Don’t Run From The Suck!

12 Jan Don’t Run From The Suck!

What do we mean by “The Suck”?

Christopher Hart here with Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting, coming to you this morning with another Lead Strong post.  So any way we coach, I’m Christopher Hart, I’m a organization and leadership development coach as well as a peak performance coach, and in leadership I talk about my six levels of leadership, I won’t go through them all cause there’s other videos on that so go ahead and reference… go up to my video section on my Facebook page and go back and look at some of our earlier videos where we actually walk people through the six levels. But I’m going to reference a couple of them reason being is because I want to talk about this topic this morning and then I’m going to tie it all back in for you guys.

Where does it start?

Level One leadership we believe you need to be a great follower.  Why?  Because one, you need the model by which to reference in times of unknown and you can ask a boss you can’t ask somebody to be in leadership, you can’t ask somebody to be something you’re not willing to , so be a great leader first and foremost.

Second one is lead by self right, we believe that if you can’t lead yourself how can you effectively lead other people?  And I believe that this is where a lot of leaders tend to fall short.  So I’m going to hit the pause button right here …actually I’ll give you the third level of leadership.

Third level of leadership, Level Three leadership is lead another, so let’s just remember those things.  Level One – be a great follower; Level Two – lead thyself; Level Three – lead another.  That’s the one-on-one engagement with an individual.  So hit the pause button on our levels of leadership there and let’s get into our topic this morning.  

This is what we mean by “The Suck”.

So condition the suck, either you …or either it will suck or you will suck.  It’s a tough message to receive but I have this ideology about suck and it really kind of focuses on what I like to call “What’s your suck factor?”  Because understand this, the brain has this mechanism in it called homeostasis where in biology it says all matter moves to a constant state, what does that mean?  Well let’s look at neuropsychology, and what that means in neuropsychology is that all matter, your brain, has this mechanism where it’s designed not to make you happy, not to make you successful, hence the reason why we have so many depressed people who are unsuccessful in this world; but it’s designed to protect you, it’s a protection mechanism.  It’s designed to make sure that you are stable, we call that AKA “comfort zone.”  So its whole job is to keep you out of stress in comfort zone, and once it gets into that comfort zone it goes, “Ahh! This is where we’re supposed to be.  Hang out here, don’t go any further because if you go any further then that’s going to be stress.”

So what we understand Homeostasis is going to keep us in this thought process of stability and balance, and that’s where I believe a lot of people where they get caught into this homeostasis process… I know I can do it I will do it… they get caught in this homeostasis process on this journey of goal attainment, like we start here like we’re in this suck factor like “Oh I got to do this,” and we start moving along this path and we hit like this comfort zone and the brain starts telling us “Stay here, there’s no stress here,” and so you think you’re winning and in reality you’re really not.  And so interestingly enough in the military special operations community, and this is been written about in books by SEALS, SEALS tend to write books about everything, I saw a great meme the other day and it was like a SEAL, a Marine and a Ranger go on a mission, they all come back alive and the SEAL writes a book about it.  So anyway, love the SEALs, they are some pretty bad-ass dudes.

Anyway in their community they talk about if it doesn’t suck we don’t do it, and here’s why, not because they have nothing better to do, trust me they have a lot of better things to do than just sit around and find things that suck; what they’re doing is they’re conditioning the suck because they understand their missions tend to suck. And it’s not that their missions tend to suck and that oh these aren’t cool and somebody’s just sending us to some foreign land do some crazy stuff, is that you typically have six, eight, ten, twelve guys going on a mission where they’re going to push their minds and their body far past their homeostasis process, and if you don’t condition that suck, you’re going to quit.  And I believe that’s where we tend to show up as suck.  So when I say either condition the suck or you will, if you don’t condition …conditioning that suck is pushing yourself past what you believe your limitations to be because your brain is going to set natural limitations, not your actual physical limitations, your mental limitations based off of your homeostasis process.

You see the other day when Dean, challenged me to do max rep burpees in seven minutes…there’s some videos on that, there’s a lead up video and a post video of that experience… I didn’t think I could do more than 30 seconds, I’d never done more than 30 seconds. I didn’t think I can do more than 25, like my goal was to do 50 and I did 72.  You see at that moment I was conditioning the suck, and let’s be very clear, I’m going to be a hundred percent honest, about a minute and 29 seconds exactly into it, it sucked, and my brain is “Quit, you don’t like this stuff.  Why are you doing this stuff? Like you can forget about it, the world will forget about it, Dean will forget about it, and if not you can come up with some reasons or excuses why.”  And trust me I have plenty of reasons and excuses in my head but I pushed myself past that suck, and by pushing myself past that suck I actually conditioned a whole new level of psychology and physicality through myself.

I now know I can do 72 continuous burpees. That’s pretty pretty cool, at least for me.  I now know I can do burpees for seven minutes straight.   Quite frankly I probably could have done 10 minutes, and maybe that’s just not my next level of limitation, maybe it’s 15 minutes, I don’t know.   Dean don’t you dare try and “Why not do 15 minutes?”  No, I don’t need to and I don’t want to condition that suck, I’m just being honest.  But I will, I’m going to tell you, I will down the road as I start to condition how many I can do.  Once I get to being able to do a hundred in that seven minutes I am going to push myself; maybe it will be 10 minutes eventually 15 minutes down the road but it’s a conditioning process it’s not a leap process.  Why?  Because when you make those massive leaps the brain freaks out, it’s just homeostasis is going to kick in, it’s too much stress, it overwhelms the brain and it will naturally force you back into stability.

Now when you condition it, like my coaching style is we make small incremental changes over a sustained period of time.  So if somebody were to coach with me and sign a 12-month contract, you’re going to get on average about 48 coaching calls throughout the years…they’re not the year, excuse me, 12 months.  We ask ourselves “What would it look like…” your business or your life, whatever we’re focusing on, “… if you made 48 small little incremental changes over a 12 month period of time?”  And people tend to go “Wow like life will be great!”  Or “Wow my business would be great!”  Yeah, you’re right.  But what would happen do you think if you had to make those massive shifts real quick?  Immediately people’s brain starts stressing out.  So it’s a conditioning process.  Everything about human beings is a conditioning process.

So we understand that if you want to be successful, if you want to really attain high achievement, if you want to operate in peak performance we have to start conditioning ourselves, and conditioning yourselves past what you believe your physical or mental limitations are which actually enters you into a suck zone.  See when you run from the suck I believe you suck, you’re going to suck right, like that’s a hard pill to swallow.  It’s not about being arrogant but you know what, here’s the way I look at it man, like I want to live this great life, I want to honor the greatness that God tells me He created me to be in Genesis One in the Bible, and what Jesus died for.  He died for me; He died for my ability to break my chains, my shackles, my limitations so I can live out this relationship with His Father and live out what His Father said I could be which is great in His image, and in order to do that we’ve got to condition ourselves past suck.

Are you getting it?

And here’s what I want you guys have to understand, it’s not go do these massive shifts like “I’ll go do 15 minutes of burpees.”  Maybe I could do that but my brain is automatically hitting that trigger like hey I’m going to get there one day but I’m going to condition it.  Small incremental increases is what we call “mind hacking,” we’re going to hack the mind.  You’re going to hack the mind by creating these small incremental shifts of pushing yourself past your limitations and into that suck zone.

So the question becomes what’s your suck factor?  And whatever you’re looking to achieve, whether you’re a real estate agent or in your health, in your fitness and your spirituality, like do a self assessment, be honest with yourself because I believe you have to be honest with yourself before you can be honest with anybody else, it’s that whole like  Level Two leadership, lead by self.  In an area of concern of your life or an area that you desire to have peak performance, max achievement, be the best version that you can be of yourself, do you currently suck?  And if so, why?   What’s your suck factor?  Is your suck factor like nine… eight, nine, ten, because you’re underperforming?  And you’re probably underperforming because there’s something that’s a critical or a vital task that you know you need to do in order to achieve, or have that achievement and accomplishment, but you’re not doing it because it sucks and so therefore you suck.

Push yourself past that suck factor because when you start pushing yourself past the suck factor of the activities, when the activities suck factor goes up your suck factor goes down.  But when you run from the suck factor of activities, guess what?  That goes down, like “Oh I’m not doing that so therefore it doesn’t suck.”   Well guess what?  You will.  So here’s your scale, here’s it, here’s you.  In whatever area or goal, whatever you’re looking to do either it, the conditions that you’re pushing yourself to is going to suck or you will; and if you don’t want to suck, raise the conditions, like raise the conditions of it and you will not suck.  But if the conditions are low, like you’re not doing like suck factor activities then quite frankly I think you’re going to suck.  And that’s just my opinion, maybe I’m wrong, you can judge me for it, I’m okay with that.

So Nicole says, “I kept saying the suck factor last night every time I wanted to leave the gym. Make it a screensaver.”   Absolutely Nicole.  You know I believe… like when I go to the gym I workout from 12:00 to 1:30 every day… when I go to the gym like if I’m not feeling that suck factor I know I’m not growing, I’m not pushing myself.  It doesn’t matter, someone says “You’re still exercising your muscles,” but muscles are muscle.  The muscle that I’m looking for that I’m most concerned about is this muscle right here.  You condition this muscle and everything else is going to follow.  Like you want to have this physique, whether it’s you want to lose a hundred pounds, you want to lose 20 pounds, you want to get the beach body going you know you got to lose a little bit of that fat right here, whatever the case may be.  Increase your suck factor in the critical and vital task that you know are going to get you there because here’s what I believe, we all know with the activities are, what holds us back is the suck factor, and when you run from the suck factor you’re running towards self suck factor, you’re increasing your own suck factor.  

So that’s my rant on suck factor, and I’m not here to share this stuff with you to judge you, I’m here to share something with you that can create awareness because the first step of all transformation, Transforming Lives Coaching Consulting, first step of all transformation is awareness, when you have awareness of your own suck factor I believe you have everything you need to move forward, and then from there it all becomes a choice.  Life is choice guys, everything about your life right now.

Life is a choice.

So here’s what I’ll tell you, life is a choice, if you’re not at where you want to be in life, like if you didn’t wake up this morning and go, “Wow, life is pretty freaking awesome!”  If you didn’t say that to yourself there are some choices you need to make; and if you didn’t say that to yourself just understand you’ve gotten to where you’ve gotten to because of the choices that you made.  Remember one thing, options allow for choices and our choices are going to determine our decisions and it’s in those very decisions that we make or fail to make that’s going to define our destiny.  Where you’re at today is the realization of your destiny from the yesterdays.  Make purposeful choices, they have a purpose and they create that fulfillment that you desire in your life.  

Live a life on purpose.  Make the purposeful choices.  Chase the suck activities because when you chase those suck activities…amen brother… when you chase those suck activities I promise you, you’re going to… you won’t regret it, just like I didn’t regret doing those burpees the other day.  Like if you would have told me to do seven minutes worth of burpees every single week, dude I’d hide, like I’m not going to lie.  But now I’m empowered to do it, like I look forward to doing it and I’m going to challenge Marcy Weeks… would somebody do me a favor, I’m not sure if she’s on this, would somebody tag Marcy Weeks when they get a chance on this video because …she did 91 by the way and I’m super impressed by that and she said she’s going to be my accountability partner. I’m hoping she’ll step up and do every Wednesday, let’s do it every Wednesday, we just agreed to do seven minutes of burpees and push ourselves past last week’s accomplishment, that way we can grow the suck factor together. So whoever wants to join in on that, feel free to comment down here.  I’d love to hear what your ahas are.  We’re going to wrap this up, so as I’m wrapping this up let me know what your aha.  If you saw value in this conversation give me some likes, give me some love, some hearts, let the world know that hey you actually appreciate what this is doing for you, and even with your takeaways are.

So here’s what I can tell you, let’s wrap this up:

Level One leadership – Be a great follower.  Feel free to follow me, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. A lot of these videos were going to be put on our Youtube, so if you really want to grow your influence in leadership go back and watch some of my previous videos not because of any significance of mine, but I believe there’s some really good content in there that can really help you grow your leadership.

Level Two leadership – How do you lead by self?  It’s understanding critical and vital tasks towards the goals that you want to achieve and embrace the suck, and do it.  And do it right, remember either it’s going to suck or you will.  And so if you chase the it suck factor, your suck factor will be low.  If you run from that it suck fact, your suck factor is going to be high.  

And then how do we live Level Three leadership is guess what?  If you’re leading other people whether it’s in your family, your church organizations, your direct sales line, whatever the case may be; left and right, up and down, the people that are below you, people that are responsible for you, like that’s John Maxwell’s 360 degree leadership concept.

Lead another is challenge people to run towards the suck, embrace the suck and call them out when they’re running from it.  Like some of you people that commented on my video about “I’m not going to do that… I don’t need to do burpees…”  Like I saw someone on a Marcy Weeks video talked about like “Oh I do burpees every week anyway so I don’t need to do seven minutes.”  Yes you do, you need to do seven minutes of it, why?  Because your brain is telling you to run from it and you know it sucks that’s why you don’t want to do it.  Do it, lead another, challenge people.  Don’t allow people to live in their suck, and this is how I believe when we can do that, when we can challenge people to embrace the suck and move past their zones of uncomfortableness we start to change the world, and I believe that’s what we’re here for, at least that’s what I’m here for and I’m looking for people to join me on that journey.

So hey, thanks for joining me this morning. I really hope you guys have a powerful rest of your day. I want you guys to remember one thing, Genesis 1:26,x God on the sixth day created man, everything He created before that was for you and He did it because He loves you.  Everything on this earth is here for you, He sent his Son to die for you, to live out the verse in Genesis 1:26, that is He loves you so much He created you in His image.

Just remember God loves you so much that He sent his own son to this earth to be a role model for what life should look like; and then after 32 years of walking this earth…33 years, He sent his son to be crucified for you so that you could live at the very verse in Genesis 1:26, He made you in his image and his image is great because of what he accomplished.  And so can you.  God loves you, so do I.  Have a powerful rest of your day.  Lead strong, embrace the suck, don’t run from it.  Be blessed, take care.

About the author:

Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!

 
To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com