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Welcome to Chasing the Awesome Life, your weekly guide to making life a little bit more awesome. Because we all have goals and dreams, but yet the struggle is oh so real. So take a little time to equip yourself with the tools and the inspiration to be just a little bit more awesome in every aspect of your life.
There's no topic I won't cover in this podcast. From kids to college to the joys and the struggles, it's all awesome if you choose to chase it. So get ready to take some notes and take a little more awesome action. This is Chasing the Awesome Life. What's up, what's up, what's up, everybody?
I'm Nick DiStefano. I'm your host of the Chasing the Awesome Life podcast. I am glad that you have chosen to take 15 awesome minutes today to learn a little something with me about how you can start or continue chasing the awesome life.
I'll probably say the word awesome like 15 more times in this podcast, but that's because I firmly believe that you have the capability to be awesome within yourself. And we're going to talk today about the concept, the idea. It's one of my most popular keynotes. It is probably the most intriguing title. It is what students, staff, professionals, all and everyone in between think
They all say, I was really interested in this session just based off of the title. And it is Embracing the Suck. Yep, Embracing the Suck. Something we all need to do. Now, whenever I give a keynote, usually it's not just the title Embracing the Suck. Usually there's this wonderful little powerful tool in the English language. We call it a colon.
So I love to put a colon after it and say something like, embracing the suck, learning to love what's not so awesome. Or sometimes the keynote could be, embracing the suck, learning to love conflict, embracing the suck, overcoming adversity, embracing the suck, and the list goes on and on.
The key theme, though, y'all, is about the fact that you should stop running from your fears and you need to start running towards your fears. And I think that is very counterintuitive to who you are as a human being, to what you've learned your entire life, to what comes natural to you, to what most of us like to do.
We want to be comfortable. I don't want to challenge myself to do something uncomfortable, to do something unnatural. That's not fun. In this keynote, I often wear my rucksack. You'll hear me as I talk in some of my other podcasts. If you follow me anywhere on social media, you'll see that one of the things I like to do is I like to ruck.
For those of you that are new to who I am or not sure what rucking is, never heard of this and think that it sounds like I'm just cursing, I am not. Rucking actually is the practice of carrying weight in a backpack, so to speak, a rucksack as they would call it in the military, and accumulating miles on foot. So for me, that is walking as fast as I can.
And that for me is something that has helped me to be in better shape, both mentally and physically. And it's not something that I would necessarily say I'm thrilled about. Every time I put 30 pounds on my back, I feel it. I know it's there. There's no avoiding it. You can't pretend that it doesn't exist.
You can get used to it. You can get a little more comfortable with it. But let's be honest, carrying 30 pounds around in a backpack is not something that you can just say, oh, well, no big deal. It's not really there. You always notice it.
The same is for the suck in my life and your life. And we say the suck in quotation because here's the thing, y'all. It's different for every one of you listening to this. The suck, so to speak, is different. Your suck compared to my suck, whatever that is, is different. It's not more. It's not less. It's just different. You know, it'd be like.
comparing our crap in the toilet and forgive me for being crude here y'all like it's all crap okay um you can't pretend that it doesn't exist though it's part of life like it's just the way the world works it's the way your body works it's the way you know anatomy physiology all of it right i'm not going to get into that sort of shit okay that's not what we're here to talk about um put
You've got to embrace it. You can't pretend it doesn't exist. It would be like if when my boys were younger, or not even younger, I mean, Cooper's still in diapers now, y'all. If I said to myself...
I don't want to change his diaper because it's gross, right? That'd be one, neglect and bad parenting. But two, you can't just run away from the things you don't like. I don't enjoy changing a shitty diaper. Like, it's just not fun. It's not something I'm like, oh, this is exciting. Like, this is a wonderful thing. Yay, let's go change some shit. No, hell no. Nobody says that. No one's like, woohoo. That's just not the way the world works. The same thing happens for whatever's going on in your life.
You might have some struggle, some fear, some anxiety, something that you're going through, and it's time that you switch your mindset on that.
You know, when it comes to Cooper and changing a dirty diaper, and we think about that, a lot of times I tell myself I have to go change another dirty diaper. And tons of people out there, tons of motivational speakers and people that you might follow on Instagram and all sorts of people, people from Tony Robbins to Simon Sinek, whoever it is that you're following, have probably said this, and I'm just going to reiterate it. There's nothing that you have to do
It's all things that you get to do. The same mindset shift needs to happen with the crap that's going on. So if you're experiencing whatever curveball life has thrown at you, and I don't know what that curveball is, y'all, it could be anything. For Megan and I, it was two years ago, the curveball of finding out that Calvin had autism.
And I sure as hell don't want to say, oh, I have to accept that Calvin has autism. No, I get to. You know, I get to be his dad. I get to...
love him. I get the opportunity to go through life with him. Every day that I have with him and with my family is truly a blessing. And, you know, that sounds cheesy and it sounds corny, but that's something you have to practice. You don't just wake up one day and say, okay, well, I'm excited to throw 30 pounds on my back and just walk around. No, you slowly start doing it day after day so that when the thing happens,
truly does happen in your life that is the curveball or the suck, whatever it might be, the crap in the toilet, you're ready for it. And that truly has to be a mindset shift for you. So a couple of things that I would suggest if you're listening to this and, you know, you're going through something, there's a couple of things that
that I think all of us could do a better job at when it comes to embracing the suck. And this is really, truly just scratching the surface, y'all. Again, these are 15 awesome minutes or less. So this isn't anything that is earth shattering. And I can get into more details. And I'm happy to answer questions for people that are listening to this. So if you're listening, and you're interested in learning more and more things you can do,
I would suggest that you just reach out to me. You can find me on Instagram, Chasing the Awesome Life. You can, same thing on Facebook in terms of social media or LinkedIn. You can also email me at dstefanoleadership at gmail.com. All that information is going to be in the show notes as well for you. So,
a couple things you can do. The first thing you should do is practice gratitude. And I'm not talking about, you'll hear people say this all the time, you need to write down three things you're grateful for every day. And I think that's a wonderful practice, but that has to become a habit. That's not something that you're going to just start doing. You need to find time to do that. You need to be looking for that throughout the day. And I think
I say that's a nice habit, but it's not my favorite thing because I would rather you look for those things throughout the day rather than just at the end of the day go back and look at what are the things that you did because I think that allows you to live more intentionally rather than reflect, which is for me more action-oriented. And when we're talking about chasing the awesome life, it's all about what's the action you're going to take to make a difference.
So the action specific to gratitude when it comes to practicing it that I want you to do is to actually take five minutes today and reach out to someone who's had an impact on you. And it could be friend, family. It can be small. It can be large. But someone that has made a difference in your life. And I want you to take five minutes today.
and reach out to them and thank them. You can text them, you can call them, you can write them a thank you card, you can publicly thank them on social media. Do whatever works for you and that individual and the relationship you have with them. But you know, one of my all-time favorite
Ted Talks is called Everyday Leadership by Drew Dudley. If you haven't seen it, I'd highly suggest you go check it out. And one of the things he says in this is we celebrate birthdays in this world where all you have to do is not die for 365 days. But then he challenges, you're not celebrating the people who impact you. So even if that person that impacts you today is
Is the person who's bagging your groceries because they're smiling and they're friendly and they say, hey, how are you? How cool would it be if you said to that person bagging your groceries or scanning your groceries? Hey, you know, I really appreciate the fact that you have such a positive attitude. Thank you. That's literally one sentence. And that's going to change that person's day for the positive attitude.
But you have to practice that. You have to intentionally be thinking about what am I doing today to practice gratitude? Okay, so that's the first thing. Get out there and practice gratitude. Another thing if you want to start embracing the suck, and this is key, y'all, okay? You've got to name what you're afraid of. You have to be willing to actually name it and then also tell somebody else about it.
Megan knows what one of my biggest fears is, and one of my biggest fears is not necessarily a fear of failure, but a fear of letting others down. I have this fear that causes me to constantly feel like I need to be doing something for others, feels like I need to be constantly getting things done for other people.
I'm working on that all the time. I'm learning to slow down, to not put pressure on myself. I'm learning that I don't have to be perfect and get everything done. That when I vacuum, the lines don't have to be perfect. Although I'll have to admit, I do take some stress relief in creating very nice carpet lines when I'm vacuuming. If anybody else feels the same, let me know. So I'm constantly working on that fear and I have someone helping me with it.
You can't embrace the suck if you're holding the backpack and the suck all by yourself. You have to have other people on your journey with you. So name your fear. Find somebody that you can share that fear with and say, hey, this is something I'm afraid of. It's something I worry about. It's something that whether I realize it or not, unconsciously, sometimes this impacts my actions.
And that naming of the fear and sharing it with somebody is going to bring it more to the forefront of your mind. It'll prevent you from always just running away from it or unconsciously acting on it and not even realizing you're doing it. So when we talk about embracing the suck, y'all, gift bag this up for you, okay? Practice your gratitude and then also you can name and share those fears, whatever it might be, all right?
Again, embracing the suck is for me a much larger concept, a much larger practice, a much, much, much larger theory and idea that we all need to be working on constantly.
It's why I've got full keynotes and workshops on it. And again, I'm happy to chat with anybody who wants more information about it. Just reach out to me. And until then, get out there. Say thank you to somebody today for something large or small, and then find someone that you can share that fear with. I'll catch you all on the next episode. Keep chasing the awesome life, friends.