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Welcome to today's episode of The Mind segment to our podcast, I am your host, Rob Dial, and if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe. But since you never miss another podcast episode, and if you want to receive motivational text messages from me in video format to your phone, send me a text right now. One five one two five eight zero nine three zero five. Once again, one five one two five eight zero nine three zero five.

Today we're going to be talking about how hard life can be and we're going to talk about how to work through it. And I want to talk about this because no matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter where you're from, life is going to be hard at some point in life. You can go to this entire life, this human experience, and you can't go through the entire thing without getting some scars along the way.

Some injuries. You can't go without getting a couple broken bones. So today we're going to talk about how life is going to be hard either way. But you might not realize it. You're actually making life harder on yourself than you believe. So life is already going to be hard, but you're making it harder. So it's never going to talk about how to relieve yourself from life being so hard at how to make it easier and also how to have a happier life as we're going through.

But the best part about life being hard is that you get to pick your heart. What do I mean by that? You get to pick whether you want life to be hard right now or you want life to be hard for the rest of your life. So you can either have immediate life being hard or the rest of your life life can be hard. And let me give you a couple of examples. Just makes a lot more sense, right?

Do you know what is hard, hard work?

Hard work is hard. It's hard to to force yourself to work 30, 40 extra hours on top of the job you already have, it's hard to have sleepless nights. You could start your business, you could support your family or be able to travel the world or start your dream job or whatever it is or impact the people that you want. It's hard to put in hard work, hard to put in 60, 70, 80, 100 hours a week for a year, two years, three years.

Sometimes it's hard to put in the hard work. That's why it's called hard work. Do you know what's even more hard than hard work being broke? Being broke is way harder. I'll tell you, I've been in both situation before, I've been in a situation where I've been really, really broke and I've been in a situation where I've worked really, really hard. I've been in a situation where I was five months behind on my car payment. I almost lost my car.

I've been in the exact same situation that same time where I lived off of pasta for two months inside of my one bedroom apartment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, lost my the company I was running, ran it into the ground, lost all of my money, went into debt, lived off pasta for two months, literally all day for two months was pasta sauce, which was a dollar eighty eight at Wal-Mart and a box of pasta, which is 88 cents at Wal-Mart.

That's how I lived for two months. That sucks.

And if I hadn't made any changes in my life, guess what? I would have been in the exact same situation.

You know what else is hard about being broke, not being able to provide for your family the way that you want to, not being able to provide for your family the way that you think that they deserve to be provided for?

You know, it's hard the judgment that you place on yourself for not being able to provide for your family. All of those things are hard. What's hard is seeing that some people can, you know, take their children to other countries and travel with them and get experiences, be able to afford to put them into a college or be able to help them with their first car. That's hard to see that you can't do that.

But other people can. So either you can decide that you're going to work really hard right now and take to heart in this moment, or you can realize that the rest of your life is going to be hard if you don't work hard. You see what I mean?

The beautiful thing is that the choice is yours. Either you can work hard or you can have life. Be hard for you because you're broke. Being broke is hard, hard work is hard, you get to choose which hard you want. Another example, if you think about like I'm going along with hard work, like I've been lazy, I've procrastinated, and I'm asking you, have you been lazy before?

Have you ever procrastinate if you ever put off what it is that you actually truly need to do because you don't want to do it right now, in that moment when you're being lazy, in that moment when you're procrastinating, in that moment when you're sitting on top of the couch and you're just scrolling through Instagram, you're thinking about, you know, just trying to not pay attention to your worries.

That's not easy.

I get it. You're not to have that situation, it's not easy to be stuck in that situation. It's easy to choose to stay in that situation because it's easier right now. But I want you to realize in that moment it's easy. But what's not easy about it is the life that it's going to give you for the rest of your life until you make changes.

So some people are like, oh, I don't like my circumstances. OK, well, show me your actions. If you don't like your circumstances, let me see what your actions are on a daily basis. So if you're being lazy or you're procrastinating, you're choosing easy right now, which is going to turn into hard later. Now, if you were to flip that and go, you know what, I'm going to put in the work, I'm going to get some willpower, I'm going to force myself to do the things I need to do to create the life that I want.

Well, it's going to be hard now, I promise you that. But by putting in the work now, life will become easier down the road.

So either you choose easy now in hard labor or hard now and easy later because you either have a choice in every situation.

It's either instant gratification or it's delayed gratification. Sitting on Instagram, just looking at your phone, not doing the stuff that you need to do is instant gratification. You're just flipping through, doing mindless stuff, getting drops of dopamine and saying, oh, this is great. I'm able to look through these things and I don't have to do any work right now. But that's not going to put on your bank account. That's not going to give you the life that you want.

Delayed gratification is putting in the work now, knowing that it's you're not going to see the fruits of your labor for a few months, a few years, maybe, like you don't plant a tree and immediately get fruit from it.

It's got to grow. And that's exactly how your life has to be as well. So the difference between instant gratification, delayed gratification is instant gratification is sitting on the couch, being on Instagram, whatever it is, choosing the easy route right now, delayed gratification is putting in the hard work. It's really hard now, but it's going you're going to get the fruits of your labor later on down the road. Another example of choosing your hard of instant gratification versus delayed gratification is this.

Do you know it's hard eating healthy? It's hard. It's hard to say no to delicious food. And, you know, you can make healthy food. Delicious. But I'll tell you this. I don't know a whole lot of things that really compete with the big old pizza, but you have to say no to pizza. That's hard. It's hard to eat no sugar. It's hard to say no to alcohol. For some people, it's hard to be healthy and to take care of your body, to say no to gluten, to say, you know, no to red meats, to say no to the things that the greasy stuff, the fried chicken, whatever it is, all of those things that tastes so good, it's hard to say no to them.

And when you say no to him in the moment, you don't get any immediate gratification. It's all delayed gratification. But you know what else is hard? What else is hard? Being overweight, being obese, your body failing on you because of not being taken care of for years, having complications because of your weight, having complications, because of choices that you made in the past, which were based off of instant gratification instead of delayed gratification. Right.

Possibly not being able to live as long. That's hard. You know what else is hard?

Not being able to see your children walk down the aisle because of choice that you made in the past, not being able to see your grandkids grow up because of choices that you made in the past. That's the difference between instant gratification versus delayed gratification. And in those choices, when you look at and take yourself outside of your own head, you realize it's not just hard on you. That's also going to be hard on other people down the road, not just yourself.

So one of them is hard now, which is saying no and eating healthy and the things that you should and actually taking care of your body. And one of them is hard later, which is eating unhealthy now. But then seeing what happens down the road, seeing the repercussions of maybe the decisions that you didn't make in the bad choices that you made simply because you wanted instant gratification or as Joe Rogan says, mouth pleasure. You just want something that tastes good.

That's all that you're worried about. You're not worried about the repercussions in the future. So both of those are hard.

One of them is hard now and easy later. One of them is easy now and hard later. Which one do you choose?

The choice is always up to.

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Let's give you another example.

You know what else is hard working out five times a week. I don't know about you. I've never been. I've never loved working out. I forced myself to do it and I enjoy it after I'm done, but I enjoy it. Don't enjoy the process of thinking about doing it. I don't enjoy the process of showing up to the gym. I don't enjoy the process of working out, lifting heavy. That's hard going for runs. That's hard forcing yourself to get off the couch.

That's hard. Those things are hard. But do you know what else is hard? Deciding not to workout. And then realizing years down the road that you're immobile, having joint issues, having muscular issues, skeletal issues, not being able to play with your grandkids in the yard and throw the football because of choices that you made in the past of being too immobile like we have such sedentary lives were sitting all of the time. And we have to realize that just you know, it's like they say sitting is the new cancer.

People are going to start dying in droves because of the fact that they're not taking care of their body and sitting for long periods of time can really start to at. So it's it's easier to sit and just to be sitting and stay sitting all day long. It's hard to get up and do a workout. But once again, if you look at them, one of them is easy now and half later, one of them is hard now and easy later.

But once again, what do I say? You get to choose which hard you want to go for. One of them is hard now working out force yourself to do things you don't want to do. One of them's hard later being immobile, being injured, not being able to play with your your grandkids, maybe not being around, maybe not being able to leave a wheelchair because you live such a sedentary life. So which hard do you want to choose?

What else is hard, tough conversations or hard? It's hard to sit down with someone that you love, maybe a spouse or some mature relationship with or maybe a close friend or maybe a family member, it's hard to sit down and have a conversation that's tough, that absolutely needs to be had. But it's also hard to see what happens if you don't have those conversations, if you don't have that tough conversation of, hey, I think that maybe you should stop drinking.

If you have that tough conversation with somebody, maybe they don't stop drinking, maybe something happens to them down the road, if that's not very good, you don't have those tough conversations with your spouse that you're afraid to have because you're like, oh, I really want to make sure that I don't get into an argument. I'm worried about that. You don't have those tough conversations about what happens down the road. Maybe the marriage starts to dissolve because it's been years and years and years of not communicating at the level that you need to communicate.

So it's tough to have those. It's hard to have those tough conversations right now. But any relationship, the most important part is communication. So if you're avoiding conversations that need to be had. Something might happen down the road, something might deteriorate down the road, somebody's health minded here, down the road, your relationship might deteriorate down the road. It's you choose your hard now or it's going to be hard later, which path do you want to take?

One is hard. Now one is hard later. The beautiful thing about it is it's completely up to you. Do you know what else is hard? Financial discipline is hard to not want to compete with everybody that you see on Instagram. That's hard to be able to not go out and spend money when you don't need to. It's harder to stay home and cook something than is to go out to eat. Financial discipline is hard. Sitting down and taking time and putting a budget together every single month and making sure you're sticking to it is hard.

It takes time. It's easier not to do it. But do you know it's even harder than that being in debt your entire life. Being in debt, not being able to do the things that you want to not be able to travel to the place that you want to not be able to have the freedom that you want to because you didn't sit down and make a budget, because you didn't sit down and make a plan. All of these things are hard.

It's either hard now or it's hard later. Instant gratification is so much easier. It is. That's why so many people choose instant gratification, because it's easier. But if you were to fast forward 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now.

And see what your life would be if you decided to choose instant gratification every single time. You wouldn't be happy about it. You wouldn't be happy about where your life would be in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, where your family's life would be 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, where your relationships would be 10 years, 20 or 30 years, where your finances would be 10 years, 20 or 30 years down the road, where your body would be 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the road.

In the moment, it seems awesome. In the moment, all I want to do is sit down on my couch, eat a big fucking pizza and some ice cream. That sounds amazing, doesn't it?

But if I fast forward and have those types of decisions every single day for the next 30 years, my body, my mind, my finances, my life, my relationships are not going to be in the order that I know that I want them to be.

So I don't know about you. Instant gratification seems a lot easier. Delayed gratification is a lot harder. Why? Because you're working something that you don't immediately get to see. You don't plant a seed in the ground and it immediately grows into a fruit bearing tree. But you know that when you plant the seed into the ground and you take care of it and you water it and you give it a sun, take care of it, you water and give it sunlight, eventually one year, two years, three years down the road, it will start to bear fruit.

And that is what makes it easier. That's when you're actually going to start loving the decisions that she made in the past.

Your life where you're currently are right now in this moment is all of a bunch of little, teeny, tiny decisions, tiny decisions over the past 10, 15 years.

Got you to where you are right now. Whether it's what you want or whether you don't don't want the beautiful thing about that, though, is that from right now into the future, the next 15 years of your life where you are in 15 years will be a bunch of little, teeny, tiny decisions.

Did you choose instant gratification or did you choose delayed gratification? Which when did you choose one? Easy now and hard later ones. Hard later, hard now, easy later. Instant gratification is always going to be easier, but it's always going to be much harder in the long run. And it's not going to pay off because it sucks. You're stuck in the exact same situation, same situation, or sometimes even worse.

So at some point you have to sit down and be real with yourself and you have to realize that nobody else is in control of your life. Nobody can make you do something you don't want to do. Nobody is telling you to sit on the couch and, you know, knock it off and work out, not get up. And, you know, nobody's telling you to to stop eating the pizza. Nobody's telling you to stop having the extra beers when you come home from work.

Nobody is telling you to stop doing those things. You have to be the person that does it for you. You have to realize at some point in time, either my life is going to be really great in 10 years or I'm not going to be enjoying my life in 10 years.

And that's the truth. The question is, what are you going to do about it in this moment? Life is going to be hard. It's hard for everybody. Like I said in the beginning, nobody goes his life without scars. It will either be easy now or really fucking hard later or it'll be harder now and easier later.

But I guarantee if you choose hard now, not only a little bit easier later on down the road, but you'll be much more satisfied with the life that you'll that you've built.

You've realized you'll realize 10 years from now. That if you look around that your entire life was a bunch of little, teeny tiny decisions where you decided not to get the instant gratification, we decided to push yourself a little bit more, decided to put in the hard work. You decided to work out, you decided to eat healthy. You decided to get your finances in order. You decided to fix your relationships. All of those were hard. But if you fast forward in 10 years, all of them are going to be so much easier and so much better because you chose the right choice.

Your life is your choice. Nobody is telling you to take instant gratification. Nobody is also telling you to take delayed gratification. You choose which one you want. It's either easy now or hard later or hard now.

Easy later. The choice, as always, and everything is beautiful. Life is yours. So that's what I got for you for today's episode, if you love this episode, please share it with someone that you know and love, and I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode, make it your mission to make someone else's day better. Please go ahead and share this on your Instagram.

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