Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast, everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don't want to hear. What does strong mean to you? I can tell you the definition of strength and being strong for me personally, has evolved so much over the years. And recently I've had the honor of sitting down with different PhDs in different fields, other coaches, psychologists, all these different people in different areas and careers and discuss what strength means to them. I've also been diving in with clients as to what strength really means to them in their lives, and it's been so fascinating to see all the different definitions, even looking it up. When I was writing my book, the Strong System, I found that there were like 10 different dictionary definitions of what it means to be strong. And the more I got into this, the more I realized how our definition of strength really dictates how we move forward in life.

(00:56):
And the more we see nuance to it and see some of the softer sides of strength, the more we actually help ourselves grow and become our fittest, healthiest, happiest selves. And the more we have a very hard, rigid definition of strength, the more we hold ourselves back. And I've seen this in my own life when I was believing that strong had to be defined as powering my way through it, through anything that I encountered, the more I held myself back. So I really want to dive in this podcast into what it means to be strong and the nuance in that definition and how it can really impact the results we see, but also how we can better tap into our own strength and the different strengths that we have. So first, going back to my story of how I personally started to shift my definition of it, I started to realize that when I was thinking about being the lone wolf doing it all on my own, I was holding myself back from seeing opportunity in the obstacles.

(01:51):
I was also pushing just to work harder, overwork smarter. So there's the story of the two wood cutters where there's an older wood cutter and a younger wood cutter. And the younger, stronger wood cutter thinks he's going to beat the older wood cutter chopping wood. And so they go and they have a little competition and the younger wood choppers chopping really fast, chopping really hard, and the old wood cutter's going at it too. But then the old wood cutter pauses and he pauses, and the young wood cutter thinks like, what is this guy doing taking a break? And the old guy says, Hey, take a break with me and we'll rest right now. And so all the guy thinks is like you're pausing to in chopping wood. But the old wood cutter was pausing to sharpen his ax. And at the end of the day, after multiple breaks for the older wood cutter where the younger woodcutter took none, the younger wood cutter looks at the pile of wood for the older wood cutter and thinks, how is his pile so much bigger?

(02:44):
And it was because he was pausing to sharpen his axe so that he could be efficient in his work. And I started to realize efficiency of work played into strength. I also started to realize that the more I was willing to ask for help and be like, Hey, why are you pausing? How can this benefit me the stronger I actually got? Because a rising tide really floats all boats. And the more we learn from others, the more we lift ourselves up. So often this lone wolf attitude is what holds us back. And lone wolfs, that is a fallacy. They aren't strong alone, they're surviving on their own, but they thrive with a pack. And even Arnold Schwartzenegger said, you can call me a lot of things, but don't call me a self-made man. And I think it's because we don't recognize how much asking for help and getting that perspective can help us see the things that we don't know.

(03:28):
So when we think about being strong, there has to be a vulnerability or a willingness to be vulnerable, a willingness to be soft, a willingness to step back. All the things we think are sort of in opposition to the strength we normally think of gring your way through working hard or pushing through anything. And that's where we can really move forward. And that's where I've seen the most growth in my life, and that's what I want to help other people achieve as well. And I've noticed with clients, the more that they step back, and you might notice in your own life, the more that you step back, the more you're willing to embrace the softer sides of strength, the better able you are to move forward. And so often in our life too, we don't recognize those things. And so we think, oh, I'm not strong.

(04:05):
And then we doubt our ability to conquer a new challenge. But if you are faced with something hard right now and you're like, I'm not sure I can do this, this is the perfect time to tap into your strength. And I want to share how I think what we have to do is recognize the other times we've conquered something similar. So no, you might not have made a change in your diet or your workouts that felt achievable or doable. You might have not have PRD in a race in a specific way and shown yourself strength in that exact form. But so often we've shown ourselves our strength in another area of our life and our ability to conquer the hard challenges that come our way. And so there are different forms of strength that might've pushed us through to be able to achieve things we once thought weren't possible for us in the past.

(04:46):
And the more we go back and remind ourselves of those times we have conquered, the more we'll give ourselves perspective to help accomplish this new task we're asking ourselves. So there's different forms of strength. There's the ability to bend like bamboo. Bamboo is incredibly strong and flexible. So I want you to think if there's a challenge right now in your life, when in the past have you bent without broken or without breaking, when was the last time you flexed with life? Think about a time that you really had to sort of change your plans and go with the flow of something and ultimately you came out stronger for it. So often if our plan doesn't go perfectly, we sort of throw up our hands and quit when really planning is so valuable. But plans themselves are pointless. The planning it's is what is indispensable. And so when we think about that, think about the last time you had a plan, you had to flex with life and you ended up coming out accomplishing your goal and even maybe achieving more, you really conquered something that's strength.

(05:45):
Go back and think about that and think about maybe with your new challenge, could this come into play? Are there plans that you can create but that you can flex with life? Another form of strength is the lotus and the lotus rises out of mud in all of its beauty. When was the last time you sort of were in the muck but you managed to stay focused on your goal and still rise out of it, come out stronger for it. And we often don't step back to think about like, okay, maybe I'm in the muck right now, but if I step back a little bit further and I look at all the learning that's going on, how could that actually pay off to reach my goal? So often it's just our perspective of the situation and we think, oh, my outcome should have happened now and when it doesn't, we think we failed.

(06:27):
When really this failure is the learning thing that pushes the outcome just a little further down or a little off our schedule. So think about the last time that you felt like you were in the muck of something in the mud, and ultimately all that mud around you is what led to the beauty. Later think about that situation and then think about how could that apply to the challenges I'm facing now? The more we can show ourselves our past successes and strengths, the more we can realize we can overcome whatever hard we're facing now, but we don't give ourselves that recognition. Next, I want to talk about the strength of a diamond. Diamonds become beautiful because of pressure. So think about all the times you've had pressure and you've come through learning from that to come out stronger. The struggles are what form our strength, but they're not fun to go through.

(07:16):
We have to recognize they are necessary. Anytime you've grown stronger, you've seen more confidence grow in yourself, you've seen yourself become better. It's usually out of a struggle. And sometimes the struggles feel better or worse, and sometimes they're ones we want to embrace, and sometimes one we're just challenged with because of life. But so often that pressure is what forms our strength. Think back to a time when you had pressure in your life, when you had to handle all these different things that life was throwing at you and you came out stronger, you learned from it. Think about those diamond strengths that you can now apply moving forward. Because again, the more we remind ourselves of all the times we've conquered in the past, the more we can see opportunity in the obstacles now, and we know we can do hard things. The final type of strike that I want to talk about is weathering the storm.

(08:04):
So if you think about mountains, they have weathered so many storms to be formed, and they are these big magnificent things. You are a mountain, you will come through those storms and you will be formed and shaped by them, but strong still. And you will stand the test of time because of that. So I want you to think when have there been storms in the past that you have weathered, that you have come through? And they might not have been easy. You might've had some little chinks and different things happen in your armor. You might've had some struggles, you might've had some little rocks slide off, but overall you stood the test of it. When was the last time you had that happen and how did you come through it? How did you give yourself perspective in the moment? Who did you rely on? Think about how you weathered that storm and then how you can apply those same principles now to weather whatever storm you're going through.

(08:55):
But I want you to step back and recognize you can do hard things. You have proven your strength in the past to come to where you are right now and you will keep proving it. But only when you embrace your strength can you really prove what's possible for yourself instead of limiting yourself with doubt. But I want you to think about all these different forms of strength because so often we do have one singular definition. And when we define it only in sort of that hard way, we hold ourselves back from seeing all the opportunity, from seeing all that we can grow into, from seeing all the forms of strength that we can utilize to our advantage. And we really do limit what's possible for ourselves. Because being strong might mean being soft. It might mean being vulnerable. It's not always just about gritting your way through on your own.

(09:39):
But you might also recognize when some of those softer sides of strength aren't serving you as well. And you have to sort of say, suck it up buttercup and push into the hard. So really realizing that strength means so many different things. It means so many different things that we can use to our advantage at different times, the better off we're going to be. So I'd love to hear what does strong mean to you today and how has that definition changed over time? And then I'd even love to hear some reflections you've done on where is your lotus strength in the past and how can you use that? Where is that diamond strength? How are you that mountain? Or even how have you been that bamboo in the past? Because all of these different forms of strength can be utilized to move us forward so that we can see the fabulous results we deserve.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.