Emotional Resilience.

I’m pretty successful. I’ve achieved a lot. I have a wildly-successful business that does great work in my own city and, hopefully soon, beyond into other parts of the country.

I’ve taught myself business, team development, marketing, content creation, sales, large event planning, bar management, business relationships building, and so much more.

I haven’t achieved everything YET that I want. There are a lot of things that will finally be possible because I’ve put in considerable work to build a foundation for them. I’ve been patient. I’ve worked toward a singular goal UNTIL I GOT THERE. I don’t give up.

Through failure upon failure I continue.

I don’t let the online haters push me off my path or convince me that I’m a failure, a fraud, bad at business, a money-grubbing, self-serving user.

I don’t let people who don’t show up fully in our business relationship convince me that I’m never going to be successful.

I don’t let team members walking out or clients firing me mean anything except that we were’t right for each other– right now.

I don’t let significant cash losses or launch flops or catastrophic weather destroy my dreams.

All these things and so much more have happened to me as I built a six figure business.

And I keep climbing higher and higher and higher BECAUSE OF THEM.

So, what did all that get me? High emotional resilience.

And…..

Super-successful business friends. A business that is a movement, with a very strong and effective mission. Close relationships with lots of powerful people in my city. Heaps and heaps of experience. Notoriety (good and bad, haha).

My ability to withstand (and grow from) negative emotion caused by really challenging situations allowed me to achieve big things.

So, if you want to get good at things and achieve your dreams, you’ll need to go through as much negative emotion as your dreams require based on how resilient you are already.

If you have high resilience, it’ll be easier and faster for you. If you have low resilience it’ll be harder, and might take longer.

EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE IS:

• the ability to recover from or adjust easily to negative emotion

Some people, like me, have high emotional resilience. That’s because we’ve gone through a lot. It’s not because we had help along the way to reduce negative emotion. The strongest in this category have experienced a ton of negative emotion and turn it into growth. Into success.

I’m not suggesting that everything needs to be hard. But you know in your heart where you’re unwilling to grow because experiencing negative emotion doesn’t seem like something you want to do. Those unwilling to experience negative emotion won’t grow.

NEGATIVE EMOTION IS CAUSED BY OUR THOUGHTS.

Negative emotion was not caused by the situations I was in, but they certainly triggered thoughts that pushed me into negative emotion.

Situations like:

• online trolls

• team members walking out on me

• vendors telling me that I’d never be successful

• being publicly shamed by one of my idols

• losing LOTS of money

• failing publicly over and over and over again

• other businesses copying me

• really great people leaving my business

• people getting hurt at my events

• hiring attorneys to help me figure out how to get rid of an employee

• weather destroying one of my events

• business chaos

• financial scarcity

• taxes

• and more, so much more

All this stuff sucked (and still sucks) to go through. But I can take more and more of it because I’ve grown from those experiences, rather than shrinking away.

Why?

Because I don’t complain about it– anymore. I used to complain. Until I realized that what I was looking for was someone to help me feel better about all these emotions I was experiencing. But now, I intellectually know that they’re also the reason I can do more and more and more. More, in fact, than I ever thought possible.

I’m not happy to go through negative emotion in the moment, of course, but I also have been there before and know it’ll pass. That’s why I have high emotional resilience. I can take more. I know why I’m experiencing it and I know it’ll make me stronger.

NEGATIVE EMOTION THAT LEADS TO GROWTH IS DIFFERENT THAN SUFFERING.

Suffering is resisting reality. Suffering is resisting negative emotion. The odd thing is that suffering feels terrible, too. Suffering is negative emotion without growth.

Suffering is being mad about things but not taking action.

Suffering is blaming others for your internal emotional state.

Suffering is avoiding growth.

Suffering separates you from the world. It leaves you feeling alone, isolated, different.

IF YOU WANT SUCCESS, GET BETTER AT EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE

One of the reasons it’s actually hard to give someone a plan for a successful business is that it depends so much on the person making the plan happen. If everyone I gave a plan to had high emotional resilience, it’d be a lot easier to guarantee their success.

Because doing business stuff is not actually hard. There are formulas and steps that work.

But people discount their own emotional resilience. And when something comes their way that they didn’t expect (which is CERTAIN to happen in business), it’ll be very personal how they react to it. It’ll sink them or it’ll be a growth moment. It’s really up to them to decide.

The more growth moments, the more success.