Behind all the successes and other shiny things are the struggles that often don’t get noticed. Familiar to those who are working towards reaching their dreams, we all have some challenges we need to overcome first. If there is one thing many learn along the way, it is that the struggle is real. In this episode, Julia Gentry and Travis Gentry give insight into our struggle—that though not many people talk about it is, in fact, very much universal. They equip us with some tools to understand how to sustain the struggle, get through the hard, and follow our dreams. When is the right time to adapt to new norms? How do we stay on when we want to tap out? Julia and Travis answer these questions and more as they go through the emotional and mental challenges that many faces on their path towards moving forward.

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The Struggle Is Real: How To Overcome Mental And Emotional Havoc When Following Your Dreams

What we’re talking about is real talk. The struggle is real.

How do you feel about talking about the realness? Is that what you’re trying to say?

We’re sitting in the backyard, the pool is behind us. You don’t see the struggle, work or when evil me comes and tries to sabotage your rhythm, flow, or thoughts. We wanted to share that with you as we’re on this journey and traveling, there are hard parts to it. It’s not all “look at us” and we’re going to go on some awesome adventures and we’re going to showcase that because that’s a big part of it. Also, with four kids traveling to a new location every four weeks or so, two businesses, trying to take our business to the next level, COVID happening, and things are shutting down. Some of the things that we want to do are with people and interacting live but we can’t.

We thought it would be beneficial to do an episode around the struggle is real. This is not just about having a dream. Anyone can have a dream. We all have dreams at some level and some capacity. There’s a difference between having a dream and following a dream. It’s easy to even think of these trite statements but if you buy a mug that says like, “Follow your dreams,” or you buy a T-shirt that says, “Living the dream.” All of those sound nice but there is so much behind the scenes that go on to following your dreams and chasing your dreams that we thought it would serve those that are reading to talk about the struggle in achieving your dreams. There is a struggle to achieve your dream. We’re going to talk about that and give you insight into our struggle because you are not alone. We also want to equip you with some tools to understand how to sustain the struggle, get through the hard, and how to follow your dreams.

How to acclimate, how to understand when it’s time to press, sit, and adapt to what’s the new norm. We’re going through a lot of new norms not just with what is going on in the world, but for us personally, there are a lot of new norms, new nanny, new location, new grocery stores, gyms, and everything is new as we travel, which is amazing. I love that. I thrive in those situations. It’s also exhausting sometimes. It wears you down a bit because there’s no consistency in what we’re doing. There is and then we move and then we go to a new location.

 

My hope as we share whatever ours are, the struggle is different for everyone. If we’re not careful, one of two things happens even in our social media world which is either one, everything is doom and gloom. Every time you get on, you’re like, “This is mentally and emotionally exhausting because it’s one more statistic, fatality, business shutting down, comment of fear, or you’re looking at all these pictures that everybody’s life looks perfect.” I even had someone say, “It must be nice to be you.” There was a part of me that was like, “This is awesome. This is what we’ve always wanted to do.” The other part of me was like, “Either you have no clue or I’m doing a bad job of communicating that the struggle is real, it is hard, and we’re born for this.”

We’ve talked about picking your heart before. What mountain do you want to climb? You don’t want to climb a mountain, get to the top, look around, and you knew deep down inside that you should have been climbing, pursuing, and going after something different.

There are two things here that most people are accustomed to the uncomfortability. A couple of episodes ago, we talked about picking your heart which at some level, everything is hard. Being single and being married is hard. Having one kid and having four kids is hard. For us, living in a spot longer than nine months is hard. Traveling full-time is hard. At some level, it’s all hard. We’ve had $100,000 in debt and we’ve had money, and they’re both hard. At some level, you lower the playing field to go, “It’s all hard.” You keyed in on something important to talk about which is, how do you pick your heart? If we use an analogy, it’s like a mountain. Answer me on that. How do you know how to pick your heart? How do you know how to pick the mountain that you want to be climbing?

There's a difference between having a dream and following a dream. Click To Tweet

Deep down at a heart-gut level, there are these desires that you have. Most of the time, they don’t go away. Whether you had them as a kid, teenager, or college and you pursued them and then you stopped because it wasn’t productive or you had kids and you had to get a real job, whatever that looks like, or you settled down in a place, but you’ve always wanted to live somewhere else, experienced something, or what you want to pursue is not in your current environment. Those thoughts and those desires are innately in you.

You also said something huge. You keep coming back to it.

It’s like I caught the bug of real estate, I pursued it, we tried other things, I went back into real estate, I backed down from it, got distracted, traveled, and different things but it’s this thing inside of me. If I don’t press into this and give it 110%, it is going to eat me alive because I know what I’m capable of doing and there are people out there waiting for me to help them with this tool and this knowledge that I have acquired over the last several years.

It’s your mountain.

 

It’s a mountain that doesn’t go away.

There’s beauty in that. Part of this is if you keep circling it, you keep wondering about it, you read books on it, and it makes you sad to talk about it because it’s not manifesting in your life. It’s the thing that you need to look at and that you’re born for. It is your mountain. The problem is we look at other mountains that we “should climb.” We look at the mountain that we happened to start climbing. We consider the mountains that everybody else is climbing. I get on social media and I compare myself to that mountain. The mountain analogy is the life that you’re living.

To our point of this midlife awakening, or most people call a midlife crisis, the problem is you get to the top of this mountain 30, 40, 50, 60 years old, you look around, and you’re like, “This isn’t it. There’s got to be something more. This is not what I thought my life would look like. This is not what I wanted.” That means you’re on the wrong mountain. Part of this is figuring out and learning how to get on the mountain that you want to be on most. To your point, you’re not chasing real estate and avoiding it is hard. You’re doing it by yourself, learning how to trust other people, hire people, and get mentors is hard. What hard do you want more?

Those are all the things I’m doing. Have a mentor, have a couple of people that are working with me, and going into new remote markets. I know it at a head level, people that are doing it, and crushing it so then evil me pops up and I have to do it perfectly. Analysis-paralysis then creates procrastination which then leads to like, “If it’s not perfect, I don’t want to move forward on it.” I don’t want to have failures even at a head level, I know that I have to have those to get through and to gain that knowledge to be able to do in different markets, multiple properties, trust people, the process, and the numbers specifically in real estate to be able to go. One of the biggest things that I have struggled with over the years of knowing that I can have what I’ve seen other people accomplish and lying to myself of saying, “It’s going take too long.”

 

There’s so much in everything I heard you say. This is what’s fascinating to me about following our dreams. There are tons of different types of hurdles in achieving our dreams. We’re seeing this. You and I talked about this even before this. How do you deliver a podcast when the dreams of people across the world are being shut down or closed? How do you have this conversation that we’re not trying to make this look easy? What’s fascinating about me is everything you mentioned is the emotional and mental hurdles that pop up when you start to follow your dreams. This is why we get stuck, why we don’t manifest our dreams, or why we don’t ever get to where we know we’re capable of being is because nobody’s talking about the mental and emotional havoc that is being created as you’re moving forward. Everything you said is all in your mind. Is your mind exhausted?

It’s almost to the point of the challenge as you start to step into this and strengthen or use muscles that you haven’t used in a long time or ever before. You made a comment too of everything that I talked about as far as pursuing your dreams is similar to not pursuing your dreams and the sabotage that comes into it, but over a period of time, you start to be comfortable in that familiarity of not pursuing your dreams. You’re like, “I know what this feels like and how I show up.” You make excuses. It has to be perfect. It’s going to take too long. You never go to, “I’m going to follow my dreams,” because you’re starting over and you’re going to experience new hurdles, struggles, limitations, and sabotages. It’s almost like one and the same. I’m either going to not pursue my dream and I’m going to experience this but then I become comfortable with it or I’m going to go after something knowing that I’m going to experience a lot of new things, but it’s going to be hard and frustrating at times.

I have seen this more than ever before from my journey as well. I’ve been talking about writing my book for a bit. This podcast, even this YouTube channel, the community that we’re creating online, I’ve been talking about these things. I’ve had this dream forever, and now that I’m en route, I am committed, I am in but the mental and emotional game is real for me that as I’m doing things each day, I can feel the level of stress within my body that I’m moving out of such land of comfortability where normally I would have stopped. I’m starting to push myself mentally and emotionally. I can feel myself starting to stress and to start playing that game of like, “How do I not be here? How can I distract myself? What’s something I could do differently?” The levels of vulnerability of putting yourself out there and chasing your dreams, this is fascinating because I can see it happening real time.

What’s even funnier is that I’m watching myself do this. I’m like, “I normally would stop now.” This has been my stopping point for many years. This is normally where I tap out and stop.” It’s learning how to lean in, to press in, and to take it a step further. That’s the key. You said this whole concept of how do you continue to follow your dreams even in those moments that normally you would stop? How do you keep going when your normal tendencies are to avoid, fall into the distractions, busy yourself, push tap out, drink more wine, eat more food, and all the coping mechanisms? Let’s talk about, how do you press on when you want to tap out?

 

What I’ve experienced knowing that I love waking up early, having quiet time, and working out. I didn’t get up as early as I normally do, so it throws me off for the day or staying up a bit later. What I’m getting at is do one thing better than you did the day before to get momentum. You can compound on that, keep your momentum and gain momentum. When I know that I don’t show up fully for that day and be able to press and wake up early, do the things that I know that start off my day to create that energy for success. At the end of the night, when the kids are in bed, after our hour-long process of getting them in bed, the excuse could be I’m tired. I’m mentally checked out, so I’m going to go to bed or I’m going to watch something that has no growth potential for me. It’s doing one little thing, 15, 30, 45 minutes, knowing that I put in a bit more, because, over a period of time, that bit more each day is huge leaps and bounds in growth and mentally.

It’s not just doing more. We talked about that too. Sometimes, it’s being still and present, reflecting on your day as opposed to it’s a lot easier to check out and be like, “I’m tired. I’m going to lay down.” Processing the day as though, what did I do that was good and great? Where did I find myself that I was busy but not productive? Moving into tomorrow, how can I do 1 or 2 things differently that I’m going to be more productive, more present, more joyful, get more things done, impact more people around me? Do it again. Start to recognize. If you check out, you look at the week and you’re like, “What did I do?”

The compound effect is going to happen no matter what. This is what’s amazing about this concept. What I heard you say is zero. If we’re going to give a 1, 2, 3 throughout this episode, we start at zero. You’ve got to create energy. The irony in this is that it’s hard to get up and create that energy to sit in a place of meditation, pray, and work out. If you roll out of bed, do what you always did, turn on the news, pour yourself a cup of coffee, you’re creating energy that way too.

It’s stagnant, low, doubtful, and depressed energy as opposed to one that’s proactive. That’s non-negotiable. The next thing that you said is to do one thing that’s different, better, more progressive in alignment with where you want to be. Not one more thing for the sake of one more thing. This isn’t a to-do list thing. This is one more thing that’s in alignment with where you want to be for compounding effect purposes but if you look at the flip of that, if I don’t do one more thing that’s in alignment with where I want to go, I’m going to get more of all the things that I don’t want.

A dreamer in action will always offend a dreamer who appreciates the idea. Click To Tweet

What stimulated this conversation for me was when I told you that I got that text message from my friend and she sent me a mural that said, “Follow that dream.” She said, “Thinking of you.” I was like, “That’s cool.” Immediately I was like, “I’m not preaching this whole concept of dreaming for people to think about me.” This isn’t like, “Follow that dream, Julia. Follow Julia’s book.” The whole reason I’m doing this is all of you dream, chase your dream. I said to her, “We’ll play around with this for a second.” I texted her back and I said, “Thank you for thinking of me but what about you? Are you following your dreams?” Silence. I didn’t hear anything back from her.

I was trying to create an invitation for her to go, “You’re calling me out a bit.” “No, I’m not.” She didn’t. That was her answer of like, “We like the idea of following your dreams but are we willing to do what it takes?” Bill Johnson says this all the time, “Faith in action will always offend faith as a concept.” A dreamer in action will always offend a dreamer who appreciates the idea. I talk with another girlfriend who said, “Julia, I feel such shame or fear. I can’t even tell you that when I go to step out to do something, I feel all the feels.”

I was like, “You’re the only one.” She was like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? You’re not the only one. That makes you human.” That would be my biggest notice and awareness, even though I feel fear of judgment or I feel stress because I’m putting myself out there. I’m saying this on my mind, I’m allowed to feel whatever I need to feel and that makes me human but it doesn’t make it true. I can feel afraid but that doesn’t mean this isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing. It means that I’m scared to do it but I know that I can do it. Feel your emotions but don’t let them be your truth.

It dictates your actions which create your reality.

 

Part of this is recognizing that as you start to follow your dreams, you have to let yourself feel everything that you’re going to feel but not to be making decisions from feelings. They’re information. I feel afraid and shame, someone is going to judge me, angst or anxiety. That’s been a game-changer for me because I need to do this anyways. This is still the mountain that I want to climb. I still need to climb it. I need to feel the fear and still stay in alignment with where I want to be most.

Going back to what I’ve heard other people say like, “That’s going to take a long time.” A week, a month and a year are going to pass regardless of what you do. I’ve told myself this, “That’s potentially going to be a lot of work. It’s going to take 5 or 10 years to accomplish the dreams and goals that I have.” Now the time has passed, it’s going to pass no matter what but I couldn’t tell you it’s been 1, 2, or 3 years where I’ve jumped in and out of playing with my dream, not staying on the course, and not pressing into what I know that my dream is bigger than me. It’s not about what I can get, what I want to build within real estate, it’s going to take a team and empower other people. The time has already passed.

It’s such a weird concept. If you think about whether you’re 30, 40 or 50, the times are going to pass. At some point, you’re going to be 50. If you’re 40, you’re going to be 60. It’s going to come and go. You have to look at it from the perspective of like, “What is in me if I don’t do it?” If I don’t pursue this and go after it, when I’m laying on my death bed or when I die, there are a few things that I’m like, “That would be my regret.” I don’t care what I didn’t do in the past. I want more of what’s inside of me to come to fruition. One, I know that there’s a bigger calling because there are more people involved. It’s not just about me. If your dream is about you, it’s not a dream. It’s a goal or a hobby that you want to do but a true dream impacts the world and the people around you.

I was doing some final edits in my book. I was reading about the Art of Conviction. The Supreme Court talks about that part of the reason that our religious rights are protected by the constitution is because it’s a conviction. It is God ordered. Travis and I are not proponents of having big dreams. Have a real dream because when you have a real dream, it’s automatically big but don’t dream a big dream for the sake of ego. When you’re dreaming real dreams and they’re connected to the heart of God, it’s about, “I can’t not do this. God put it in me to do it. It’s my responsibility.” When you can start looking at this like, “This isn’t even for me or because it’s a nice idea. This is something that God put in me. I keep chasing it. God put it in me to do it. I can’t not do it. I have to climb this mountain.”

 

Here’s the key that I’d like us to zone in on which is, once you’re on that mountain, you say yes and you give in to our point, here we are, we’re doing it. All chips are on the table, both together at the same time where sometimes you’ve been building yours at a different time. I’ve been building mine at different time. We’ve got all chips on the table. As you start to climb up this mountain, it’s similar to this concept of climbing Everest and acclimating. What’s fascinating to me about Mount Everest and when you look at how climbers get to the top, they don’t just get to the top no matter how fit someone is in one swing. We know that it’s not going to happen in one day or even ten. It’s 40 to 60 days that it takes to summit. The reason that it takes that long is that there are four base camps along the way that they have to acclimate. Acclimate by definition is the ability to grow accustomed to a new condition.

To your point, you keep saying getting comfortable in the uncomfortable, growing accustomed to your capacity being stretched, our new environment, and a new way of doing things which all of us across the whole globe are learning to be accustomed to this. If you don’t realize that there is a process to acclimating and to get to the top of the summit, you’ll die. That’s why I want to zone in on this concept because it’s relevant in how we follow our dreams so we not only get to the summit but we sustain it.

Some time within that same thing from a social environment, it looks like you are taking a step backwards like acclimating. Sometimes you hike up to a certain point or the next base camp and then you come back down.

They call it climb high, sleep low.

You have to understand. When you back yourself into a certain lifestyle, have the house, cars, and the perception of you’ve got it all together, your family and marriage, everything is great and then you are not pursuing your goal or your dream and you have to take a step. Sell your car and your house. You’ve created this identity and then you get attached and tied to that identity. That’s a hard thing for most people to do of letting go of the stuff and the identity that they’ve created to recreate a new identity to take 1 or 2 steps backwards to take 10, 15 or 20 steps forward.

 

There are two parts to this. Let’s talk about the physical side of this and then the emotional side of things. To your point, when you said we back ourselves into the life that we have, that might blow a few people’s minds for a second. We have some friends that are realizing that they have all the stuff but they’re going through a divorce. They have a nice career but they’re empty and unfulfilled. They’re doing all the things but these aren’t the things that they want to be doing. They may read that and go, “What did you say?”

That could be an offensive statement, but there’s so much truth in that because what happens is, we’re looking at our lives in comparison to what everybody tells us that we should have or everybody else does have, the house, the cars, the kids. I’m not saying that these are bad things. If they’re not right for you, they’re wrong for you. For every decision, there is this decision management process. If I make a decision to buy the house, who has to pay monthly on the mortgage is me. If I make a decision to take this job, eat this food and do this, that means in a day, week, month or year, I’m still reaping the consequences or benefits of that decision that I made.

It should disrupt some people to stop the process. If you can’t take ownership or where you’re at, our message will not resonate or connect with you. You have to take ownership of it. Everything that you said, from a physical standpoint, environmental, where you live, you chose that and you had taken a job and it brought you somewhere but you chose that job which brought you to this place. Through our travels, we’ve heard that too like, “You’re lucky. It must be nice. I’d love to live X.” You’re like, “I don’t understand.” It’s a season or you move for your spouse or a job or whatever, but ultimately, you’ve got to pick. You’re choosing if that’s your dream job then you may have to live somewhere. I understand that but if you’re miserable, you don’t like your job or your career and living somewhere, or having a house payment that is way above what you want it to be because you’re paycheck-to-paycheck and on this treadmill, not being able to go on the trips or experiences or vacations that you want.

When following your dreams, you have to let yourself feel everything that you're going to feel, but don't make decisions from feelings. Click To Tweet

This wasn’t as much when we traveled full-time in the RV, but when someone is like, “It must be nice to do that. How lucky you are.” My knee-jerk reaction is like, “We intentionally, consciously with everything in us, made decisions to be doing this. We didn’t happen to be here. I’m not a trust-fund kid.” We have been strategically getting out of one business, walking through that process of watching au pair leave, navigating the waters of COVID, watching all of my clients shut their doors, and watching me have to not shut my doors. We intentionally, with every single step that was happening hard, good and indifferent, made the decision to be doing this. You are no different. Every decision that you made to get here, you made those so good on you. If we are talking, not to be offensive to each other, but good on you because you made the decisions to get you here like I made the decisions to get me here.

It either sounds nice and/or it’s not as important to you but backing up on what you were saying, it was 2007 when we made the decision and when I quit my job to step into real estate to fumble through everything that we have. We’ve had more failures than we have successes. When we’re talking to someone as we’re traveling and stuff, it looks like that but it’s almost like that picture of the iceberg. If you’ve seen it in the ocean, you’ve got the little piece up above it, and then down below is this huge piece of iceberg, all the things that go into accomplishing your goals, the sweat, and the tears.

Conor McGregor, love him or hate him, I love watching him because he has put in the work, time, effort, blood, sweat and tears to be able to have the lifestyle and to accomplish what he has. If you hate him, you hate him. He’s got a lot of people as much that don’t like him that do like him. He has in the past backed it up through everything he does outside of the cage to accomplish what he has inside the cage.

Hopefully, this is coming off to real talk and motivation. You truly can have an understanding, everything that’s going on, COVID is affecting us too. We’re learning how to adapt and change with what we want to accomplish in hopes, belief, faith, and being optimistic that we will get back to a new normal. We have no idea what that looks like but we will get back to it. It’s preparation for the opportunity that is coming in the future. Everything that we’re doing, we have that in mind when it starts to open back up. It will always be and forever a new normal. We’re learning in the midst of this what is that new normal.

You hit on something else that is important as we address this acclimating and growing accustomed to new conditions, and I hear it a lot. We’ve said it to some degree but you hear it a lot from people who say, “I’m afraid of what other people think or going to say.” What happens to that, if you consider the consequences of caring more about what other people think than what God’s put on you to do, that means that ultimately you care more about what other people think than what God’s called you to do. At the end of your life, you’re going to look back and go, “I put more emphasis and attention on what other people thought about me than what I thought about me.”

The minute that I care more about what other people think about me or my dreams means that I’m giving my power away. To your point of Conor McGregor, something you’ve said for years, and reminded me is that 1/3 of the people will love you, 1/3 of the people will hate you, and 1/3 of the people will be indifferent, no matter what you do. If we continue to focus on making everybody like us, making sure that nobody judges us, and we do the status quo, what happens is we no longer care and we detach from what we think which is when we start a war within ourselves.

We could do a whole show on that because we were groomed to fit in from a social aspect and also environmental. You go through school and your objection for the most part is to fit in. You’re learning the same system that everybody else is. When you step outside of that family system or structure, your environment, you’re going to get people that don’t understand it. I also believe that that calling will also set those people free or they will disconnect from you and go the opposite way. How many people that we’ve had in our life that it’s pissed them off a bit based off of what we would say to them because we want to speak truth. The truth will piss you off before it sets you free and to see what has happened in their life knowing the reason why it rubbed them wrong was because they weren’t living what was inside of them.

It’s 100% convicting. When you watch someone at any level, that shows an area to dream. If you notice that you’re getting jealous, offended, they’re loud and obnoxious about what they believe in, she’s got a nice body, or they’re impacting many people. There’s an area that you want to level up in your own life. Instead of spending so much judgment on what they’re doing or worrying about what they think about you, just do it and then you don’t need to be having that conversation. How you start to get through this to the point of acclimating is that how you bring this tool of acclimation into your own life and you have to realize that there are different mountains that you can climb. The goal here is to pick them out and you want to be on the top of the most. That’s what it comes down to. We’re not trying to make this sound crazy easy because it’s not. It’s simple, stupid, hard but if we could dumb it down to make it elementary level and simple that we’ll do it. The goal is to find the mountain that you want to be on top of the most.

 

The results that you want most, not short-term, not ego but the one you want the most. I’m going to have to acclimate along the way to get to the top of the summit because the reality is, I have a different belief system, routine, patterns and habits down here that aren’t going to take me to the top of the mountain. Like in Everest, when they come to each base camp, not only are they active resting, refreshing their bodies, eating food, and making sure that they’re nourished, they’re taking gear off. They’re letting go of things that don’t serve them. When we do this in our life, we have to mentally, emotionally and spiritually grow accustomed to a new condition. We have to get comfortable with people judging us because of our decisions.

That was such a good visual if you think about it because they have Sherpas and mules that pack in food and supplies. As you get higher, you have to. If you look at it from a perspective of like, “That’s mental trash.” You have to empty that mental trash. You have to get rid of it. As you get to the different levels, you gain new strength, awareness, and you have to let go of what was because it won’t serve you and allow you to reach the potential that you have inside.

The line is when do I need to do one more pushup to your point. When do I have more in me that I can do a few more, that I can lean in, I can make a few more calls, and I can ask for some more help? When is it time for active rests to where you’ve hit your limits for that day, week, or month? I’ve hit my capacity of understanding. I’m feeling God’s love in a way that I’ve never felt it. My marriage is starting to grow.

My finances are starting to increase. The book is almost done. Any level of finding your limit and going, “I have to acclimate and grow accustomed to this newness of passion, love vulnerability, even hard, uncomfortability, whatever we want to call it.” Sometimes, it’s even acclimating to new levels of anger. Anger isn’t bad, it’s an emotion. We only make it bad because we tend to make bad decisions when we’re angry. Therefore, “anger is bad.” It’s an emotion with information. We have to grow accustomed to this territory. We’ve got to hunker down, climb high, sleep low, and grow accustomed to it because we need to be ready for where we’re going.

For me personally, how I function, everyone functions a bit differently, a bit more each day. Even when I know mentally, I’m like, “I’m tired,” or those excuses pop in my head of why I’m not going to do whatever it is, make one more phone call, do one more sprint, or whatever it is that I’m doing, it’s due a bit more. It could be 1 or 5 more and then acclimate.

That’s your whole point of climbing high and sleep low. You could do the things that you said that you were going to do, which is getting to your base camp, but then you’re going to tell yourself, “I need to go higher.” The reason that they climb higher is because they’re preparing themselves for where they’re going, but then they come down and acclimate.

I understand that. I’m saying from a perspective for some people that are reading. It’s a bit more each day and when they do acclimate, they don’t climb every day. They stay at that base camp too. Sometimes, doing nothing is better than doing something. It’s like working out. I can’t go to the gym and do chest every single day. I won’t grow. I won’t get the full benefits out of the workout. You have to know when to press in, when to do a bit more, when to back down and acclimate. The acclimation could be a day or week. Looking at it from different areas of your life, relationally, physically, spiritually, when do you need to press in and acclimate.

I talked to a client and I said, “How are you doing?” She says, “I’m acclimating.” It’s hysterical because you know what they’re talking about. She’s like, “I’m having deeper, more meaningful conversations with my partner than ever before. He is responding and I am responding. We’re acclimating because we’ve never talked this deep before.” I was like, “You’re doing it.” She’s like, “We’re doing it. We’re leaning in hard to your point, harder than we have, deeper than we have, richer and more meaningful, more honest than ever before, and we’re actively participating and going, let’s soak here for a second. Let’s take a couple of deep breaths. Let’s grow accustomed to this level of depth so we can climb because there’s going to be more.” It’s fun when you get to be in this type of conversation with people who know where to point the balance. When you call them on a certain day and they’re like, “I’m acclimating.” You’re like, “I’ve got so much love for where you’re at.” When you know you’re acclimating, you’re taking a couple of deep breaths to go, “I can do this.” Take a couple of deep breaths, put my sights on where I’m going, don’t look back, don’t look down, rest, because I’ve got to get up and climb in a couple of days again.

Anger isn't bad, it's an emotion. We only make it bad cause we tend to make bad decisions when we're angry. Click To Tweet

I love that you’ve been coaching them and they’ve gone through The Dream Factory work. You have to get connected and get surrounded by people in a community or learn new skills. Go through our six-week course online. You have to be around people that are going to challenge you because you can make the excuse.

You’ve been acclimating for several years.

I get that. It’s important to surround yourself whether with a daily devotion or something that you’re getting, coach, mentor or community that can call you out when you need to be called out, support you when you feel weak, encourage and challenge you. You have to get connected, whether it’s our community or someone else’s.

If I could give a shameless plug, this is why we’re starting our membership site called Dream: Together. I’ve been talking to pastors all across the country who have these small groups at church and they go, “Normally we would have thought that these would have done well.” What’s happening is that COVID is causing everybody to start isolating but they’re not coming back out. They’re not even getting online to doing small groups. They’re not even seeking counsel, counseling, and being together in any fashion because they’re “burnt out” of Zoom or one more online meeting. The problem is I’m isolating. The minute I’m isolating, I’m starting to think I’m the only one that’s depressed, lost my job, feels fear, and freaking over this.

What happens is we start to pull back and retreat and we start to lose that momentum and connection with ourselves, other people and God. The shameless plug is about this Dream: Together membership site, which is designed to get you in a conversation that’s not only encouraging but is challenging. One that’s not only going to help you see what you can’t see, but it’s going to push you towards what you want most and is going to remind you of these ongoing tools that you’re not alone. It only works if you work it. We can have all the tools in our tool belt, but if I don’t pick up the hammer and hit the nail on the head, it’s not going to work.

Darren Hardy says it. He says something along the lines, “Does everyone know what to do or how to do it?” Are you willing to do it? The how-to’s are out there but it’s getting connected and showing up because you get what you put in, you get in return. It’s not about you either, it’s about serving the community or people around you. You can’t be getting filled up, you have to go give it out to the world and the people around you too. It’s holding your hands open as opposed to close or looking at, “Fill me up. I need.” As opposed to, “I need, yes, I’m going to pass through to the people that are below me physically, mentally, spiritually, relationally, that I can go fill up because they need help. They need a hand to get unstuck of where they’re at their level.”

All in all, the hope in this is that the struggle is real and you’re not alone. There’s supposed to be a struggle, pressure and tension. That is how we grow. It’s the gut check to say, “Am I on the mountain that I want to be on? Am I pursuing the dreams that are within me?” If not, we have to realize that we’ve had enough strength to climb this mountain which means you have enough strength to climb another mountain. You’ve had every single choice that has got you to where you are, which means any other new choice can get you to where you want to be. It’s the realization, the gut check to go, “Am I on the mountain that I want to be on?”

Once I am, I need to be responsible for learning the fine line between leaning in and doing another pushup, giving it a bit more, doing one thing. Creating the energy to build the dream that’s important to me and then also know when I need to acclimate and let myself grow accustomed to a new level of learning, exposure, and feeling emotions. For many of us, it could be easy for all the coping mechanisms that we’re not feeling our emotions. Sometimes, it’s letting yourself feel them and move through them. That’s the goal of acclimating, it’s to give yourself the space to grow accustomed to a new norm.

Get connected, reach out to our community, watch our YouTube stuff, but ultimately you have to show up. You have to get engaged, not just from afar. Get engaged with our community or another community. Do they challenge you? Do they support you? It’s not just about what you can get, it’s also what you can give too. There are different pieces to what we’re talking about. Thanks for reading and knowing our struggles. The struggle is real. Thank you. We’ll see you next time.

Important Links:

• Dream: Together
• YouTube – The Dream Factory and Co.

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