Ep. 125 - Caleb Nelson - L.E.B - Love Every Body

[00:00:00] Welcome to Mental Toughness with Dr. Rob Bell.

[00:00:13] Each week, Dr. Rob sits down with athletes, executives, and expert coaches to talk about

[00:00:18] mental toughness and their hinge moment.

[00:00:21] Here's your host, perform, recover. So our guest today on the mental toughness podcast is a performance coach. She's hosted the naked Sunday podcast, big fan of that podcast. I love

[00:01:42] listening to it. A lot of insight. He works with heart centered leaders to help them with their Tyson of the day. And it's simplest form is like it just brings me joy. My dog just no matter what kind of mood I'm in, what's a smile on my face. And something I do with my clients. I call up the nexus of happiness is basically these three things.

[00:03:00] If I do these, these three things every day for me,

[00:03:03] I'm happy. It's like, how do I take this moment and then hold myself accountable and show others? Like, let me bring you into my life and allow you to share that moment with me. Yeah, I love it, man. Yeah, You know, it was interesting because we've heard this thing about dogs like, wherever that number seven to one, right, seven dog years to every human year. And then I heard this, I thought was really interesting. It was like, well, okay, well, that's seven to one ratio. I mean, that must hold true then throughout, you know, their entire life.

[00:05:42] So the reason why they're so happy every morning is essentially they haven't seen you in a week.

[00:06:42] There's a loved one standing in front of me, even if it's maybe not the pinnacle of our honeymoon phase

[00:06:47] or whatever it is, it's like, oh, like,

[00:06:49] you're choosing to share space with me.

[00:06:52] And I think dogs stand as a pretty powerful mirror for us

[00:06:57] if we allow them to be.

[00:06:58] Yeah.

[00:07:03] Your hinge moment, I wanna start with that,

[00:07:06] because then I think A lot of people get stuck in these narrow lanes and buy into whatever other dogmas that I've never seen to question that. So coming back to my hinge moment, I was 17 and I was with all the great stories. There was a girl and...

[00:08:22] So how long were you in this cult though?

[00:08:24] Until I was 17. So in my life, you know, good athlete, good at like good in school, all that stuff. Like I could stay on my path, but for sure that was a restrictive piece of me of like, as I've looked back in my life, what essentially came around to like, was that I was giving up this control or this power

[00:11:02] and to experience what I think is ultimately the had my mom on the podcast, like early on, when we talked about this moment, I pulled my parents aside. Nothing had to happen yet. And I was like, you know, I wanted to be respectful. Like, Hey, I get it. I got three younger siblings. I'm not going to just, you know, disrespect your entire faith practice and all that. I just don't happen to agree with it.

[00:11:03] And I'd, I'd been confronting a lot of that stuff for a long time.

[00:12:05] And I think this is where a lot of people can start to play other stuff that comes along with this.

[00:12:06] But what I always think about now for myself is that to me was my first entrepreneurial

[00:12:12] moment of like, I'm willing to take on whatever consequences come with this.

[00:12:16] This is my life.

[00:12:18] And I need to have a say in this.

[00:12:23] I can't just to take it. They're like, cool, there'll be consequences. And there was. So we went down that path. I was 17. She was 18. I've that young love me, whatever kind of poured my heart into everything. Like I'm like, I feel like I'm giving up my entire life. For this. High school girl. She didn't need to.

[00:13:40] She didn't deserve all that kind of.

[00:13:42] Pressure of what that was.

[00:13:44] Nor did she know, because I couldn't talk about my feelings or.

[00:13:47] Anything. start to kind of push back. Like is there a reeducation program that you have to go through or like? No, my life, it's just been like, I just went off and just did my life. Like I just. Okay. What were some of those consequences then? It was like money that I had, like my parents cut me off from some of that stuff. Like just kind of like more,

[00:15:00] like when I say like my experience with this

[00:15:02] was more first world problems,

[00:15:04] if I'm really real about it,

[00:16:07] of me, though I still didn't even talk about it, probably till I didn't really start talking about the church stuff until

[00:16:09] probably, I don't know, five, seven years ago, something like

[00:16:12] that, maybe a little longer, not as openly, but it just didn't

[00:16:15] come up as often. Namely, because I don't think I knew how to

[00:16:20] have a conversation around it. There was a lot of shame and

[00:16:22] guilt, like the people judge me when people think I'm weird. I'm

[00:16:25] a weird dude, like, don't do actually want to have a meaningful relationship with my family that started to reshape that. Yeah. Um, when I look back, a lot of my stuff was just like, there's no curiosity, there was no questioning, there was no space to

[00:17:41] really share my thoughts and flex my own and I joke now like, hey, I'm starting my own again. But with that, I was pretty lost. I was like all into this fitness thing. I really didn't know what I wanted. And I was just kind of like, cool, you seem like you got it all figured out. And I went on this path. Ty, come here, I got a treat for you. I had all this success, but by external standards and I felt very hollow and empty on the inside. And I think the problem there was when he would ask me like, well, where are we going with this business? I still remember a question, he's like, dude, we're friends, do you really want in on this?

[00:20:21] And there was some kind of messier other stuff

[00:20:25] that went on between the two of us,

[00:20:27] which we've both patched up ever since then. over a tie, like the high joke is the tie that broke the Campbell's back. It was I was supposed to, I didn't want to wear a tie to some barbecue. We wanted to get dressed up or something like that. I was like, I don't want to do that. Um, but with that, the fallout was pretty dark because we had two businesses. One, the one was together. And then the other one was the original gym.

[00:21:42] And it was almost like, yeah, two, you had two gyms.

[00:21:44] He had one that he owned.

[00:21:46] And that's where I started my career at.

[00:22:45] at that point in my life was it was all external. I was too afraid to sit with myself and see who I was as a man.

[00:22:49] So the thing collapsed.

[00:22:52] I went dead broke during that. I still kept working.

[00:22:55] That's some of the messier stuff that happened during that time that is really not even really worth.

[00:23:00] Rehashing, but. It stripped me down to like, you're six pack abs, you're not the person who is on your, is not your, the arm candy you have, you're not this business, or at least like your value is not this shell of a building.

[00:24:22] Your value is who you are, and you need to go discover

[00:24:24] what that is.

[00:24:26] I was coming off of steroids at that time.

[00:24:28] I was just like disheveled. go deep. When you go deep in a relationship, the wide, the impactful, the money, the things that everybody chases. One good friend, typically who's like willing to go through it with you, has all those other resources there. They have the capacity, but if you don't build real

[00:25:40] trust, all you're looking for is their surface level, like relationship, it's not how hard you train. It's how well you recover. Right. When you sleep is when you build the muscle. When you like that's when you digest. That's when you're healing all the pains. And the first time I thought of it from what's called a zoomed out more esoteric concept within

[00:27:00] leadership was Ryan Ryan Holiday's book Stillness is the key. And there's death, whether it's a downturn in the economy, a bad sales cycle, a client leaving you fall out with a business partner like something is coming, tragedy is coming. And the same way if you play people like spend everything they earn every month, like people

[00:28:21] just burn themselves out, they go right to the wire and be like grind your face off man.

[00:29:26] anxious energy while that was really powerful and got somebody to the place that they're had. When you get to a certain place of like, how do I sustain this? How do I keep, how do I live like meaningful life and not destroy my marriage and not destroy my relationship with my kids?

[00:29:38] Hell, not even destroy the relationship with everybody at work.

[00:29:41] Or my health, people sacrifice those other things. to just get there. I'll leave extra time because I don't know what's gonna come up. I like to be and arrive in a spot. Like what if something was going on with you? What if my dog is going crazy? What if somebody's sick? Simple buffers that I don't think a lot of people think about the, it's the transitions.

[00:31:01] Like say you leave the grocery store,

[00:31:03] the transition it's not,

[00:31:05] you don't get in the accident at the grocery store

[00:31:08] or right at home. buy in from another partner and a leader within your organization. That's what I think a lot of people won't think about. So just putting a buffer to say, I'm going to sit still for five minutes. I'm going to bring myself back to zero. We can start again. That that's the time management that I think it doesn't mean you need to carve out three hours every single time you have anything.

[00:32:21] It's right.

[00:32:22] How do I put maybe a five minute.

[00:32:26] And they're 10 minute, but in the the NFL winning and losing, I mean, you win, you feel good for an afternoon, you lose, you feel bad for a week, right? Till the next day. And you know, it was interesting man, because there was one coach at Talk Bet, if you win

[00:33:40] a game in the NFL, that's a good thing.

[00:33:44] Like one game, he said, if you win one game as a coach in NFL, he said, that's a good

[00:33:47] thing. That's why I love with your book, like the patience, the patience is, it's a will, I think it's a willingness to slow down when everything in your being, when especially if you're a high performer, everything that you did to get to where you are says no, like

[00:35:01] go more. then they go back and now they know what the next shift is, right? From 8 30 to like noon, then they're having, um, you know, dinner at that time, not, not supper, but dinner and not lunch, but it's dinner. And then they know what their afternoon rhythm is. So they, like farmers know though that that is a built in rhythm to their work.

[00:36:21] That we miss now because we get hit with the urgent, right?

[00:36:25] We get hit with, well, an email here and a call here and I've got to do this now.

[00:37:24] resources they have at their disposal. You don't know, understand what other buffers they have.

[00:37:28] You don't even know if they're just using automated posting to put stuff up there, yet they're not busy at all. Like, that was, I think it's such a profound example of harvesting,

[00:37:35] and then you just have to start thinking like, for farmers, it's like, how do you keep the farm

[00:37:40] alive for generations? There's a handoff around that around that is like, I don't see anybody as my enemy anymore. In learning how to love everybody in front of me, I have learned how to love myself more. I fundamentally believe we're all each other's mirrors. Like right now you are a mirror of something in my life.

[00:39:00] You're teaching me something right now.

[00:39:04] And in this world, if there's anything I can help people

[00:40:05] Hell's has been bastardized in so many ways. It's a pretty sacred element, and it gives, it is the vehicle by which we do all the great works in our life.

[00:40:14] So to come back to a sense of love and respect and value within our body,

[00:40:19] not just the internal, like the soulful piece, but also the external piece.

[00:40:23] It's valuable. It is, it's a warning light that I really need to look at I don't want to look at just want to keep the foot on the accelerator But if I don't pay attention to it man, you know, it blows up unfortunately

[00:42:44] even better, you know what? In some ways, I might even say that's even more impactful because I think we're drawn to the words we're looking for anyway.

[00:42:47] Yeah.

[00:42:51] So years ago, I was exposed to my first leadership work in my 20s. So that's a big reason I have a lot of

[00:42:57] so grateful for my first mentor, that even the one we had to follow for a while there

[00:43:01] is he got me exposed to a lot of that. And

[00:44:05] And one of my longest clients, he would always say, it's like, if you don't have respect, you've got nothing.

[00:44:07] Something along those lines.

[00:44:08] He has a West Point grad, awesome guy,

[00:44:11] loves family, like it was just amazing to me.

[00:44:14] And I always stuck with fans like,

[00:44:16] oh, no wonder that resonates because I have all those things

[00:44:20] I just said I hate, like to me, there's signs of disrespect.

[00:44:23] Right.

[00:44:24] And then I flipped and I was like,

[00:44:25] oh, so my core, like respect. Because I'm the same exact way, man. Like it would infuriate me. How dare you not hold the door for somebody? Because that's, you just hold the door for people. It's very simple. Just hold your mind. Well, it was started with simple things like that. I'm hyper diligent about showing up on time. Like that is like you've chosen to share

[00:45:41] time with me. I like to be early. For me, it's all like the subtlet nuts. People talk about stuff all day and they don't like, what are you going to do about it? And then the final part is being committed. So in all of those things, it's just, I think about it down to the minutiae of, like I said, holding the door, being five minutes early, saying, please and thank you.

[00:47:02] And higher level stuff, it's a lot of,

[00:47:05] when I'm posed's a fantastic tool. What does it say about me when what draws my ire is people that say first annual? But there's no such thing as a first annual right? There wasn't the first world war until there's the second one. So it's like they

[00:48:22] say first annual when it's inaugural. That's what it is, well, what is really a good study or not, right? I mean, you have internal validity, have external validity, and they kind of counterbalance one another, but I want to see the study. So my value, I guess, when it comes to that is what, what's the value, the education? I think it still comes back to integrity and respect.

[00:49:42] To me, respect covers a lot of things.

[00:49:45] Here's the, maybe the crazier side of me,

[00:49:47] the more I've done and things like that, to make it like, are people being real? It's easy to hide stuff under numbers and say really complicated things because most people won't do the work. Yeah. And you can't, you can't dazzle with brilliance. You have baffle with bullshit. Oh, oh, I hope you, that's, you got to make a post around that.

[00:51:04] That's a fire post right there.

[00:51:06] You baffle them with bullshit.

[00:51:08] Yeah. And that was part of what would drive me in every single area. It's like, well, there's no way I'm not going to be good enough. Well, like with anything, there's you know, waste that comes with that. So, I mean, there's

[00:52:22] it works until it doesn't work.

[00:52:23] You know what I mean? But what I've learned from you and other people have equidus a lot, but

[00:53:27] I mean, you don't have to, you don't like striving and seeking more depth and growth and creativity.

[00:53:37] It's not absent from that. And in fact, the things you create from that, that inner stability, that enoughness is far more abundant. And there's a lot more creativity that comes from that. It's not

[00:53:44] scarcity. Like there's an infinite channel destruction cycle I see that takes place.

[00:55:01] I love that.

[00:55:03] It's interesting we're talking about this, my buddy, he competed for the first time in wrestling

[00:55:05] in 13 years over the weekend.

[00:56:01] using wrestling as a metaphor here,

[00:56:07] where you can build that skill set differently. And he said, he's like, I'm getting better.

[00:56:11] And it's just so different what you're talking about.

[00:56:13] It's from that wholeness of like,

[00:56:14] I don't have anything to prove.

[00:56:16] I got a successful business.

[00:56:18] I got a loving kids.

[00:56:19] I got a beautiful wife.

[00:56:20] I have a happy family.

[00:56:21] Like, what am I trying to prove here?

[00:56:24] Just proving to myself like,

[00:56:26] I'm worth showing up for like they have the answers. If I listen, the answer is common. So that's one. The other part is like everybody has an interesting story. And if I set the table for that and make sure they feel valued and feel safe

[00:57:42] and feel appreciated and I show up and be hope that there's a lot of people with a lot of love and a strong desire to give that and share that in the old space for that and The biggest things that I think people are struggling with when they come to me is like they feel overwhelmed and they feel like they're struggling with their energy. So the alignment on our audit is to be able to find out like, Hey, where are you at with your time. How are you organizing your time. The reality is they have forgotten because of the consequence of their own abundance. There's two successful for their own good. They don't know what to do is not being afraid of like sacrificing these deep meaningful connections they've built. How do I talk to my wife? How do I talk to my husband? How do I navigate those things and not destroy that? Because I think we've all, a lot of people are starting to learn is like,

[01:01:40] great, I could build this massive business,

[01:01:42] but I don't have relationship with my kids,

[01:01:45] but I had a divorce.

[01:01:47] But like all that stuff, Wow. That's a good question. I don't even know. That's very rare that I'm a loss for words.

[01:03:03] I think that that's changed my life. That's changed my life. Whenever I'm feeling lost, I go right back to that. Like, this is all that's really gonna matter anyway. So they're my mirror. Let me let me go talk to them and remind myself what I needed to be showing up for because

[01:04:21] we're gonna have the answers. Want to listen with me. Like I told you, like I'm a weird dude. So like I feel, I feel honored once I'm going to, I'm going to break the mold a little bit today. Let's just go on that journey. You spot it. You got it. Yeah. What, uh, and where would you want people? And again, we'll put the links on there. Where would you want people to find out more about you, take the alignment audit.

[01:05:44] You can go to naked Sunday studios.com backslash audit.

[01:06:41] Awesome. Glad, thanks so much, ma'am, for joining us and taking the time.

[01:06:43] I appreciate your brother, and thank you so much for allowing me to share.

[01:06:57] Thanks for listening to Mental Toughness with Dr. Rob Bell.

[01:07:01] To find out more about Dr. Rob, visit his website at www.DrRobBell.com or follow him