Franklin: [00:00:00] Right now, the world needs great men who will stand up and lead with honor, serve with purpose and courageously fulfill their God given roles as husbands, fathers, leaders, and men. I'm your host, Franklin Swan, bringing you practical tools and powerful conversations you can use every day to build yourself into the man God is calling you to be.
This is the world needs men. Let's go. All right. Welcome back to the World Needs Men podcast. I'm your host, Franklin Swan. And today I've got an episode that I'm going to call 10 Strategies for Overcoming a Challenge. To give a little context for today, I have got a pretty significantly herniated disc in my neck.
And been dealing with it for a couple of months now and [00:01:00] going to be seeing some doctors and pretty big damper on my life in a, in a number of different ways. And it happened through probably three different jujitsu classes. I started, uh, doing jujitsu about five, six months ago and then had about three classes here a couple of weeks ago or a couple of months ago now.
Where I just got my neck cranked and by that third class, I took a blow and man, it just lit me up and long story short, I've got an MRI that shows a herniated disc pushing on the nerve that goes into my left arm. And so I've got some weakness, tingling, numbness, just not good stuff. So I've not been lifting, certainly not doing any jujitsu, can't run.
I can walk in the morning, have to be careful about what I lift. And pretty much been in some level of pain now for the past couple of months and as I go through this challenge, what I realized is there are some [00:02:00] commonalities between this challenge that I'm going through right now and others that I have faced and some of what I'm going to call the strategies that I I have employed a lot of this, not necessarily intentionally, but just as I look at it, realizing there's different strategies that I've been using to fit, whether it's a business challenge I've faced, uh, this one's a health challenge, you could use this in a, in a relational challenge that you may be facing, all these strategies will be applicable to a number of different areas of life, but I realized like when we have a challenge we're facing, there are things we can do about it.
And there are things that we can kind of stack in our favor and stack the odds so that we're able to come through the challenge we're facing and hopefully be even better on the other side of it. And so today are the 10 strategies there and there's more than this. Of course, there's other things you could do, but these are 10 really significant ones that I believe have been very helpful [00:03:00] in helping me get through some of the biggest challenges I've ever faced.
So, you know, I, I think that without a plan, we often run the risk of making our current problems permanent because when we don't have a plan, then we don't move forward. We just kind of sit and stay where, stay stuck wherever we're at, but, but we have to put a plan in place in order to move on to something better.
So as we get into this, the first strategy that I'm going to. propose is, is real simple, but it's faith. So when, what do I mean by that? Well, faith is about asking for God sized help in order to navigate through the challenge. And it's about having the humility to recognize your own fragility and weakness and about seeking, not for God to necessarily just fix your problem, but But to give you the wisdom and the strength and the courage and determination to face the challenge head on, [00:04:00] one step at a time.
It's about prayer and inviting God into your life and into your circumstance. And it's about believing that you will get through this and believing that this can be something that ends up being for good. And believing that something even better relies on the other side of whatever challenge you're going through.
Prayer daily is a huge part for me getting through a challenge. Because I know that I only have so much. But when I pray, when I surrender to God, when I bring it to Him, again, maybe He's gonna come and fix this. But if He doesn't, Okay, well, then can I ask for wisdom? Can I ask for strength and courage and determination to go one step, one day at a time and walk through whatever it is that I'm facing right now?
So the first, first strategy is just to have faith, have faith in God that he will see you through it and have faith that, that you've got what it takes in order [00:05:00] to make it. So the second strategy is to create a compelling vision. So when you have a challenge that you're facing, you have to create a compelling vision, a vision of what life is going to look like on the other side of this.
You have to paint a picture of, of what you're ultimately working towards and aiming at. When you connect to the things that are most important to you, to the people who matter, to the things that you love to do in life, your purpose, your mission, like all of these things will help you create a vision for your life.
Like, so for me right now, part of my vision is to get back to a place where I can go trail running through the woods, where I can throw my daughter in the pool, where I can wrestle with my son, where, you know, my wife can lean on me and not worry that she's going to hurt my neck. And so I've got a vision that is not reality right now, but a vision of something bigger and better that I'm working towards.
And it's [00:06:00] really critical when we are facing a big challenge to see a brighter future. In the Bible, it says where there is no vision, the people will perish. This applies to, and the same principle applies to challenges we face in life. The third strategy is to set some intentions. I think back to when, when COVID came along and my particular business was shut down for about 30 days.
And at that time I had, you know, I have three white boards in my, in my office and I wrote a phrase out, I wrote an intention at the top of each one of those boards and the first one said, This is the greatest opportunity of my career. So the truth is that when we have a challenge, if we look at it the right way, we can always make it into some sort of opportunity.
So the first intention I set was that that was going to be the greatest opportunity of my career. Then the next phrase I wrote was that we will be built [00:07:00] by this challenge. And I wrote that off the top of the other one. And the third was that we would be an even better company because of this challenge.
So those are the intentions that drove me forward and in their broad statements that define who we will be and how we'll operate and what we ultimately gain from the challenge that we're facing. Your intentions set the direction That you will move towards every single day in our high, like a high level guidepost.
They're not specific outcomes so much as they're, they're these big, big directional signs that just kind of move us in the right direction. And it's about cultivating the right mindset. I could have easily stepped into that and said, this is going to be the end of our business. This is going to be a big setback.
This is going to be a challenge that we cannot overcome. And that would have driven a certain set of. [00:08:00] responses and reactions and actions that would have ended up taking us down that path. But instead, I got my mindset right by setting the right intentions. And that's the third strategy for overcoming a challenge is to set those intentions.
I know on the other side of this, that I'm going to find a place of even greater health. In spite of the fact that I've got this injury right now. So the fourth strategy is to create a plan for progress every single day. And whether it's big or small, one of the best things we can do for our mental health and for our state is to simply make progress every single day.
Making progress is one of the most powerful tools for getting through any challenge. Oftentimes, uh, challenges can feel like climbing a mountain and when you see to the top and we're struggling towards, you know, fighting towards getting to the top of that mountain. But for anyone who's ever climbed mountains, you've experienced this [00:09:00] where you see what you believe is the summit and you're working towards it and you get to that spot only to find that it was a false summit and you're not there yet.
And a lot of times going through a challenge will look like that. You're going to have setbacks, you're going to have things that knock you down and knock you back a little bit. And so when you Make a little bit of progress where you focus on daily action that moves you forward a little bit of time.
You continue to make that progress until finally you, you reach the end, no matter how far away it is. And it's just like climbing a mountain. And so this can look like a morning routine. It can be helping some other people. It can be taking one to three actions every single day that moves you forward to solving, resolving the issue or challenges you're facing right now.
And when you take that daily action, you build, you begin to gain and build momentum and you get some wins each day. And when you have days where there's setbacks and days when you don't win, you know, [00:10:00] the next day you can wake back up and get back after it and start collecting some more wins. When the sun comes up every morning, it's a new opportunity to just get back after it.
So strategy number four is just create a plan for making some daily progress. Number five is take massive action. This is about responsibility. This is about the simple fact that if we do not take action, nothing will change. Tony Robbins has a great quote. He says, It's not a matter of resources. It's a matter of resourcefulness.
It doesn't how much or little we have. It's about what we do with it. You have to leverage every relationship opportunity insight that you possibly have and commit to a daily plan of massive action that gets you moving in the right direction. You have to be determined. You can't just sandbag it. You can't just take the easy road.
You have to do everything you can to move forward. The next [00:11:00] strategy coaches, counselors and mentors. You know, there are times when we simply cannot see what is standing in our way and we need someone else who can give us perspective that is an unattached and unemotional. perspective and from someone who has a level of training and skill in helping people identify what's standing in their way, holding them back so that they can ask the right questions and shine a light on our lives in a way that helps us to see the things that we need to do.
Sometimes Having a coach and having someone that you can go to who, again, they don't have that emotional attachment. It can be so powerful because they can just listen to you. You can, you can vent, you can open up, but at the same time, they're also going to hold you accountable. They're going to, they're going to call you out and they're going to make sure that you keep moving in the right direction no matter what comes up.
Next strategy, friends and family. Man, I think one of the greatest dangers we, uh, run as men. is this pull, [00:12:00] especially during challenging times to isolate, to, to remove. People from our lives to shut down to not tell people what's going on to kind of hide from the world and men die in isolation. Men suffer and and just get snuffed out when they're alone.
And one of the greatest tools that we can use and one of the best things we can do is simply make sure that we've got family around us that we bring in and open up to and are intentional about getting other men around us who can help us and support us and, and let us know that we're not alone. A great coach of mine once said, pain shared is pain divided.
And that's true. during, you know, recently with the challenge I'm facing, it has been extraordinary how many men have kind of rallied around me. They, they shoot me a text message and say, Hey man, how you doing? Or they give me a phone call or they even show up at my office unannounced and just, [00:13:00] just to talk to me for a bit and, and check in.
And that has been so powerful and, and sharing with my wife and my kids, like how I'm doing, how I'm feeling, you know, and also letting them know that we're going to make it through and we're, and I'm going to be okay. But when you can open up, there is a healing process and there is a reassurance and there's something just very powerful about using that as you navigate whatever challenge it is that you're facing.
Next strategy, helping other people. If you want to lessen your own pain and suffering, all you have to do is focus on helping another man in his pain and suffering. Take your eyes off yourself and focus on helping others, even when it might feel like you have nothing to give. We always have something to give, and one of the most powerful things we can do is simply serve others.
And when we [00:14:00] do that, we will bring so much energy and so much just power into ourselves because we're just simply taking the focus off of ourselves. Andy Stanley has a great quote. He says, all suffering is simply an excessive focus on ourselves. And when we can focus on other people, we suffer less. When we focus on other people, we can also realize that a lot of the times, no matter how bad the struggle or the challenges that we're going through, there's probably a lot of people around you that are going through something even worse and something even harder.
One of the quotes that I love to share inside of my business every day or not every day, but on a regular basis is that Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. And so when we only focus on ourselves, it feels like we're the only one who is suffering.
But when you focus on other people, you realize, man, there's other people who are facing so much more difficult challenges, or there's other people who have faced the same challenge I'm, I'm facing right now, [00:15:00] and they've come through it just fine. And so it's really important. To continue to focus on serving other people and not just wallow in our own self pity or in misery or in our own suffering, shift the focus and see how you can focus on somebody else and help them the ninth time.
strategy is to embrace gratitude and reject negativity. Another Tony Robbins quote, we either get to make the decision that life is happening to us or it's happening for us. It's either a gift or a curse, but it's up to us and we get to make that decision. And whichever one we decide will have a tremendous impact on the ultimate outcome.
Even in the darkest of circumstances, we get to embrace gratitude and that will give us strength and Courage to make it through being grateful for the challenges and being grateful for the trials and circumstances and situations because [00:16:00] these are the things that help us grow as men. When we reject it and want to push it away, then we're not able to benefit from it.
But when we're grateful, we can see that even though I'm going through something really tough and challenging right now, I have friends who are coming around me. I have doctors that I have access to. I have resources available. There are, there are people who care about me. And, and the reality is. If we focus on gratitude, no matter how bad your circumstance or situation, there is always more to be grateful for than not.
We are all blessed more than we are cursed. The number of blessings that I see around me right now are more than I ever have, even in the midst of this challenge. And so that, that's one of the greatest things you can do is just be grateful. You can even be grateful for the pain. You can even be grateful for the struggle, you know, and I think a lot of us have had most of us have had the experience in the [00:17:00] situation where we go through something very difficult in life, but on the other side of it, when we're asked about it, here's the response, you know, I would never wish that on my worst enemy or I would never want to go through that again.
If I had the opportunity to go back in time and not go through it, I wouldn't choose that either. And I think the reason that is, is because there is a piece of us that recognizes and knows that we wouldn't be who we are today without the challenge. And, and the reality is men, it's, it's the challenges that build us.
It's the obstacles and the setbacks and the heartaches and the failures, like those things build us into men. If we allow it, if we can find a place of gratitude within it. Because when we're grateful, then we can learn and we can grow from it and we can become even better men versus versus just stewing in self pity or misery or anger.[00:18:00]
And the flip side to that is we just have to reject negativity. I mean, just whether that's a negative mindset, negative ideas around what we're facing, negative people who may be in our lives, negative circumstances, like we just have to get the negativity out because that will not help you get through any challenge you're facing.
You have to embrace gratitude and reject negativity. Finally, number 10, give yourself some grace. I had a, a very good friend of mine, uh, call me and he said, you know, I was just thinking about you. You're on my heart. And, and I wanted you to know that it's okay to not be okay. Some days it's like, man, you know, I really needed to hear that because as a father, as a husband, as a business owner, someone, you know, I consider myself a leader.
I'm always pushing, I'm always trying to grow. And it's, It's difficult to not get in a mindset where, you know, I've got to always have it figured out and got to have things together. [00:19:00] And he said, you know, you, it's okay if you're not okay. And that's, that's the reality men like just giving ourselves some grace, just giving ourselves some grace on the days when we get knocked down, that it's okay to, to just not always be okay.
When you give yourself some grace, I think that we put ourselves in a position of fighting the number one enemy that we're going to face, which is the stories and the voice that comes from that six inches of space between our ears. Our own worst enemy is ourselves, our own self talk, our own limited perspective, uh, negative perspective.
And when we give ourselves some grace, we just. We remove some of the pressure to be perfect, and some days are going to be wins, and some days are going to be losses, and on the days that they're a loss, on the days that we have a setback, just give yourself some grace, [00:20:00] and get back up the next day, and do the work, and serve other people, and embrace gratitude, and connect with your family, and reach out to coaches, and paint a vision of the future, and lean on God, and just keep moving forward.
Whether you're in a struggle right now, coming out of a struggle, going into a struggle, like we all face challenges all the time. Whether that's in our health, in our relationships, in our business and career, they're gonna come and go, no matter what, like that's just part of life. But maybe next time you have a few more tools and a few more resources and some strategies that would allow you to move through it better and to come out the other side even better, you know, to go back through these real quick, these 10 strategies.[00:21:00]
Number one is faith, believing in, in God sized help and that you can make it through. Create a compelling vision. Number three, set some really powerful and positive intentions. Number four, create a plan that allows you to make progress every single day. Number five, take massive action. Number six, get a coach or a counselor or a mentor around you who can give you unemotional and unattached feedback, perspective, and clarity.
Number six, bring your friends and family around you. Open up to them, let them know how you're doing and lean on those relationships. Number seven, focus on helping other people. When you focus on someone else, it takes all the focus off of you and your pain and your suffering and the struggle that you're going through ultimately diminishes.
Number eight, embrace gratitude and reject negativity. [00:22:00] And that's it. No, that was number nine. Finally, number 10, give yourself some grace. If you employ and utilize these 10 strategies, the next time you face a challenge or a struggle, I promise you, you will sail through it smoother. You will shorten the gap in the, in the time it takes to get through it.
And then ultimately on the other side of it, you'll be an even better man, having having faced it. And then the next time the next struggle and challenge comes up, you'll be even that much more equipped, skilled and prepared to face the next challenge that comes. So men, don't run from your challenges, embrace them, build a plan to face them and move through it in a way that you can be proud of.
And that demonstrates to your wife and children and the people around you what an honorable man looks like when he is facing something challenging. Hope this serves you in some way today. If [00:23:00] you got some value from it, please share with another man.
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And until next time be the man the world needs.