August 19, 2026 • 39 mins
Hard things are not a sign you’re doing life wrong. They’re often the first evidence that something real is being built. I start by naming a problem I see everywhere, including in myself: we call something “hard” when it is actually uncomfortable, inconvenient, or demanding discipline. Once we separate hard vs impossible vs uncomfortable, the fog clears and we can stop using our feelings as final proof.
Then I bring receipts from biology and history. Your body adapts under pressure through strength-building processes like muscle repair and neuroplasticity, and it was designed to handle acute stress when it’s paired with recovery. From there, I spotlight stories that make the message undeniable: Wilma Rudolph turning childhood polio into Olympic gold, Sarah Blakely building Spanx with $5,000 and relentless persistence, and Melody Hobson using fear of poverty to fuel a groundbreaking career in finance. These are not “special humans”; they’re humans who stayed in the work.
We also confront the polished excuses that keep us stuck: quitting mid-hard and calling it “alignment,” using “waiting on God” to avoid responsibility, assuming wealth always equals corruption, and falling into the modern comfort trap where convenience becomes a cushion. I talk about failure, rejection, and the shame spiral that makes one setback last a whole season, plus the difference between rest that restores and rest that keeps you comfortable.
If you’ve been telling yourself you’re not the kind of person who can do hard things, press play and let’s challenge that story together. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a push, and leave a review so more people can find Renovating the Soul.
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Alexandria (00:00):
The street light above you, the road underneath
you, the building you're sittingin, the phone in your hand, the
computer you're watching on.
Every single one of those thingsbegan as an idea in a human
mind.
And then someone had to do thehard work of making it real.
Before electricity, humans usedfire.
(00:20):
Before roads, humans carvedpaths through wilderness.
Before space shuttles, humanslooked out the sky and refused
to believe it was the ceiling.
We sent human beings to themoon, not robots, but people.
People with fear and doubt andheartbeats who had to train
their bodies and minds to dosomething no human had ever done
before.
And this isn't an Americanstory.
(00:42):
This is a human story.
Every civilization on this earthhas survived things that should
have ended them, built thingsthat shouldn't have been
possible, pushed through whateveryone else said was the
limit.
And if another human being didit, built it, survived it,
thought of it, created it, thenthe capacity for it lives in you
(01:03):
too.
That's not motivation, that'sbiology.
Welcome to Renovating the Soul.
I'm your host, AlexandriaRobinson, and this is a podcast
about the real unglamorous workof becoming.
The work that actually requiressomething from you.
Hard questions, honest answers,and the willingness to look at
(01:25):
the foundation you were handedand decide what you want to
build on it.
That's what we do here.
So wherever you're coming fromtoday, I'm glad you're in it
with me.
Let's get into today'sconversation.
Welcome to another episode ofRenovating the Soul.
I am your host, AlexandriaRobinson, and I am so glad that
(01:47):
you could be with me today.
If you've been here, if you'vemaybe even listened to one
episode of the podcast, youmight have heard me say
something about hard work.
It is one of my mantras, one ofmy tropes, one of the things
that I would shout from therooftops.
And while I've hinted at it inmultiple episodes, I haven't had
(02:08):
a dedicated episode to thatidea.
And that's what this episode istoday.
Pumped for y'all to hear this,pumped to have this conversation
with y'all.
So let's get into it.
We're gonna open up the episodedefining our terms as we like to
do here on Renovating the Soul.
We're doing this so that we canall be on the same page with
what I'm meaning when I use theword hard or what I mean by
(02:31):
other terms that I may usethroughout the episodes.
The definition of hard isrequiring a great deal of
endurance or effort or done witha great deal of force or
strength.
But here's what's happenedsometimes.
Something that I see we've done.
We've confused hard withimpossible.
We've treated difficult as asignal to stop rather than a
(02:52):
signal that something is beingbuilt.
The definition of impossible isfelt to be incapable of being
done, attained, or fulfilled.
And I I love words so muchbecause the word felt is so
specific.
It's felt to be incapable, butthat doesn't mean that it is,
right?
Sometimes when you feel likesomething is happening doesn't
(03:14):
mean that that's true, butthat's what impossible does.
You're incapable or something'sincapable of being done,
attained, or fulfilled.
And more importantly, there is adistinction or a difference
between hard and uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable is causingdiscomfort or annoyance.
When you see that person in theroom that you haven't talked to
in a long time, right?
Or you're uncomfortable ifsomething is upsetting your
(03:36):
stomach and makes you feeluneasy and it makes you wiggle
sometime or squirm or it makesyour heart beat a little faster.
But there's a difference betweenhard that we just talked about,
which is working, enduring.
And if you just think about it,right, a rock is hard.
You're if you're doing this tothe rock, it's not gonna smash,
right?
Now something may eventually beable to smash it, but it's not
(03:57):
gonna smash without some type offorce, some type of endurance
being done.
And that's different than justbeing uncomfortable or being
annoyed or being uneasy.
So sometimes, and everything isnot everyone, right?
So hear me gently with what I'mabout to say is that there is a
difference between hard versusuncomfortable.
(04:22):
But that doesn't mean that thethings I'm about to list are not
hard for someone.
But I'm just gonna give someexamples of what it would look
like to distinguish distinguishhard from other things.
So waking up early is not hard,it's inconvenient.
Having that conversation is nothard, it's uncomfortable.
Finishing what you started whenyou don't feel like it is not
(04:44):
hard, it requires discipline.
Again, hard means requiringendurance and effort.
It's not just resistance tosomething you'd rather avoid.
And hard work doesn't have to bedramatic to count, right?
It's the book you decided toread, the class you took to go
further, the decision to move toa new city, not knowing what it
(05:04):
would unlock.
Simple decisions that don't feelsignificant in the moment are
still decisions to move forwardrather than stay still and they
accumulate.
That's how our lives get built.
Our bodies were literallydesigned for this.
So let's I just love this somuch.
And we talked about in episode13, the Broken Souls, Broken
(05:27):
Bodies episode.
And that episode it showed usthat our bodies respond to what
we carry emotionally andspiritually.
But here's the other side ofthat truth is that those same
bodies were built forextraordinary endurance.
Your body adapts under pressure,muscles tear and they rebuild
stronger.
Bones that fracture and heal,they come back denser.
(05:48):
Your immune system developsmemory, lungs expand with
training, the brain rewiresitself through repeated effort.
This is neuroplasticity.
Your nervous system was designedto handle acute stress.
And this is something that wetalked about in functional
health, in the functional healthepisode, um, is how our body
responds to certain things.
(06:09):
So our bodies can handle acutestress to flood our bodies with
resources when we need them mostand to pull back when the threat
has when the threat has passed.
But the problem is chronicstress, not challenge.
There are so many natural thingsthat are operating within our
body that we need.
Our emotions are signals, stressis a signal, anxiety, everything
(06:29):
that is happening with our bodycan give us the signs and the
endurance that we need if we'repaying attention.
So during pregnancy, the humanbody creates an entirely new
organ from scratch, which iscalled the placenta,
specifically to sustain anotherhuman life.
It does not exist beforeconception, and the body builds
it in weeks.
(06:49):
The cervix, which is normallyless than half an inch open,
dilates to 10 full centimetersduring labor.
The pelvis shifts and expands.
Hormones flood the body to allowligaments to loosen so bones can
move.
For my women and my friends thathave had a C-section, this is a
(07:10):
major abdominal surgery.
Surgeons cut through sevenlayers of tissue.
Women recover from this whilealso caring for the newborn.
And then here's what happensafter our bodies, women's
bodies, they produce customizednutrition.
It shifts hormone levels dailyand is biologically wired to
(07:31):
function on disrupted sleep formonths, even though we're
exhausted and we don't want tohear that.
But our bodies were made forthis.
Now, here's something that Iwant us to sit with.
Most animals are born ready towalk, run, or swim within
minutes or even hours.
A horse stands within the hour,a wildebeest runs with the herd
(07:51):
on day one, right?
But human babies are bornentirely dependent, unable to
feed themselves, regulate theirtemperature, or even hold their
own heads up.
Why?
Because the human brain is solarge and complex that it cannot
fully develop inside the womb.
We are born early by nature'sdesign, or say early by nature's
design, so that the mostsophisticated brain on the
(08:14):
planet can keep growing outsidethe body in relationship with
other humans.
All of this, every bit of it,happens inside an ordinary human
body, not a superhero, not aspecial case, but a regular
person.
And in this episode, I'm gonnabe highlighting different people
that I'm inspired by, storiesthat I've heard, but I want to
(08:38):
highlight these people so thatyou and I can see cases of this
beauty of hard work anddefeating the odds and
endurance.
So our first is gonna be WilmaRudolph.
Wilma was born prematurely anddiagnosed with polio as a child.
Doctors said she would neverwalk normally.
She wore a metal brace on herleft leg until age 12.
(09:01):
And her mother would take her,they said that they would ride
the train and they would takeher to Maharry in uh Tennessee
to get her uh physicallychecked.
They would give her massages athome, and through years of
relentless physical work, shenot only walked without the
brace, but became the firstAmerican woman to win three gold
medals in a single Olympics in1960.
(09:24):
Wilma is just one case, buthumans have always done amazing
things.
I mentioned some of these in theopening, but before the light
switch, there was fire.
Someone had to figure out how tocreate controlled flame, how to
contain it, and how to use itfor warmth, light, and cooking.
Can you imagine the observation,the failure, the iteration that
(09:44):
was required to do that?
It was hard work.
Before the road, there waswilderness.
Before the bridge, there was ariver that couldn't be crossed.
Before the building, there wasopen ground.
All of it required human hands,human minds, human endurance.
I stop and I look at thestoplight.
In Portland, they call it BridgeCity.
And the bridges are so amazinglydesigned.
(10:07):
Like when you drive over them,you got you can't just help but
stop and look up and wonder theingenuity that went into it, the
design, the intentionality,making sure that it was safe,
you know, which I'm sure is liketop of the list.
But then to just you see thesuspensions, you you see the
material, like this is all doneby humans.
(10:27):
Then if you think, you know,globally, right?
Because it's not just aboutbeing here in Portland or
America, like I said, this is ahuman history.
This is civilization aftercivilization.
The pyramids of Egypt, the GreatWall of China, the aqueducts of
Rome, the underground railwaysof London, every single one of
these was built by human beingsdoing things that they had never
(10:49):
done before.
And the moon.
I mean, how amazing is that thatin 1969 humans left this planet
and landed on another celestialbody.
They trained their bodies towithstand conditions they had
never experienced.
They built technology that hadnever existed.
They did it because someonedecided this hard thing, this
(11:09):
amazing thing, it's worth doing.
And again, this isn't aboutbeing American or being
exceptional.
It's about being human.
Every culture on this earth hasa history of endurance,
creativity, and survival thatshould make you stand up
straighter and make you holdyour head higher and be proud
that you are a human.
(11:30):
And if you ever feel likesomething is too hard for you
specifically, I want you to lookup.
Seriously, I do it all the time.
Look at the streetlight, look atthe road, look at the building
you work in, look at the houseyou live in, look at the street
your children play in, look atthe airplane.
Oh my gosh.
And remember that a human being,someone just like you, with
(11:53):
doubts, with fears, with ideas,with dreams, with a heartbeat
just like yours, they made that.
And I think that sometimes ourresistance to hard work or to
working hard or however you wantto say it comes from two lies
that we've either been sold ortold, or somehow we convinced
ourselves of.
And the first one is aboutdirection that if something is
(12:16):
meant for you, it will feelnatural.
That your purpose is a specificdestination assigned to you
before you were born, and yourjob is to find it.
So what happens is you wait, youchase alignment, you look for
signs or messages, or you're aquote girly like me.
And meanwhile, nothing getsbuilt.
But purpose isn't found beforethe work, it's revealed through
(12:39):
it.
Ooh, that's a hard lesson that Ihad to learn.
And I wish someone had told methat years ago, that you start
where you're planted, you move,you expose yourself to new
ideas, new places, and newthings that you didn't know you
could do, even if you haven'tfigured out that you could do it
yet.
You just try and things follow.
The feeling of passion almostalways comes after the hard
(13:03):
work, not before it.
I spent so many years chasingpurpose, purposely royal as a
brand that I had, still a blogthat I have up.
I spent so many years with thisidea saying, I gotta find my
purpose, I gotta find mypurpose, I gotta find my
purpose.
That what it actually started todo was keep me from doing
things.
It kept me from trying, it keptme journaling and more so
(13:24):
sitting around waiting for it tobe revealed than I did just
going to do something, justfiguring it out, or even just
choosing, or even just choosingwhat I wanted it to, what and
what I wanted to do.
The second uh lie that we'vebeen told is about capacity,
that the people who have builtremarkable things were just
gifted.
(13:44):
They were just born with it.
And if you weren't born with it,then the ceiling is lower for
you.
But most of the people we callgeniuses weren't born
exceptional.
They simply worked harder,longer, and more consistently
than other people around them.
Their drive was different, maybebecause their beliefs was
different, but they weren'tnecessarily born any different
(14:06):
than you or I.
Heartbeat, lungs, even peoplewho were born without limbs or
born with deficiencies, theystill find a way to not let
anything hold them back.
So it's not about being bornequally, whether it's your
physical body or whether it'syour upbringing.
It's just about what are youwilling to do with what you
have.
(14:27):
Einstein reportedly said that hewasn't more intelligent than
others.
He simply stayed with problemslonger.
We like to call peoplenatural-born geniuses and
geniuses and all of thesethings, but then we don't
realize that that puts a limitand almost becomes an excuse for
us not to go after somethingbecause I wasn't born with it.
(14:48):
But I've already listed thatyou're a human.
So if you're here, you can doamazing things too.
So the real question isn'twhether you're called or whether
you're gifted, it's whetheryou're willing to move before
you feel ready and to work whennobody's watching without
recognition.
One of my favorite stories thatI just would say she inspires me
(15:09):
the most is Sarah Blakely.
Love that girl so much.
She went from selling faxmachines door to door in the
Florida heat uh to cutting upher the feet off of her
pantyholes one day, and thenrealizing that nobody had solved
the problem that she was facing.
She's like, nobody's doing this.
Like I want the pantyholes, butI don't need them to go all the
(15:32):
way down.
And she realized as as a lot ofinventions happened, go looking
for it.
She didn't find it, so shesolved it herself.
With$5,000 in her savings, nofashion experience and no
connections.
She wrote her own patent.
She drove to Meals to findsomeone willing to make a
prototype and she walked intostores alone.
After the product was made, shewalked into stores alone.
(15:55):
She started quietly.
I love when she tells thisstory, where she would go in the
store and she would move herproducts closer to the register.
You know, secretly she's doingthis.
She's moving her products closerto the register so that um
people would be aware becausethey were putting her product
behind other popular brands.
And so she's saying, no one'sgoing to be able to see it if
you guys don't put it where, youknow, someone can see it.
(16:18):
And because she was a new brand,she's like, I gotta get out
there.
But that drive and determinationand the belief that she had and
what she did and the hard workthat she put into doing it
caused her to go into thosestores and start moving stuff
around.
And then when she was in thestores, she would talk to women
about the product without everrevealing it was hers.
And that was just a strategy sheused, but I love when she tells
(16:39):
that story.
And now Spanks has become thisbillion-dollar company without
spending a single dollar onadvertising.
Now that may have changed, butyou know, at one point that was
the case.
I love stories like Sarah's andWilma's and other stories.
I love hearing people's storiesbecause it's such a good
reminder, not just of whatsomeone else was able to do, but
(17:00):
what we're able to do if we usewhat we have and if we just
start where we are.
I've already kind of touched on,you know, two of the lies that
we can get caught up in, but I Iwant us to also look at some of
the defenses that we use becausethere are excuses that sound
reasonable, but keep us in thesame stagnant place.
(17:21):
One of them is alignment.
This doesn't align with meanymore.
Alignment specifically hasbecome one of the cleanest ways
to quit mid-hard, right?
You just it starts to get hard,doesn't align with me anymore.
You ever heard someone quit ajob and say, Why'd you quit?
Oh, it wasn't aligning with meanymore.
Why'd you break up and it wasn'taligning me with anymore?
Like, okay, okay, right?
(17:43):
But it gives us this excuse toquit mid-hard without
accountability.
Quitting because something gothard and calling it misalignment
is worth looking at, honestly.
The second one is the waiting onGod defense.
My Lord Jesus, I could do awhole episode on this.
Maybe one day I will.
(18:08):
I have to pray about it.
I have to see.
And I say this because I don'tmind discernment, I don't mind
prayer, I don't mind your faith,but there's a difference between
I'm waiting on God, I haven'theard from me yet, and I that
means I shouldn't say there's adifference, I should say using
(18:32):
God in this way, or waiting onGod, or prayer, or whatever it
is as an excuse, it blocks youfrom moving.
I hear I hear this all the time.
I'm slowing down on this onebecause I want to be sensitive,
but I hear this all the time,and and I've heard it all my
life, and I was it.
(18:52):
You know, someone brings anopportunity my way.
Sometimes I know I don't want todo that.
But I gotta wait for God.
Gotta hear from God.
And I don't know what I'msupposed to be hearing.
I don't know what it was.
Was he supposed to open theclouds and say, Yes, my child,
do it.
I don't think that's what he putus here for.
(19:13):
I think we're here to figure itout on our own because that's
how we learn and grow.
If I'm waiting for God to passout decisions like candy, then I
don't need to take anyresponsibility for it because
then what happens is let's sayyou do something, right?
And it doesn't work out.
I think the best example I cangive y'all is get in a in a
relationship with somebody andthen it doesn't work out.
(19:34):
And what's the one thing thatyou'll hear someone say, Oh, I
didn't wait on the Lord, or, youknow, oh, I didn't pray on it,
and so I jumped in.
No, you made a bad decision,made a bad judgment call.
No, you rushed it, right?
Like there are other reasonsbesides it, but when you use God
as your defense and both saying,I have to wait on him, you can
also flip it and use him or orit, whatever religion it is, as
(19:58):
the excuse for why you did do itwhen really you need to be held
accountable for your own actionsbecause that's the only way
you're gonna learn and grow.
If God is there, God is God.
Okay, He's He's done the thing,He, He, He's up there, but you
have your own life.
You have to learn, you have togrow.
It's not His lesson to learn,it's your lesson to learn.
(20:18):
So waiting and working are notopposites.
I I would I would I would haveyou sit with this if you feel
like this is you, and I wouldask you, why can't God meet you
in the motion?
Why do you have to wait?
The next one I see a lot withthe new generation, and it's
(20:38):
that wealth equals corruption.
The belief that anyone with morethan you got it through greed or
evil is a very convenient story,but it's also a ceiling.
It makes ambition morallysuspect and hard work pointless.
Some people have more becausethey worked harder and longer or
they're started earlier.
(21:00):
And this is not to deny thatpeople are handed, uh not
handed, but like, yeah, I wouldsay handed, a different
blueprint.
This is not to say that somepeople are born with better
structure and families andthings in place.
It's not to say that.
But I literally saw a post ofsomeone, it was a motivational
post, and it was a beautifulhouse, gorgeous house.
You don't know who owns thishouse.
(21:20):
Nobody knows who owns thishouse.
It's not a famous person'shouse.
It's just a nice big house.
And this, the, the uh, I don'tremember the exact quote, but
essentially what she was tryingto say was, you know, you can
either play small or you cankeep working hard and this be
kind of what you have one day.
And I loved it because I'm like,yeah, that's a gorgeous house.
Even if it's not about themansion and the cars and the
(21:42):
money, you want to be set.
I don't want my kids to have tostruggle.
That's just the reality that Ihave.
I don't want them to have tostruggle.
I want to be able to provide forthem when they're adults.
I want to be able to pay theirweddings.
I want to be debt free myselffrom these student loans that
the government no longer isgonna pay for.
Okay.
So I want to be in a good placeand in a good position.
When I looked at the comments,All of the comments, and I kid
y'all not that at least the onesat the top were like, yeah, but
(22:05):
that person did some shady stufffor that.
Yeah, but they lied.
Yeah, but they cheated.
And I just thought, man, youguys don't realize that when
that is your mentality, not onlyare you discrediting the hard
work of other people, that isvery real, because again, you
don't know these people.
You don't know their lives, youdon't know what they've done,
(22:25):
but then you also, again, giveyourself an excuse for why you
can't go after things because,oh, I'm not corrupt, I'm not
evil, so I can never have that.
Who says that that's theprerequisite for wealth?
I hope that makes sense.
It's a very limiting mindset,right?
You don't have to defend everywealthy person, and that's not
what this is about.
But you have to stop lettingthat assumption become your
(22:48):
excuse because again, it's aceiling.
I would say also on that, thatthis is that's a great point for
you to check your jealousy,check your projection, because
most times we want to be likethat person or we want what they
have, but we don't feel like itcan ever happen.
And sometimes, yeah, you're notgonna be them, but that doesn't
mean you can't do good with whatyou have.
(23:10):
That doesn't mean that you can'tgrow and flourish and have your
own portion.
Hope that's landing right.
The next one is the comforttrap.
Y'all, okay.
We're 2026, right?
We have remote work, which isunheard of if you're a 90s or
before if you grew up like wedid, it's a nine to five, you're
in the building.
But now we have remote work, wehave you can get your food
(23:34):
delivered.
I just think about that and I'mjust like, oh my gosh, I get my
groceries delivered.
When you really think aboutthat, that is just a crazy idea
from the way that we grew up.
You used to have to go toHollywood video and Blockbuster
to rent a movie, to put in yourVHS.
(23:54):
And then you had to drive anddrop it back off.
I mean, it's so crazy how thetimes have changed, right?
But we have delivery food, youknow, services, grocery
services, move movies,streaming.
Who would have thought thatstreaming would be a thing, you
know, and you know, not cabletelevision.
I mean, I remember the days whenit was cable versus satellite
(24:16):
dish, when the dish was all therave.
It's just crazy how much thingshave changed.
But my point in saying this isthat we have so many tools, like
every tool imaginable, right?
We haven't even gotten to AI androbots and all the things that's
happening, the cars that drivethemselves.
I mean, my goodness, right?
But we are still blaming othersfor our lack.
People have built civilizations,they've raised families, and
(24:39):
they've written masterworks withalmost nothing.
The abundance that we have issupposed to be feel, but for
many of us, it's become acushion.
The much that we have, theabundance that we have, all of
these things that we have, Ifeel like they're holding us
back, some of us back, more thanit's actually propelling us.
(25:03):
I've been seeing thisconversation come up a lot even
with our social lives, thatbecause we have social media,
many of us are not interacting.
We don't know how to eveninteract.
I I would say probably not themillennials.
I'm gonna stick up for y'all,okay?
Y'all don't be mad at me.
But I've heard this about thenew generation.
I've heard from my youngercousins when they go out, they
(25:24):
don't even dance at the clubsanymore.
I'm like, well, what do y'alldo?
I guess they just stand there.
I don't know what they do, butwe used to just dance.
There was no pictures, it was noInstagram, it was no TikTok, it
was no nothing.
And so that's what I mean by,you know, having all of the
abundance that we have isamazing.
I think it's great.
I think we should be movingforward with it, but at the same
time, it shouldn't be a crutchor a cushion to keep us from
(25:46):
moving forward and stillbuilding something on our own
because it can be done.
Our next spotlight is gonna beMelody Hobson.
Melody, ooh, I love her, okay?
Because she is she carriesherself with a grace that is
just unmatched.
When you watch her talk, whenyou watch the way she moves,
(26:09):
she's just so elegant, so fluentin the way that she speaks, and
just so confident with who sheis.
It is she is just such abeautiful woman, like when you
when you watch her, and you canuh you know put her name into
YouTube and and see some of herinterviews that she's done
recently.
But Melody, she grew up inChicago with a single mother.
She uh described gettingeviction notices and utility
(26:32):
shutoffs.
And she has said openly on theinterviews that I've seen of her
that her drive in finance,that's the field that she works
in, came directly from her fearof poverty.
She took the thing that scaredher most and walked straight
into it as her life's work.
She got to Princeton on PellGrants, loans, and financial
aid, and then she interned at aninvestment firm and then she
(26:54):
never left.
She uh recently, I would say,uh, can't I don't know how many
years it's been, so I'll justleave it at recently.
She became the co-CEO of AerialInvestments and the first black
woman to chair an S P 500company.
And this wasn't because theindustry made room for her,
because she'll tell thosestories when you listen to her.
(27:14):
It's not that she didn't have towork through, you know, being a
woman in a in a financial fieldand in a male-dominated field,
not at all.
But it's because she outworkedthe room.
Her drive, her integrity, herwillingness to keep going.
Yeah.
The fire that she has, she'lltell her tell you herself was
lit by that scarcity.
(27:35):
And I love her honesty and beinghonest and saying that the way I
grew up is what fuels me.
It's what keeps her going.
Even now, after all the successshe has, it's why she keeps
going.
And if you want to add this inthere, she's married to George
Lucas.
But she's amazing in and ofherself that you don't even have
to mention George Lucas to toyou know add that on her.
(27:58):
No, she has her own resume, butMelody is absolutely amazing, so
you should definitely look herup.
But like Melody and many others,you will get a no.
You will fail.
You will let yourself or someoneelse down.
And that's not a sign that youwere wrong to try.
That's just what happens whenyou're moving, when you're
living.
I already told y'all that I gotrejected over and over by those
(28:21):
law schools, and I was almostusing it as an excuse of like,
well, this is why I don't try,and this is why I don't take
risks.
But that's not the mindset Ishould have.
It's okay to admit out loudbecause it's very real for me.
But on the other side of comingout of that, I realized, no, I
needed this.
I needed to see myself to beable to do the hard things.
I need to allow myself the roomto say it's okay to fail.
(28:44):
It's okay to get the nose.
It's okay to be rejected.
It really is.
And that as long as I keep doingsomething, even if it's just
learning the lesson from it, notnecessarily applying again,
right?
But whatever it is, it's justthe goal is that I don't stay
stagnant, that I don't stay inthe same place, right?
The goal isn't a life withoutfailure.
The goal is a life where failuredoesn't stop you.
(29:06):
It doesn't stop me, where the nois just information, where the
setback is just a Tuesday.
What stops most people isn't thehard work itself, it's the shame
spiral that follows the setback.
You fail and then spend sixmonths in self-punishment
instead of six months working.
The failure was one moment, butthe punishment becomes a season.
(29:31):
And two days before I recordedthis, I said to myself, and I
wrote it in my notes after Isaid it, but I said to myself,
if you punish yourself for whereyou are, you won't grow.
And I said that because I hadall these doubts and fears about
doing this very podcast.
And I was like, I can't do it.
I was just letting all thisstuff creep in.
I'm not getting a lot oftraction on social media, like
(29:53):
very real things where I'm justlike, oh my gosh.
And I'm like, Well, I'm I'mlooking at this podcast and I'm
looking at that for inspiration.
But then I'm ended up comparingmyself.
And I had to stop myself andsay, if you do not give yourself
grace for where you are, if youdon't accept that it's not
always gonna come out perfect onthe podcast, you're not always
gonna love what you said, you'renot always gonna sound as
(30:13):
polished as you wanted to.
If you do not let yourself bethat, be where you are, you will
not grow.
I will keep myself in a bubbleand in a box.
And I want you all to hear me.
This is not an attack on rest.
Rest is very real, it'snecessary and it's biological,
but there is a version of restculture that has become a way to
avoid the hard work that wouldbuild you.
(30:36):
And we need to be honest aboutthat.
If you're always exhausted,always burned out, always
needing to break before you'veeven started, then it's worth
asking whether you're genuinelydepleted or whether you're
avoiding somethinguncomfortable.
Because there is a differencebetween the rest that restores
you and the rest that you use tostay comfortable.
(30:56):
One builds you back up and theother keeps you exactly where
you are.
I also want to say that it's nothard forever.
That rest can be the goal, thatease can be the goal.
That's the beautiful thing aboutwhen you're working hard, when
you're working hard, when you'reworking hard, when you're
working hard, it's somethingthat it's not hard all the time.
(31:17):
It's just like when you startworking out.
You start exercising.
If you've never exercisedbefore, it's going to hurt.
You're gonna strain, you're youknow, you're you're gonna be
mad, you're gonna be cut cursingthe skies.
Why am I doing this?
Why does this matter?
But over time, your body beginsto adapt.
You begin to adapt, yourmentality begins to shift, and
it becomes easier to go to thegym.
It becomes easier to lift thoseweights.
(31:39):
And then you push yourself andyou keep doing something hard.
But the beautiful thing that youhave to realize is that it does
not stay hard forever.
And I want to speak directly towhoever has been looking at what
they want to do and tellingthemselves they're not the type
of person who can do hardthings.
Maybe someone told you thatgrowing up.
Maybe you've just watchedyourself quit enough times that
(31:59):
you started to believe it.
But I want you to hear this thecapacity is in you.
Not because of positivethinking, but because of
biology, because of history,because of every human being who
has ever lived and endured andbuilt something from nothing.
You come from that lineage.
It's literally in who we are aspeople.
(32:19):
And I've talked a lot aboutthese famous examples in those
stories.
They do matter, and I love thehighlights that I've given you,
and I hope you look those peopleup.
But I also want to talk aboutthe people in my actual life
because sometimes the mostpowerful proof isn't someone
you've never met.
It's the person you grew up withor the person sitting across
from you at the table or theperson you watch struggle and
(32:40):
keep going anyway.
The first is my grandma.
My grandma's almost 92 yearsold, and she gave birth to 13,
13, no twins, children.
I don't, I still, yeah, don'tknow how she did it.
All are alive except for myoldest, my uh for the oldest, my
uncle Nate, and she raised themand she helped to raise us
grandchildren.
There's 40 plus of us firstgrandchildren, and she's seen us
(33:03):
all through her home at onepoint and watched several of us
at the same time and several ofthem.
Um, she was, I believe, like theyoungest secretary of her church
organization.
Before she got married and hadkids, she was obese.
Like the way that she couldorganize, the way that she she
supported, the way that she'sbuilt her administrative
details, just how concise sheis.
(33:24):
And she's lived through historythat most people only read
about.
And she remembers it withclarity.
Oh my gosh, that girl.
We call her she's a walkinghistory book.
That's exactly what we say.
And it really humbles all of us.
She didn't do hard things once,she did them every single day
for nine decades.
Next for me would be mymother-in-law, Sherry.
(33:45):
I am in awe of her resilience.
I met her in 2005 and I watchedwhat she carried and what she
pushed through.
I've learned her story over theyears from, you know, just being
together.
We just all went on vacationtogether to San Diego and got to
hear more of her story.
And it really could be a book ora movie, but I won't tell it for
her.
She's gonna have to tell you to,you know, one day.
(34:07):
But she took her experiences andher pain and everything that she
had gone through, and shestarted working for a shelter to
help women and children.
And not only did she startworking at that shelter, but she
worked her way up to management.
And it was not just about, youknow, hard work, but the hard
work transformed her.
She's become somebody who Ideeply admire, and I just can't
(34:28):
wait for the world to hear howmuch she's really been through.
Next is my friend Shawnee.
Shawnee is the founder of the InBloom conference, and she has
been building it year by yearwith intention and heart.
I believe five years she's beendoing this conference.
The challenges come and shekeeps going anyway.
And that's what it looks like tobuild something from vision when
nobody can see it yet but you.
(34:50):
She is so intentional, she's socreative, but her heart is just
so for the people, and she knowswhat she wants.
And I love that about Shani.
She knows what she wants, andshe's gonna get what she wants.
And then last would be my littlebrother Jonathan.
One of my little brothers,Jonathan, the one right under
me, we're two years apart.
My it's different being theolder sibling, and I don't know
(35:13):
what it's like to be the youngersibling, obviously, but I do
know watching my kids thatyounger siblings have so much.
Um there's like sometimes adifferent expectation that the
younger siblings can't be theolder sibling, or everyone's
shining on the older sibling,and then the younger siblings
get overlooked.
And I can only imagine whatthat's felt like, you know, me
(35:34):
being the only girl and theoldest, and then him being right
behind me.
But he went to massage therapyschool, and it was random to us
all, and there, you know, a lotof there were lots of doubts
from others, but he did it andhe was really good at it.
And now he works at achiropractic office, but he
moved to California and he isworking hard to build something
(35:54):
while also doing the internalwork.
And that's what I'm most proudof him for.
He's pushing throughgenerational patterns, he's
facing the thoughts that comeup, and he's learning to choose
differently.
That combination of externalbuilding and internal rebuilding
at the time at the same time isone of the hardest things a
person can do, and he's doingit.
And I can go on and on and onand on with examples, but the
(36:16):
point is you don't have to lookto history or to Hollywood to
find proof that people can dohard things.
Look at your people.
They're doing it right now.
Getting to do hard things meansyou are alive, you have
capacity, and you have somethingworth building.
Hard work is not punishment,it's proof that you are creating
something real.
And again, it's a blessing.
It's a beautiful blessing thatwe have to be able to work hard.
(36:40):
And when I say this is hardwork, which is something I say
often, I don't say it withresentment.
I say it with pride becausenothing worth having, no strong
foundation, no transformed life,no healed soul was built
overnight.
You have to see the beauty inthe hard work, the blessing of
being able to work hard, whichis a capacity that we hold not
just within our physical bodies,but even within our souls as
(37:03):
well.
And you are already the proof ifyou think about it.
You have already done hardthings, things you didn't know
you could do until you were inthe middle of them and had to.
The fact that you are here,still breathing, still trying,
still showing up is evidencethat you were built for this.
You come from people whosurvived things that should have
ended them.
You carry that in your body, inyour history, and in your blood.
(37:26):
You can either keep tellingyourself that life is too hard,
or you can prove to yourselfthat you are harder to break.
And our blueprint moment goesback to my experience with the
federal government.
Because when they buildbuildings, when the federal
government does uh our builds ordid our builds, for some of the
most critical agencies, FBI,Social Security, they don't
(37:47):
design for the best casescenario, they design for the
worst.
The question isn't whether thebuilding will be comfortable,
it's what still stands whensomething goes wrong.
Blast resistant windows,reinforced rooms, bollards to
protect the building from um andthe people within the building
from external damage.
Every element is engineeredassuming that at some point this
(38:09):
building will face something itwasn't supposed to have to
survive and it needs to holdanyway.
Fire alarms, emergency exits, uhsprinklers, all of it is
designed with those things inmind.
That's what hard work builds inyou.
Not comfort, not ease, butload-bearing capacity.
The people who have done hardthings consistently aren't just
(38:29):
more disciplined, they'restructurally different.
Or as people say, you know, I'mbuilt different, right?
When something hits them, moreof them stays standing.
The walls don't come downbecause they were built for
exactly this.
You looked around at thebeginning of this, or maybe you
thought about it, and I askedyou to see what humans built.
The street light, the road, thebuilding, the phone in your
(38:51):
hand.
Every single one of thosestarted as a decision, a
decision that the hard thing wasworth doing, or at least worth
trying, without exactly knowingwhat was on the other side.
Not everyone thought this isgonna, you know, rock in my
career, or this is gonna be thething that gets me there.
They just tried, even withoutknowing what it was going to
(39:11):
look like.
And now I'm asking you to lookat something else.
Look at your life, look at whatyou're carrying, what you're
building, and what you're stillstanding in the middle of.
That didn't build itself.
You did that, and everything youhaven't built yet is waiting on
the same thing all of thosethings waited on.
A human with the galls, with theaudacity, with the strength,
with the courage to say the hardthing is worth doing.
(39:37):
I hope y'all enjoyed thisepisode.
Until next time, let's keepdoing the work to renovate the
soul.
The street light above you, the road underneath
you, the building you're sittingin, the phone in your hand, the
computer you're watching on.
Every single one of those thingsbegan as an idea in a human
mind.
And then someone had to do thehard work of making it real.
Before electricity, humans usedfire.
(00:20):
Before roads, humans carvedpaths through wilderness.
Before space shuttles, humanslooked out the sky and refused
to believe it was the ceiling.
We sent human beings to themoon, not robots, but people.
People with fear and doubt andheartbeats who had to train
their bodies and minds to dosomething no human had ever done
before.
And this isn't an Americanstory.
(00:42):
This is a human story.
Every civilization on this earthhas survived things that should
have ended them, built thingsthat shouldn't have been
possible, pushed through whateveryone else said was the
limit.
And if another human being didit, built it, survived it,
thought of it, created it, thenthe capacity for it lives in you
(01:03):
too.
That's not motivation, that'sbiology.
Welcome to Renovating the Soul.
I'm your host, AlexandriaRobinson, and this is a podcast
about the real unglamorous workof becoming.
The work that actually requiressomething from you.
Hard questions, honest answers,and the willingness to look at
(01:25):
the foundation you were handedand decide what you want to
build on it.
That's what we do here.
So wherever you're coming fromtoday, I'm glad you're in it
with me.
Let's get into today'sconversation.
Welcome to another episode ofRenovating the Soul.
I am your host, AlexandriaRobinson, and I am so glad that
(01:47):
you could be with me today.
If you've been here, if you'vemaybe even listened to one
episode of the podcast, youmight have heard me say
something about hard work.
It is one of my mantras, one ofmy tropes, one of the things
that I would shout from therooftops.
And while I've hinted at it inmultiple episodes, I haven't had
(02:08):
a dedicated episode to thatidea.
And that's what this episode istoday.
Pumped for y'all to hear this,pumped to have this conversation
with y'all.
So let's get into it.
We're gonna open up the episodedefining our terms as we like to
do here on Renovating the Soul.
We're doing this so that we canall be on the same page with
what I'm meaning when I use theword hard or what I mean by
(02:31):
other terms that I may usethroughout the episodes.
The definition of hard isrequiring a great deal of
endurance or effort or done witha great deal of force or
strength.
But here's what's happenedsometimes.
Something that I see we've done.
We've confused hard withimpossible.
We've treated difficult as asignal to stop rather than a
(02:52):
signal that something is beingbuilt.
The definition of impossible isfelt to be incapable of being
done, attained, or fulfilled.
And I I love words so muchbecause the word felt is so
specific.
It's felt to be incapable, butthat doesn't mean that it is,
right?
Sometimes when you feel likesomething is happening doesn't
(03:14):
mean that that's true, butthat's what impossible does.
You're incapable or something'sincapable of being done,
attained, or fulfilled.
And more importantly, there is adistinction or a difference
between hard and uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable is causingdiscomfort or annoyance.
When you see that person in theroom that you haven't talked to
in a long time, right?
Or you're uncomfortable ifsomething is upsetting your
(03:36):
stomach and makes you feeluneasy and it makes you wiggle
sometime or squirm or it makesyour heart beat a little faster.
But there's a difference betweenhard that we just talked about,
which is working, enduring.
And if you just think about it,right, a rock is hard.
You're if you're doing this tothe rock, it's not gonna smash,
right?
Now something may eventually beable to smash it, but it's not
(03:57):
gonna smash without some type offorce, some type of endurance
being done.
And that's different than justbeing uncomfortable or being
annoyed or being uneasy.
So sometimes, and everything isnot everyone, right?
So hear me gently with what I'mabout to say is that there is a
difference between hard versusuncomfortable.
(04:22):
But that doesn't mean that thethings I'm about to list are not
hard for someone.
But I'm just gonna give someexamples of what it would look
like to distinguish distinguishhard from other things.
So waking up early is not hard,it's inconvenient.
Having that conversation is nothard, it's uncomfortable.
Finishing what you started whenyou don't feel like it is not
(04:44):
hard, it requires discipline.
Again, hard means requiringendurance and effort.
It's not just resistance tosomething you'd rather avoid.
And hard work doesn't have to bedramatic to count, right?
It's the book you decided toread, the class you took to go
further, the decision to move toa new city, not knowing what it
(05:04):
would unlock.
Simple decisions that don't feelsignificant in the moment are
still decisions to move forwardrather than stay still and they
accumulate.
That's how our lives get built.
Our bodies were literallydesigned for this.
So let's I just love this somuch.
And we talked about in episode13, the Broken Souls, Broken
(05:27):
Bodies episode.
And that episode it showed usthat our bodies respond to what
we carry emotionally andspiritually.
But here's the other side ofthat truth is that those same
bodies were built forextraordinary endurance.
Your body adapts under pressure,muscles tear and they rebuild
stronger.
Bones that fracture and heal,they come back denser.
(05:48):
Your immune system developsmemory, lungs expand with
training, the brain rewiresitself through repeated effort.
This is neuroplasticity.
Your nervous system was designedto handle acute stress.
And this is something that wetalked about in functional
health, in the functional healthepisode, um, is how our body
responds to certain things.
(06:09):
So our bodies can handle acutestress to flood our bodies with
resources when we need them mostand to pull back when the threat
has when the threat has passed.
But the problem is chronicstress, not challenge.
There are so many natural thingsthat are operating within our
body that we need.
Our emotions are signals, stressis a signal, anxiety, everything
(06:29):
that is happening with our bodycan give us the signs and the
endurance that we need if we'repaying attention.
So during pregnancy, the humanbody creates an entirely new
organ from scratch, which iscalled the placenta,
specifically to sustain anotherhuman life.
It does not exist beforeconception, and the body builds
it in weeks.
(06:49):
The cervix, which is normallyless than half an inch open,
dilates to 10 full centimetersduring labor.
The pelvis shifts and expands.
Hormones flood the body to allowligaments to loosen so bones can
move.
For my women and my friends thathave had a C-section, this is a
(07:10):
major abdominal surgery.
Surgeons cut through sevenlayers of tissue.
Women recover from this whilealso caring for the newborn.
And then here's what happensafter our bodies, women's
bodies, they produce customizednutrition.
It shifts hormone levels dailyand is biologically wired to
(07:31):
function on disrupted sleep formonths, even though we're
exhausted and we don't want tohear that.
But our bodies were made forthis.
Now, here's something that Iwant us to sit with.
Most animals are born ready towalk, run, or swim within
minutes or even hours.
A horse stands within the hour,a wildebeest runs with the herd
(07:51):
on day one, right?
But human babies are bornentirely dependent, unable to
feed themselves, regulate theirtemperature, or even hold their
own heads up.
Why?
Because the human brain is solarge and complex that it cannot
fully develop inside the womb.
We are born early by nature'sdesign, or say early by nature's
design, so that the mostsophisticated brain on the
(08:14):
planet can keep growing outsidethe body in relationship with
other humans.
All of this, every bit of it,happens inside an ordinary human
body, not a superhero, not aspecial case, but a regular
person.
And in this episode, I'm gonnabe highlighting different people
that I'm inspired by, storiesthat I've heard, but I want to
(08:38):
highlight these people so thatyou and I can see cases of this
beauty of hard work anddefeating the odds and
endurance.
So our first is gonna be WilmaRudolph.
Wilma was born prematurely anddiagnosed with polio as a child.
Doctors said she would neverwalk normally.
She wore a metal brace on herleft leg until age 12.
(09:01):
And her mother would take her,they said that they would ride
the train and they would takeher to Maharry in uh Tennessee
to get her uh physicallychecked.
They would give her massages athome, and through years of
relentless physical work, shenot only walked without the
brace, but became the firstAmerican woman to win three gold
medals in a single Olympics in1960.
(09:24):
Wilma is just one case, buthumans have always done amazing
things.
I mentioned some of these in theopening, but before the light
switch, there was fire.
Someone had to figure out how tocreate controlled flame, how to
contain it, and how to use itfor warmth, light, and cooking.
Can you imagine the observation,the failure, the iteration that
(09:44):
was required to do that?
It was hard work.
Before the road, there waswilderness.
Before the bridge, there was ariver that couldn't be crossed.
Before the building, there wasopen ground.
All of it required human hands,human minds, human endurance.
I stop and I look at thestoplight.
In Portland, they call it BridgeCity.
And the bridges are so amazinglydesigned.
(10:07):
Like when you drive over them,you got you can't just help but
stop and look up and wonder theingenuity that went into it, the
design, the intentionality,making sure that it was safe,
you know, which I'm sure is liketop of the list.
But then to just you see thesuspensions, you you see the
material, like this is all doneby humans.
(10:27):
Then if you think, you know,globally, right?
Because it's not just aboutbeing here in Portland or
America, like I said, this is ahuman history.
This is civilization aftercivilization.
The pyramids of Egypt, the GreatWall of China, the aqueducts of
Rome, the underground railwaysof London, every single one of
these was built by human beingsdoing things that they had never
(10:49):
done before.
And the moon.
I mean, how amazing is that thatin 1969 humans left this planet
and landed on another celestialbody.
They trained their bodies towithstand conditions they had
never experienced.
They built technology that hadnever existed.
They did it because someonedecided this hard thing, this
(11:09):
amazing thing, it's worth doing.
And again, this isn't aboutbeing American or being
exceptional.
It's about being human.
Every culture on this earth hasa history of endurance,
creativity, and survival thatshould make you stand up
straighter and make you holdyour head higher and be proud
that you are a human.
(11:30):
And if you ever feel likesomething is too hard for you
specifically, I want you to lookup.
Seriously, I do it all the time.
Look at the streetlight, look atthe road, look at the building
you work in, look at the houseyou live in, look at the street
your children play in, look atthe airplane.
Oh my gosh.
And remember that a human being,someone just like you, with
(11:53):
doubts, with fears, with ideas,with dreams, with a heartbeat
just like yours, they made that.
And I think that sometimes ourresistance to hard work or to
working hard or however you wantto say it comes from two lies
that we've either been sold ortold, or somehow we convinced
ourselves of.
And the first one is aboutdirection that if something is
(12:16):
meant for you, it will feelnatural.
That your purpose is a specificdestination assigned to you
before you were born, and yourjob is to find it.
So what happens is you wait, youchase alignment, you look for
signs or messages, or you're aquote girly like me.
And meanwhile, nothing getsbuilt.
But purpose isn't found beforethe work, it's revealed through
(12:39):
it.
Ooh, that's a hard lesson that Ihad to learn.
And I wish someone had told methat years ago, that you start
where you're planted, you move,you expose yourself to new
ideas, new places, and newthings that you didn't know you
could do, even if you haven'tfigured out that you could do it
yet.
You just try and things follow.
The feeling of passion almostalways comes after the hard
(13:03):
work, not before it.
I spent so many years chasingpurpose, purposely royal as a
brand that I had, still a blogthat I have up.
I spent so many years with thisidea saying, I gotta find my
purpose, I gotta find mypurpose, I gotta find my
purpose.
That what it actually started todo was keep me from doing
things.
It kept me from trying, it keptme journaling and more so
(13:24):
sitting around waiting for it tobe revealed than I did just
going to do something, justfiguring it out, or even just
choosing, or even just choosingwhat I wanted it to, what and
what I wanted to do.
The second uh lie that we'vebeen told is about capacity,
that the people who have builtremarkable things were just
gifted.
(13:44):
They were just born with it.
And if you weren't born with it,then the ceiling is lower for
you.
But most of the people we callgeniuses weren't born
exceptional.
They simply worked harder,longer, and more consistently
than other people around them.
Their drive was different, maybebecause their beliefs was
different, but they weren'tnecessarily born any different
(14:06):
than you or I.
Heartbeat, lungs, even peoplewho were born without limbs or
born with deficiencies, theystill find a way to not let
anything hold them back.
So it's not about being bornequally, whether it's your
physical body or whether it'syour upbringing.
It's just about what are youwilling to do with what you
have.
(14:27):
Einstein reportedly said that hewasn't more intelligent than
others.
He simply stayed with problemslonger.
We like to call peoplenatural-born geniuses and
geniuses and all of thesethings, but then we don't
realize that that puts a limitand almost becomes an excuse for
us not to go after somethingbecause I wasn't born with it.
(14:48):
But I've already listed thatyou're a human.
So if you're here, you can doamazing things too.
So the real question isn'twhether you're called or whether
you're gifted, it's whetheryou're willing to move before
you feel ready and to work whennobody's watching without
recognition.
One of my favorite stories thatI just would say she inspires me
(15:09):
the most is Sarah Blakely.
Love that girl so much.
She went from selling faxmachines door to door in the
Florida heat uh to cutting upher the feet off of her
pantyholes one day, and thenrealizing that nobody had solved
the problem that she was facing.
She's like, nobody's doing this.
Like I want the pantyholes, butI don't need them to go all the
(15:32):
way down.
And she realized as as a lot ofinventions happened, go looking
for it.
She didn't find it, so shesolved it herself.
With$5,000 in her savings, nofashion experience and no
connections.
She wrote her own patent.
She drove to Meals to findsomeone willing to make a
prototype and she walked intostores alone.
After the product was made, shewalked into stores alone.
(15:55):
She started quietly.
I love when she tells thisstory, where she would go in the
store and she would move herproducts closer to the register.
You know, secretly she's doingthis.
She's moving her products closerto the register so that um
people would be aware becausethey were putting her product
behind other popular brands.
And so she's saying, no one'sgoing to be able to see it if
you guys don't put it where, youknow, someone can see it.
(16:18):
And because she was a new brand,she's like, I gotta get out
there.
But that drive and determinationand the belief that she had and
what she did and the hard workthat she put into doing it
caused her to go into thosestores and start moving stuff
around.
And then when she was in thestores, she would talk to women
about the product without everrevealing it was hers.
And that was just a strategy sheused, but I love when she tells
(16:39):
that story.
And now Spanks has become thisbillion-dollar company without
spending a single dollar onadvertising.
Now that may have changed, butyou know, at one point that was
the case.
I love stories like Sarah's andWilma's and other stories.
I love hearing people's storiesbecause it's such a good
reminder, not just of whatsomeone else was able to do, but
(17:00):
what we're able to do if we usewhat we have and if we just
start where we are.
I've already kind of touched on,you know, two of the lies that
we can get caught up in, but I Iwant us to also look at some of
the defenses that we use becausethere are excuses that sound
reasonable, but keep us in thesame stagnant place.
(17:21):
One of them is alignment.
This doesn't align with meanymore.
Alignment specifically hasbecome one of the cleanest ways
to quit mid-hard, right?
You just it starts to get hard,doesn't align with me anymore.
You ever heard someone quit ajob and say, Why'd you quit?
Oh, it wasn't aligning with meanymore.
Why'd you break up and it wasn'taligning me with anymore?
Like, okay, okay, right?
(17:43):
But it gives us this excuse toquit mid-hard without
accountability.
Quitting because something gothard and calling it misalignment
is worth looking at, honestly.
The second one is the waiting onGod defense.
My Lord Jesus, I could do awhole episode on this.
Maybe one day I will.
(18:08):
I have to pray about it.
I have to see.
And I say this because I don'tmind discernment, I don't mind
prayer, I don't mind your faith,but there's a difference between
I'm waiting on God, I haven'theard from me yet, and I that
means I shouldn't say there's adifference, I should say using
(18:32):
God in this way, or waiting onGod, or prayer, or whatever it
is as an excuse, it blocks youfrom moving.
I hear I hear this all the time.
I'm slowing down on this onebecause I want to be sensitive,
but I hear this all the time,and and I've heard it all my
life, and I was it.
(18:52):
You know, someone brings anopportunity my way.
Sometimes I know I don't want todo that.
But I gotta wait for God.
Gotta hear from God.
And I don't know what I'msupposed to be hearing.
I don't know what it was.
Was he supposed to open theclouds and say, Yes, my child,
do it.
I don't think that's what he putus here for.
(19:13):
I think we're here to figure itout on our own because that's
how we learn and grow.
If I'm waiting for God to passout decisions like candy, then I
don't need to take anyresponsibility for it because
then what happens is let's sayyou do something, right?
And it doesn't work out.
I think the best example I cangive y'all is get in a in a
relationship with somebody andthen it doesn't work out.
(19:34):
And what's the one thing thatyou'll hear someone say, Oh, I
didn't wait on the Lord, or, youknow, oh, I didn't pray on it,
and so I jumped in.
No, you made a bad decision,made a bad judgment call.
No, you rushed it, right?
Like there are other reasonsbesides it, but when you use God
as your defense and both saying,I have to wait on him, you can
also flip it and use him or orit, whatever religion it is, as
(19:58):
the excuse for why you did do itwhen really you need to be held
accountable for your own actionsbecause that's the only way
you're gonna learn and grow.
If God is there, God is God.
Okay, He's He's done the thing,He, He, He's up there, but you
have your own life.
You have to learn, you have togrow.
It's not His lesson to learn,it's your lesson to learn.
(20:18):
So waiting and working are notopposites.
I I would I would I would haveyou sit with this if you feel
like this is you, and I wouldask you, why can't God meet you
in the motion?
Why do you have to wait?
The next one I see a lot withthe new generation, and it's
(20:38):
that wealth equals corruption.
The belief that anyone with morethan you got it through greed or
evil is a very convenient story,but it's also a ceiling.
It makes ambition morallysuspect and hard work pointless.
Some people have more becausethey worked harder and longer or
they're started earlier.
(21:00):
And this is not to deny thatpeople are handed, uh not
handed, but like, yeah, I wouldsay handed, a different
blueprint.
This is not to say that somepeople are born with better
structure and families andthings in place.
It's not to say that.
But I literally saw a post ofsomeone, it was a motivational
post, and it was a beautifulhouse, gorgeous house.
You don't know who owns thishouse.
(21:20):
Nobody knows who owns thishouse.
It's not a famous person'shouse.
It's just a nice big house.
And this, the, the uh, I don'tremember the exact quote, but
essentially what she was tryingto say was, you know, you can
either play small or you cankeep working hard and this be
kind of what you have one day.
And I loved it because I'm like,yeah, that's a gorgeous house.
Even if it's not about themansion and the cars and the
(21:42):
money, you want to be set.
I don't want my kids to have tostruggle.
That's just the reality that Ihave.
I don't want them to have tostruggle.
I want to be able to provide forthem when they're adults.
I want to be able to pay theirweddings.
I want to be debt free myselffrom these student loans that
the government no longer isgonna pay for.
Okay.
So I want to be in a good placeand in a good position.
When I looked at the comments,All of the comments, and I kid
y'all not that at least the onesat the top were like, yeah, but
(22:05):
that person did some shady stufffor that.
Yeah, but they lied.
Yeah, but they cheated.
And I just thought, man, youguys don't realize that when
that is your mentality, not onlyare you discrediting the hard
work of other people, that isvery real, because again, you
don't know these people.
You don't know their lives, youdon't know what they've done,
(22:25):
but then you also, again, giveyourself an excuse for why you
can't go after things because,oh, I'm not corrupt, I'm not
evil, so I can never have that.
Who says that that's theprerequisite for wealth?
I hope that makes sense.
It's a very limiting mindset,right?
You don't have to defend everywealthy person, and that's not
what this is about.
But you have to stop lettingthat assumption become your
(22:48):
excuse because again, it's aceiling.
I would say also on that, thatthis is that's a great point for
you to check your jealousy,check your projection, because
most times we want to be likethat person or we want what they
have, but we don't feel like itcan ever happen.
And sometimes, yeah, you're notgonna be them, but that doesn't
mean you can't do good with whatyou have.
(23:10):
That doesn't mean that you can'tgrow and flourish and have your
own portion.
Hope that's landing right.
The next one is the comforttrap.
Y'all, okay.
We're 2026, right?
We have remote work, which isunheard of if you're a 90s or
before if you grew up like wedid, it's a nine to five, you're
in the building.
But now we have remote work, wehave you can get your food
(23:34):
delivered.
I just think about that and I'mjust like, oh my gosh, I get my
groceries delivered.
When you really think aboutthat, that is just a crazy idea
from the way that we grew up.
You used to have to go toHollywood video and Blockbuster
to rent a movie, to put in yourVHS.
(23:54):
And then you had to drive anddrop it back off.
I mean, it's so crazy how thetimes have changed, right?
But we have delivery food, youknow, services, grocery
services, move movies,streaming.
Who would have thought thatstreaming would be a thing, you
know, and you know, not cabletelevision.
I mean, I remember the days whenit was cable versus satellite
(24:16):
dish, when the dish was all therave.
It's just crazy how much thingshave changed.
But my point in saying this isthat we have so many tools, like
every tool imaginable, right?
We haven't even gotten to AI androbots and all the things that's
happening, the cars that drivethemselves.
I mean, my goodness, right?
But we are still blaming othersfor our lack.
People have built civilizations,they've raised families, and
(24:39):
they've written masterworks withalmost nothing.
The abundance that we have issupposed to be feel, but for
many of us, it's become acushion.
The much that we have, theabundance that we have, all of
these things that we have, Ifeel like they're holding us
back, some of us back, more thanit's actually propelling us.
(25:03):
I've been seeing thisconversation come up a lot even
with our social lives, thatbecause we have social media,
many of us are not interacting.
We don't know how to eveninteract.
I I would say probably not themillennials.
I'm gonna stick up for y'all,okay?
Y'all don't be mad at me.
But I've heard this about thenew generation.
I've heard from my youngercousins when they go out, they
(25:24):
don't even dance at the clubsanymore.
I'm like, well, what do y'alldo?
I guess they just stand there.
I don't know what they do, butwe used to just dance.
There was no pictures, it was noInstagram, it was no TikTok, it
was no nothing.
And so that's what I mean by,you know, having all of the
abundance that we have isamazing.
I think it's great.
I think we should be movingforward with it, but at the same
time, it shouldn't be a crutchor a cushion to keep us from
(25:46):
moving forward and stillbuilding something on our own
because it can be done.
Our next spotlight is gonna beMelody Hobson.
Melody, ooh, I love her, okay?
Because she is she carriesherself with a grace that is
just unmatched.
When you watch her talk, whenyou watch the way she moves,
(26:09):
she's just so elegant, so fluentin the way that she speaks, and
just so confident with who sheis.
It is she is just such abeautiful woman, like when you
when you watch her, and you canuh you know put her name into
YouTube and and see some of herinterviews that she's done
recently.
But Melody, she grew up inChicago with a single mother.
She uh described gettingeviction notices and utility
(26:32):
shutoffs.
And she has said openly on theinterviews that I've seen of her
that her drive in finance,that's the field that she works
in, came directly from her fearof poverty.
She took the thing that scaredher most and walked straight
into it as her life's work.
She got to Princeton on PellGrants, loans, and financial
aid, and then she interned at aninvestment firm and then she
(26:54):
never left.
She uh recently, I would say,uh, can't I don't know how many
years it's been, so I'll justleave it at recently.
She became the co-CEO of AerialInvestments and the first black
woman to chair an S P 500company.
And this wasn't because theindustry made room for her,
because she'll tell thosestories when you listen to her.
(27:14):
It's not that she didn't have towork through, you know, being a
woman in a in a financial fieldand in a male-dominated field,
not at all.
But it's because she outworkedthe room.
Her drive, her integrity, herwillingness to keep going.
Yeah.
The fire that she has, she'lltell her tell you herself was
lit by that scarcity.
(27:35):
And I love her honesty and beinghonest and saying that the way I
grew up is what fuels me.
It's what keeps her going.
Even now, after all the successshe has, it's why she keeps
going.
And if you want to add this inthere, she's married to George
Lucas.
But she's amazing in and ofherself that you don't even have
to mention George Lucas to toyou know add that on her.
(27:58):
No, she has her own resume, butMelody is absolutely amazing, so
you should definitely look herup.
But like Melody and many others,you will get a no.
You will fail.
You will let yourself or someoneelse down.
And that's not a sign that youwere wrong to try.
That's just what happens whenyou're moving, when you're
living.
I already told y'all that I gotrejected over and over by those
(28:21):
law schools, and I was almostusing it as an excuse of like,
well, this is why I don't try,and this is why I don't take
risks.
But that's not the mindset Ishould have.
It's okay to admit out loudbecause it's very real for me.
But on the other side of comingout of that, I realized, no, I
needed this.
I needed to see myself to beable to do the hard things.
I need to allow myself the roomto say it's okay to fail.
(28:44):
It's okay to get the nose.
It's okay to be rejected.
It really is.
And that as long as I keep doingsomething, even if it's just
learning the lesson from it, notnecessarily applying again,
right?
But whatever it is, it's justthe goal is that I don't stay
stagnant, that I don't stay inthe same place, right?
The goal isn't a life withoutfailure.
The goal is a life where failuredoesn't stop you.
(29:06):
It doesn't stop me, where the nois just information, where the
setback is just a Tuesday.
What stops most people isn't thehard work itself, it's the shame
spiral that follows the setback.
You fail and then spend sixmonths in self-punishment
instead of six months working.
The failure was one moment, butthe punishment becomes a season.
(29:31):
And two days before I recordedthis, I said to myself, and I
wrote it in my notes after Isaid it, but I said to myself,
if you punish yourself for whereyou are, you won't grow.
And I said that because I hadall these doubts and fears about
doing this very podcast.
And I was like, I can't do it.
I was just letting all thisstuff creep in.
I'm not getting a lot oftraction on social media, like
(29:53):
very real things where I'm justlike, oh my gosh.
And I'm like, Well, I'm I'mlooking at this podcast and I'm
looking at that for inspiration.
But then I'm ended up comparingmyself.
And I had to stop myself andsay, if you do not give yourself
grace for where you are, if youdon't accept that it's not
always gonna come out perfect onthe podcast, you're not always
gonna love what you said, you'renot always gonna sound as
(30:13):
polished as you wanted to.
If you do not let yourself bethat, be where you are, you will
not grow.
I will keep myself in a bubbleand in a box.
And I want you all to hear me.
This is not an attack on rest.
Rest is very real, it'snecessary and it's biological,
but there is a version of restculture that has become a way to
avoid the hard work that wouldbuild you.
(30:36):
And we need to be honest aboutthat.
If you're always exhausted,always burned out, always
needing to break before you'veeven started, then it's worth
asking whether you're genuinelydepleted or whether you're
avoiding somethinguncomfortable.
Because there is a differencebetween the rest that restores
you and the rest that you use tostay comfortable.
(30:56):
One builds you back up and theother keeps you exactly where
you are.
I also want to say that it's nothard forever.
That rest can be the goal, thatease can be the goal.
That's the beautiful thing aboutwhen you're working hard, when
you're working hard, when you'reworking hard, when you're
working hard, it's somethingthat it's not hard all the time.
(31:17):
It's just like when you startworking out.
You start exercising.
If you've never exercisedbefore, it's going to hurt.
You're gonna strain, you're youknow, you're you're gonna be
mad, you're gonna be cut cursingthe skies.
Why am I doing this?
Why does this matter?
But over time, your body beginsto adapt.
You begin to adapt, yourmentality begins to shift, and
it becomes easier to go to thegym.
It becomes easier to lift thoseweights.
(31:39):
And then you push yourself andyou keep doing something hard.
But the beautiful thing that youhave to realize is that it does
not stay hard forever.
And I want to speak directly towhoever has been looking at what
they want to do and tellingthemselves they're not the type
of person who can do hardthings.
Maybe someone told you thatgrowing up.
Maybe you've just watchedyourself quit enough times that
(31:59):
you started to believe it.
But I want you to hear this thecapacity is in you.
Not because of positivethinking, but because of
biology, because of history,because of every human being who
has ever lived and endured andbuilt something from nothing.
You come from that lineage.
It's literally in who we are aspeople.
(32:19):
And I've talked a lot aboutthese famous examples in those
stories.
They do matter, and I love thehighlights that I've given you,
and I hope you look those peopleup.
But I also want to talk aboutthe people in my actual life
because sometimes the mostpowerful proof isn't someone
you've never met.
It's the person you grew up withor the person sitting across
from you at the table or theperson you watch struggle and
(32:40):
keep going anyway.
The first is my grandma.
My grandma's almost 92 yearsold, and she gave birth to 13,
13, no twins, children.
I don't, I still, yeah, don'tknow how she did it.
All are alive except for myoldest, my uh for the oldest, my
uncle Nate, and she raised themand she helped to raise us
grandchildren.
There's 40 plus of us firstgrandchildren, and she's seen us
(33:03):
all through her home at onepoint and watched several of us
at the same time and several ofthem.
Um, she was, I believe, like theyoungest secretary of her church
organization.
Before she got married and hadkids, she was obese.
Like the way that she couldorganize, the way that she she
supported, the way that she'sbuilt her administrative
details, just how concise sheis.
(33:24):
And she's lived through historythat most people only read
about.
And she remembers it withclarity.
Oh my gosh, that girl.
We call her she's a walkinghistory book.
That's exactly what we say.
And it really humbles all of us.
She didn't do hard things once,she did them every single day
for nine decades.
Next for me would be mymother-in-law, Sherry.
(33:45):
I am in awe of her resilience.
I met her in 2005 and I watchedwhat she carried and what she
pushed through.
I've learned her story over theyears from, you know, just being
together.
We just all went on vacationtogether to San Diego and got to
hear more of her story.
And it really could be a book ora movie, but I won't tell it for
her.
She's gonna have to tell you to,you know, one day.
(34:07):
But she took her experiences andher pain and everything that she
had gone through, and shestarted working for a shelter to
help women and children.
And not only did she startworking at that shelter, but she
worked her way up to management.
And it was not just about, youknow, hard work, but the hard
work transformed her.
She's become somebody who Ideeply admire, and I just can't
(34:28):
wait for the world to hear howmuch she's really been through.
Next is my friend Shawnee.
Shawnee is the founder of the InBloom conference, and she has
been building it year by yearwith intention and heart.
I believe five years she's beendoing this conference.
The challenges come and shekeeps going anyway.
And that's what it looks like tobuild something from vision when
nobody can see it yet but you.
(34:50):
She is so intentional, she's socreative, but her heart is just
so for the people, and she knowswhat she wants.
And I love that about Shani.
She knows what she wants, andshe's gonna get what she wants.
And then last would be my littlebrother Jonathan.
One of my little brothers,Jonathan, the one right under
me, we're two years apart.
My it's different being theolder sibling, and I don't know
(35:13):
what it's like to be the youngersibling, obviously, but I do
know watching my kids thatyounger siblings have so much.
Um there's like sometimes adifferent expectation that the
younger siblings can't be theolder sibling, or everyone's
shining on the older sibling,and then the younger siblings
get overlooked.
And I can only imagine whatthat's felt like, you know, me
(35:34):
being the only girl and theoldest, and then him being right
behind me.
But he went to massage therapyschool, and it was random to us
all, and there, you know, a lotof there were lots of doubts
from others, but he did it andhe was really good at it.
And now he works at achiropractic office, but he
moved to California and he isworking hard to build something
(35:54):
while also doing the internalwork.
And that's what I'm most proudof him for.
He's pushing throughgenerational patterns, he's
facing the thoughts that comeup, and he's learning to choose
differently.
That combination of externalbuilding and internal rebuilding
at the time at the same time isone of the hardest things a
person can do, and he's doingit.
And I can go on and on and onand on with examples, but the
(36:16):
point is you don't have to lookto history or to Hollywood to
find proof that people can dohard things.
Look at your people.
They're doing it right now.
Getting to do hard things meansyou are alive, you have
capacity, and you have somethingworth building.
Hard work is not punishment,it's proof that you are creating
something real.
And again, it's a blessing.
It's a beautiful blessing thatwe have to be able to work hard.
(36:40):
And when I say this is hardwork, which is something I say
often, I don't say it withresentment.
I say it with pride becausenothing worth having, no strong
foundation, no transformed life,no healed soul was built
overnight.
You have to see the beauty inthe hard work, the blessing of
being able to work hard, whichis a capacity that we hold not
just within our physical bodies,but even within our souls as
(37:03):
well.
And you are already the proof ifyou think about it.
You have already done hardthings, things you didn't know
you could do until you were inthe middle of them and had to.
The fact that you are here,still breathing, still trying,
still showing up is evidencethat you were built for this.
You come from people whosurvived things that should have
ended them.
You carry that in your body, inyour history, and in your blood.
(37:26):
You can either keep tellingyourself that life is too hard,
or you can prove to yourselfthat you are harder to break.
And our blueprint moment goesback to my experience with the
federal government.
Because when they buildbuildings, when the federal
government does uh our builds ordid our builds, for some of the
most critical agencies, FBI,Social Security, they don't
(37:47):
design for the best casescenario, they design for the
worst.
The question isn't whether thebuilding will be comfortable,
it's what still stands whensomething goes wrong.
Blast resistant windows,reinforced rooms, bollards to
protect the building from um andthe people within the building
from external damage.
Every element is engineeredassuming that at some point this
(38:09):
building will face something itwasn't supposed to have to
survive and it needs to holdanyway.
Fire alarms, emergency exits, uhsprinklers, all of it is
designed with those things inmind.
That's what hard work builds inyou.
Not comfort, not ease, butload-bearing capacity.
The people who have done hardthings consistently aren't just
(38:29):
more disciplined, they'restructurally different.
Or as people say, you know, I'mbuilt different, right?
When something hits them, moreof them stays standing.
The walls don't come downbecause they were built for
exactly this.
You looked around at thebeginning of this, or maybe you
thought about it, and I askedyou to see what humans built.
The street light, the road, thebuilding, the phone in your
(38:51):
hand.
Every single one of thosestarted as a decision, a
decision that the hard thing wasworth doing, or at least worth
trying, without exactly knowingwhat was on the other side.
Not everyone thought this isgonna, you know, rock in my
career, or this is gonna be thething that gets me there.
They just tried, even withoutknowing what it was going to
(39:11):
look like.
And now I'm asking you to lookat something else.
Look at your life, look at whatyou're carrying, what you're
building, and what you're stillstanding in the middle of.
That didn't build itself.
You did that, and everything youhaven't built yet is waiting on
the same thing all of thosethings waited on.
A human with the galls, with theaudacity, with the strength,
with the courage to say the hardthing is worth doing.
(39:37):
I hope y'all enjoyed thisepisode.
Until next time, let's keepdoing the work to renovate the
soul.
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