Comfort Is Making You Weak | The Sean Trace Show

I made a painful mistake.

After eating cashews with the skin still on them, I triggered a severe allergic reaction that left nearly 40% of my body covered in a rash. It was miserable—but it also reminded me of something important:

Adversity teaches lessons that comfort never will.

In this episode, I talk about accepting reality faster, leaning into discomfort, building resilience, finding perspective, and why life's toughest moments often become our greatest teachers.

The goal isn't to avoid adversity.

The goal is to become the kind of person who can handle it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up, guys? I got something to talk to you about today here on the full Chantre show. That's what I'm saying about that. It's hard to focus right now. I'm gonna tell you the truth. It's really hard to focus right now. And I'm gonna show you why. This is what I'm dealing with right now. Now. Ah, see that? Not fun at all. This side too. Also, my legs, my back, my arms, all over. Like 40% of my body is covered in rashes. I'm gonna take a page from Jonko Willink. It's hard, but good. All right. A few days ago, I made a massive mistake. Massive mistake. I ate cashews with the skin on them. Like a lot of cashews with the skin on them. Now, what I didn't know is that cashews are related to poison ivy and poison sumac. Itching right now, all over. The result? A brutal allergic reaction. I'm talking brutal. Rashes, itching, like discomfort. It's hard to sleep. It is hard to work. I'm just like, every day I'm at work and I'm just wanting to scratch. My executive assistant looks at me and she's like, Mr. Sean, no. And I'm like, I'm trying. I'm trying right now. At one point, roughly 40% of my body was covered with rashes. I think it's actually still about that, if not more. No, it has been miserable. I've been the last couple of days. If you guys are watching my podcast, when this comes up, you're gonna see there's a lot, and I'm just like moving around, and I just keep touching parts of me because I'm like, oh, my skin's crawling right now. It's tough. And strangely enough, though, it's been one of the best reminders I had in a long time. Because I remember one thing adversity teaches lessons, comfort never will. There's some different things and some problems that we have in life right now. And for me, this is one of the things I thought. One of the problems that we have is that we, I see, I'm scratching right now, it's hard. We expect life to be comfortable. Now, most people expect life to go according to plan, but the reality is it never does. You know, we had a great reminder of that a couple of years ago in the pandemic. Everyone thought things were gonna go this way and they went that way. And when you're cruising along and you expect everything to go according to plan, and something doesn't, and when something painful happens, people immediately ask, why is this happening to me? Now, life was never supposed to be comfortable. Problems literally are part of the deal. And that's okay, because those problems teach us something about ourselves. Now, the solution to this whole problem that we expect life to be comfortable is actually pretty straightforward. Accept reality faster. You know, I follow this one page, nature is brutal, because it's like these horrible videos of animals getting ripped apart and eaten and hunted by other animals. And it reminds me that this world is not that nice of a place. We can make it a nice place. We can surround ourselves with good people, we can surround ourselves with community, but in and of itself, it's a kind of rough place. So I have to start off with these simple steps. And the first one is stop asking, why me? Why me? Why did I get dissed? Well, because I hate all those freaking cashews, you know? And shifting off of that why me, I could be bitter, I could be upset, I could be grumpy, I could be complaining, but the reality is none of that fix the situation. So I moved to step two, and that's asking, what do I do now? Well, for me, there's some different things. I can get some medicine, I can grin and bear it, I can do some soothing, cool things. I can keep the AC on so I don't sweat as much, which makes it a little bit more bearable. There's things that I can do, and that's that whole dichotomy control. What can you control and what can you not? Focus on what you can control and let go of the rest. And you gotta then move on to step three, which is focus on your response, not the problem. If you're focusing on the problem, it's the problem. It is there. Whether you like it or not, it is there. There's nothing you can do about that. But there is something that you can do about your response. Now, this leads to a little bit more of a deepening of this whole thing. And the second problem that we often get is that we avoid discomfort. Like a lot of us avoid discomfort. We spend our lives trying to avoid pain. Like, think about it. I know, don't know about you, but 99% of the people that I know, they try to avoid that struggle. They avoid the inconvenience, they try to avoid the discomfort. But discomfort is where growth lives. If you go to the gym, you're only going to get stronger by moving into discomfort of lifting heavier weights. You're only going to get healthier by going through the discomfort of maybe not eating as much savory, delicious food. Man, that food that you ate today that caused you to gain a little bit of weight, I'm sure it was delicious. The discomfort of not eating that is tough, but it's the thing that you need to be doing. And the challenges, the things that challenge us often strengthen us. So, what's the solution to avoiding that discomfort? Well, build a higher tolerance for the discomfort. There's some different steps that you can do. The first step that I like is to do difficult things on purpose. For me and my family, it's again getting into Muay Thai, getting into martial arts, practicing hard things. You know, I'm not great at guitar. I have the guitars on the wall, but I'll tell you a secret, I suck at guitar. So practicing is hard for me. So I get out there and I try to practice because it's difficult, it's painful for my fingers, but I get better. And the second step that I really enjoy is to stop treating discomfort like an emergency. Like right now, my whole body is screaming. It's screaming like everywhere on me is telling me to scratch it and just do something. But the reality is, is um, sudden emergency, I will be fine. There is nothing dangerous about what I'm dealing with right now. It's annoying, it's challenging, but it's not an emergency. And when I start framing it that way, I can move on to step three. And that's remembering that growth usually feels uncomfortable. I talked about the weight room, the gym. I'm gonna wake up nice and early tomorrow morning, which is not comfortable. After I have a meeting with a client, which is at 4:45 in the morning, I have to wake up, which is also not comfortable. But I do those things because growth happens. I get better and I can grow more when I lean into that discomfort. But it's hard for people to do, and there's some reasons that we don't do it. But one of the reasons that people don't do it is our next problem, and that's people underestimate themselves. Most people have no idea what they're capable of. And they're they don't have any idea until life forces them to find out, you know, and they might have a hard strip, but that hardship is going to reveal their strength, and the pressure reveals their character, just like a diamond is only revealed once it is put under extreme pressure. I think back to my mom. I didn't know how strong my mom was until my family went through a very challenging lawsuit with each other, not with each other, but together. We went through a lawsuit with a group that had injured my family, and we stood together. But we stood together through the strength of one person, my mom, and they attacked us. They attacked us with extreme vigor. And I had one uh psychologist who then questioned me, questioned my brother, and said literally the most horrible things about me and my brother, and belittled my mother, who was trying to protect her family. Not cool. But the thing that I learned in that more than anything else was how strong my mom is. And I only hope that I can be as strong for my family. The solution here, when we underestimate ourselves, is to use the challenges as proof. One of the things that you can start doing is keeping a record of challenges you overcome. Write down the challenges that you've faced and how you surpass them, how you grew beyond them, how you overcame them. You're gonna start noticing that you are stronger, you are more capable, you are more powerful than you think. And then you move on to the second step, and that's reminding yourself what you've survived before. When you have that list, when you're able to look at it and go, you know what? This is what I overcame last year. It's not bad. If I overcame that, man, I can overcome a lot of other things. You might gain the confidence that you didn't know that you had deep inside you. Now, the next step is to let the adversity build confidence, not fear. So many of us are thinking about the worst possible scenarios. You start drifting toward what could go wrong? What could go wrong instead of what can I overcome? Because I know that I'm a strong individual, but it's connected to this next thing. Another problem that people often have is that they lose perspective. Why? Because you're suffering. It's hard for me right now. My legs are on fire. Our problems feel like the biggest problem in the world, but they aren't. Someone out there is fighting cancer. Someone lost a loved one, someone is facing challenges greater than ours. Perspective changes everything. I'm upset about my skin. It's itchy. It's itchy. I have a family member who just was diagnosed with cancer in both breaths and in her lymph nodes. Her struggle is greater than mine. And that perspective is powerful. So, what's the solution? We can zoom out, and that's what you have to do. Remember that there are people carrying heavier burdens than you. I think that if you can start to remember that, and it doesn't minimize your problems, they're still there. But you realize that they might not be as big as you think. And that's a good thing because if you can gain that perspective, it helps you realize that you can also overcome those problems. Another thing that I highly recommend is the next step. It's to start practicing gratitude daily. I am thankful today that I found a little itch relief stick my wife and I brought back from the US. I have been using that a lot. It has been helping. I have gratitude that we bought that for whatever reason on our last trip to the USA. It's gratitude that I'm starting to feel better. My arms are not as itchy as yesterday, though the side of my body is on fire. But I'm have gratitude that my arms are better. Finally, the last tip is to stop comparing your life only to easier situations. We look on TV and we see the Elon Musks of the world. We see the people that we think are having much better lives than we do. And we do not understand that they also have their battles and their challenges that they are fighting. For everyone that you see that living the perfect life on Instagram or some other social media, I guarantee that they also have struggles. They also have challenges. You just can't see them all the time. But if you stop comparing and you can zoom out, it will help you gain perspective. Now, another thing that I see as a big problem is that we think bad means bad. Most people see adversity as something to avoid, something unfair, something negative. But many of life's greatest lessons arrive disguised as problems. I've had some troubling and challenging clients of late, but each one of them has helped me and my team level up. They've helped us be better. So that at some point in time, when we're no longer working with that person, my team can put that work and that skill level into my videos. We get better. Or if we get bigger clients, and we had that challenge from that one difficult client, and now we're working with a bigger client, and we are so prepared for whatever they're bringing. Those opportunities come as problems. Now, what's the solution for looking at bad means bad? Look for the lesson. You know, first step I always tell my family is to ask what the struggle is teaching you. What are the challenges teaching you? What can you learn? Because if you can look at that thing that is the hidden lesson inside of there, you're going to be able to start applying that to your life. And that's the second tip is find the opportunity hidden inside the setback. For me, dealing with these challenging clients that I'm dealing with right now. I recognize that my team is getting better through the struggle. We are improving every single day. And step three is to take a page from Junko Wheeling. Train yourself to say good before you complain. You've got rash over 80, 40% of your body? Good. You've had a really bad day? Good. What is it teaching you? I'm not saying it's easy. I am not good at this, but I'm working on it. You can too. Now, the final problem I want to talk about is we forget how tough we are. Modern life is comfortable, sometimes too comfortable. And comfort makes us forget our own resilience. Hard times remind us what we're made of. So, what's the solution for this? Build evidence of your strength. You are one tough motherfucker. I'm sorry. You're one tough mofo. And you got to remember that. So, some things that you can do to remember that is number one, face challenges instead of avoiding them. You do not need to avoid these challenges. You need to step up and look them square in the face and deal with them. Step two, keep promises to yourself. This is important. You have to do this. You have to look in the mirror and say, you know what? I'm doing this today. Tomorrow, I need to start facing a challenge I have. And the step I need to take is to go and buy some file folders. That's it. Put some dates on them and get them organized. And after that, I do the next step one as a time. One at a time. And that's keeping the promise to myself. Now, the final step that I like to do is to use adversity as a training ground for future battles. I don't care how stable things are right now, you will have battles in the future. You will have people who challenge you in the future. You will have things that disappoint you in the future. And that is okay. Because you will be ready for that because you've been training at this point in time for that future battle. All right, some closing thoughts. Thrash has been awful. Okay. No question about it. But it also reminded me of something important. I can survive challenging things, I can do hard things, and so can you. The goal is not to avoid adversity, the goal is to become the kind of person who can handle it. Because life will test you. The question is whether you'll see those tests as punishment or training. Taking a page from Jonko Willink. Good. I'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.