#75Hard and Live Hard – My 7 Lessons About Mental Toughness

Ready for some mental toughness? Have you heard of 75Hard? Many have heard of it; of those, fewer have tried it. Even fewer have completed it.?

Andy Frisella (Real AF, 1stPhorm) created 75Hard as a daily mental toughness challenge versus a health & fitness challenge, even though four major components are health related: two 45-minute workouts, drink a gallon of water, no alcohol and stick to a diet of your choice without cheating.?

Why? I believe the answer is that even sticking with healthy habits is a mental toughness challenge.?

You may not be aware of the rest of Andy’s LiveHard program, which has three additional phases that follow 75Hard.

August 2, 2022 I began 75Hard. I finished it on October 17, 2022, successfully completing each daily requirement for 75 days.?

Without going into all the program details which are also at 75hard.com, I continued, completing the three phases of 30 days each. The phases are all somewhat different, with a 5-minute cold shower, random acts of kindness, conversation with a stranger, 10-minutes visualization, and an 8 task list added in different phases.

I finished the entire year on August 1, 2023, the only way to successfully complete the year which needs to be an entire 365 days. This means that Phase 3 must end on the date prior to when I began in 2022.?

Thus, my Live Hard year was August 2, 2022 to August 1, 2023.?

Now that I’ve posted on social media, some things stick out at me:

·??????People who say they could never do it

·??????People who say they tried and couldn’t do it

·??????One person who said she completed 75Hard (not in my group of new friends from the 75Hard FB Group)

·??????People who say that drinking a gallon of water each day isn’t good for you

·??????People who say they’ve completed it but their own version, with made up names like 75Medium or 75Light

I’ve also thought a lot about what I learned over this past year because I am a different person than when I started.

1.?????Keeping My Commitments:?

More than physical fitness or health, even more than “mental toughness”, this was my personal year to keep this commitment to myself. We often keep all kinds of commitments to others, whether our family, or employers, friends, etc. but when the going gets tough, we will often give up on ourselves.

“How you do one thing is how you do everything.”

I’m not sure who originally said this, but I agree with it. In this case, our excuses to do or not do something, where we give up on ourselves and why, where and when we quit. When we make our own rules that are different than they should be, we aren’t giving ourselves a big enough chance, because the new rules are scaled down versions of the originals. In short, all these things are ways that we do everything.

So many times this past year I wanted to quit.?

When I hadn’t had my full gallon of water and it was getting later in the evening.?

When I was in Colorado in January during Phase 2 and my 45-minute outdoor workout was walking in sub-zero temperatures so cold that my eyelashes froze.

When my cold shower turned colder last November because groundwater temperatures change as temps plummet.?

But I didn’t quit on myself. Every single task I checked off on my 75Hard app during the 165 days was a tiny acknowledgement of my commitment to me.?

2.?????Start Early and Stay Steady:?

My first activity in the morning was my progress pic. Not because I really cared about my progress, but because I’d heard from so many that this single task messed them up. They forgot completely and thus failed the day.

Do whatever you can to make yourself “failproof”. And isn’t this also a great overall life lesson? Do what needs to be done! Give yourself every single chance to succeed that you possibly can.

Early outdoor workout, especially if you’re traveling. Just know you’re done with that for the day. Get the second workout done before evening if possible.

Drink water from the moment you wake, having it handy (I used a 32 oz mason jar.) to sip nearly continuously. No flavors. No “iced tea is really just water”. Plain water.

3.?????Small Tasks – Big Lessons:?

In addition to the progress pic, I had a friend who had only read part of her 10-pages for the day and didn’t realize it. It’s really like a punch in the gut, the longer you’ve progressed on the challenge, when you fail a day.

I’ve talked about this with other people and they are outraged that it ruins the challenge. It’s not fair, they say.?

Small things can really trip us up. The devil in those pesky details can rear its ugly head such as not proofreading an email, misspelling someone’s name, not remembering someone’s name, forgetting to get gas, not paying attention to a bank balance.

I’ve been there, 100%. Getting all these small details right means paying attention before they become glaring errors.?

And since how you do one thing is how you do everything, do we say, “it’s not fair!” or “it’s no big deal” i.e. what’s your favorite excuse? It’s a real eye-opener, and paying attention to the little things can be an enormous game changer.

Want to make a big difference? Make the little things important.

4.?????Embrace the Uncomfortable:?

I experienced uncomfortable in almost every task. Working out when I was sore and tired. My outdoor walk in Michigan humidity. My outdoor walk(s) in Chicago windchill of 25 degrees below zero, and I thought I had frostbite.?

The showers seem to really freak out people. I looked online prior and the best advice I could find was to relax, breathe slowly and deeply, and embrace the zen of the moment. That’s what I did, even after the initial shock of the deep freeze temps last November.?

Screaming was never a recommendation, and the first minute is really the biggest challenge.

Mental toughness doesn’t conjure up a picture of someone screaming in a cold shower. Finding a way to embrace the cold shower sounds like mental toughness to me.

I also took a ten-minute cold shower just to enjoy all the five minutes afterward. I didn’t play music, I didn’t set an alarm. I used the stop watch setting on my phone to activate at 0:00 then didn’t look at the time for as long as I could. Usually I was close to 5 minutes, so it was nice knowing I just had a bit to go.

5.?????Celebrate and Measure Wins!:?

Every day I gave myself a mental high five at the end of a completed task list. (The app does it also, $4.99 is a bargain to succeed in these challenges.)?

I didn’t look at how much more I had to go until I was well over the halfway point. Day One I celebrated being done with the first day. I congratulated myself at all the milestones: one week, 10% complete, etc.?

Focusing on progress, on the wins, is an important life lesson, as well. Try an experiment and see everything that happens as a gain, not looking at the gap. Check out Benjamin Hardy’s The Gap and The Gain for a deeper understanding of this profound practice.

6.?????Making Connections:

For me, random acts of kindness and conversations with strangers were all about the joy of connecting. This was one of my favorite parts of the Live Hard year, eye to eye connections, finding out more about a person, doing something unexpected for another human, in whatever context we happened to find ourselves.?

7.?????Daily Reading:

If you know me, you know I’m a reader. This was a treat, to read 1,650+ pages of non-fiction inspirational, motivational, and/or educational books. Some of my favorites include Benjamin Hardy’s 10X is Easier than 2X, The Gap and the Gain, Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, Essentialism by Greg McKeown, Deep Work by Cal Newport.

I did read others that weren’t quite as great as I’d thought they’d be. The rule though, is to read an entire book without quitting. So I did.

Once I finished, the 75Hard app has an option to begin the next 75Hard. Nope. I’ve done this and proved it to myself. It’s not necessary to repeat, and I am also keeping these habits because they have impacted my life. Being able to enjoy a glass of wine or fine bourbon is a treat, and it will continue. I’ll very likely take 30-day alcohol breaks throughout the year, though, because it does feel good.

Bottom line: try 75Hard. Give yourself every chance to succeed. Observe and be aware of your own tripwires and traps, designed to keep you from success. How you do one thing is how you do everything.