This sucks! I am not gonna do this.
How many times we have been through this only realizing that if we had embraced the suck, things would have been a lot different!
Sharing bigIdeas from the book "Embrace the Suck" - a book about resilience and how to deal with adversity - written by Brent Gleeson, a former Navy SEAL combat veteran turned entrepreneur and speaker.
The book is based on the author's experience as a Navy SEAL and the principles he learned in the military that can be applied to personal and professional life. The book provides tools and frameworks for dealing with adversity and embracing challenges.
Why do I recommend this? It is a raw, brutally honest, in-your-face self-help guide that teaches readers how to use pain and discomfort as a motivator to achieve their goals.
Btw, what am I reading now? Star Wars made easy (helped me really understand the crazy thinking behind Star Wars series).
Anyways, sharing bigIdeas from the book Star Wars made easy.
Do something that sucks, everyday.
Stress and anxiety can be great tools if you know how to use them and choose to use them. With all the media and medical attention on the negative impacts of stress, it’s easy to conclude it’s irredeemably bad, something to be avoided at all costs.
This applies to both physical and emotional stress and anxiety.
Pain is a pathway.
Life will eventually knock you hard on your a**.
Accepting that fact is a stepping-stone to growth. Just expect pain. Constantly trying to avoid hardship and pain will only hold you back. Each experience, each moment that you have is precious.
Challenge every moment to make the best out of even the worst circumstances. You may well be amazed at the power, wisdom and strength you gain in the process.
“You might be wondering this and telling me to go f*** myself, that I haven’t been through the kind of suffering you’ve endured. And that may very well be true. My intention with this book is not to appear that I know it all or have experienced all the hardships life has to suffer. I’m simply providing a tool to use in your own way while navigating darkness and uncertainty.” – Brent Glesson
The point is we all have our own journeys. We all have to embrace the suck along the way.
If you ain’t falling, you ain’t trying.
Failure is usually a fairly demoralizing and upsetting experience. It can alter your perception and make you believe things that simply aren’t true.
Unless you learn to respond to failure in psychologically adaptive ways, it can paralyze you and ultimately keep you from moving forward.
To deal with inevitable setbacks, Embrace the Suck has eight failure realities that you must understand:
Reality 1: Failure makes the same goal seem less attainable.
In one study of a special operations sniper school, instructors had their students fire at targets from the same distance on an unmarked range. They then had the students estimate the distance to the targets.
Students who scored lower believed the targets to be significantly farther out than students who scored the highest. Failure distorts perception if you allow it to.
Reality 2: Failure alters your perception of your abilities.
As much as failure can distort your perception of goals, it can also alter your assumptions about ability. Students who fail the selection process fall into deep depression -sometimes even become suicidal.
Failure can make us doubt our skills, intelligence and capabilities. Simply acknowledging this is the first step to self-correction.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to NBW: Your homepage to AI, Startups and Personal Growth to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.