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. Today, we're going to talk about how to build resilience, building resilience. This is, uh, something that. Men need to do, men need to know how to do, but let's talk first about like, why is it even important to, to be resilient?
Well, first and foremost, let's look at the opposite of [00:01:00] what resilience is. The opposite of resilience is fragility. It is being fragile. And the one thing we don't need more of in this world is more fragile men. We don't need our wives, our kids, our families, communities, businesses don't need fragile men.
They need resilient men. Men who can stand up in the midst of the storms of life and lead and be counted on and who can do the right thing, who don't shrink from the challenges. that arise, we need resilient men. And I believe that it's a responsibility we have to one, understand that resilience is, is an important thing.
And two, it's important to understand how we actually build that into our lives and, and into who we are as men. So if you look at it, like, A resilient man is one who earns the right to lead. He earns the right [00:02:00] through his actions, and being resilient is about what you do when things hit the fan. When, when things go south, when the challenges arise, what are the actions that you take that give you the right, earn you the right to lead.
And two, a man who's resilient is one who can be trusted because you know that he's going to show up. You know that you can count on him. You know that if you call on him, he's going to respond appropriately and he's going to be able to serve and he's going to show up. So how do we define resilience?
Well, if you look in the dictionary, resilience is the ability of a person to adjust or recover from adversity Or a major life challenge so that again, so the resilience is the ability of a person to adjust. or recover from adversity or a major life challenge. That's the dictionary version. I want to propose a slightly different version.
I [00:03:00] want to call resilience is the ability to do the work in the midst of resistance. So what does it mean to do the work? Well, doing the work is about following through on your commitments, your non negotiables. It's when you do the things that you said you would do. It's when you uphold your own personal values and standards.
Doing the work is when you show up, put in the effort, and refuse to quit. That's doing the work. It is, is being responsible for the roles and, and the things that you have committed to in life. Whether that be in your family, in your personal life, friendships, in your career, in your community, how you take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, physically.
All of those things are doing the work. Waking up in the morning is part of doing the work. Waking up at the time that you have decided to get up in the morning [00:04:00] is part of doing the work. So, the resistance is what shows up when we decide to do the work. And the resistance comes in many forms. And I learned this concept of, of the resistance when, uh, I was in a group called Superhuman Fathers.
They, they called it the resistance. And, you know, And it was interesting, I remember the day that it was like, oh, okay, now I know what you're talking about. And I had, you know, leveled up my fitness plan, my, my nutrition, everything in the first few days were really, easy, not easy, but like I was excited about it.
And then life began to set in and all of a sudden things would pop up that would make doing the work that I had committed to, doing the physical training I had committed to, doing the nutritional commitments I had made, it made those very difficult and we just called it the resistance. So the resistance is just [00:05:00] anything in your life that shows up and creates a barrier or a challenge to doing the work that you have decided or committed to doing.
The number one place that the resistance comes from is your own mind. It's your own mind that will convince you or talk you either out of doing things or into doing things, talk you into, or talk you out of the commitments that you've made, and you start negotiating with yourself. You know, your alarm goes off at 5 a.
m., and you start hitting the snooze button and negotiating with what time you really should get up, and it's real easy in that scenario to to justify why we're going to sleep in and why we need more sleep, or you've committed to a particular training regimen, or you've committed to taking your wife on date night, or you've committed to certain new programs or initiatives at work.
And as soon as you make those commitments, the resistance comes [00:06:00] up. And And convinces you or starts to tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't do it. Don't have to do it. It'd be better to quit. You know, you're not good enough. You're not smart enough. You're not worthy. You're probably going to fail.
That's the resistance. It's in your own mind. The resistance can also come from other people in your life. Your wife, your kids, your friends and family, your boss, your co workers, your employees. Like the people in your life can become the resistance. They can tell you, Oh, you know, let's stay out late when you know you got to get up early in the morning and hit your workout.
They may convince you to come out and drink with them when you've committed to stop drinking. They may. Convince you to do any number of things that go and or that are in conflict with what your priorities and your commitments are. So the resistance can come through the people that you're around and [00:07:00] associated with every single day.
And then the other big place that the resistance comes from is the storms of life. You have health storms, financial storms, relational storms, you know, the economy goes south. unexpected illness or injury happens, relationships have struggles, like, those are the storms of life and all of these things are, you can just sum them up as the resistance, these things that show up that just create huge obstacles and barriers to what our values are, what our commitments are, what our standards are, what our non negotiables may be.
And so we have to understand, like, any time that we set out to do something new or to do something big, to start something new, very soon the resistance is going to show up. And it's going to come from our own thoughts and our own limited beliefs. It's going to come from the people around us. It's going to come from the storms of [00:08:00] life.
But that's the thing. Like, that is a, a critical and necessary component and part of the recipe for us as men to build this resilience that I'm talking about. That, I mean, it's, it's not something that we could actually do away with. We actually need that without it, we can't build this resilience that, that we're, that we're learning about today.
And so the way we build resilience is to first define our non negotiables. You know, what are those things that we're committed to every single day? It could be the time you wake up. It could be your workout. It could be, I'm gonna have a devotional every single morning and spend time, you in the Bible, and I'm gonna spend time in prayer.
It could be a non negotiable to be home at a certain time, to spend with your family every day, or to prioritize date night, or to prioritize taking your kids out on a date each week, or you're gonna start writing gratitude notes to them every day. That could be a non negotiable and a commitment that [00:09:00] you make, or maybe it's in business, maybe you're going to start a new venture, start a new business, maybe you're going to take on some new responsibility.
Maybe you commit to just getting a certain amount of work done every single day no matter what. So, whether it's in your physical body, in your health, whether that's in your, your spiritual life, whether that's in your family, in your business, all these things become your non negotiables, your commitments, your standards for how you live, your values, the things that you will do, the things that you won't do, and you make those commitments.
And then you prepare and you realize that as soon as you make that commitment, there is going to be something that's going to show up. That's going to give you all of the reasons to not stay committed and to not follow through. And that's the resistance. That is the next part of the equation that helps you to build this resilience.
And so when you stick to your commitments in the midst of that resistance, then you begin to build. [00:10:00] resilience. And over time, you will build this resilience like a muscle and it'll become a habit. And eventually doing the work in the middle of that resistance will become second nature. It'll become your default to do the work versus to stop doing the work.
And especially when the resistance comes, it'll almost be like that's just an indication of, oh, now I have to double down and I have to focus in and I have to do an even more intentional job with what I've set out to do. Because otherwise, we're putting ourselves in a place where we can't be trusted.
We're putting ourselves in a place where we're not fit to lead. We're not, we don't have the right to lead because we haven't done the work. We can't be counted on. We're proving that when things get tough, when the temperature increases, when, when things are not going real well for us, that [00:11:00] we fold. And that is the definition of fragility for a man.
He's a man who is just fragile in those tough moments, can't be counted on, can't lead. And when we can't do those things, we leave our families up to figuring it out. We put that responsibility onto the shoulders of our spouses. We put that responsibility onto the shoulders of our kids because we haven't built that resilience.
And so, men, I think we just have to look at how are we doing this every day and, and we have to come in and connect this idea with our why. You know, what is, like, your reason for getting up and, and living every day? You need to take a look at that. For me, it's my wife and kids. Like, they are my why. They are the fuel that fires my engine.
They are the I mean, they are my purpose, they are my focus. Of course, there's other things in my life, but if I [00:12:00] look at, you know, what's my wife? It's my wife and kids. Like, that's what drives everything. And when I connect this idea of building resilience to the fact that that has a massive impact and it has a huge influence on who I am as a husband and father, Then I realized, like, this isn't just a, a thing that I can choose to do or not do, like, this is mandatory.
It is mandatory for me to build resilience as a husband and father so that I know that I can lead my family through the storms of life. And as you do this, then what we need to do is actually follow the principle of progressive overload. Because the, the challenge is, is that we, we get comfortable. You know, maybe you start off building some resilience and you start off with something that's hard.
But over time, you keep doing something, you keep working out or waking up or, or pouring into your family or having these commitments. And then eventually, though, those things that were hard become easy. And [00:13:00] so what we have to recognize is, as soon as they become easy, we kind of stop developing our resilience and we quit building that muscle.
And so just like if you want to increase your strength in the gym, you follow the principle of progressive overload and you, you increase the weight or you increase the reps just a little bit each time. But over time, you're just progressively building that strength and you just do it a little bit of time and a little bit of time.
1 percent rule. If you could just increase your, Resilience 1 percent per day, like think about who you would be, what you could handle, like think of the pressure that you could be under and be unfazed in one year, in two years, in five years. And then you're a man who your wife and your kids can look to and they can find an immense amount of safety and security and peace in the midst of the storm because they know that they've got somebody who can handle it.
But we're not built with this ability. You know, none of [00:14:00] us are naturally gifted with the ability to handle this pressure. It's something that has to be intentionally cultivated and nurtured along and focused on. So, when we can make a decision to reject fragility by building resilience, then we can become the men that our families deserve.
And when we do this by design, we become men who can lead and men who can be counted on and trusted and men who our families can turn to when the storms of life blow in. So, man, I would, I would encourage you, what are the non negotiables that you know that you need in your life? What are those standards that you need to set and then commit to and then realize that there will be resistance that's going to come, that's going to give you all the reasons to not do it, but in the midst of that, you can realize that that is how you build [00:15:00] yourself.
That is how you become a man who can be counted on and trusted and looked to. And we all have that responsibility. So that, men, is how you build resilience. It's how you cultivate it, and it's how you go about leading your family. If you're a man who is listening to this and you're looking for more, and if what I'm talking about is resonating with you, but you find yourself in a place where you're struggling, you're in pain, you're in relational pain, you're in, in pain in your business, you're in pain in your body, and you look in the mirror and you don't even want to look at yourself.
And you're just thinking, man, I just need someone who I can work with, who I can talk to, who can, who can show me how to get out of this space. Then I'm beginning to open up a very limited number of [00:16:00] spots. And if you click the link below, just send me an email, send me a DM, and we can have a conversation and see if we'd be a fit.
And see if, if I'm somebody who could help you out of a dark space, because. I found my own way out of a dark space. And there were men who I reached out to at that time. And now I'm in a position where I feel called to serve other men and help them out. That resonates with you, then reach out and we'll jump on a call.
Thanks for joining today and go build yourself some resilience. Let's go.