Mental Toughness | Justin Stoddart

FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION:

Justin Stoddart 0:01
So the big question is this. How do we those of us in the real estate industry with crazy amounts of ambition? How do we think bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we simultaneously see success and significance, income and impact? My name is Justin Stoddart, and this is the Think bigger real estate show. On this week’s episode of the Think bigger real estate show, we’re going to talk specifically about mental toughness, how to develop it, what to be watching for and how it’s going to help you as we enter into this shifting real estate market.

Justin Stoddart 0:51
Alright, welcome back to this special edition of the Think bigger real estate Show. I’m your host Justin Stoddart. This week is going to be without a guest, it’s going to be me I’m gonna be sharing insights from what I learned over the weekend about mental toughness. For those you that are watching the video here you’ll see a picture of me and my son, as we wrapped up what was called the Goggins challenge. For those of you that are unfamiliar with David Goggins, he is notably the toughest man in the world. ultra marathoner multiple times Navy SEAL. guy who is many, many people look to as someone who has really redefined what it means to be mentally tough. And this experience of accepting a challenge that he put out a year ago, and he is named the Goggins challenge changed me. And it changed kind of the way that I look at mental toughness. And I think it’s perfect timing is we’re entering into a market that is going to require some mental toughness, so excited to share with you the lessons for those that aren’t aware of what this challenge entails. It consists of running four miles, every four hours for a 48 hour period of time. So essentially, you run, you get up at midnight, let’s say that’s what we did, and ran four miles, then came home, and then at 4am, gotta begin right another four miles with a bed, got up. 8am ran another four miles, another four miles at 12, noon, another four miles at 4pm, another four miles at 8pm, another four miles at midnight, and you repeat that twice, right? So in other words, you’re just feel like you’re running forever. It was very, very challenging. Now, am I in good enough shape to run four miles? Yeah, did I think it was in good enough shape to run 48 miles? Not really. But I figured you know what I can probably I can probably figure it out. I discounted. However, the exhaustion, the the toll that it would take upon my body, those miles compounded on each other without much sleep at all. So I’ll just paint the picture really quickly, then I’m gonna dive right into the principles that again, are going to help you to learn what’s going to take, I think, to really thrive in the upcoming real estate market. So again, can I run for miles and then rest for four hours? Yeah, but that’s not exactly what happens. You see, it was pouring down rain when I was doing this challenge. And the I would get up and run right. And my son, Corbin, who I shared here, I’ll I’ll share this again here. So this is Corbin right here. He’s a much better runner than I am. He’s 14 years old. And he’s just a talented runner. And so I thought this would be great opportunity, right for he and I to bond and connect. So we would get up. And it would take him about 30 minutes to run for miles he was he was kind of going a little bit slower for Dad, take me about between 30 to 3533 to 35 minutes, leases we got started. As we continued on, I realized that it was taking us by the time we ran got home, got left to rest, before I got to run again. Well, for the next hour, you lay there and you toss and you turn, your body can’t go to sleep after running for miles like it takes a while to unwind. So then I’ve got about an hour left and I need about the next, you know, another 15 to 30 minutes to get ready for the next. So I get about 30 to maybe 45 minutes of sleep if I’m lucky. So compound that over, you know, essentially what was it 1212 different times, and your body’s just absolutely exhausted like you are shot. And that’s how I was feeling. And so as I’m out running out a lot of time to think now I knew going into this that I was more interested in what I would learn mentally, more so than what what I would get out of it physically. I knew that it would be like a good physical test. But what I didn’t, what really what I wanted more out of this was to get really to strengthen myself and strengthen my son. One mantra that we have in the Stoddart family is that I’m a Stoddart and I can do hard things. I’m a Stoddart and I love to do hard things. That’s something that we tell our kids and we’ve purposely put them in difficult situations not dangerous but different. called situations knowing that if they’re going to thrive in life, that they are going to have to go through difficult things. And I would say that same is true for adults. Right now some of us maybe didn’t have the good fortune of having parents who expose us to that. I had great parents, maybe some of you didn’t, right, and you had a pretty sheltered life. And it’s like hard things are really hard for me, that’s okay. It’s not too late to develop that muscle. And that’s one of the key lessons that I want to teach you is it having the right mindset to go through difficult things to go through new experiences is is a muscle and that you can get used to it? Okay. Now, a few weeks ago, I

Justin Stoddart 5:36
was on the show here talking about this market with Selina Griffith talking about how we shouldn’t call it a challenging market, we should call it a changing market. And I still 100% endorse that and agree with that. I also believe that we’re all better off if we are mentally tough. Okay, so I’m going to share with you some key lessons, again, that I learned while out all by myself, because Corbin was faster than I was thinking about the pains that I was experiencing the desires to want to be done. Looking for a way out, right, all these things that were going through my mind that I had to fight off, I think are very important for us to see the market for really what it is, which is what we talked about a few weeks ago, which is this isn’t necessarily a challenging market, it’s just a changing market. Right? So one of the key lessons is that, that pain, this, this experience that we’re not used to is not necessarily a bad thing, okay, so you can picture me out there running, and all of a sudden, things are getting a little tight, they get a little sore, and things are starting to hurt. And keep in mind that our mind is designed to protect our body. So when we start to feel a little bit of pain, it’s our mind saying, Hey, you should like this could go bad, you could actually injure yourself. But it gives you the pain long before the injuries over there. It’s very difficult to compete when you’re injured, but you can compete with pain, it takes me back to a basketball coach, that was very formidable in my life, formative every go. And I remember one point, he sat down a teammate of mine who was always getting injured. And he said, Look, I want you to only asked this question, Are you injured? Or does it just hurt? And my friend was like, I don’t know the difference. He said, you can play with pain, but you can’t play with injury. Okay, his whole point in this is that like, it’s okay to experience a little bit of pain. Because again, your mind will tell you that it hurts before you’re actually injured. In other words, we have these senses inside of us that are telling us to stop, right that are telling us to stop before we actually or beware or caution, be careful before we actually need to. Okay, so in other words, we can we can push ourselves through a lot more hardship and challenge, then we could if our mind wasn’t so protective of us, okay. So again, pain is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s simply a warning system. So be aware of it. When you’re feeling discomfort, that doesn’t mean you should stop. That’s the key lesson here. Just because it’s different, and it’s a little uncomfortable, does not mean you should stop. Okay. So hopefully, maybe that will benefit to you at some point where it’s like, I used to be able to sell listings by simply putting them on the market. And now I’m having to follow up and ask buyers if they’re going to submit an offer. And I’m happy to as as learned from Cody Gibson this past week, you might have to create a drip system to communicate with your sellers, because the home isn’t getting showings like actual when I say drip system, I mean an actual communication system to be able to keep them informed as to what’s happening over an extended period of time, because the home is not selling like that’s different. And that might feel like that’s painful, right? It doesn’t mean you should not do it, it just means that it’s different. It just means that you’re experiencing something new that you’re not used to experiencing. So we should not shy away from pain is what I’m saying. Or when I say pain, I mean just discomfort or something new. That just means that we were unfamiliar with that, that we haven’t learned that yet. Okay, so that’s a key lesson. Another thing that was really important for me is that I had a big vision of where I was headed. I knew from when I started that I was going to go for 48 hours, right didn’t matter what happened unless I like broke something. And my body absolutely was deeply injured. I was not going to stop like it wasn’t like, well, let’s see how this goes. And maybe if I liked the first leg, I’ll do the second leg. Not that I have thoughts of that. Yes, I’ll get that here to hit another point. But from the very beginning, you guys, I had a vision that I was going to run four miles every four hours for the next 48 hours period like I would decide it. So no matter where your head’s at, in this market right now you need to decide, like I’m going to be selling real estate for the next 20 years. I’m going to be selling real estate for the next 10 years, whatever it is, do not make your decision contingent upon what’s happening in the market. That’s a fast way to get yourself out of it. That’s not the way to be successful. It’s like if this goes well, I’ll keep doing it. Guess what, at any given point, things aren’t going to go just as you wanted them to. You’ll find yourself bouncing around from career to career to career and never actually getting good at anything because you didn’t learn How to actually be tough enough to get through the challenging times. If that makes sense for does give me like a thumbs up, if those of you that are watching live, like, it’s okay. Right? It’s okay to have it feel different, it feel uncomfortable. So have a big vision. This is what I’m deciding to do. You know, I really admire the late Kobe Bryant,

Justin Stoddart 10:20
he talked about how he would set out a training regimen at the beginning of the summer. He said, once I set that training regimen in place, there was no negotiation. Once I said it, I was committed to it, and I did it. Now there were times where I was like, man, what was I thinking when I said that I was awfully ambitious when I started setting up this training program. But he said the point for negotiation was over, I was no longer able to negotiate with myself and say, like, you know, I don’t want to go that hard. No, I set the plan. And I committed to the plan. And I’ll back that up by saying, Every good thing that’s ever happened in my life has come about because I committed in my faith in my marriage and my physical fitness in my finances, and my career, everything good in life follows. It’s on the heels of being committed. But what are you committed to, we have to have a big vision as to what we’re working towards. And moving towards that big vision is what actually gives us the ability to move through difficult things, right, looking beyond get if I if I had to make a decision at every step when my quads were blown out and hurt just to take a step like, it would be a very easy decision to say stop that hurts. But I was working on something bigger. Okay, it was working on a bigger vision. I’m doing this for 48 hours, I was committed, there was no negotiation at that point. I was all in. And so the important thing to remember is have a big vision, if you don’t yet have a big vision for your career. Let’s talk right, let’s talk message me find me on social media message me say, Look, I don’t have a big vision, I’m thinking about every painful step that moves forward. And it’s causing me to want to stop, I help agents go through what’s called a think bigger blueprint, which is to get massive clarity on where they’re headed on what they actually want. Now, so they don’t have to reevaluate the decision to be doing what they’re doing. Every time there’s a painful step. They’ve already decided the painful steps, just part of the process, right? It’s part of the beautiful process, have a big vision. The next thing that really helps and by the way, let me just say this, that I don’t in any way, consider myself to be the authority on mental toughness, right? Just the opposite. The reason why I did this is because I felt like I needed to be more mentally tough, there are people probably listening to this, that have done far more difficult things than the Goggins challenge, right? I know there are. And so please take this with this is one guy’s perspective on what it means to be to grow in mental toughness, right? Not that you all should become like, because I’m so mentally tough. No, I’m just a guy on a journey, just like you’re a guy or a gal on a journey, trying to become more mentally tough, so you can get the life that you want with the impact that you want. Right? That’s where I’m coming from. So in addition to having this big vision, it’s having other people that are committed with you on this journey. The way I heard about this journey was a gentleman by the name of Juan, who’s are out of Long Beach, California, he’s the kind of Guru the like, the guy’s like interviewed on CNN, just a dear friend, in a mastermind of mine. He’s the one that proposed this, we did it for a charitable event. And I knew that one was doing this with me at the same time, there was some accountability there. I also purposely brought my son along one for the bonding experience. But number two, I also brought my son along, I’ll bring up his picture here again, I brought him along, because I knew that I would be better doing it with him than by myself, okay, now I get it. We’re all in business for ourselves for a reason, because we want that freedom. Yet doing it alone is different than being a business for yourself. You don’t have to do it alone. If you’re doing it alone, my guess is it’s not going to be very sustainable. You actually need to surround yourself with other people that are also working on a big vision, people who have bought into your big vision that are along with you committed with you. That’s why this gets way better. There were times that my son will tell you this, the very first time we woke up, I said, Corbin, I think we should do this later in the summer. I think we’re both too tight. I don’t think we’re ready for this. He was like Dad, no, we’re doing this, right. So like my son who’s 14 and was like talking me off the fence. Now, at another time again, I

Justin Stoddart 14:25
was concerned partially for him injuring himself. I don’t want to injure himself. He’s a great athlete, and overstressed him, but I was also looking for a way out of times, right? So I told you like, a big vision helps with that. But there were times a weakness where I was like, hey, look, maybe we should just stop. I’m like, let’s call it we’re halfway through is a good effort. He was like, No, we’re not doing that. Right. There was another time later in the race. Very last leg. He had a deep, really painful hip cramp. And I could tell he wanted to quit. He wanted to be done. And I was like, No, we’re not. Now I knew he wouldn’t have that close to the end. But my point in saying When we surrounded ourselves with other people who were have bought into a big vision, or even our big vision, there’s accountability, and our chances of succeeding at that are much higher than not succeeding at that. So have people that are committed, right could be a coach, coaches, mentors, peers, have people around you that know your vision and are committed with you. Okay. The next thing that I learned is to have a routine. Okay? So not only do you need to have a big vision, but it was very clearly marked out what we were supposed to do every four hours, run for miles, do that straight for 48 hours. And I’m sorry, right? It was very clear, because it was so clear, the plan was clear. I didn’t have to think about well, maybe we should do eight miles now. And then rest for eight hours like no, the plan was laid out right now doesn’t mean that there isn’t a proper time and a place to have some iterations. However, I do think that in a moment of discomfort, if we also have to decide what do we do next, there’s a higher likelihood that we’re not going to do anything. Next. Let me say that, again, I think that’s an important point. In moments of discomfort, if we’ve not already decided what we’re going to be doing specifically, there’s a higher likelihood that we won’t do the right things, or we won’t do anything. So the more clarity you can get going into changing circumstances, that this is exactly what I’m going to do. And just like Kobe Bryant said, I’m not going to, I’m not going to change, right? I’m not going to negotiate with myself, once the plan is set, this is what I do. And then just commit to the plan. Okay, just commit to the plan. And once we get to that point, now all of a sudden, it gets a lot easier because we’re taking out the possibility of indecision of analysis paralysis, okay, we remove that from the equation, we just can almost robotically go do it. Okay, super important. The last thing I want to share with you that I believe is critical. So at one point, my wife said, she’s like, What hurts the muscles like my quads, like my quads are burning, okay, now, so she took like, the like the gun left the massage gun. Do you guys have seen those before stun guns, I don’t know exact what they’re called. But she like went to town on my left thigh. Like it was so painful. Like she was just like, thrashing that thing. I thought, holy cow. This hurts worse than running. And it was like very painful. And she was doing that together with like the the deep blue rub right there kind of like the Ben gay rub, right? That that is kind of icy hot stuff. She was doing those two together. And it was I was extremely uncomfortable. And to the point to where she was going to move to the right leg. And I kind of like got like, I didn’t let her do much on the right leg. Because the left leg was so uncomfortable. I’ll tell you what, that was the biggest mistake of the race because for the rest of the time, my right leg, the one that she did not do any preventative work on was killing me like my IT band was was a flame, every step right? Every step with my right leg was sore from that point on my left leg actually felt pretty good. And so we have to take a look at sometimes there’s some things that we have to do in the short term, that are a bit painful, but that they allow us to really thrive moving forward. Right, some of this might be getting certain help making certain investments, getting certain coaching, being willing to do certain activities day in and day out. Those little things that seem a little bit painful, actually prevent the bigger pain of not having enough business of not having the right mindset of not having the right skill set.

Justin Stoddart 18:43
If we can experience a little bit of discomfort here. It’ll alleviate a lot of discomfort over here. Okay. And that was that was a very pertinent lesson for me. Was it that preventative work? The preventative discomfort is is is super important. So many other lessons you guys that I learned from this. I want to keep this somewhat brief. But I will share this the same question that I asked everybody that crosses the Think bigger real estate stage, which is this, what do you do to continue to be a big thinker? What do you do to continue to expand your possibilities? And I just want to end with this comment is that you will never reach your potential. If you’re always shying away from discomfort, you will never realize the massive deposits of human potential that sit right underneath your feet. If you are never willing to put yourself in a spot that is very uncomfortable. And I’ve I’m as guilty of that as anybody else. That comfort is very comfortable, right hence the name. But if we stay there, we will be will be shortchanging ourselves those people who love us the most the causes that we care about most in life and frankly He, for those that know me, well, that is my passion and in the mission that I’m on is to wake myself up and wake anybody else up that I can possibly reach to this reality. There is massive potential inside of each and every one of us massive beyond what we can even comprehend. And unfortunately, the only way to get to that potential and realize that to wake ourselves up to that is to do some things that are uncomfortable. And as somebody who just went through that, I’ll tell you that coming out the other side, I feel a lot stronger, not just physically now it’s a little sore, for sure. But just facing the week facing the challenges in life and in business. Were easier this week are easier this week, because of what I just went through conversations. Keep in mind, I was running over the weekend had nothing that I was talking to almost nobody yet this week, conversations that maybe would have been a little uncomfortable for me last week, are far more comfortable for me this week. In other words, getting uncomfortable in something even physical is causing it’s bleeding over into other areas of my life. So if there is any disconnect, where you feel like you’re underperforming your potential, where you’re like, why am I here? Why am I even having this conversation anymore? I am, I deserve so much better. I’m living far below my potential. I’m frustrated, I’m just not there yet. Right? I’ve been there. We’ve all been there. If you feel yourself in that spot, just know that you’re close. Because it’s that feeling of being discontent with where you’re at, that will drive you through the fear of doing something uncomfortable. And the moment that you go through something uncomfortable, is the moment that you get stronger. And the moment that you get stronger is the moment that you’re able to go sees those things that before you could only see and maybe not even see. So the key to expanding my possibilities both for myself as well as you the audience that I serve is to be uncomfortable is to be okay being uncomfortable. And we’ve heard that before. I hope this story in this experience has inspired you to be okay with that because there is a whole lot of life a whole lot of impact. That is just around the corner for you. Want to thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Think bigger real estate show. I love being the host of this show. I love serving you. If you want to stay better connected, find me on social media, you can find me if you’re a real estate agent inside of the successful real estate agents Facebook group, find me there and follow me on Instagram and other places would love to connect and hear your stories of personal development, your stories of of overcoming. And my final request of everybody listening today are these three simple words and they are go think bigger. Love you all my friends talk soon. Bye bye. If you enjoyed this episode that have a very special invitation for you, I have created a private Facebook community called successful real estate agents where the focus is going beyond success having both a successful business and a significant life. If you’re not yet a member. Go sign up now.