Compounding Daily
Do you feel stuck? Uninspired? Stagnant? The Compounding Daily podcast hosted by Miguel Sanchez, aims to spark curiosity and drive. Each episode gives you deep insights on how to cultivate healthy habits, practice discipline, change your perspective of life, and restructure your mindset in a way that promotes small changes in your daily life that will compound to help you earn that 1% needed everyday to reach your goals, whether they be physical, mental, or both.
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Compounding Daily
EP127- The Courage to Speak.
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How many times have you avoided a conversation you knew needed to be had?
In this week’s episode, I dive into the hidden costs of avoiding difficult conversations—with ourselves, our doctors, our bosses, and those closest to us.
Through raw personal examples from my own life, I share how I repeatedly postponed doctor appointments despite knowing my health was deteriorating, stayed in relationships long past their expiration date, and watched opportunities pass me by—all because I feared uncomfortable conversations. The pattern became clear: avoiding discomfort wasn’t protecting me; it was preventing my growth and compounding my problems.
The transformative power of difficult conversations cannot be overstated. When we finally summon the courage to have that health discussion, career conversation, or challenging personal exchange, we often discover that the anticipation was worse than the actual experience. More importantly, these conversations become catalysts for meaningful change and personal evolution.
I’ve learned that growth happens at the edge of comfort—particularly in those moments when our bodies are literally squirming with discomfort during difficult discussions. Whether it’s questioning limiting beliefs about what’s possible for “people like us,” setting boundaries in relationships, or simply asking clarifying questions when confused, using your voice is an act of personal power.
Remember: problems exist whether we acknowledge them or not. The difference is that confronting them through conversation opens the door to solutions. Your willingness to engage in difficult conversations might just be the key that unlocks your next level of growth and fulfillment.
What difficult conversation are you avoiding today? Your future self is waiting on the other side of that discomfort.
Listen, reflect, and if this resonates with you or someone you know, please share this episode—it might be exactly what they need to hear.
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Miguel:@m_sanchezvillafane
Email: Compoundingdailypodcast@gmail.com
Hello, hello and welcome back everybody to Compounding Daily. I'm your host, miguel Sanchez, and welcome back to another episode, episode 127. That is 127 weeks of progress, 127 weeks of aiming for a better version of ourselves. I appreciate every single one of you, whether you've been here the whole time or whether you are new, know that I don't do this because I'm bored, right. I don't do this because I get something monetary out of it. I do this because, from my own experience and in my own life, I've yet to experience a better form of joy than the one that comes from people who I know are getting better because of the difficulties that I've overcame in my life. Because I've overcame things in my life and now I share with you what I've learned and my perspectives, and I'm never giving you direction. I'm never saying here's what to do. I'm saying here's what I've been through. Learn from it and do what you want. With that information and the conversations that stem from that of hey man, that morning message is just what I needed came up within our friend group that sometimes it feels as if I'm directly speaking to somebody through the messages that I put out, and to me there is no better form of payment than that, because, as I sit here now, I don't have a script in front of me. I don't have an idea of what I want to talk about. Understand that when I sit here, the goal is always the same to provide you, the listener, with a different perspective or something to think about, something that makes your brain have to be present and say, huh, I never thought about it from that perspective, or, oh, I never considered that, or maybe I'm going to implement that, or I don't agree with that, but why don't I agree with it. All of those things are worthy, in my own opinion, of me sitting here and doing my best to provide you with some form of insight. So, all of that to simply say thank you for being here. And, as always, let's get into it with the formalities of the show.
Speaker 1:If you are new, yes, it's Monday, the beginning of a brand new week, and I always emphasize this right Because in my own life, me and Monday did not get along. We always battled with each other as to why do they have to come by so quick and why am I so against it, and when are things going to get better? And you can see that just in the attitude that I carried and, most of all, if you were around me long enough, you didn't have to watch my attitude I would tell you that I was dissatisfied with my life, especially on a Monday morning. And if you fast forward now to where I am, I'm still in the same career and nothing has really changed drastically besides my physical health. But I am now able to appreciate the days, including a Monday, specifically a Monday, because the person that I now have become is the kind of person that looks for the difficult things that can be appreciated but often are not, and Monday is one of those things.
Speaker 1:It's so easy to wake up and say it's Monday, I don't want to be here, I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I wish things were better, I wish things were different. Is it Friday? Yet it's easy, that's easy. You know how? I know it's easy. Most people do it, myself included, for most of my life. Do you know what? It's not easy? Going against that? Showing up on a Monday with a good attitude, not counting down your days till Friday, saying good morning, not just morning. You know that is a little bit more difficult and something that is not seen.
Speaker 1:And all of that to emphasize on the fact which most people, some people don't agree with, but it is a fact that that's a choice. You can wake up and entertain a negative conversation, or you can wake up, accept that a negative conversation is happening within your mind and then from there, you have a responsibility to reroute it to a place of positivity and understand something. I don't mean butterflies and rainbows or fake optimism, right. I'm not saying let's take away your actual suffering and misery that you are going through and act like it doesn't exist. That's not what I'm saying at all. But what I'm saying is that, despite those things, you can still choose to carry yourself like the kind of person that, despite the difficulties, you carry yourself with your head high, right, don't? You don't have to smile if you don't want to write, but understand something you're not the only one going through problems and the world, especially other people, just does not care about yours. They got their own problems to worry about, so make sure that you're not adding to the list of problems to other people just with your presence. Show up with a good attitude, give people a smile, say good morning, use their first name, let them know that hey, not everybody has to suck on a Monday. All right, some people actually enjoy waking up period and I want to share that positive energy with you. So it is Monday, happy Monday. Get out there, let's become better, let's win together and, as I always say, let's earn that 1% and let's get right into today's topic. Give me a second so I can sip on my coffee. Okay, so bear with me here.
Speaker 1:This episode is probably not going to be much longer. I don't see how I'm going to go deep into this topic, but the last few episodes that I've been releasing I want to say maybe starting around episode 120, have all been solos and they've all been based off current circumstances. They've all been based off current circumstances, and what I mean by that is sometimes people say, well, where do you get the topics from? And when I say current circumstances, I mean, like literally, something I'm going through at the moment, something I went through this week, a nagging thought that's in my mind that I feel like I need to vent about, and I want to find some form of value in it, because if it's nagging me, it's probably nagging somebody else out there. So it's just my approach, and this is one of those topics where it's been nagging at me all day as I sit here and I wasn't sure how I was going to traverse through this conversation and I almost just decided to go on a different route and just go on my list of possible topics and pick one of those, but then I feel like I would be avoiding it and, ironically, that's what I want to talk about today the avoidance of difficult things. And if you've been with this podcast for a while, then you're probably like oh, here we go about discipline again. No, no, no, it's not what I'm talking about. About discipline again. No, no, no, it's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:The dominant thought in my mind as of late has been don't avoid difficult conversations, miguel, and what I mean by that is this, and this is what I've learned as of recently, right, because I've been embracing this this Most of my life, because I lack proper communication skills and because I was scared of confrontation not physical, but confrontational verbally I let people get away with saying I scaried my way out of conversations that I knew were going to slap me in the face with hurtful truths. I avoided conversations that I know needed to be had for me to progress in life, but I didn't want to have because I knew that it would be delivered with some pain. So therefore, I didn't have those conversations. So therefore, I didn't have those conversations. And I want this message, this episode today, to have one emphasis on what I'm trying to put out, and the emphasis is this have difficult conversations, understand something. Just like to have a physically strong body. You got to put your body through difficult strength training regimens and difficult things to grow the muscle, to strengthen it. It's the same exact way that to progress in life, you have to have these uncomfortable conversations.
Speaker 1:And let's dissect this a little bit right. There's in my head at the moment maybe three different forms of ways in which I can use this as an example. First and foremost is with the most important person in your life, with yourself. How many times do you avoid a conversation about personal accountability with yourself Out of the fear that you know the answer you're looking for is within yourself. But you just know that the answer that you're going to receive is not the one that you want, so therefore, you don't have the conversation. How many times have you found yourself in that position? How many times have you told yourself man, I just know that things I just know I need to change, I need to make better decisions. And I know why I don't want, I don't want to have this conversation right now. And then you just go and you turn on the TV, you distract yourself. Or you go and you hang out with your friends. You distract yourself. The conversation never happens, right?
Speaker 1:Let's use another example of health. What about when, physically, you know something is ailing you, you feel ill, Something's wrong, but you don't want to go to the doctors? Because when you know, when you go to the doctors, they're going to tell you exactly what's wrong with you and let's just say, maybe you've been neglecting your physical body. You know you haven't been eating well, working out, doing the things that you know create a strong uh vessel to carry around. So you know what the conversation with the doctor is going to be. Well, yeah, you don't feel good because you you smoke cigarettes or vapes all day and you don't work out and you don't eat your meals properly and you don't hit your protein intake and you don't even drink water. And now you're sitting there with a whole conversation of things you already knew, because those are things that you already knew, but you avoided them for so long. And now another person has given it to you and you don't want to receive that conversation. So therefore you avoid it. Right?
Speaker 1:What about the example of the individual who wants to raise at work, who wants to progress up that ladder of improvement, but they're afraid of talking to the boss about hey boss, I would like to progress in this company, I would like to become a better individual. Can you give me constructive criticism as to things that I can do better so I can be of more value to you? Right, and of course, people don't speak like that. That's just how I speak. But you get the point. A conversation that most people don't want to have, because now, what? What if the boss is like well, you know, honestly, you do call out too often, you're always not on time. A lot of people say that they see you on the phone all the time, and these are things, again, that you know but you don't do, and therefore you want to avoid the accountability that's going to come from that conversation.
Speaker 1:Understand something and I've said this before, and the more I say it, the more real it feels the best conversations, the most life transforming conversations that I've had in my own life have been from. Conversations that I've had in my own life have been from conversations that I did not want to sit through, conversations that, as I'm being spoken to even if it was me speaking to myself I can feel my body squirming, uncomfortable, begging me to do anything but the very thing I was doing at the moment. And it wasn't until I forced myself to go through those conversations that this personal development journey started for me, and ever since then, I love these uncomfortable conversations. I love the conversations that would bring your average people to a fight and instead it brings us to a different point of understanding and awe, because now I'm having these conversations that most people avoid and instead I'm having them with people that understand that I don't want to have them based off of judgment and my own opinion, but instead so I can learn and you can learn and we can get better together. Those are the conversations that are difficult to have but worthy of having. Why avoid them? Have the difficult conversations. They can change your life. Well, miguel, how do you know? My life changed the second I started going through them. I'll give you my first one.
Speaker 1:I knew the physical. My yearly physical was coming up. I knew that shit was coming up. They were calling me. Hey, this is Miguel. Yeah, this is Miguel. Hey, we want physical. Was coming up. I knew that shit was coming up. They were calling me. Hey, this is Miguel. Yeah, this is Miguel. Hey, we want to schedule your physical. Oh, I don't have time at the moment. Can we schedule it for next month? Oh, sure, and then guess what? Next month is approaching, my physical is coming up. I call them. Hey, I have an appointment coming up. I'm not going to be able to make it. Can we push it to next month? Oh, yeah, sure, is everything okay? Yeah, everything's okay. I'm just so busy I don't have the time.
Speaker 1:Right, that was me knowing that since the last year that I saw my doctor, I gained weight, I wasn't healthier. I didn't follow any of her directions, I didn't do what I said I was going to do, and I knew that the second I went into that physical and I stepped on that scale and I walked into that room, that she was not going to just be like oh you look great. Oh man, I'm so happy. No, no, I knew she was going to have a conversation with me that I didn't want to have a conversation about. All right, miguel, well, you know this, but it seems like I have to tell you yet again You're overweight, your blood pressure's through the roof, you're pre-diabetic, your cholesterol all of this are just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And there I was sitting angry Angry at who it wasn't myself at the moment, but now that I reflect on it, 100% me, and you know a conversation that I knew I couldn't avoid for very long, and I avoided it as long as I could because I knew it was going to hurt, right?
Speaker 1:How many times has one of your friends said something that you don't agree with and, just to avoid an argument, you just let them continue talking with something you disagreed with. Why not stop the conversation and say wait, what do you mean by that? And I know that sounds like a joke, but ask all my friends if I disagree, and not in a confrontational way, right. But if I hear something that one I know is not true, or two I don't understand, I'm not just going to accept it as facts because it's coming from a friend. No, no, no, let's talk about it. What do you mean by that? Because I don't understand, right?
Speaker 1:My close friends will tell you that I love having these uncomfortable conversations, because these are the kind of conversations that I have, right, the kind of conversations where I'm just like hey, haven't seen you in a while. Hey, yeah, how's everything been? Everything's good. Yeah, are you getting better? Have you set goals for yourself? Are you aiming at anything greater than your current version of yourself? Those are the kind of questions that I ask. And guess what? Now it turns into a good conversation, Even if the answer is no, because they know that I'm not asking out of judgment. They know that I'm not asking to because this is what I'm doing, so you could be doing great too. No, no, no, it's never like that. It's just because I've come to understand at this point in my life that, in comfortability, you don't want to have those conversations, the conversations that say, hey, you may be comfortable, but you don't want to have those conversations, the conversations that say, hey, you may be comfortable, but you don't want to die here. So what must we talk about? Oh, let me tell you what we must talk about the things that have to change. But I don't like change. It's uncomfortable, exactly, and that's why the conversation must be had.
Speaker 1:Don't be afraid to speak up. Your voice is power. You may not need to become a speaker like me. But, at the end of the day, don't allow people to just walk around you and just speaking things into existence that you disagree with and you don't have a voice to speak up back, to make things back into order, if that makes sense, right? Don't allow your mind to convince you that in avoiding the conversations, the problem doesn't exist. The problem exists whether the conversation is being had or not. The difference between the conversation being had or not is that if the problem exists, the conversation is not had, the problem will probably get a little bit bigger and become more of a problem, whereas if you have a problem but then you have a conversation as to what led to the problem, what created the problem, even though the conversation may be uncomfortable, guess what? Now you can start looking for solutions, but that conversation must be had. Don't be afraid of having difficult situations conversations. They can lead you to a place of growth and understanding.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how many times in my past relationships I already, in my own mind, was having conversations of I'm not happy here, I don't want to stay here, but I stayed, and I'm talking about stayed an extra year, stayed an extra six months, all because I was afraid of having that conversation about breaking up. And that's a fact, a real life scenario of mine. You know wasting time because I was afraid to have that conversation. A job opportunity comes across my path and want to take it, but I'm afraid of having that conversation and letting my boss know that I got to put in my two weeks because he's been a good guy to me, but I know it's time for growth. I have the conversation and he says, hey, that's awesome, brother, you've been a great worker to me. My doors are always open, best of luck. And then I go and I try it out. Turned out it sucked and I came back. That've been a great worker to me. My doors are always open, best of luck. And then I go and I try it out. Turned out it sucked and I came back. That's not a real scenario, but I'm giving you a real example, right, you can see what I'm referring to here.
Speaker 1:Or an opportunity comes across my path. In my mind I create a scenario where my boss loses his shit on me and says why I'll never make it anywhere else besides his company and I never have the conversation, I never put in the two weeks and I just stay miserable, dissatisfied, allowing opportunities to pass me by, all because I was afraid of having a difficult conversation. Right, I'll end it with this. This is the last scenario. Man, I've been through a lot of these. It's like my mind is just throwing them as I sit here and look for more scenarios. I'll give you a real scenario.
Speaker 1:I had an individual tell me Right, uh, that the goal to be financially free is unrealistic because people like us and he was pointing out the color of his skin, he was like people like us aren't meant to be financially free. The system is set up against us. Old me would have just stood quiet and said oh man, you know, maybe he's right. You know, old me, even if I disagreed, would have looked at him and said oh, that's not a conversation I really want to entertain right now. You know, like it's probably going to lead into an argument. I kind of don't agree with him. But who am I to tell him he's wrong? You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Current me, which is what actually happened was well, who are you to tell me what I am capable of? And he's like well, what do you mean by that? And I'm like well, based off your experience, you're limiting yourself to telling yourself that you can't be financially free because the system is against you. I disagree with you and I believe that the system is not corrupted at all and instead it may be a little bit more difficult for me and you, but not impossible for me and you. And if you need to look for examples, just look out into the world. There's people of my skin color, just like me and you, thriving in life. And he was looking at me like, well, that's not what I mean. I'm like well, what did you mean then? And now, guess what? A conversation of value. A conversation where I was able to paint a different perspective to him. A conversation where, moving forward, maybe he looks at himself in the mirror a little bit different and say maybe it's not the color of my skin that's the problem and maybe it's the way I'm approaching life. That is a conversation and a perspective that would have never been attained by him or me if I would have just stood quiet and allowed him to talk that nonsense he was talking.
Speaker 1:Don't be afraid of having difficult conversations. A difficult conversation like the one I just had with you sitting here. I sit here all the time and I wonder is this value? Are they going to judge me? Are they going to say that is trash? And at the end of the day, I can have this conversation with myself, or I can sit here and not have it at all, but I feel like my purpose in life is to have this conversation. So thank you for being here. Through this difficult conversation, clearly I allowed myself to express myself and what I thought was going to be an eight-minute episode turned into one of the longest episodes of a while over 20 minutes. So thank you for being here, man, thank you for being here. Please share with your friends. It's how the podcast will grow. It's how the podcast gets better.
Speaker 1:I don't ask for anything in return.
Speaker 1:I never say, hey, buy my product.
Speaker 1:I'm not selling anything. I like to think that my value comes from the things that I'm going through and share with you, and I hope that you, as you listen to it, even if it doesn't resonate with you directly, maybe it resonates with somebody that you know needs to hear the things that I'm speaking about. Send them my way, have them listen. I'm an open book. My social media pages are open. Send me a message, let's conversate. Let's have these difficult conversations, but, as you hear me speak. Know that this doesn't change when I'm speaking to you directly. If you come to me uh, I don't like to think for advice, because who am I to give advice? Right, but you come to me to have a conversation, know that I am a person that doesn't sugarcoat the hurtful truths. I won't pat you in the back and tell you everything's going to be okay. If everything clearly is not going to be okay, let's have those conversations. Those are the conversations that get us better and, with that being said, thank you for being here and until next time.
