The Best Investors Don’t Avoid Challenge. They Design It.

 There is a stage in real estate investing where the problem stops being knowledge.

You know how to underwrite a deal. You understand debt. You can raise capital. You know how to evaluate markets, negotiate terms, manage partners, and make decisions under uncertainty.

And yet, something still feels harder than it should.

Maybe you're reacting too quickly when a partner challenges you. Maybe you're avoiding a difficult conversation with a key team member. Maybe you're constantly consuming information but struggling to think deeply. Maybe your business is growing while your energy, relationships, or clarity are deteriorating.

At that point, the question changes.

It is no longer simply, “What do I need to learn?”

It becomes:

“What part of me needs to grow to operate at the level my business now requires?”

One of the central ideas in Faisal Ensaun's training on challenge is that growth is closely tied to deliberately experiencing discomfort. Challenge can arrive naturally through life, business, relationships, uncertainty, or failure. But there is another option: you can create challenge intentionally.

For an investor, that distinction matters.

Because the bigger your portfolio and organization become, the less likely your next breakthrough is to come from simply acquiring more information.

It may come from deliberately challenging yourself.

Growth Usually Begins Where Comfort Ends

The human system naturally seeks comfort.

Once you've done something enough times, it becomes familiar. Your brain doesn't have to spend as much energy figuring it out. The pattern is known.

That's useful.

It's also one of the reasons people get stuck.

The same mechanism that makes an experienced investor efficient at underwriting can also make that investor resistant to learning something completely new.

The same comfort that makes a partnership feel stable can prevent someone from confronting a relationship problem that needs to be addressed.

And the same familiarity that makes an established business feel manageable can make a new level of growth feel threatening.

The transcript makes an important distinction here: challenge doesn't necessarily mean suffering.

Challenge is discomfort with a purpose.

Think about physical training. You place tension on a muscle, recover, and adapt. Once the body becomes comfortable with that level of demand, you increase the challenge.

The same principle can apply to how you develop as a leader.

If you've become exceptionally good at analyzing numbers but uncomfortable with emotional conversations, the next challenge may not be another underwriting course.

It may be learning how to sit in a difficult conversation without becoming defensive.

If you've built an impressive business but your physical energy has deteriorated, the next challenge may be physical.

If you've stopped learning because your schedule is full, the challenge may be intellectual.

Growth requires identifying where you're currently comfortable—and determining whether that comfort is helping you or quietly limiting you.

The Real Risk: Becoming Strong in One Area and Weak in Another

One of the most useful frameworks in the transcript is the idea that your system communicates through four primary channels:

1. Sensations
2. Emotions
3. Self-talk
4. Intuition

For an investor, these four areas provide a useful way to examine development beyond financial performance.

Because it is entirely possible to train one while neglecting the others.

You can have an impressive physique and poor emotional regulation.

You can be intellectually brilliant and unable to handle uncertainty.

You can have extensive market knowledge and still make impulsive decisions when your ego gets involved.

You can be financially successful while remaining disconnected from your own internal signals.

The issue isn't that one area is more important than another.

It's that the demands of leadership eventually expose whatever you've neglected.

1. Challenge Your Body

The first category is physical.

This is probably the easiest form of challenge for high performers to understand because the feedback is tangible.

You train.

It gets difficult.

You recover.

You adapt.

Then you increase the demand.

For an investor, physical development isn't simply about appearance. It can be about capacity.

Running a business requires energy. Negotiations require presence. Travel requires resilience. Long periods of uncertainty require emotional and physical stamina.

If your body is constantly depleted, your decision-making environment changes.

That doesn't mean every investor needs to become a marathon runner or elite athlete.

The point is to deliberately place your body under an appropriate level of demand.

The challenge should serve the life you're trying to build.

Ask yourself:

Where have I allowed physical comfort to become the default?

2. Challenge Your Emotional Range

This may be the area where many accomplished investors have the greatest opportunity.

Physical discomfort is visible.

Emotional discomfort is much harder to measure.

It can look like anger you don't want to acknowledge. Fear you disguise as certainty. Frustration you turn into control. Disconnection you explain away as independence.

And in business, these things have consequences.

Imagine a partner brings you a concern about your leadership.

You immediately become defensive.

The conversation escalates.

You leave convinced that your partner is the problem.

But what if the real growth opportunity was your ability to experience the discomfort of being challenged without reacting?

That's a very different form of training.

The transcript describes emotional discomfort as particularly difficult because people can suppress or avoid emotions rather than actually experience them.

For a real estate operator, this matters enormously.

Your emotional range affects how you handle:

• partnership disagreements
• investor criticism
• employee underperformance
• failed negotiations
• unexpected losses
• market uncertainty
• rejection
• conflict
• pressure

You don't become a better leader by eliminating difficult emotions.

You become better by becoming more capable of experiencing them without allowing them to run the organization.

That is a different skill.

And sometimes developing it requires support—from a coach, therapist, mentor, or another qualified professional.

3. Challenge Your Intellect

There is another kind of comfort that successful investors can fall into: intellectual comfort.

You know your market.

You understand your asset class.

You've developed a playbook.

You've seen enough deals to recognize familiar patterns.

That's an advantage—until the environment changes.

The transcript makes an interesting observation: sometimes people say they don't have time to read or learn, when the deeper issue may be that sustained learning itself feels uncomfortable.

That is easy to recognize today.

Information is everywhere.

Deep learning is not.

You can scroll through hundreds of pieces of content and feel informed without ever forcing your mind to sit with a difficult idea long enough to understand it.

For an investor, that distinction is becoming more important.

AI is changing how quickly information can be accessed. But faster access to information doesn't automatically produce better judgment.

You still need the capacity to concentrate.

To read.

To think.

To question your assumptions.

To learn something that initially makes you feel incompetent.

That last part matters.

When you enter a new field, your mind has to work harder because the patterns aren't familiar yet.

You feel slow.

You feel confused.

You may even feel like you're bad at learning.

But that discomfort is often part of building the new cognitive muscle.

If you're going to lead a business through another decade of change, intellectual comfort may be one of the most expensive comforts you can afford.

4. Challenge Your Intuition

The fourth category is the most difficult to define.

Intuition.

The transcript describes it as the rapid integration of information from the mind and body—and, in Faisal's broader philosophy, the combination of mind, body, and soul.

You don't need to interpret that spiritually to understand the practical point.

Experienced investors often know something before they can fully articulate why.

A deal may look good on paper, yet something feels wrong.

A potential partner may appear impressive, yet something doesn't sit right.

A market may seem unattractive according to conventional metrics, while your accumulated experience tells you to look closer.

But intuition is not automatically wisdom.

Fear can feel like intuition.

Past trauma can feel like intuition.

Bias can feel like intuition.

So the challenge isn't simply to “trust your gut.”

It is to develop enough self-awareness to distinguish intuition from reaction.

That requires experience.

It requires reflection.

And, importantly, it requires quiet.

Your Ability to Be Alone May Affect Your Ability to Think Clearly

One of the most practical recommendations in the transcript is also one of the simplest:

Spend time alone without distraction.

No phone.

No constant input.

No conversation.

No entertainment.

Just enough quiet to notice what is actually happening internally.

Ten minutes is enough to begin.

Go for a walk.

Sit somewhere quiet.

Do nothing.

Pay attention to your thoughts.

Notice your physical sensations.

Notice your emotions.

The point isn't to manufacture some mystical breakthrough.

The point is to become aware of signals you normally drown out.

For an investor, this can be surprisingly valuable.

Your calendar may be full of meetings, calls, underwriting, investor conversations, travel, Slack messages, news, podcasts, and social media.

But constant input can make it difficult to distinguish your own thinking from everything you've consumed.

Sometimes clarity requires less information, not more.

The Challenge You Avoid May Be the One Holding Back Your Leadership

This is where the framework becomes particularly relevant to business.

Your personal development eventually becomes a leadership issue.

If you cannot challenge yourself emotionally, you may struggle to challenge your team constructively.

If you cannot tolerate intellectual discomfort, you may resist ideas that contradict your assumptions.

If you don't have physical capacity, your leadership may deteriorate under sustained pressure.

And if you can't distinguish intuition from fear, you may make decisions based on internal reactions that you mistake for insight.

The transcript includes a story of a business owner whose partner recognized that he had an emotional blind spot. His reactions were affecting the business, and the recognition ultimately pushed him to seek support.

That is an important leadership principle:

Sometimes the people around you can see the growth area you cannot.

The mature response isn't defensiveness.

It's curiosity.

Stop Asking, “How Can I Make This Easier?”

Successful people often spend years making things easier.

They build systems.

They delegate.

They automate.

They hire.

They create processes.

They reduce friction.

That's good business.

But there is a point where reducing every form of difficulty becomes counterproductive.

Because some difficulty is developmental.

The question isn't whether your life should be difficult.

It is:

Which difficulties are making you stronger, and which difficulties are simply draining you?

That distinction is critical.

You don't need more suffering.

You need the right tension.

The right challenge.

The kind that expands your capacity rather than merely consuming it.

A Four-Part Challenge Audit for Investors

Take 20 minutes and assess yourself across the four areas.

Body

Where am I physically comfortable to the point that I've stopped developing?

What physical challenge would improve my energy and capacity?

Emotions

Which emotions do I avoid?

Where do I become reactive?

What difficult conversation am I postponing?

Intellect

What am I currently learning that makes me feel like a beginner?

Where have I stopped questioning my assumptions?

Am I consuming information or actually developing knowledge?

Intuition

When was the last time I had enough quiet to hear my own thinking?

Where might fear, ego, or past experience be masquerading as intuition?

What decisions deserve deeper reflection before action?

You don't need to overhaul all four areas simultaneously.

In fact, that may simply create another form of avoidance.

Choose the area where your current level of development is most obviously limiting the next level of your business.

Then create a challenge.

The Investor Is the Business

This is ultimately the deeper lesson.

At the beginning of a real estate career, the investor is often focused on acquiring external capabilities:

How do I find deals?

How do I raise capital?

How do I negotiate?

How do I finance this?

How do I scale?

Eventually, another question emerges:

Who do I need to become to carry what I'm trying to build?

A larger portfolio doesn't merely require more capital.

It requires a different capacity for uncertainty.

A larger team doesn't merely require more management systems.

It requires a different capacity for leadership.

More partners require greater emotional range.

More visibility requires greater resilience.

More complexity requires better judgment.

And more success often requires a person to confront parts of themselves that were never challenged when the business was smaller.

That is why challenge matters.

Not because struggle is inherently noble.

Not because pain automatically creates growth.

But because the next version of you usually cannot be built entirely inside the comfort zone of the current version of you.

The best investors don't seek difficulty for its own sake.

They seek the challenges that make them capable of carrying more.

More responsibility.

More uncertainty.

More people.

More capital.

More opportunity.

And ultimately, more life.

The question isn't whether challenge will enter your life.

It will.

The more useful question is whether you will wait for life to choose your challenges—or deliberately choose some of them yourself.

Because the challenge you create today may be the capacity that your business needs tomorrow.

TRANSCRIPT

In today's training, we're gonna cover… Challenge. 

we… we have our group coaching session on the Human Drive for Challenge, but what I wanted to go deeper into how challenge actually internally works for human beings, whether you're a leader in an organization, you're building a new business, or you're leading your team.

Or you're leading yourself in your own life or your family. All of it comes down to what your nature is as a human being.

And this is something you're gonna have to experiment and test out, these things that I'm sharing, but this comes out of my experience and my clients that I've supported over the past 11 years, hundreds of my clients over the past 11 years that have actually put these to test and used them. So this is based on experience. If there's any theory in there, I'll share the theory part of it, but…

Everything that I'm gonna share here, I've actually used it in my life, and I've gotten my clients to use it over and over and over, so this has been replicated. Now, you're gonna have to test it out for yourself how it comes about for you, but you're gonna gain a lot out of it. So the initial frame I wanna start with is.

That challenge in your life leads to the greatest amount of fulfillment and growth. That's the claim. Challenge in your life leads to the greatest amount of fulfillment and growth. This could be the natural challenges that show up in your life.

And this could be the challenges you create. And the part I want to focus on is the challenge that you actually create. Now, I'll share this, I mean, we all…

There was a philosopher who said this, that we don't grow because we're wise, we grow because we're forced to grow. And that's the initial part of the journey for pretty much every human being. Rarely any human being who has just grown through insight.

And here's what happened to me. Well, I dealt with a bunch of stuff early on in my adult years, where I dealt with all kinds of addictions, difficulties dealing with myself, with relationships, with my life, with uncertainty, and I went into this self-destructive path.

And that challenge, which came about out naturally.

helped me… it was an opportunity, it wasn't determined, it didn't determine whether or not I will go towards this growth or not, but it gave me the opportunity to grow. And this is why somebody, one trainer, Tony Robbins, says this, that I give myself challenges so God doesn't feel like He has to give me any challenges. But in that case, God gave me challenges, and I was able to go through it. Now, that doesn't mean it's…

determined that if I was given that challenge, aka in my case, that was addiction, that would overcome it, but somehow I had the ability to grow through it.

Now, most human beings start with that kind of challenge in their life, where they have a relationship challenge, they have an internal challenge, an existential challenge, financial challenge, a health challenge, and those challenges push you to grow to a certain degree, and in fact, if you actually

follow most people's lives, in the early years of your life, you will see the most amount of, recurring small challenges. For example, even if you watch the little kids, they fall a lot. That's their challenge, too. The only way they're gonna learn how to walk is if they constantly fall.

And they fall thousands of times. If you're ever a parent or you've been around kids, you know that they constantly fall to get up, and that challenge on their muscles helps them grow, on their bones, helps them grow, and this is the path of nature as well.

And then later on, as you go towards your teenage years and early adult, you are faced with the most uncertainty, and it forces your mind and your body to adapt. This is also why, when you look at people's lives from 18 all the way to 40,

people have the most amount of financial growth as well, because they actually experience the most amount of challenge in terms of what they have to learn and face. And a lot of that comes from the discomfort of not knowing, not understanding the world, so they're forced to adapt. Not everybody will overcome that, that's why it requires a specific type of mindset to be able to go through that.

But I'm speaking to high performers. I'm speaking to high achievers, to people who have actually overcome through a lot of natural challenges that they've gone through. They've learned through those struggles. And if you have a story like that, this will resonate a lot with you. And I'll start it off with a couple of quotes that come from some of the most ancient cultures. The first code is that

The mind is the slayer of the real.

the mind is the slayer of the real, which comes from Bhagavad Gita. It's one of the oldest human texts in existence. And the second quote, this one I don't really know the origin of it. I think it's a tribute to Stoic philosophers who probably got it from different… several different ancient cultures, which is, the mind is a… is a…

Let me remember this. The mind is a…

let me say this properly. The mind is a terrible servant? No, the mind is a terrible servant.

No, no, no. The mind is a great servant, but a terrible master. Something along those lines. Let me repeat this. The mind is a terrible…

master, but a great servant. Let me find the actual code on this, because I messed this up completely. The mind is a…

Yeah, so the actual code is, the mind is a great servant.

but a terrible master. Which, to me, it translates to that if the mind is in your control, then it does incredible things, but as soon as the mind becomes the master, then we have challenges with it. That means it's running the show. And the reason why this is an important piece, because

almost all of your challenges towards growth and fulfillment, and all of it involves your mind, which, in this case, I'm talking about your whole nervous system, your whole consciousness. But we relate it a lot to the mind, and it can become very complex when you look at different models, but I'll stick to…

Everything comes down to your mind being…

either in charge, or you're in charge. And the challenge is that the mind has its own intelligence. If you don't give it any input, it does its own things, and there are reasons why it does its own things, and I'll talk about that as well.

But before I go in those… in that area, there are a couple things you should know about the mind. Before I go there, I'll speak to this. If challenge, which was our initial hypothesis, if challenge leads to the most amount of fulfillment and growth.

The mind is in between it, and the mind either helps you go towards that challenge, or interferes with that challenge.

And…

this is the problem. There are two things that are a problem with the mind. The first one is your mind loves comfort.

And you probably know this in your own experience, and I'll explain that. The second one is your mind loves novelty. Interesting things.

And we're wired that way. Your mind loves comfort for a specific reason, and now I'm gonna translate that to your brain. Your physical brain loves comfort. Why does it love comfort? Because comfort means that it has done the same thing over and over and over, whether that's eating a specific meal, that is interacting with a set of specific people, whether that's exposing yourself to specific things.

All translate, or doing something physical, all translates to comfort.

And so, in your life, what that shows up is, for example, even as simple as watching a movie or a show. If you have more familiarity with a show or a movie, you're gonna wanna watch that… you're more inclined to watch that movie or show over and over. Especially if you haven't watched it for a while. And that's the second part of it, is novelty. Your mind also seeks new things. Why is it? Because it understands that it needs to learn and grow, and because that's how it's…

it can survive and it can transmit information to the rest of the members of its species or tribe or group. So, those two things, by the way, the big corporations have leveraged that to death right now. You're constantly exposed to novelty through social media, through every app that you have, and it gives you a sense of comfort, because you keep getting the same thing fed to you over and over and over.

News understands that very well. News gives you something very, very interesting, what triggers your emotions, and we'll talk about the emotions, but it's comfortable because you're sitting in your space, you're just listening to it, and you're talking about it. It doesn't do anything other than the fact that it just makes you comfortable, and this is why the desensitization of negative things in the world is actually a horrible thing, because

The news knows that it will grab your attention through fear and discomfort and all that stuff, but now you're getting desensitized in that whole process.

you're getting desensitized in that whole process because, because you're getting exposed to it over and over and over, and you're in your space, in your comfort zone, and you love novelty, it's giving you new things. Those are the big challenges that are in between growth. Now, this is why it's actually hard to challenge yourself to grow.

And I'll bring some data around this. When you study some of the highest high performers in the world, the top 15%, which is the area I'm certified, and it's a model that I've been taught to coach people through, which is that when you talk to the top

15% of the world's highest performers, which are studied in 193 countries at this point, I believe.

And when you ask each one of them, most of them will say… actually, all of them, without exception, this is an area that they constantly give themselves challenges.

And they do this intuitively, they don't need to understand the mind very specifically, but they intuitively have learned through their experiences, through the people that have been around the network they're part of, how they've been trained to think. For several reasons, they constantly give themselves challenges to grow.

And they will even say it in that way, well, they will run a marathon, they will push their body to its limit, they will learn a new skill, they will learn a new language, they will put themselves in an environment where other people are challenging their thought processes. They're constantly doing that. In fact, they look at comfort as a negative thing most of the time. They enjoy their comforts, but if they see that it's a normal part of everything they do, they look at it as a negative thing.

In fact, what they're seeking is growth. What they're seeking is growth, and to go towards growth, they need to… they know that they need to go towards a little bit of hardship or struggle. In fact, one of my favorite coaches has said this over and over, that there are only two themes in the human world, in the human growth, not just individually, but as a species. We've had two themes.

There's struggle, and there's growth.

and you cannot… there's struggle and there's progress, sorry. Struggle and there's progress. That was Brendan Burchard who said that. And without… you cannot have one without the other, and most people want progress without the struggle. And what is the struggle? Now, a lot of times when people say that you need to suffer to gain growth, I have a bit of a disagreement there, because suffering is a…

Big term that comes from the spiritual world.

But the way I look at it is, what you need is… that struggle is pain. What you need, or another way to say this, is discomfort. Discomfort and pain for you to be able to grow. And think of it from the analogy of going to the gym, or growing your muscles. What do you do with that? You actually have to expose your muscles to tension, and to the point where you actually feel quite a bit of discomfort in your muscles.

sometimes heavy pain, sometimes lighter, depending on how much you can take, what your philosophy is, what your goal is. Aim as an expert bodybuilder or weightlifter will train very differently than somebody who's just keeping up in shape.

But…

when you expose your muscles to tension over and over, what happens? Your muscles actually break down. They don't grow in that mode, break down. Then you're giving it nutrients and rest for it to grow. And you have to keep doing that, and every time it gets comfortable to a certain degree, you push it to the next level. And this is why muscles grow over and over, because it will get comfortable with the tension that you're giving it, and it'll grow. And that's a great analogy

for how your mind works as well. But here's the complexity with mine. Now, you might be a leader sitting there, you're running a company, you're running a team. Well, how can I use this? Well, I'm gonna break this down into four ways that your mind needs to have tension on it. Then your mind needs to have struggle, and struggle, or discomfort, or pain.

consistently, so it can grow. Not suffering, and I'll quickly define, I won't go deeper into it, but to me, suffering is a resi… thinking that this thing is gonna hurt me.

Or, another way to put it, that it's resistance to pain, resistance to anything that's uncomfortable. But if you know that this thing is gonna help you grow, you're gonna do it. And the analogy is simple. If you understand that going to the gym, putting strain on your muscle, even though it hurts, it actually helps it grow, you're gonna do it, because you understand that on the other end there's positive. But if you're afraid that you're gonna rip your muscle open, you're not gonna do it.

So, suffering to me is resistance

To that growth that you don't yet understand. But we understand that a certain amount of discomfort and struggle is required for you to grow in every area of your life.

So in those four areas, I'm gonna go to… your system is constantly communicating with you with those 4 areas. And if you understand those four areas, then you know how to create discomfort in each of those areas to grow. And once again, I'm sharing all this not because I've learned it in some book and some theory, I've been experimenting with all this for 20-plus years, and that's… nothing I share here, I haven't tested it out myself to a degree.

So…

What are these four ways? I've written these down. The four ways are, sensations, emotions, self-talk, intuition. These are the four languages that your system has. And some parts of it I'll have to be careful explaining, because it fits… it looks… it's a different model than most people understand. Some you might agree with, some you might not, but they… in your experience, you'll find all four of them.

And that's an important piece. If you can see them in your experience, you can actually make changes and shift those in a positive direction. So, and I'll explain. So, when I say sensations, your system has sensations, that translates to your body, whatever sensations that are in your body. When I say emotions, that… those are actually not just labels of emotions that we have, which are,

Which could be happiness, joy, connection, disconnection, sadness, anger, all that stuff, and I put them in two categories of survival and growth emotions. But emotions are essentially the biochemical feedback from your body.

that we label as those terms. And sometimes we can label them clearly, sometimes it's hard, sometimes we have a mix of emotions, but those… those two fall into the… I put them in the category of… it will help you understand this.

I'm moving ahead of one of my sheets. So, sensations and emotions.

are the language of your body, which means that's how your body's constantly communicating with you, through sensations, stimulus, and emotions. Emotions are feelings that you're getting in the moment, and actually they're related to your past as well.

And, the second one… the third one is self-talk. Self-talk is the language of the intellect. In fact, if you study children, you'll find that up until they develop language skills.

which is between 2 to 3 years old, they don't actually have any self-talk. We're learning more and more about children. They don't have an internal dialogue. Adults have that.

Excuse me.

Adults have that self-talk, and self-talk is the language of your intellect, or mind. And it's not just your language of your mind, because language was developed by your race, or species, or group.

Our language was given to us, it was taught to us by our family, our community, our… the place we grew up in. And we… language teaches us to think a certain way. It can be incredibly powerful, and a lot of people use this for positive or negative.

And then finally, the fourth one is… The language of intuition.

which I connect with… you can… if you don't want to make it more mystical, you can say the language of mind plus body, which means the collective data that you're exposed with internally and externally, and the conclusion that your system comes up with very quickly.

Yeah, you're able to make intuitive decisions without thinking too much about it. But in my philosophy, it's the combination of mind, body, and soul.

The data from all of those all at once.

that's part of the reason why a lot of… some people will be able to make a quick decision without even looking at a lot of data, and they are 100% sure about it, and more sure than any data they were exposed to. In fact, it was, I think, the CEO of this…

huge,

software and hardware, computer hardware company, NVIDIA, who set a version of this, and it's like, the… I used to think that some of the smartest people were those who had specific skill sets on the intellectual side, but he has learned over time with his experience, it's those people who do have those skill sets on the intellectual, but they're able to use their intuition, which is their ability to gather data from multiple sources

and quickly translate that into decisions, a version of that. And those are… will be some of the most smartest… some of the smartest people that we're gonna be surrounded by. And so intuition is a part of you that you can actually train.

So why am I sharing all this? Why am I sharing that you have these four areas that you need to be uncomfortable in? The first one was, your body sensations, sensations which is connected to your body, emotions, which is also connected to your body, biochemical reactions, the labels we give them.

Third one is the self-talk, the language that is in your head with which you think. And then the fourth one was intuition. So, you will find, for example, if you run into somebody who is, who, who has a really

defined physique, they work out every day, and and they're like, this guy's really good at that area, but then when you look at another part of their life, it's a mess, such as their relationships, which connects to emotions.

They're training their body, but they're not looking at another part of their body, another part of the language that their body's communicating. So they're pushing for discomfort, their body.

But they're not pushing for discomfort on the emotion side. In fact, it's actually very hard for most people, because it's not as tangible as the body, for most people. And in fact, one spiritual teacher said that one of the biggest hurdles of the 21st century for individuals and groups might be the discomfort of facing their emotions. And then she put it as, we are living in the emotional dark ages.

Which is a pretty bold statement to make, but I would agree in a lot of ways. Most of the clients that I've worked with

their biggest struggles come in the emotional range area, whether it is the range of experiencing it, or even accessing it. The reason being is that a lot of our traumas and painful things from our past are connected to emotions, so our mind doesn't even allow us to access it.

I can't tell you how many times I've been in a discussion with a client where often they realize something and they feel the discomfort.

They were not aware of it, and that's what we call repression for a long time. Or suppression, they were aware of it, but they weren't accessing the depth of it.

So, that means that they're not actually facing

the uncomfortable emotions, which is the pain, which they're calling suffering, or a lot of people call that suffering, and that is why they're plateaued in that area, and usually that connects through relationships. They don't know how to access that, that's why they don't know how to lead a team, they don't know how to empathize, they don't know how to connect, they don't know how to challenge people, because they cannot access even their own emotions, so there's no… not enough discomfort.

The third one is the self-talk. Self-talk is completely connected to the input you've been given all your life about the language, the way your parents have trained you, think, your school system.

Government, everything else, and also the thing that you're inputting in your mind, and ways in which you're making sense of that language, and then language diverges into the skill sets, knowledge you've learned that you can apply in real world.

And it also, and this is why it's so powerful, so you can actually use that knowledge to do something specific for people. Let's say that's learning programming, you're an engineer, that means you have

Learn a specific… engineering is a language within a language. For example, if you learn coding, that is a language within the language we've learned, and it's a computer language.

Same thing in… if you look at structural or mechanical type of engineering, you have to be able to read certain visuals that is a language in itself. Blueprint reading, we call them.

But your mind is filled with different languages and beliefs and thoughts and models with which you make sense of the world, and it's probably one of the most powerful pieces of how you grow.

Now, there are people who, who will not push themselves in that area. That means they will not expose themselves to new learning. I'll give you stories of this. There are lots of people who want to read, but they don't take the time to read, and they don't realize that the reason… they keep saying that, well, no, I don't have time to read, it doesn't fit into my schedule.

But it might not be that, it might be that it's very uncomfortable for their mind to pay attention to grasp what the book is saying, whether you're reading it visually or listening to it. So, because it's so uncomfortable, they will listen to a little bit of it, read a little bit of it, put it down. And they don't realize that their brain doesn't want to spend that energy.

to learn something new, which is the discomfort of it. So they haven't gone over it, and you find that, and I've tested this with people, as soon as somebody starts getting through a few chapters of a book, they want to read the whole book. As soon as they get through a whole book, they want to read the next book. Why? Because now your mind has developed the muscle to be able to read. Same thing with learning a new thing. Some people complain, I can't learn anything new, or they're older. Well, how am I going to learn to run

business at 50, 40, 60. Well, you have to push your mind to learn. That's the intellectual discomfort.

And then finally, the hardest of it all is the intuitive side, because there are no books on… I mean, there are books on it, but it's very experiential. It's very…

personal to every person. It's very hard to draw patterns of what intuition looks like with different people, and it's also very unique to your own system, and there are times you might think that you're operating based on intuition, but you might be operating based on your emotions and fears and all kinds of stuff.

That is something to test out. I call that the language of the soul plus mind plus body, or the language that has all the data in one place, and it requires a certain type of person to access it, but the starting point is actually to push your body, push your emotions, push your intellect to its limits. Once you do that, you will actually get closer and closer to intuition. How I know this? How do I know this? Well, if you follow the track record of

every thinker, every leader, every philosopher, you'll find that they've actually put… the thing that's obvious is they've pushed themselves in at least two of those areas. Their intellectual and emotional side, or body and intellectual, at least two, or emotional and intellectual, one of…

Or some of them, all three of them, and as soon as they do that, they get… they naturally go… get connected to a different side of themselves, which you can call it their core, their soul, their intuition, you name it, what…

But all of a sudden, they're able to make decisions and operate at a level most people cannot understand. They look mysterious, they sound mysterious, they do things mysteriously, and other people are like, how are they doing any of this stuff?

And, so, my question to you would be, are you challenging yourself? Are you consistently creating discomfort in the area of, your sensations, your body? Are you pushing your body

to the limits for the purpose that you have. If you want to be in shape, you need to push your muscles to a certain degree, even for your mind to operate. If you want to compete, it's a different kind of… and the intensity varies, but you still need to push past discomfort for your muscles, your body, for your energy to be at a certain level. Are you pushing your emotions, which means that are you facing the difficult emotions in your life of anger, of

frustration, or disconnection. Those are some of the hardest things for people to face. You either can do it, or you cannot, and you probably need support in that area, whether that comes from therapy, coaching, another modality. And the third one is your intellectual side, the self-talk. The intellect requires pushing. We're in the age of learning. We're in the age of information, and in fact, with AI,

learning is going to become more and more… faster and faster, but are you pushing your mind to learn, or are you stuck in scrolling? And nothing wrong with just scrolling, you can do it for a few minutes, but…

Is that the only way your mind can learn, or can you actually get through books? Can you actually sit down through training and courses and use them and apply them?

that changes your life in a whole other… and so the whole system right now is built to train your mind to be attention deficit. Your attention is very divided. If you can focus, and focus for a long time, and concentrate, you can learn almost anything. Everything is free these days.

So, are you pushing that area to learn new things and apply, whether that's AI models, or pushing your skill sets in whatever field you're in, and leveraging AI or something else, or pushing yourself to grow within your field and learn more, and not take it for granted that it's a muscle to work out? And finally.

Or are you uncomfortable in the intuition area? This one is the hardest one to figure out, but you can do a few things. You can start with pushing yourself in the first three, which is, body, emotions, and intellect.

Once you push in those three, you'll naturally, at some point, get to this, but if you really want to go in this area, spend more quiet time with yourself, because that addresses actually all three areas. You will start to listen, hear your thoughts, you will notice your sensations in your body, and you'll notice your emotions. Spend time alone without any distractions. That is the starting point of accessing your intuition. Most people cannot

Spend even 30 seconds without looking at their phone, or talking to somebody, or some other distraction.

spend… start with 10 minutes of no distractions. You can call that meditation, or just doing nothing. You decide. Go for a walk, you don't even have to sit in a place. Just look around, see, or sit in a blank room with no distractions, and just sit there, and pay attention to your thoughts, pay attention to what's happening with your body.

Pay attention to your emotions, you will start to notice the whole other side of you, and that is the first step towards understanding a deeper part of you, and also accessing the intuitive side of you. If you're not creating some level of discomfort in these four areas, you are not creating growth, and you're gonna have to force the initial part of it, because your mind will not let you, your consciousness will not let you, your brain is

Set up to preserve energy.

your brain is hardwired to, yes, look for novelty, but if it takes up too much energy, it will not go towards it. And this is why everything new feels hard to start. Every habit feels hard to stop… start, whether it's the habit of thinking a certain way, whether it's the habit of doing some things, whether it's the habit of reading, the habit of…

Working out the habit of being challenged, the habit of starting a new business, and having to go through the discomfort of learning and applying something, and having risks involved in it, which requires your emotions in the process to face the uncomfortable, fearful emotions, lots of things around it, so…

Here's the power of this. When you can start to master these four areas, you will notice the same patterns in other people, you will learn to challenge other people around you. You will become a better leader, because you will notice that the people around you are not challenging themselves either in most of these areas, or a couple of these areas that they need to force themselves on. I had one client come up to me, one of the reasons why he joined my program, one of the main reasons, because one of his

business partners notice this, and I mean, it's like, you need to challenge yourself on the emotional side, or to that degree.

I feel like there's a blind spot you have there, and he didn't even help him there, you need to find support for that.

And that pushed him to seek me out, he's like, I need to figure out this emotional thing, I'm too react.

And they're building a business, and they cannot afford the reactionary decisions that he was making. And the partner could see that, because I'm fairly sure, I've never met the partner yet, but I'm fairly sure that person has had some grip over his emotions to be able to notice that in the other person. Same thing, if you don't challenge yourself in these areas, you're not gonna be able to challenge your team members, you're not gonna push them, you're not gonna…

Get them to move to the next level, whether that's intellectual, body-wise, emotions-wide, or intuitive side.

So, if you want to be a great leader, start pushing yourself in these areas, challenging yourself to grow in these areas. We're gonna go much deeper into this on Thursday, those who are part of the community, and we're gonna figure out where are the areas in your life that you are pushing yourself, and where are the areas you're not, and how can we…

Push you to go towards the right areas for you to challenge so you can grow faster in your life, business, relationships, and all the areas that matter to you.

Hope this was super helpful. Please share your insights with me once you watch this. Until the next conversation. Hope you have a great day. Bye.