” They were like, “You have to put it in the eleventh.” I was like, “No.”
First off, my mind was like, “Do it, just put it.” I put it on the eleventh one then you’ll only have to do the two tomorrow. It was incredible. I think sometimes our body sends messages to us when we’re dealing with stress, pain or anxiety. It operates for us, protecting us with survival instincts. It was interesting that sometimes, specifically that night, where my mind went to do that, “You only have to do two.” I didn’t do that. I did two already and I’m headed down the gondola to do number thirteen. I feel amazing and my family is going to meet me at the top. It was a great journey. It was a fun experience.
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