Episode 28: The Values that Keep us Grounded - Part 2

What do you do when life doesn’t move as quickly as you hoped? When things fall apart, opportunities stall, or discouragement creeps in? In Part 2 of this Unshaken series, Stephanie and Michael revisit two powerful values: Grow Through the Wait and Fall. Rise. Repeat. This conversation is honest, reflective, and deeply practical for anyone navigating setbacks, uncertainty, or rebuilding seasons.

Mixed & Edited by Next Day Podcast

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome to the Become Unshaken Podcast, where we journey through the hard together. We're so glad you're here. Welcome back to the Become Unshaken Podcast. My name is Stephanie Rodriguez.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

And I am Michael Rodriguez.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Today's conversation is probably one of the most honest and personal conversations we can have around resilience because we're talking today about waiting, disappointment, setbacks, and learning how to rise again. Everybody loves breakthrough moments. Everybody loves to celebrate the win. What people don't always see are the quiet seasons that happen before the breakthrough, the waiting seasons, the uncertain ones, the seasons where you wonder if what you're building is even working. And we we can speak from experience. Wolf. And I think one of the biggest misconceptions about resilience is that resilient people don't struggle. We do, right? We all do. They just learn, we learn how to keep moving while we struggle. So lately, Michael and I have had a lot of conversations about patience, perseverance, and what it means to keep showing up without becoming discouraged by the timing. And don't get me wrong, discouragement really does weigh on us too, but we rise above it. And we want to talk about how we do that because sometimes growth doesn't look exciting. Sometimes growth looks like just continuing anyway and choosing to, right? Continuing to believe, work, trust, rise. So today we're revisiting two important values. We're continuing our conversation from last week, and we're gonna talk today about growth through the weight and fall, rise, repeat, right? These are two values that have deeply shaped our lives. Michael talks about it in the book. He talks about it often when he is coaching and working with people. We're gonna talk about it today in the most real way possible. We'll bring our own examples so that we can really create some relevance on how these things show up in everyday life, right? These are not just values that live in a book, right? Or that live in Michael's mind. These are values that we talk about every day. Because if there's one thing that life guarantees, we can all agree. It's that every single one of us will fall at some point, right? So it's not really a matter of if you're going to fall. The question is whether you're gonna rise again. Let's dive in. Let's get into that conversation. You ready?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yes, I am.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Okay. What have we been dealing with lately? Let's actually reveal a little bit about how our lives have been going as of late and how these values have really rang true for us.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah. I think first and foremost, you know, you talked about it when I when I talk to whether it's someone that I'm coaching or whether it's just friends or people in our lives. And I've also been open and honest. I I myself am not the most naturally patient person. And, you know, you think about it, and I don't know why this just jumped in my head, but you read a good book, you watch a good movie, the main character has a problem, has to endure significant struggle, go through a lot, and comes out victorious, and we love it. But the movie's two hours. And when we are living our life, and we have a problem, and now we have to struggle, and it's longer than two hours, man, we got a problem. And and I think it's so interesting that one, we we all know that life doesn't just give you what you want, and so you will work hard and you will have to wait to achieve what it is that you're seeking to achieve. And and if you could do it easily, well, it doesn't feel great to achieve, right? That's grind before glory. If you don't have to work to earn something, it doesn't give you much of a rewarding feeling. You're not rewarded for it, you don't feel great, lack of fulfillment, etc. So we know, and we even love that story, but when we ourselves are in it, man, it feels like a different ball game.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Right? Much less inspiring when I'm going through it.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

And it's it's just so interesting.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Yeah, we can watch it all day if it's happening to someone else. Yeah, we're like when we have to live it. Oh, it's uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Oh, it it feels terrible. And you know, life also makes you wait.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

And I think it really wasn't until I became a full-fledged adult and started my my business, right? And started, I got into the restaurant industry, and then I also became a daddy shortly thereafter. And all of a sudden, there are just things as life gets more serious, and as you get older that you realize, man, I I've got all these goals. Life says wait. And when I consider, you know, a few things. We'll first talk about the business. I thought when I bought that first restaurant, I was looking at 30 days, maybe 60 days of oh, really hard work. Oh, it's gonna work so hard. And then it was just gonna turn that puppy around, and I was gonna be printing money, and I was gonna be living life, and I was gonna be buying all these stores. And that did not happen.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

No, you don't happen.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

If if you've heard one episode or read three pages of my book or seen anything on our socials, yeah, you'll know that quite honestly, even 16 years, I'm still waiting.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Yeah. Can I say though, what's so interesting about that? And I promise I I I want to hear the rest of what you were going to say. Yeah, jump in. Don't forget your point. But it's so interesting. Even when we see overnight successes, quote unquote overnight successes on social, like celebrated, they are never really overnight successes, right? People have been out there grinding for years, even decades, even. I think about musicians, I think about comedians, I think about artists, I think about people that have put their work out. And it's not until it's seen by maybe one person of impact that it then becomes this amazing big thing. So I think to your point, there's so many people out in the world grinding and waiting. And they have to, they're forced, they have to face that reality that it's not gonna happen until it's meant to happen.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Absolutely. For for every, you know, 14, 15-year-old celebrity or musician that hits it, there are 500,000 who are still sleeping on the couch at 41 waiting for that break. And, you know, it it is incredible. And and yeah, just because someone shows up overnight to you doesn't, you know, it wasn't overnight for them. Yeah. And, you know, I I was talking about, you know, 16 years into the business, and I still haven't broken through. Now, now that may sound crazy to anyone listening that, you know, and when as I talk and I even do some consulting and stuff with other business owners, you know, they look at expansion and go, well, of course you made it. Whoa. No, every time you expand, you start over. The clock starts again. The need to wait and be patient and work and grind daily starts over every time you take on a new loan, every time you take on a new opportunity, every time you take on a new challenge, you grow from the previous experiences, right? So I'm not, I don't have 25 restaurants with no experience. No, I've gained a ton of experience. But life and the bank and the economy and everything else in life is going to make me wait. And that is a reality. And so, you know, again, I'll talk to people who want to expand professionally the way that I have, and I say, okay, that's fine, but this is what you need to understand, right? And eventually you got to make some tough decisions and you got to understand where you're going to go and what you're going to do and what this actually means. But growth doesn't mean success. You've got to grow in the weight. You've got to wait and survive and build. And then you get that glory, right? And I think it's really important to recognize that when we also get in that dangerous space of comparison. So you're out there and you're grinding like crazy and you're working and you're working and you're doing what you're supposed to do, and you're staying disciplined, and you're trying to remain active in the patient waiting that you're there. And you just don't know why it hasn't happened yet. And it's happened for this person or that person, or I see this. First of all, we all run our own races. Second of all, everyone, almost everyone, okay. Caveat. I don't know everyone's life. Sure. Almost everyone needs to wait. You want to get that first home loan? You don't graduate from college and buy a house. You don't have a part-time job and say, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna I'm gonna buy a home. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. You've got to build.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

And you've got to, again, when life makes you wait. The bank made me wait for seven years before I got to go from one to three restaurants. Seven years.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Which also requires you to stay disciplined, right? So you can't just look at that, get frustrated, and then move on or or make some really terrible decision just in the moment, choosing maybe today over tomorrow. And then also sacrificing that discipline that helps you maintain focus on what your goal is. So they're all so connected. All these values are so, so, so connected for a resilient mindset. And to your point, it's accepting the truth of that and the reality of that, that it doesn't just come overnight, these things that you're we're after. Because if you look around, you can get really lost really fast if what you want is what you see and you're not willing to wait for it.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

The amount of times I would say in the first 10 years of my professional career that I would look or talk to friends, or I would look and see what you know, my friends are on a vacation with their family. Oh, our annual vacation. And I'm thinking, what's an annual vacation? I can't go anywhere. I can't leave for more than three days.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

And here I got people going on annual vacations. I got people who get insurance from their job.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

And if they can do that, great, right? But if you're also getting into debt and sacrificing, you know, other things that are far more meaningful in order to be able to do that. That's also not what we're after.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, 100%. It listen, we always say you got to be disciplined, and it's in the book. I don't know if I've emphasized it much on the podcast, but financial discipline is about the the greatest gift that people usually give themselves. So 100% hear that. But but really what I'm saying is, you know, people can look at me and go, man, he's his own boss. I wish I was my own boss. Uh, I wish I could just do what I wanted to do, and this is how I would do it if I didn't have a boss to answer to and an organization under above me, and yada yada yada. And then here's the business owner that, you know, every nine to five is like, man, I wish I could do that. And I'm sitting here as a business owner thinking, man, I wish I had insurance. I wish I had a 401k, I wish I could go to the doctor, I wish I got vacation time. You know, it just don't get caught there. One, right? But again, when when we talk about getting back into patients, as I'm just slowly dreaming about the what-ifs, right? And the things that that required me, you know, over the last five years, I've really come to accept that reality and and see my blessings for what they are and recognize the blessings that you know others have that aren't in in you know, their own business owners and things like that. But I digress. When it comes to patience, right? We we talk about it being active. We're still being active in that wait, but we also have to again accept the fact that waiting is a reality. And the more that you fight the reality of waiting, the more you fight having patience, really the more frustrated you get, or the more undisciplined you get, and the again further away from your future goals and purposes you become, right? It ties a lot to patience and discipline really do tie a lot within each other because both require kind of active pursuit of a future and making decisions today for that future. But but that patience is all about typically we don't choose to be patient. Typically, you are forced to wait. And life forces you to wait for in a million different places.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

But you still have a choice, right? So to your point, you can choose to be active or you can choose to be passive. So, so definitely don't, you know, miss here. We are saying don't be passive, right? You can choose that, but there is so much at risk when you do, right? Because again, resentment or lack of discipline sets in and you and you just start losing focus. You start losing hope is really what you start losing. And that is dangerous. That's a dangerous place to be, is to see things that you want or desire a certain state and be without hope. And then you start really acting out of desperation, which is really no good for yourself or or for the people around you. And if I think about seasons of waiting, you're always in a season of waiting at for something at some point. And the season of waiting that I feel like we are in now for us and for me personally, I would say even with Become Unshaken, right? We are we are waiting, but being very active in that wait to reach as many people as possible, right? To really break through with the movement that we are trying to create. And then personally, I'm in a season of waiting with my career. If I think about the role that I'm in now, making an impact wherever and however I can for as many people as I can. Sometimes I've been in a state of my career where I know what my next move will be. And then then there are others where I'm just I'm not sure. I'm kind of waiting to see what doors end up opening, and that's where I'm at now. But I'm not being passive by any means. I'm making as much impact as possible where I am and always looking for opportunity to make more.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

That's right. Yeah, I know. If you throw your hands up, you're not getting any closer to the end goal, you're not getting any closer to the future that you want, you're not getting any closer to uh, you know, living and anchoring into that purpose. You really are just treading water. And when you do that, as you said, right, it your future now just gets farther away, or time goes on and you're no closer to where it is that you want to be. And what what comes from that? Hopelessness, right? And we want we want to be the antithesis of that. We want to remain active. We want to work towards that future because that's actually what drives then hope for that future. And it is when you're making those active decisions. It's when you're active in working hard, it's when you're active in being disciplined, it's when you're active in the patience, right? You're growing in the weight. Those seven years of forced weight that I just talked about, I became a phenomenal operator. I learned everything about my business, everything that I wanted to know and everything I didn't want to know. And how did that benefit me? That's when I went from one to three. I then was operator of the year. Well, go figure. All of that active effort and work ethic and energy put into being active in my forced weight prepared me for that opportunity that finally came. Right. And so I never lost hope for what I was trying to do and where I was trying to go. And every day, listen, over seven years, listen, that's that's a long time. That's tough. Doesn't mean that every day I woke up and I said, Yippee, let me go, stay active in this forced weight and grind like I can grind.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

No, it's a struggle.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

It is a struggle, and yet I still maintain hope because I got up. What did I do? I fell, I would fall, I would rise, and then I would repeat.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

And what makes that possible, and we've talked about this, it's so important to kind of place this here, is trust, right? So, so we've talked about how you know that rising again is gonna work, or that you even can or should. It's because you've done it before and you can trust yourself to do it again, right? So you have to prove, you have to, you have to build the muscle somehow. But that muscle isn't isn't starting from a great place. It starts small. And you have to, you have to choose intentionally, right, to grow through the weight, to remain disciplined. And when you fall, you rise again. And that repeated process is what builds memory for yourself, trust in yourself, hopefulness, right, that really does lead to a resilient mindset. It's it's amazing how it all works together. You really can't have one without the other, but but that trust, I think it's so well placed at this point in the conversation because it only gets formed in your mind when you choose to do it repeatedly.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah, and and again, every day we're gonna have a different amount of energy and capacity to do these things. But the more you do it, the more it becomes who we are, the easier these decisions become. And listen, I don't know where you are in in your journey of resilience. I don't know where you are. I don't know if some of these things make a ton of sense and you've been doing them for forever, or if some of these things you've never really done. When you collectively combine these four values, these four characteristics, right, that we build what we call the unshaken mindset, it does become easier. It does not eliminate the forced weight, it does not eliminate the need to grind, right? And patience is or discipline is not always easy. But the more you do it, the easier those things become. And as you build that momentum, again, fueled by your purpose, remember to anchor and re-anchor and re-anchor again to that purpose. These things become easier. When you put enough of these together for long enough, you can choose joy. That is what we want. Uh the deeper we get into this mission and the more kind of organic growth and interactions and conversations that we have had. I don't care who it is in what sector of the professional world we come across. We are all looking for hope. We are all looking to choose joy, and the need for resilience teaching and building is everywhere. And so we are here trying to encourage you. And and we talked about Stephanie just said, you need to have trust in your ability to do it. If you aren't there yet, we are asking you to trust us that if you can combine these four values and you take time and your silence and you anchor to your purpose to energize and fuel the strength necessary to build that muscle of resilience, you can choose joy. And so please, we are we are asking maybe it feels like blind trust, uh, but out of experience, years and decades of experience. There are always two ways to respond to everything to lay down or to rise and repeat. One way we can hold that hope back or or subdue that hope, make it feel far away, make things feel less than joyful.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

So let's talk about fall rise repeat. Between last episode and this episode, we've had so many opportunities for examples, real examples like our health and career, parenting, especially. And you've talked a lot about the business, but with fall rise repeat, I know that this this year, this year was kind of a tough start. And it could be a really great, relevant example for our listeners to hear a little bit about how you approached the start of the year, thinking specifically about fall, rise, repeat as a value. So so just if you can reflect on that. How did you how did you think the start of the year went? And what was the the reality of the mindset of become unshaken, this this resilient mindset that you embrace so so intentionally? How did that factor in?

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Yeah, I alluded to it uh at some of the earlier podcasts in the year for sure, just because it was inescapable, quite honestly. The first three months, Q1 of of this year for for the business and for the restaurants is absolutely brutal. Had to make difficult decisions, had to close a couple restaurants just because. Because that is what was best for the health of the entire portfolio, you know, to to be stealing from successful locations to simply keep the doors open at others really doesn't make financial economic sense at all. You know, but first of all, that's a that's a very difficult decision to make.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

You you put a lot of time and energy and work and resources into each restaurant, each location, right? There, each one of them feels like an extension of you. And to almost have the sense of needing to accept defeat in in two of these stores, that was tough. That was tough. And again, a lot of external circumstances made it an easier decision, but it still felt bad. It still felt sad even. And so to start the year off making those difficult decisions and closing up shop, to then be bombarded by one of the closed restaurants, the landlord absolutely just laid in and laid on financial burdens that that quite honestly could not be met realistically. And then, you know, 25 restaurants, everything's breaking all the time. I had equipment failures, I had other landlords coming up with random bills that have never been heard before. I had vendors who were charging way too much, up to four times what they were supposed to, and trying to get the ACH, you know, auto debits out. And insurance companies make mistakes. I mean, anywhere and everywhere I looked, organizations, companies that I do business with were taking my money. And then we had leaky faucets that required digging up ground and closing restaurants, and it was never ending. It felt as though it was never ending. And quite honestly, at times it almost feels like a personal attack. You look at life and you say, What are you trying to prove? What are you trying to do? Right. You're sitting here, we've started a brand on resilience, and I think, all right, you wanna you wanna test it. You want to test it. And I'll be honest. Emotionally, it was incredibly difficult to weather. It was a very hard three and a half months of life, of professional life. It was just brutal and never ending. And literally, almost every day it felt like something major popped up. And you know, you zoom out and you think, I don't think I can do this. I don't think this is gonna work. I I don't have I don't have what it's I don't have the money that it's gonna take to survive this. And like always, I was given a choice. And by who? By me. Right? And there's no boss, there's no one else that's saying, well, you gotta get up and go to work. You're gonna have to steal grind before that glory, you're gonna have to figure it out. Nope. Every day that alarm goes off, and it is my decision to make as a human being. Am I going to stay down or am I going to rise and repeat, no matter what? I will say that that this professional journey has made it so that even when emotionally I am not sure that I've got what it takes that I mentally and physically do. I will say that that my muscle of resilience has been built greatly both by life and this career that I have chosen, so that when circumstances look dire, I still have the faith that as long as I continue to get up, as long as I continue to fight, as long as I grind, as long as I stay disciplined, as long as I remain patient and grow in that weight, as long as I rise after I fall, I will be okay. And I will say that this felt, this this first start of the year, this really felt heavy and big and scary. But I also had joy. And you know, if you're not in my heart and you're not in my mind, and you're not in my life, and you're not in my tribe. You don't know if that's real or not. But man, it was. And it is, and it remains true. And I think that's also the reason that we have found and I have found and believe that this is something that can change lives.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

And so a way of being a hundred percent, a way of being, a way of living, a way of feeling, and it's achievable by effort. It can be chosen. And I think, again, that's the differentiator is that these principles of silence and purpose and the unshaken mindset, the values of that unshaken mindset, hard work, patience, discipline, and perseverance. All of those things are a choice. You can choose to know what your purpose is, you can take that time, you can choose to anchor to that purpose, and you can choose to work hard, you can choose to be patient, you can choose to be disciplined, you can choose to get up. And when you make all those choices, the circumstances aren't what make us feel bad or good. It doesn't take our joy. You can actually have joy regardless, and and living that, right? And again, we we started this brand and we're loving it, and we believe in it fully. And I truly feel as though life said, prove it. And to go through those very difficult days and weeks and months to apply these principles successfully. To have gone through it, and listen, we're not done, we're not gonna be down for for many years. But the reality is that doing these things can give you the capacity to choose joy no matter what. Yeah. Right? And now you want to add that we had family members who got really sick and injured. That terrible things in life happen to each one of us every single day with no conclusion, or with a conclusion that is nothing short of absolutely heartbreaking.

unknown 29:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

And yet we have a choice. We are still afforded a choice, and that choice is to lay down and quit, or that choice is to get up and to choose joy.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Yeah. You say it often, right? Life isn't fair, but choose to get up anyway. And and we have to, right? For the people that we love and and for the love we have for ourselves, right? We just give ourselves grace within that. So, you know, part of part of my role in in this journey as we face the first part of this year was helping you rise, right? That was part of my my role as as a member of your tribe. And and for some of you, if you're dealing with a slower season and you can help be that person for someone else, do it. Dive in, be part of that tribe for someone else. But if you're somebody that needs it yourself, if you're down, if you're kind of in that pit right now, trust that you can rise above it and you can choose joy, right? And you'll do it because you can and because we believe in you. And so we are here absolutely cheering you on because the inevitable is true, right? The the falls are gonna happen and they're gonna happen often. But we can choose to get up, we can choose joy, we can anchor to our purpose, right? And we can find those moments for ourselves to make sure our cups are filled so that we can continue to pour out, we continue to grind, we continue to stay disciplined and grow through the weight. That they're all connected and they're all here for you, every single one of these values. So, in conclusion, I do want to say that that one thing we hope you take away from today is this the waiting season is not actually wasted. Even when it feels slow, even if it feels frustrating or unfair, some of the most important growth in your life is happening in seasons where nobody else can see it. And the truth is, resilience is rarely built in comfort. So lean into those places where discomfort is real, where you're uncertain about what's going to happen. It's built in the moments where you have every reason to quit, every reason to shrink back, even lose hope, but you choose to keep going anyway. We've both experienced moments where life has knocked us down, moments where things didn't go the way we planned, and where disappointment really did feel heavy. But one of the most powerful, powerful things that you can learn is this falling is not failing. Staying down is. So if you're in a waiting season right now, keep growing. If you're rebuilding, keep rising. If you're discouraged, keep moving. You may be closer than you realize. So thank you for spending time with us today. And this if this episode encouraged you, I hope that it did. We hope that it did. Share it with someone who may need the reminder that they're capable of rising too. Make sure to download this episode, right? Downloads do matter, they help us reach even more people. And as always, we want to remind you that joy is always possible, regardless of circumstance. And we hope that you choose joy. So we will see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Everybody have a great week.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

We're so glad you joined us today. If you found inspiration through today's episode, share it with a friend and make sure to follow so you don't miss what's ahead. Until next time, choose joy, regardless, in whatever comes your way. See you next week.