POWC # 873 - The Right Kind of Stress

You know that the only way you get better is when you're uncomfortable. The only way you get better is when you challenge yourself. Hello and welcome to Pillars of Wealth Creation, where we talk about creating financial success with a special focus on business and real estate. I'm your host, Todd Dexheimer.

Now let's get to it. Hello and welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Todd Dexheimer, and I got another solo podcast episode. So I hope you're doing well.

Thanks for listening to the show. And I want to talk about a couple different things and just stuff on my mind, which, you know, there's always all kinds of crazy things on my mind. But today I want to talk about struggle and I want to talk about growth and I want to talk about stress. And so I think there's, I was actually listening to something and this person is talking about stress and they're talking about how to get rid of the stress in their life and breathing exercises and meditation.

And they're talking about how stress is so damaging and how we don't want to do it. And all this kind of stuff and like relieve the stress from your life. And it sounded great, by the way, like it sounded, it sounds so good. like no stress in your life.

Wow. How, how great your life would be. But then as I'm thinking about it, I'm going, well, wait a second. The stress in my life has often caused and created the most amount of growth in my life.

Uh, it's, it's definitely created the most amount of learning opportunities in my life. And so if I don't have stress, then what does that leave? And so I started thinking through that and I'm kind of like doing some research on it. And, and it comes to be that stress is actually a good thing in life.

And, you know, like schools try to teach kids to not be stressed into, uh, you know, to, to, to do these breathing exercises and things like that. But all you're doing when you're doing that is you are actually creating you're you're stunting growth right you're not allowing for your yourself to grow think about when you're exercising so when you're if you're an athlete and you're in the weight room how do you how do you get stronger do you get stronger by doing just a couple light reps and calling it a day.

No, you get stronger when you actually go to the gym and you work hard. You get a, you stress your muscles, right? You tear the fibers and that's how you grow. That's how you change.

You know, I was a distance runner and you know, could we just go out and run two miles every day, nice and light and easy. Sure. Would we get faster? Would we get stronger?

Absolutely not. So we stressed our bodies. You know, there was times where we did, you know, six, one mile repeats at race pace or even faster than race pace. And you have, just a couple minutes in between, three or four minutes in between, where you're doing a light jog, stretching out a little bit, and getting ready for the next one.

And you did a two-mile warm-up run, you're going to do a two-mile cool-down run. Stressing your body, right? You go to the gym, you lift weights, stress your body. Any athlete, if you've played football, if you've played hockey, basketball, soccer, you name it, whatever, it doesn't matter.

If you've played a sport growing up or still do today, you know that the only way you get better is when you're uncomfortable. The only way you get better is when you challenge yourself. And so when you think about that, well, obviously, you know, an athlete gets bigger, stronger, faster when they put in the hard work, when they, when they do the max reps, when they put the speed work in, you know, over distance. And it's the same thing with you and your business, you and your life and your personal life.

You're only going to get better, stronger, you know, learn more, all that kind of stuff. If you have stress in your life And I don mean to create artificial stress I don mean to go out and just create stress for stress that doesn do you any good either What I mean is you have to be uncomfortable at times You have to be willing to push your boundaries at times. You have to know that there's going to be times during your day, during your week, during your months, that you're going to be uncomfortable, that you're going to be stressed and that's okay, right?

That, that is okay. That's how you learn, you know, by, by the way, let me, let me, if you're always stressed, there's certainly something wrong too. If you're always stressed, that means you're not actually learning from your stress. You're not actually improving yourself from your stress.

You're only being stressed. Like you're only pushing your limits to the max at all times. And any good athlete knows that that's not the case either. Like we, we have to push ourselves really, really hard, but we also have to recover, right?

So if you're always stressed, if you're always pushing yourself to the max and challenging yourself, then that's not good either. Certainly. So we do have to have a balance. So I'm not telling you to be stressed all the time, push hard all the time, because then you're not truly learning either.

You're not figuring out because look, if I'm stressed, maybe I have to hire new employees. Maybe I have to come up with better systems and organization. Maybe, I mean, maybe it just that stress starts to go away as I continue to learn and grow in my business. But there's things that you do on a day-to-day basis to eliminate that high stress pressure.

And then hopefully a new high stress pressure comes on because you're challenging yourself. You're trying to grow yourself and then you eliminate that and so on and so forth. Right. When I think about the beginning of my business, there was a lot more high stress moments when I first began, But don't get me wrong.

I also had times where I was able to relax a little bit. And the only times I felt like my business was stagnating, by the way, was when I didn't have period when I had a periods of no stress for too long, or very little, right, when I just didn't feel like things were maybe on fire a little bit. So you, I want that in my life. And I don't think, uh, the, I think these people that are telling you to eliminate all the stress in your life and there's all these different ways to do it.

You can Google it, right? There's all kinds of ways to eliminate stress. I think that's hiding. And I think that's actually going to create more stress or create laziness, quite frankly, and then not allow you to truly be who you want to be and what you will want to want to achieve.

You know, you were put here for a purpose. You weren't put here to be lazy. You weren't put here to be complacent. You were put here for a purpose.

And so challenge yourself and make sure that you are growing and putting stress on your mind, putting stress on your body, putting stress on relationships, right? And then taking time, of course, for recovery too, but learning from those stresses. There was a study and it talked about students and students who use a one-on-one tutor don't tend to grow if that one-on-one tutor gives them too many of the answers or guides them too much to the answers. So the more the tutor actually guides towards the answers, the less that student actually learns and retains.

The really good tutors are the ones that challenge that student, stress that student, make sure that student actually is uncomfortable at times. And same thing with parents. You know, look, if you're always doing things, there's all kinds of studies out there that talk about it. Like if you're always doing things for your kids, they're not going to learn and grow.

They're going to expect that people do things for them all the time. And so the less you do for your kids, actually the better. Like I think myself and my wife, I think we sometimes do too much for our kids, you know, and I think she would agree. And I agree.

I mean, certainly you have to do things for your kids. You have to be there for them. But I think sometimes we tend to do too much for our kids And I think that kind of everybody right But that doesn allow them to grow And so that the challenge is where that balance Same thing when you talk too much for your kids. Let your kids talk.

Let your kids answer questions from other adults, from other kids. Don't talk for them. If somebody asks them their name and you spout out their name right away, you're not allowing them to talk and communicate. Now they just don't, you know, they think that's okay.

And when they ask them five questions and you answer four out of the five questions, or maybe even all of them, like, what are you doing? Allow them to talk, allow them to grow, allow them to feel some stress, right? You don't have to do it for them. So it goes, it goes with every aspect of life and business.

You know, think about the business leaders, the good leaders are the ones that certainly do they help and mentor and have systems and processes in place and all that kind of stuff for their employees. Yes. But they also allow their employees to do things, to make mistakes, to challenge themselves. They don't, they don't do it all for them.

They're not the micromanagers. So don't be a micromanager for, for your kids, for your, your employees, for, for anybody in your life. Don't be a micromanager. Um, yeah, so I, there's a lot of studies out there that talk about how it's great to be stress free, but there's also, I think too much evidence and many studies out there that show that stress is good in your life, but have healthy recovery, right?

Think about yourself as a, I, so one of the reasons I like sports is because I think sports truly challenges you in ways that life challenges you. And I think it really is, is a good metaphor for life. And when I think about, when you think about sports and how sports work, think about how your business can work in that same aspect. Think about how your personal life can work in that same aspect.

I mean, sometimes you are going hardcore in your business. Sometimes you have a ton of stress. Sometimes you're, you're stretching your limits, but other times you're recovering, right? And then you have the race day or you have the, the, you know, the, the game day, whatever it is, right?

So think about your business like that. Think about your life like that. And I think that's a good, to me, that's a good relation to really every aspect of your life. The last thing I want to talk about too is communication.

So this is a totally different sidebar, right? So I'm actually two into one really. But one of the things that I have really tried to focus on over the last couple years, And this is a challenge because I like to talk, as you can tell. But one of the things I have really tried to challenge myself on is listening more and talking less.

And sometimes you're shutting up and listening is actually going to create the best relationship that you can create. So, so in, in, and I need to take this more into consideration too, in my, in my marriage, um, and with my kids in my close relationships. But the thing is like, I think get really good or get as good as you can asking questions. And so that's what I've challenged myself at.

When I meet with investors, I try to learn about them. I try to ask a lot of questions. It's really easy for me to talk about myself, my business, all that kind of stuff. And certainly that comes into the conversation because that's why we're meeting.

But I also want to learn about them. Do they have kids? What are the kids into? What are they into?

What are their hobbies? Where do they work? Why are they working there? What do they want out of investing?

What do they want out of life? Like, what are they looking for? Are they married? You know, what, what's that relationship like?

All that kind of stuff. I want to learn about them. And I, I find that I get actually more out of my meetings and more out of that relationship when I ask them good questions and they do the vast majority of the talking and by the way i really truly listening to them And I trying to slow down on my interjecting because it so easy to interject You hear somebody say something and you're like, oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.

I do that same thing. It's, you know what, if you make it all about you, they don't feel connected to you. Make it about them. I love the book, how to win friends and influence people.

And in that book, um, Dale Carnegie talks about, he went to a party and he goes to this party and this gal, I think it was a gal he talked to, uh, the entire time or for a lot of the time he talks to this gal and she loved him. She absolutely loved him. He was the most gracious, amazing person she's ever met. And he says that it's funny because he didn't talk.

Like she did all of the talking. He asked a few questions and then she did all of the talking and he listened. And she thought he was so amazing and she doesn't know anything about him. She doesn't know who he is because he didn't do the talking.

And now positive for him, right? Good, good on him. He listened. He made this person feel super comfortable with him.

He did. He allowed her to do all the talking. Now, shame on her because she did all of the talking. She didn't ask any questions.

That's the exact opposite that you want to be. you don't want to be the one doing all the talking but you certainly do want to be asking a lot of questions and it's okay to talk a little bit about your business or yourself and all that kind of stuff certainly but i think we tend to talk too much about ourselves and we tend to listen very little and we're only listening on the surface level to provide an answer to somebody and not truly listening and understanding what they're talking about and truly digging deeper into that conversation to make them feel good and to really learn truly who they are.

So that's something that I am working on. I've been working on probably for the last, you know, like I said, last about two years. I continue to not be very good at it, but I'm trying, I'm learning, I'm growing in it. And I think it's valuable for you as a listener, if you want to be a successful business owner, successful, you know, spouse, successful parent, friend, you know, brother, son, daughter, you know, whatever.

I think it's really important to try to practice the same thing. So So, you know, take some time and decide if that's something you need to work on like I do. And, you know, maybe we can come better together because I know I still got a long ways to go. Well, that's all I got for today.

I hope this episode resonated with you. You have a fantastic rest of the day. Make every day a Saturday. Hey, thanks so much for listening.

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So you can go to coachwithdex.com and check that out. And we can definitely have a call. Thanks a lot for listening.

You make it a fantastic rest of the day. I'll catch you on the next episode.