In this episode, Leif and Daphne review Daphne's STRUGGLE acronym. They discuss struggles they have overcome in life and fitness, and how you can use adversity as an impetus for growth.
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We're on a mission to help 1,000,000 vegans get into the best shape of their lives because we believe that the more healthy, fit vegans there are in the world, the faster veganism will spread. Let’s work together to inspire change, spread compassion, and challenge the status quo.
In this episode, Leif and Daphne review Daphne's STRUGGLE acronym. They discuss struggles they have overcome in life and fitness, and how you can use adversity as an impetus for growth.
Register for Menopause Mastery: https://www.vegansuperheroacademy.com/menopause-mastery
CONNECT WITH THE VEGAN GYM:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
NEW TO THE VEGAN GYM?
We're on a mission to help 1,000,000 vegans get into the best shape of their lives because we believe that the more healthy, fit vegans there are in the world, the faster veganism will spread. Let’s work together to inspire change, spread compassion, and challenge the status quo.
Are you going to let life just happen to you? Are you going to let adversity win, or are you going to take that and make something from it? My name is Leigh Farneson. My brother, anders and I are on a mission to help 1 million vegans get into the best shape of their lives. We firmly believe that the more healthy and fit vegans there are in the world, the faster veganism will spread. Let's work together to inspire change, spread compassion and challenge the status quo. Welcome to the Vegan Gym Podcast. So we've both been reading the biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which has been a really engaging and entertaining read for me. What have been? I know you're not all the way through it. I've read through it twice and I'm gonna read through it a bunch more. What has really stood out to you about Elon and his journey?
Speaker 2:one. Well, thank you for recommending the book, and I would definitely want to recommend it to others because I've really enjoyed it. I think I had a misperception of Elon Musk in terms of you know, you see Tesla, you see SpaceX, but I had no idea what it took to get those two companies to where they are today, and the fact that, in many ways, they almost weren't both of them. They almost weren't.
Speaker 1:They almost weren't, both of them. They almost weren't. So what I took away is a better understanding of the struggles that Elon went through and he's 300 million dollars.
Speaker 2:He could have just that could have been it. Yeah, he could have, just he could have done whatever he wanted, but he was not one to stay comfortable yes, he's.
Speaker 1:He's a great example of seeking discomfort, of almost needing. The book talks a lot about his need for just kind of drama and chaos and I think definitely there's a lot of this need to seek struggle and discomfort and I think he just needs to be in a place of kind of mental torment.
Speaker 2:I can do without the mental torment. I'm not saying I recommend it. I'm just saying that seems to be his diagnosis, but I do love that he didn't waver. I mean his focus on electric vehicles and the impact on the environment that never changed and, you know, trying to find a pathway to get there. And then the same thing with SpaceX. I mean even just the creativity of going from outsourcing everything to insourcing it and building it ourselves.
Speaker 1:I really give him kudos for not allowing any of his struggles to become obstacles to doing what he knew was the right thing to do. One of the most powerful quotes that I've seen or heard from Elon is when he said my proceeds from PayPal were 180 million. Okay, so 180, I think I said 300. Anyways, a lot of money. He can do whatever he wants. I put $100 million into SpaceX, $70 million into Tesla and $10 million into SolarCity. I had to borrow money for rent, which is just. There's a lot that you can take from that. He clearly is not a normal guy. He's a risk taker, very much so. Anyways, the reason that we're bringing him up is because we want to talk about struggle. You led a really awesome masterclass where you were talking through an acronym for the word struggle, and I'd love to start pulling that apart and understanding how do you view struggle and how do you turn struggle into strength.
Speaker 2:Well, it was reading this book that actually prompted me to come up with this acronym. So let me walk through the word struggle, S-T-R-U-G-G-L-E, and I've put a meaning to each letter that is positive, not negative. So the S in struggle stands for showing up, and that showing up even when it's hard, because it's easy to give into our excuses and take a day off. But the true test is showing up every day, even when it's hard to do the work. And so you have to show up for yourself every single day, even when you're going through struggles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really. I love that you start the acronym with this, because that's really kind of where it all starts. So, being able to show up and just I don't think maybe everyone fully appreciates the power of showing up and people tend to focus more on okay, what's the outcome? What are you doing once you show up? No, how about we just show up? How about we just start with the process of literally just getting to the start line, because most people are never going to get there?
Speaker 2:And it's easy to shy away from showing up, or something that I see sometimes in coaching is people hide. So you have to show up to the starting line. You have to show up for yourself, because if you don't show up you're not going to make any progress anyways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crucial.
Speaker 2:So the next letter is T, and that is for tenacity in the face of adversity. So I think and this is something I saw in Elon is that, despite all of the adversity he encountered Despite all of the adversity he encountered, I mean watching your rocket go up you get separation of stage one and then it crashes into the ocean. So tenacity separates those who achieve greatness from those who fall short. Because it would have been easy the first time, the second time, the third time the rocket launch failed to say I'm done, but he kept coming back. And so you can't let your setbacks define you. You actually have to use them as stepping stones toward growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, One of the most powerful stories from his journey with all of his companies at least for me was with SpaceX on launch number three. And he's like this is all I got. We need to. This launch must be successful. And then it failed and he just like, right after the rocket, I think it blew up or whatever.
Speaker 1:So the rocket blows up and then he's just kind of solemnly taking a moment in the control room and then he's just kind of solemnly taking a moment in the control room and then he, he tells everyone okay, pull together every single resource we have. We've got some spare parts in this other, in our factory, or I forget the exact details. But he says, hey, we are going to get to Mars, I don't care, I will go broke before we decide to press the stop button. And I think there was one account from one of his senior engineers or something, who was part of this launch, who said, right when it blew up, just completely deflated, feeling like that was it. All these hopes and dreams are just gone now to feeling elated and recharged and just feel this intense drive after elon said we're not giving up I do not care what happens as long as I'm breathing, we're going to keep pushing forward.
Speaker 2:That's tenacity.
Speaker 1:And then they ultimately got that fourth launch to be successful. And then they got a huge contract from NASA for like I guess it was I don't know, I forget the exact order of events, but it was maybe tens of millions, and then hundreds of millions, and then a billion dollar contract, something like that. And then they started gaining more momentum, but just the ability to stare failure in the face again and again and again and say I'm not giving up. I'm never going to give up.
Speaker 2:That's what we all have to do, and maybe it's not going to Mars. It could be as simple as running a 5K, but you have to stare failure in the face and say you're not giving up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and thanks for bringing it back to health and fitness, because that's really what our goal is to pull stories from our experience or from Elon's story and just demonstrate the power of showing up, demonstrate the power of tenacity and the other things that we'll be talking about within this acronym. But yeah, it doesn't matter if it's a 5K or you're talking about building a rocket company. What are you doing to show up every single day, in the midst of failure, in the face of adversity, and still taking one step forward at a time? Exactly, as long as you can do that, you can accomplish whatever it is, whether that's a 10k, 5k marathon, rocket to mars it may not be in the time frame you initially planned it, but you have to keep moving forward it almost certainly will not be in the timeframe.
Speaker 1:You initially planned it, but you have to keep moving forward.
Speaker 2:It almost certainly will not be in that timeframe, which is why you need the next letter, which is R for resilience. So you know, coming back from adversity, it's not simply. Sometimes, I think, we think about resilience as I got through it and I'm moving forward. Resilience as I got through it and I'm moving forward. But I like to think of it as how do I grow stronger through each of those challenges? How does my resiliency grow? Because I can't just have a fixed level of resiliency and keep navigating through life. I think I get stronger every time I encounter a setback. So this needs to be an opportunity for you to grow, to develop and become stronger and more capable as you're going through each struggle.
Speaker 1:Have you heard of the book Anti-Fragile?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, we need to talk about that one, all right cool, so I've only read it once.
Speaker 1:Sounds like you've read it as well.
Speaker 2:I have not read the whole thing yet.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, it's a very good book and the fundamental premise is quite simple, and it's just the idea that there are various objects and substances that actually get stronger the more they're exposed to any kind of elements or heat or whatever, and the same thing can go for a business or a person on their health and fitness journey. How do you become anti-fragile, where obstacles that you face can't just not break you but can actually make you stronger and create you into kind of an anti-fragile being?
Speaker 2:I think we need to put that on our podcast list.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, we can do it. It's actually been years since I read it, so I could use a refresher as well. Okay, but it's a cool idea.
Speaker 2:I picked it up during the pandemic, so it's time to go back and look at it with a fresh set of eyes, because there were just a lot of things going on that I think that was a good metaphor during the pandemic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it certainly was.
Speaker 2:I mean going back to resilience. That is exactly the mindset that you need to have in terms of when you're going through struggles. You need to get stronger. You don't grow weaker. You need to become smarter and stronger as you navigate each struggle in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you have any kind of like personal example of that?
Speaker 2:Too many I mean I would say low effort struggles would be when I was applying. So coming out of college I applied both for to become a Rhodes Scholar and to become a Marshall Scholar. The Rhodes Scholarship was the first application process and I did not win that attempt to become a Rhodes Scholar and initially I was gutted but I think I bounced back stronger, understanding. You know how did I learn from that and come back stronger and say I'm going to do it again. I learn from that and come back stronger and say I'm going to do it again, I'm going to go do this, just going to apply again and do something else. So I retreated for a while and had to kind of regroup and say why didn't I have the outcome I expected? But then I realized that no one's going to stop me from doing it except me, so I just need to try again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good example.
Speaker 2:So which goes to you because it is you is understanding that setbacks are part of the journey. So I know that oftentimes we think going from. We set a goal, we want to go from A to B and we think it's going to be a straight line, but we both know there's no straight line. That it's. That road is going to be ups and downs. You're going to take 10 steps forward, three steps back, and you have to understand that you're never going to achieve anything worth achieving by just getting there linearly. And it's through that journey and knowing that you have setbacks that you become stronger and better. So embrace the idea that setbacks are part of your journey and knowing that you have setbacks that you become stronger and better. So embrace the idea that setbacks are part of your journey and understand that that is the case.
Speaker 2:But you also need to have gratitude, which is the first G. So gratitude for each lesson you learned. Every setback, every failure is an opportunity for growth and learning. And when you approach these moments of gratitude, you can shift your perspective from being frustrated to being appreciative. And it may not be in the moment. You know we suffer a lot of hard things in life and it may take a month, three months, a year, before you can be grateful for that lesson learned and understand what you were supposed to, how it was supposed to contribute to you becoming stronger and better. But you have to have gratitude for those lessons All of the struggles are. I don't want to say there's a purpose for the struggle, but there is definitely a lesson you need to learn from each struggle.
Speaker 1:How do you apply that more actively? So it's not typically the gratitude comes as you touched on, months later, potentially years later. How can you kind of maybe take a more empowering stance and try to acknowledge gratitude for hard things and gratitude for adversity, maybe not exactly in the moment, but as soon thereafter as possible?
Speaker 2:Oh, leif, that's a tough one. I mean I can share how I approach that. I don't presume to say that it'll work for everyone, and every now and again I'll actually say in my head what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So if something bad happens, I try and understand right then in the moment why is this happening and what do I need to learn from it and what can I be grateful for? As I'm processing it, because the retrospective scope can be long, but I agree with you, whether it's I've had a crappy run and trying to figure out, okay, today's one really sucked. But what is this sucky run teaching me and what can I be grateful for having had this opportunity to have a sucky run? Or it could be, you know, family challenges that you're trying to navigate.
Speaker 2:Okay, Things are tough right now. What do I need to learn from this? But, more importantly, what can I be grateful for having had the opportunity to navigate this? It's a little bit of that's how I do it, because otherwise some of the setbacks they can really knock you down. You know the little ones like the sucky runs. You always you can recover from a sucky run. It's not life shattering events that you need to be able to look at, for that immediate understanding, to the best extent possible, of why and what can I be grateful for coming out of this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the way I kind of process it is similar. I'm trying to look for the opportunity in the midst of setbacks and adversity as quickly as possible. So, as an example, just kind of off the top of my head, we've been working to kind of dial things in with our advertising campaigns and trying to make ads that really communicate the brand we're trying to build and the message we're trying to spread. And about a year and a half ago we were starting to build up some good momentum with our advertising and then Facebook shut down our account, just no questions asked, nothing that you can possibly do. I spent hours and hours on trying to get in touch with people on the phone. In fact, my cousin works at Facebook and I was trying to make some progress through that channel. Nothing worked we got precisely nowhere worked. We got precisely nowhere. And then, I guess largely due to the fact that our backs were up against the wall and we had no other option than to figure it out, I shifted my perspective to what is the opportunity here? How can we make this situation a good thing and what can we learn to become better from this process? And that's admittedly not an easy thing to do, especially depending on the type of situation you're dealing with, like you talked about, if you're experiencing some serious financial or some serious difficulties with your family or your partner or whatever, or you experience some serious diagnosis, either for yourself or someone you love. There are lots of challenges that are bigger than your ad account getting shut down, but for me, that was a huge blow because we're like, just we had spent months trying to like, dial this in and get things working and it was finally starting to build some momentum, and then just immediately we got shut down. Still don't know exactly why that happened. We have some ideas, but it wasn't. We didn't do anything clearly wrong, so it was a little frustrating, but anyways, that was the way we were trying to grow our business. It was kind of a difficult time financially and we really needed to make this work, and then it just turned off. So what are you going to do? You have to figure it out. So we got creative, we came up with new solutions and it ended up becoming an actually really great thing for us because it spurred new growth and new opportunities, and that's what I.
Speaker 1:I have been working to develop the ability to view challenges and adversity through that same lens and, as I just touched on, it's admittedly easier in some areas of your life than others. But constantly asking yourself what is the learning moment here, what is the opportunity here, what is kind of the larger picture here? Just asking yourself questions to try to better understand what can I learn from this. And speaking of serious kind of health diagnoses, when I was diagnosed with cancer, which kind of sparked my whole vegan journey and kind of focus on plant-based living and is the reason we're sitting down and recording this podcast right now, I didn't see all of that back then and I went through a really low period for a few months when I received that diagnosis.
Speaker 1:But I tried to quickly as I possibly could after, tried to shift that toward a place of empowerment where I said, okay, I feel like the let's call it kind of the traditional medical world kind of didn't serve me in the way that I felt health should be approached and the opportunity there was what am I going to do to take control of my health and fitness?
Speaker 1:What am I going to do to learn how to become super healthy and fit? And that really pushed me down the path of lifestyle medicine and understanding that you can really have a ton of power over your health by making the right lifestyle decisions, specifically nutrition, and that gave me a brand new perspective on health and fitness. It gave me tons of new opportunities for learning new things about how I can be as healthy and fit as possible and who knows, that might have added another decade or more to my total health span by taking control of my health, because I experienced a difficult diagnosis, so that's maybe a more extreme example of how I've tried to use adversity as an opportunity and view things through that lens.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if that's helpful, but no, I think people will find that helpful because you could have, as you said, you had a down period. You could have stayed down. But I think what I also heard you say ties into the next G, which is growth. So you went through a significant period of growth as you navigated that diagnosis, both in understanding what you can do for yourself. So how do you empower yourself? You can't assume that someone else is going to heal you in your situation.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to say that for everyone. I love modern medicine, but I do think that lifestyle medicine should be a primary way that we approach disease prevention and disease management and disease reversal. But the personal growth that you described going through that journey is really what that second G is meant to represent, because every challenge gives you an opportunity to grow, or doesn't? I mean you can definitely go through a challenge and not grow, but coming out of the depths of a challenge and better understanding how can I grow out of this or what can I learn from this? That is what the second G is meant to represent.
Speaker 1:Your challenges are really what you make them, and if you have to pay the price of facing a challenge, don't you want to get something from that? If you're going through a really difficult time, the ultimate losing situation is you go through adversity and you just say, why, me, that wasn't fair, I shouldn't have had to experience that. I hope I never have to experience that again. That was terrible. Life is unfair. That again, that was terrible. Life is unfair. That's kind of the ultimate losing position that you can have. So are you going to let life just happen to you? Are you going to let adversity win, or are you going to take that and make something from it?
Speaker 2:A passive versus an active. Yes, you again can't say how everyone else will take what we're saying and apply it to their own personal situations. But I agree with you. You can passively let it happen to you or you can actively say I'm in charge here, what can I? Take a few months where I thought why me this?
Speaker 1:isn't fair. I'm a young guy in my early 20s, I would consider to be above average health and fitness and I would say my diet was fairly quote unquote clean. I'll use the bro term in the bodybuilding world. It's kind of clean eating with lots of veggies and I was eating lots of lean meats. But relatively speaking I felt like I was doing a lot of things right, at least given what I knew at the time. And yeah.
Speaker 1:I went through a period of kind of being down and depressed and wondering why me? This isn't fair, Life's not fair. I feel like I'm taking control of my health and fitness to a greater degree than lots of my classmates who I see just eating fast food and drinking soda and staying up until 4 am. So it just it didn't seem fair. But I mean, what is that going to accomplish? If that's all I get, If that's the takeaway from my journey, from my experience?
Speaker 1:That's incredibly disempowering. And then it just further solidifies what I would call a victim mentality, where you say this is woe, is me, this shouldn't have happened to me. And I'm not saying life is fair, and I think there are many people who experience an above average level of discomfort and adversity and pain and loss. But I think through all of those experiences you can view that as an opportunity and view that as having the potential to improve your life in some tangible way, maybe not immediately, but down the road. How do we turn that into something that's going to be positive in your life? And again, I think the ultimate loss there would be experiencing adversity and gaining nothing from it.
Speaker 2:No, that is the point we're trying to make with that. The growth is an opportunity to gain. But I think you also mentioned, as you're going through that struggle, that moving to the L, as you're going through that struggle, that moving to the L, you have to love yourself. So in the early stage, post-diagnosis, when you were not in a good place, there was some self-compassion that you needed to give yourself to. I mean giving yourself time to. Sometimes I'll say okay, give yourself time to have a good cry, then pull your big girl panties up and get on with it. You do have to love yourself. You have to give yourself an opportunity to say I need a hug, I need to cry. You can't berate yourself or beat yourself up. You know, as you're going through a struggle, but to your point, you can treat yourself with compassion, but it has to be with the mindset of how to navigate the struggle, not to be stuck in a place where you don't want to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I were a few weeks into that process and you came up to me and said, oh well, the solution is plant-based nutrition. Here's a book, here are all the materials you should read, you're going to be totally fine, I probably wouldn't be too receptive to that conversation. So I totally agree. I think, depending on the significance or severity of the adversity that you are working to overcome, there does need to be typically a certain period of time where you can just kind of sit in those emotions. But then what that does eventually need to become where is the opportunity? How can I grow from this? How can I learn from this? How can I ultimately be grateful for this experience because of what it is teaching me and what doors it can open for me?
Speaker 1:And again, I think if you don't at some point add that part to your process, then I think that's a big missed opportunity. And you're then you're letting the adversity win, you're letting that dictate your life, and that kind of comes back to my thoughts on the importance of taking control of your life and taking full ownership of your life and everything that happens in your life, both good and bad, not that. And ownership does not equate to, let's say, deserving any kind of adversity or challenges, but it just means this is the hand I was dealt and I'm going to take full ownership of that. And again, I think that's incredibly empowering and the alternative is very disempowering. So if I can take full ownership, that doesn't necessarily mean that I like what I'm owning, but it means that I have control. It means that I have power. I ultimately have power over it.
Speaker 2:No, I agree with you, and that's I mean the. As you were talking, I was thinking about being paralyzed by the struggle which can happen where you feel like you are you, so that you can navigate that challenge and overcome it. But it's not easy.
Speaker 1:No, it's not easy.
Speaker 2:Which is why you need to have the E, which is endurance, because giving up is not an option. So, going back to when we were talking about Elon Musk, giving up was not an option for him and I really found that very inspirational because at every challenge, an individual who really either didn't have the vision or didn't believe in themselves, or maybe and I don't know didn't have the mental grit, could have easily tossed in the towel and just said can't do this. So you have to have endurance and understand that a struggle could be a short duration struggle, it could be a long duration struggle, but you have to be in it to win it.
Speaker 1:That's one reason that I've always loved endurance sports. Let's take an Ironman, for example, because that's the largest recent endurance event that I did. So I was out there for 15 hours. Most people finish faster than I did. I kind of imploded halfway through the run. But I love that. Every step you take or every pedal stroke you make, or every stroke in the water that you take, every single one is optional, and every single time you make one step of forward progress, you are saying I'm not giving up, Even though for most of those steps and strokes and pedal strokes, you would prefer to just pull over on the side of the road and say that's good, I'm done.
Speaker 1:I'm done is doing long, hard things that require you to continuously say yes, to struggle and knowing that you could just pull over at any point and wave the white flag and nobody would even sometimes people wouldn't even know if you're, if you're out doing a race by yourself or doing some kind of long event.
Speaker 1:but you would know you know, yeah, and it matters that that you are continuously telling yourself that you are not going to give up on your goals or you're not going to throw in the towel. So, yeah, when I, whenever I think of endurance, I think of endurance sports, because the analogy is just so. I mean, it's the embodiment of what we're talking about Just going out and doing long, hard things and putting in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of we'll call them reps, with running, biking, whatever it is, and continuing to do that, especially when you don't want to.
Speaker 2:Or especially when you're navigating additional adversity while you're doing that hard thing. Yeah, so that's the acronym STRUGGLE S for showing up, t for tenacity, r for resilience, u for understanding, g for gratitude, g for growth, l for love and E for endurance. And the reason I wanted to share that with our next level athletes is that I sometimes think that people feel that struggling is a sign of failure, and the message that we left with last night was that struggling is refusing to give up on yourself and your dreams, because if you're struggling, you're still trying, you are still moving forward, and if you look at every letter in that acronym, it means one way you can show up, you can have tenacity to keep moving forward, you can be resilient. You understand that setbacks are part of the journey. You have gratitude for every lesson you will grow from your experience. You need to love yourself through the process and you need to know that you need to have endurance, because this is a long haul.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love what you said about struggling is not failure, and I love the the idea that the only true way to fail is to give up, because I know that then the time, your time horizon, doesn't really even matter. It's. The question is are you just showing up and putting forth the effort, even if you are quote unquote failing or finding or maybe put a little bit better finding ways that didn't work for you? And what are you? If you are showing up every day and taking those steps, then ultimately, as long as you don't throw in the towel, you're going to accomplish something, and maybe it doesn't end up looking exactly like what you expected and probably the timeframe is going to be longer than you expected. But if you show up every day, and many days, that will include struggle.
Speaker 1:If you show up and push through that struggle, then even if you experience some let's call it short-term failures along the way, that doesn't mean that you are failing. It means that you are just going through the process of achieving your goals and failure and setbacks are going to be part of that. So you're learning what works and what doesn't, and I don't think it's as easy as just labeling something as a failure, I would just zoom out and say, hey, there might be a lot of points where I went in the wrong direction or I found things that did not work for me, but on a long enough time horizon I can't possibly fail because I'm not going to give up and I'll struggle, I'll work through adversity, but I can't possibly fail because I'm not going to give up. And that might mean that it takes me, might take me a week or a month or a year or a decade or a lifetime to accomplish a particular goal that I set for myself, but I didn't fail because I never gave up. Amen, all right. So yeah, again.
Speaker 1:The acronym that Daphne pulled together was for the word struggle, so showing up even when it's hard. T tenacity in the face of adversity, resilience, u understanding that setbacks are part of the journey, g gratitude for the lessons learned. G growth that comes from every experience. L love for yourself throughout the process and E endurance, because giving up is not an option. So Daphne really appreciate you sharing this with their audience.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that you're enjoying the elon musk book and I look forward to having more conversations about that same here. All right, thanks a lot. Hope that you enjoyed listening and we'll catch you on the next episode. To get access to some of our best content for free, head head over to thevegangymcom. We've got tons of articles and guides to help you burn stubborn body fat, build lean muscle and supercharge your health. You can even use our vegan nutrition calculator for free to figure out how much protein, calories and micronutrients your body needs. Get started right now at thevegangymcom.