Embracing the Growth Within: How Dads Can Leverage Discomfort for Personal and Professional Mastery

Ever wondered why some dads and entrepreneurs seem to have it all together, juggling business success with a vibrant family life? Get ready to unlock the secret as we dissect the critical differences between discomfort and pain, inspired by Michael Easter's "The Comfort Crisis." Our conversation ventures into how our cushy modern existence differs vastly from the rugged lifestyles of our ancestors, with RJ and Dustin reflecting on how embracing discomfort—be it in faith, health, marriage, fatherhood, brotherhood, or business—can serve as a catalyst for monumental growth. They'll expose the hidden traps of always seeking comfort and reveal how, by not shying away from life's less cozy moments, dads like us can transform both personal and professional spheres.

Strap in as we challenge you to look at the tough conversations you might be sidestepping, especially those that hold the power to redefine your relationships and career trajectory. In a heartfelt pledge, Dustin commits to delving into "The Comfort Crisis" during a personal challenge, underscoring the book's core message of seeking out the growth that lies within adversity. We round off with a call to action for our listeners to confront the discomforts they've been avoiding and embrace the opportunities they present. As always, the 'Dad Up' philosophy is our rally cry as we sign off, reminding each other of the strength found in community and the shared path of lifelong growth.

You can join over 350 other Dads like you by joining The Balanced Business Dad's Facebook group here: dadupgroup.com

Check out our website at: thebalancedbusinessdad.com

Socials:
RJ on Facebook at facebook.com/arjay3rd
RJ on Instagram at instagram.com/rjcampbell3rd
Dustin on Facebook at facebook.com/dustin.charles.718689
Dustin on Instagram at instagram.com/dustin_hoog

Transcript

Voiceover: 0:01

Dads, do you want a thriving business that doesn't control you, a passionate marriage and kids that adore you? Do you want to grow deeper in your faith, be healthier both physically and mentally, build more meaningful relationships with your friends? Welcome to the Balance Business Dad podcast, where, in each episode, we dive into balancing and optimizing the six pillars of life Faith, health, marriage, fatherhood, brotherhood and business. And here are your hosts, pioneers of the Balance Business Dad movement Dustin Hoag and RJ Campbell.

Coach Dustin: 0:36

Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Balance Business. Dad, I'm your host, coach Dustin with me, as always, the season that distinguished Mr RJ Campbell. Rj, how are you doing today?

RJ Campbell: 0:48

Good, I've put a delay in there on purpose, because Dustin and I were having technical problems and I was giving him that brief fear that we froze. Now life is good. We're recording on a Friday from separate locations. It's like a totally different world Shaking some stuff up.

Coach Dustin: 1:06

We are, because in 48 hours I'm going to be in Mexico, so we had to get one of these out for you, guys. But also different changes, seenering. But we're going to jump right into it today, guys, because I feel like doing it and actually Mr RJ, he wanted this topic. So one of our goals is to find relevant things to talk about to the listeners, to make sure that we are providing value to all the business dads out there and whatever pillar we can find value in, as well as to make sure we can find value in life and things that are real, that all of us go through. And this I'll let RJ kind of explain, but it's something we found he was passionate about, so let's have an episode of it, because if it had value to us, we believe it can have value to you. So, rj, what are we talking about today?

RJ Campbell: 1:54

We are talking about discomfort versus pain. I tried to say pain, tried to say that, like I was a wrestler or something that really did not work.

RJ Campbell: 2:05

Yes, discomfort versus pain. And I have mentioned on here over the last few months a book that I read twice back to back. That's bizarre, that man. I loved it, and it's a book called the Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. I have been recommending that book to everybody. So good, easy read, really really good.

RJ Campbell: 2:30

Just to the book is how, when they talk about the comfort crisis, is that we are not uncomfortable. We do not suffer discomfort as a people, an entire race of people, and I would say especially in the United States, like we did even 80 to 100 years ago. We don't know what it's like to be uncomfortable unless we make ourselves that way. It's 73 degrees inside the studio today, right here. It will be 73 degrees in my car on the way home It'll be 72 degrees. When I get home, it will be comfortable all night. I will be in a comfortable bed. I'm sitting in a padded chair. I'll move from this to a padded desk chair. We're never uncomfortable unless we want to be.

RJ Campbell: 3:19

And you only have to go back to the early 1900s, late 1800s Totally different life. Yeah, didn't have air conditioning, didn't your heat was from a fire, just sat on the ground. Food wasn't as accessible as it is now. You had to work a little harder, at least to cook it and to make it. So discomfort was different. I mean just the temperatures alone that we live in. We are rarely uncomfortable in temperature unless we plan on it. If you're a hunter, you might be, but again, you plan for this. So that's what got us thinking on this discomfort versus pain, two very different things and we use them for different things.

Coach Dustin: 4:01

That's really interesting. My wife and I grew up a little bit different, for sure Only different statuses, I'll put it at least earlier on in my life. And we were talking because one of the people I coached in investing brought a house that did not have central air conditioning and she didn't have it and she was baffled by the thought of not having central air conditioning. Now I remember a lot of times that I didn't have air conditioning, or I didn't have central air conditioning, let alone air conditioning at all. You know we were going to run off a fan, but again we were running off of a fan and it's not like we were cold, we just didn't sleep with a blanket on Right. So what we think of as uncomfortable has nothing to do with really what I mean. Even if you go back to the Industrial Revolution, when they're working in horrific factories and things like that it was, we don't know what it's like. It's so interesting to think that we do not know what it's like at all.

RJ Campbell: 5:05

We don't. So even when you were sleeping with no covers on, which is a fan blowing on you, you still were in a padded mattress and a pillow. Yeah, so relatively comfortable. So that's the just to the book. The comfort crisis talks a lot about that, but what we're thinking here is pain versus discomfort and how we use the two and how they affect us. So just to say quickly, pain. Pain is a warning and your body reacts to it. Instantly you touch a hot stove or a hot pan. Touch your body. You will pull back right away, involuntarily, because your body is trained to avoid pain. Pain is a signal that it's something bad. It could even just be startled scared for a reason bit by something stung, by something burnt, sprained. An ankle twist, don't have to sprain it. You twist your ankle. You're all playing sports and you roll an ankle. It is instantaneous that you're on the ground. You're getting off that ankle, your body is like nope drop.

RJ Campbell: 6:14

We have to prevent this pain.

Voiceover: 6:15

There for a reason.

RJ Campbell: 6:18

Discomfort is there for growth. When you make yourself uncomfortable, your body is trying to improve itself in a different way to do something so as simple as being an athlete. Yeah, dustin, because I get his alerts does his weight training two or three days a week at like 430 in the morning, maybe five o'clock. You are specifically uncomfortable when you do that. You're pushing yourself to uncomfortable state but you're doing that to make yourself better, I think back to 20 years ago, when I was 40 years old and started doing triathlons.

RJ Campbell: 6:55

You're doing a lot of training, a lot of swimming, a lot of running, a lot of cycling. That was a border you had to really pay attention to. So you're using discomfort, You're making yourself discomfort, uncomfortable every single day to get faster, stronger and more endurance, but also constantly battling the pain, warning signs that a lot of times you don't listen to just battling through the pain Because it all sucked.

RJ Campbell: 7:25

It's just where did the pain? Where did it go? From discomfort to pain? The training sucked, the racing sucked until you won or finished. Either. Won was better, winning was great, but also you're definitely. We're always going okay, is this pain or is this discomfort? My feet hurt that bad. My knee is bothering me that much. Now you would just we'd push through it. It was stupid, because your body is saying, hey, you got to stop that. This is pain. Pain's there for a reason. Discomfort's there to make you better. What's that for a little summary?

Coach Dustin: 7:57

It's interesting and the pain is the warning. So I go to David Goggins, if you've ever read any of his books or listened to him.

RJ Campbell: 8:06

Real low key, real easy easy going guy.

Coach Dustin: 8:11

Yes, yes, you should listen to him with your kids around. No, you really shouldn't.

RJ Campbell: 8:15

Oh no, you should not.

Coach Dustin: 8:17

But he talks about so much that your body can do more. It's your mind that shuts yourself down. So it's interesting. No, I think there's a balance here, and I don't think David Goggins has the balance, although I like him. You have to know when pain is really picking up and it's not discomfort anymore because you can hurt yourself. He had a perfect example, I think he went into kidney failure on his first race. So don't do that. Your body is telling you, giving you the warning hey, stop this. But I do like that. He was pushing himself to a certain point, but you do have to listen to the warning and tell him what I got out of your synopsis there.

RJ Campbell: 8:58

Yes, that's exactly right, because it's easy to keep recognizing the uncomfort. Now we could take this into an end will in a lot of areas outside of just training for a sport. But as you keep pushing that discomfort farther and farther to where it becomes pain, there is a point in there you have to recognize. This is pain I need to stop. Could be just a recovery day, or it could be even longer than that. Or you're just doing too much, too hard, too fast. Whatever those are, we start talking dust and just mixed balance.

RJ Campbell: 9:30

Think about this in your life as an entrepreneur, business owner, business dad, you're working a lot of hours for whatever reason. Maybe it's habitual because that's what you do, maybe there's just a big deadline yeah, it's not fun. Very rarely. That's why they pay us to be there. Your experience in discomfort putting in a ton of hours, missing out on a lot of things could be physical discomfort, not sleeping as well, you're not eating right, stress. But where do those signs become? Pain, not discomfort, and pain from other people. Now we're talking about balance. At what point is your wife uncomfortable with how much you're gone? That this is causing pain in a relationship Might not be as obvious as hitting a stubbing toe or touching a hot pot, but sometimes so maybe there's pain that isn't so obvious that it's instantaneous.

Coach Dustin: 10:30

Well, I think mental pain is not instantaneous. Physical pain is, but mental pain is not Right. So I think that discomfort can lead to pain if you don't control it. It can get real painful real quick if you don't have the balance, if you lay off the discomfort for a minute.

RJ Campbell: 10:47

Right, yeah, and one of the words I wrote down when managing discomfort was just mindfulness, because you are uncomfortable, but uncomfortable is okay, so you manage it by being mindful of it. But when does that mindfulness turn to hiding pain, being aware of it that way, so you can go down in so many areas of our lives? It's easy to talk about this physically and we just went on marriage, we had kids related to work, but you could be overdoing it in any area which is uncomfortable. And that's really the whole part about being balances, because we always say we're never in balance. We're trying to balance, we're balancing, but are we getting uncomfortable? Are we feeling discomfort in one area, not realizing that it actually might be pain? And it could especially be pain in another area, another, one of the pillars and for other?

Coach Dustin: 11:36

people. Are we avoiding discomfort and it's gonna lead to pain?

Voiceover: 11:41

Oh, heck, yes.

Coach Dustin: 11:42

You can go back to training, that's easy. Yeah, if I don't work out and I lead unhealthy, the pain's gonna happen because I'm all unhealthy and it's costing me my health, right. But let's go back. And it's interesting. I'm having a coaching conversation at a discovery called Today and the discomfort that he needed in his life was an uncomfortable conversation. Try not to go into details of it, but he needed to have an uncomfortable conversation with his parents because of the pain it was causing his spouse. Again, don't wanna go into more detail, but there was so much pain because he just wouldn't go have the uncomfortable conversation.

RJ Campbell: 12:30

Yeah, I'm reading a book right now called Critical Conversations. Critical Conversations addresses all of just that, so that's a totally different tangent that might be its own episode.

Coach Dustin: 12:40

Yeah, we didn't think about that.

RJ Campbell: 12:41

Avoiding discomfort can cause pain. Avoiding discomfort, I think, does cause pain Because, boy, we don't wanna have those uncomfortable conversations and things like that. We don't want to. We put them off, put them off to the extent of causing problems. We've addressed this numerous times and put it down as one of our greatest tips.

RJ Campbell: 13:01

As a business oriented or business owning dad and husband, don't lock your spouse out of that. Sometimes it's uncomfortable. You don't want to go through the discomfort of a conversation. You've had a bad week, a bad year, a bad month, whatever that is in the business, or just trials, it's employee issues or whatever they are. We don't want to have that uncomfortable conversation, one. We say it's because we're saving them the pain. They don't need to worry about it. Maybe we're also saving us the pain of them starting to question us and drill holes into everything that we're doing, which is probably fair. Do it, though, so that, boy, that's avoiding a discomfort that eventually, is going to become a pain, because things are going to happen and they're going to know it, and sometime when you're having pain, a little discomfort can get you out of the pain.

Coach Dustin: 13:50

This gentleman I was having this conversation with, he was in pain. I mean, there was pain, there's angst, there is anxiety. There's a lot of unpacking to do there, but really the uncomfortable conversations that were needed could get him out of that pain.

RJ Campbell: 14:08

It's ripping off the bandaid and just getting it done.

Coach Dustin: 14:11

in that case, it's really interesting that I was not expecting this to go this way, but discomfort's a good thing, discomfort is truly a good thing.

RJ Campbell: 14:20

Growth comes from discomfort, yeah. So when people say, hey, sometimes you just have to, you know, get outside of your comfort zone, well, there's a reason that's your comfort zone. And they're like I was racking my brain trying to figure is discomfort ever bad? Because it is absolutely how we grow. I don't know that it's ever a bad thing unless we let it get to the painful part, because growth, true growth, comes from discomfort.

Coach Dustin: 14:51

The only thing I can think of is don't make other people feel uncomfortable. That's how I, you know, that's what I would think of there is let's not make other people uncomfortable, but let's put ourselves through some uncomfortable situations.

RJ Campbell: 15:05

Right, yeah, and you will want to if, when I'm not going to say if when you guys read the Comfort Crisis and this book has blown up in the last couple years it's amazing how many people I've heard reference it. It is just a great read, it's a great story. It's just, it's just so good to read. You will find you will start forcing yourself to be uncomfortable. Our joke is I don't run the heat in my car anymore, or I don't run it like I did. I keep it low, let the car be cold. That's okay. You should be okay. You should be okay at 50 degrees with just a t-shirt on. You're not going to die, you can live forever.

RJ Campbell: 15:40

And that's at the very early part of this book. And they're, they're in the Arctic and the guys you know it's got 37 layers on this. The author, michael Easter, and he looks over at the person that brought him there and the guys just had a t-shirt on. He says to the guy how can you stand there in a t-shirt? And he says I'm good in a t-shirt down to about 40. I was like, wow, how many of us can say that anymore? That kind of kicks off the whole thing, royce, yeah, so that's just physical discomfort, but yeah, it's interesting.

Coach Dustin: 16:06

I am not told you, you know, so I guess I'll just call it out here because I love accountability. But that is going to be the first book I read during 75 Heart in March, because I think what more of a better book to be going through that book while I'm going through that?

RJ Campbell: 16:21

So it's really, yeah, the comfort crisis that plays right into 75 Heart. Look forward to being uncomfortable. Get yourself uncomfortable. Embrace the discomfort. Recognize pain, avoid it. Don't avoid discomfort to avoid the pain. That's going to make it worse, but look forward to making yourself uncomfortable in all different ways. It's the only way we get better, and we talk about it all the time just without that word. You know, if you have a fear of doing something, if you have a fear of public speaking, everybody always told you get in front of a group and talk. So that is making yourself uncomfortable. Embracing the discomfort to make yourself better.

Coach Dustin: 17:03

Guys, this one I don't know. I probably took more notes of us talking about it than I have in a long time on this, because it's really interesting what this can do for your life. Again, our goal is to bring you value. So think about a couple of different things. Think where have you avoided discomfort and could it be leading to pain? Or think about are you in pain right now that a little bit of discomfort would get you out of it.

RJ Campbell: 17:29

Yeah, never thought about it, that direction.

Coach Dustin: 17:32

And that's why we are a good balance to one another. You think it's something, I think it's something, and we go off with it. Guys, this is a good one. I hope you guys got a ton of value out of this. I know I did Go back and re-listen to this one and think of where you can put this in your life.

Coach Dustin: 17:46

That's the important part when can you put this in your life? And then I'm going to ask a favor, which I don't ask a favor too much anymore, but I'm stealing this 100% from Alex Trimosi that talks about if you are people like us and you want to offer more value in people's lives, which I believe our listeners do, then go ahead and write us a review and share this podcast, because if you're getting value from it and you share it, then you're offering more value. So I believe that you want to give value to the world, so I would ask you to leave a review and share that. Guys, you can always join these conversations at our Facebook group. Go to dadupgroupcom and get you right in there, or just look us up at the balance business dad on Facebook. We'd love to carry on the conversation with you, that's what I got Arjay, that's all I got.

RJ Campbell: 18:37

We are going to have some discomfort and uncomfortable conversations or conversations about that. Anyway, the conversation won't necessarily be uncomfortable on the Facebook group. I'm going to push this book even harder. Michael Easter is wondering why he's getting all these sales. He didn't realize it's me selling his book form. But, yeah, we'll have some cool conversations about growing. Yeah, that's what I need to do. We got to reach out to Michael Easter and say your biggest fan, your fanboy, wants you on here, see let's make Arjay feel uncomfortable and reach out to this guy to get him on the podcast.

Coach Dustin: 19:10

Guys, thank you so much for listening. As always, remember to dad up and we're out.