You Can’t Grind Your Way Into Joy — Beneath The Surface
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Hey guys, thanks for tuning in. And on today's episode, we are going to be exploring one of the most important truths about performance, presence, and fulfillment. I call it the illusion of later. You see, we've been sold this myth that if we just grind hard enough, suffer long enough, prove yourself over and over again, joy will come and find you. After stressing so long, you're going to win the game. You're going to get the promotion. Then you will allow yourself to be happy.

But here's the truth. You don't find joy by training stress relentlessly. You train stress and get stress. And the longer you live that way, the more self-sacrifice becomes your identity. Because real success, the kind we care about, the kind that's sustainable, creative, alive, it doesn't come from burnout. It begins the moment you stop betraying your own aliveness.

Welcome to Beneath the Surface. I'm Sean Delaney. Now this series is a space where I bring you the ideas I'm sitting with most, the ones I can't let go of, the ones I return to again and again in my own life, and the ones that show up constantly in the conversations behind closed doors with high performers, creatives, leaders, and people who are on the path like you, not just to do more, but to feel more alive while doing it.

Now, these episodes aren't about giving you another strategy or chasing another version of success. They're about going a level deeper, getting quiet enough to hear what's underneath the noise and remembering what actually matters and then how to feel more alive while doing it. So if you're looking for a place to slow down, think deeply, and reconnect to the part of you that most of the world forgets to speak to, you're in the right place. Let's begin. Let's go beneath the surface.

We've all heard that little voice in the back of our head that says things like, just get through this project. Just survive this week. Just hit this number. Then I'll breathe. Then I'll relax. Then I'll stop stressing. Just push a little harder now and then we'll be able to feel okay. But here's the truth most of us never stop to question. If your system

is always learning. If your body, your brain, your nervous system is adapting to what you repeat, then what happens when you live your life in that loop? What you teach your system moment after moment is really freaking simple. Stress equals normal. Tension equals required. Peace is earned, right? Your aliveness is postponed. And over time, your system doesn't just experience stress.

It becomes stress. This is why that vacation doesn't relax you, why rest feels impossible, why achievement even feels numb. Because you can't grind your way to freedom. You can't suffer your way into joy. You don't rehearse burnout and expect to arrive in aliveness. This is the deeper cost no one talks about, and it's at the heart of today's episode. By suffering and stressing, we don't train joy.

We just train suffering and stress. By suffering and stressing, we don't train joy. We train suffering and stress. Your nervous system doesn't speak English. It speaks in repetition. It doesn't care what you promise yourself later. It only learns what you practice now.

What you practice, you become. Not what you say, not what you intend, not what you hope will change once you get through this. But what you embody, moment to moment, that's what your life becomes. Because the more you abandon yourself for success, the more success demands that you keep abandoning yourself.

So if you want to live in joy, if you want to create from freedom, if you want to feel alive in your own story and your own life, it has to start now. Not someday, not when everything is handled or perfectly in the box. Right now.

And guess what? All of this, everything on this episode is trainable. You can train your mind. You can train it to become more aware. You can train it to recognize how you respond instead of defaulting to old reactions or patterns. Confidence, a big one. That is a trainable skill. It's how you speak to yourself. Calmness, that is trainable too. It's how you relate to the moment, especially when it doesn't go your way. Optimism, passion, presence, all of these, all of it,

trainable. But here's another truth most people forget or overlook. So is anxiety. So is self-criticism. So is negativity. So is despair. And most people are spending all day training those. Pause for a second and think, what are you spending most of your day training? Are you training calmness, optimism, passion, presence, confidence? Or are you training anxiety, self-criticism, negativity, despair,

The mind is always learning, always practicing something. And if we're not intentional, we end up rehearsing the harder patterns. All of the worry, all of the doubt, all of the resentment, all of the numbness. Not because we want to, but because they've become familiar. So we must choose. And I want you to remember the power of choice. Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor, he said, between stimulus and response...

there is a moment. And in that moment, we have a choice. So we must choose. We must choose. Not once, but daily. Moment to moment to practice what we want to become. This is what it's all about. To practice what we want to become. To strengthen the muscles of joy, of clarity, of calm, of courage. To train for the life we actually want to live. Let that line settle in for a second. To train for the life

we actually want to live. Are you doing that day-to-day training for the life you want to live? Now let's talk a little bit more about why and how. Okay, we need to go deeper.

Because this isn't just a motivational idea. It's rooted in biology. Your nervous system, the thing running the show behind the scenes, doesn't know the difference between now and later in the way your thinking mind does. It only knows what you repeatedly feel. The repetition that your body receives is the reality it believes. So when you're telling yourself,

I'm just pushing now so I can feel at peace later. I'll be present after this quarter is over, right? I'll finally sit down for the family dinner. I'll feel joy once I finally make the number. Your nervous system isn't waiting to celebrate with you at the finish line. It's just absorbing the repeated signal. Stress is normal. Tension is familiar. Rest is unsafe. And so what does joy become? Joy? Joy is just a threat because it feels unfamiliar.

This is what neuroscientists call neuroplasticity. Your brain rewires itself based on the states you spend the most time in. So if your days are saturated in stress, that's what your system learns to default to.

It doesn't separate your why. It encodes your way of being. And that's where things get real because eventually, even when you're done, even when you've earned the rest, even when you've reached the finish line, even when you made it, you won't feel the joy you promised yourself. Not because it's not there, but because your system no longer recognizes it.

This is why people reach success and feel empty. They win the award and then they still feel numb. They're on the podium wondering like, is this how it's supposed to feel? When they sit on the beach and after years of grinding and trying to relax and they can't, they can't sit still. This is why. Because you can't delay your aliveness and expect it to still be waiting for you. You can't spend years creating that internal tension and expect once you get out of that system, you are just going to be fine.

You have to let it into the process now. We've seen the people at the top of their game who embody this fully. I have a vision in my head right now. Just after a championship game, this was back in 2013, Alabama football beats Notre Dame in the national championship.

There was a short article by USA Today the next day. They ran what I view as an absurd headline, and it reads, Nick Saban won't rest and is far from satisfied. And there's a photo of Nick Saban, the head coach of Alabama, arguably one of the greatest football coaches of all time, holding the national championship trophy he just won.

without a smile, not a hint of joy, no relief, no celebration, just the expression that said, what's next? Back on the recruiting trail tomorrow. And honestly, that is the perfect snapshot of what we're talking about. A lifetime spent training stress, training dissatisfaction, training frustration as full, believing the myth that if you just win enough, then you'll finally feel peace. Then you'll finally be enough.

But here's the truth. If all you've practiced along that journey is discontent, don't be surprised when joy feels unfamiliar even in your highest moments. That image of Saban, that is not an outlier. That is a mirror for so many of us. We've been trained to climb but not to arrive. It's almost laughable when we take a step back and just observe how this hustle, grind, stress mentality is promoted in worship.

I was going through some of my notes, just prepping for this. And I found this slogan I had written out from the founder of Four Seasons. And it was being used at this mantra for what the best business founders should be doing. And the line is, excellence is the capacity to take pain. I remember when I first heard this, you know, it's why it's in my notes. I was like, oh, hell yes. Like, that's what a great founder does. You know, how much pain can they take and still endure?

And now I'm thinking to myself, excellence is the capacity to take pain? What the fuck was I thinking? What kind of great life is that? Excellence is the capacity to take pain? I'm not saying there isn't a time for embodying this ability. You have to muster through some suck, absolutely. But that's your life motto? This is how you want to build your life and what you want to build your life on? How much pain can I take? How much can I suffer through?

This is one of just the absolute most sobering truths I've learned. And I need to remind myself of this every single day. You don't just expand joy by practicing stress. You cultivate what you practice and whatever you practice becomes who you are. So if you want to feel peace or freedom or flow in your life, you can't wait for the project to be done, for the bank account to hit that number. You can't wait for someone else to give you permission.

Because your body, your heart, your mind, they are constantly learning. And the question is this, what are you training them to believe is normal? That is what you want to explore. Are you someone who's promoting hero tension worship? Whatever you practice is what you become. So you need to think about what you want, who you want to be, what kind of life you want to lead.

That's what it was about, finding the joy in the pursuit. That's why some of the best athletes I've ever played with never reached their potential because their system never felt safe enough to let go, to trust, to express, to flow. So if you're a leader, a coach, a parent, ask yourself, when do you perform at your best and when does your team perform?

And what do you need to do to help them flourish? Because I guarantee you the answer isn't more stress, more tension, more anxiety. It isn't grinding them down to pure exhaustion. I'm sharing this because I've lived this and I still catch myself in those patterns. You know, those patterns of trying to prove, trying to perform, tying tension to meaning. But now I know there's a different way, a freer way.

One that doesn't just get results, but lets you feel alive while doing it. I've talked about this on other episodes. Your highest self, your best capabilities and potentialities live in that freer state. It makes me think of this quote by L.P. Jaxx. He says, A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation.

He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever it is he's doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. I love that image. So let's sit with this next question for a moment. What if the very way you're trying to succeed is actually training you to never feel free?

Because most of us, the narrative goes like this. We're going to work hard. We're going to push through. We're going to sacrifice our time, our joy, our peace. And someday we'll arrive. And when we do, we'll feel peace. We'll feel worthy. We'll finally have that deep exhalation.

But we all know that moment never arrives because by the time you get there, you've trained yourself to only feel safe when you're under pressure. You've wired your system to believe that rest is lazy, right? That peace, that a quiet afternoon reading is unproductive and joy, that is just freaking dangerous. And so you just don't.

Keep grinding. New goal, new title, new business, new urgency. You don't even realize you've become afraid of ease, afraid of silence, afraid of slowing down. Because who are you without the striving? I'll be honest. I found myself at times on a weekend where I should just relax and lay out by the pool. And I'm thinking, like, I need to be doing this. I need to be learning this thing. I need to be efforting here.

And then you catch yourself and it's like, whoa, what am I doing? It's what Alan Watts pointed out when he said, we're always preparing to live, but never actually living. And that hits deep because it's not just about our schedules. It's about our orientation to life. If you believe success is the reward for stress, then the only way to keep succeeding is to keep suffering. Let's marinate on that one more time. If you believe success is the reward for stress,

then the only way to keep succeeding is to keep suffering. Because the identity you've built, the high achiever, the overcomer, the one who outworks everyone, now feels like who you are. So stopping feels like dying. The slowing down feels like you're completely disappearing. What if joy isn't a distraction from success though? What if it's a sign you're in rhythm with it?

What if fun and play aren't indulgent, but intelligent? What if they're the gateway to your best performance and to your best life? I can feel the tension stirring in you right now as you hear that. Your body is just like, huh? You're thinking, is this guy shitting me? You know, I can hear the thoughts. Do you know the stress I'm under, the tension in my work and at home, the life I'm building? Do you know how important this is?

You think there's time for joy, for play? I get it. But think about this. When do you make your best decisions? When are you most creative? When are you most productive? When does time melt and your energy feels limitless? I'll tell you one thing. It's not when you're grinding. It's not when you're stressed out of your mind. It's not when your cortisol spikes. It's when you're engaged, when you're present, when it feels like you're playing.

So your highest potentiality as a performer, as a leader, as a parent or person isn't when you put yourself in a fight or flight state. It's when you learn how to flow in a playful, engaged state. There's not lethargy there. There's not abandonment. There's not giving up. It's allowing all of you to come online and be here. So what if, as a little experiment this week,

What if we just decided to bring a little more playfulness, a little more joy, a little more authentic self-expression into our days? What if we started noticing the moments where we feel light and joyful, you know, but also locked in? And think about what cultivated those conditions. What are the thoughts? What are the actions? What are the routines? And start building rituals that help us down-regulate and connect to that feeling of liveness. What if we were a bit more intentional? What if we were a bit more intentional?

about what we do with our minds and our bodies, about how we enter the office every day. And just as importantly, be intentional about how you want to walk in that front door at the end of the day. Because joy is a skill too. Play is a skill. Lightness is a skill. And they are not in opposition to greatness. They are how greatness, your greatness, breathes.

So yes, keep showing up, keep building, keep creating, keep going after exceptional work. You are meant to express the greatness of what you're capable of, but you want to do it from a place that's alive, a place that's not exhausted, where the magic lives. That's what you want. That's what you're going after.

And we need to explore why we tend to stay trapped in this pattern. Because if all of this is true, if we now realize that the grind doesn't deliver the peace we're after, if we know that waiting to feel alive, that's not going to happen unless we train it, why do we keep doing it? Why do we keep sacrificing our life, our life energy? Why do we keep sprinting past our lives, hoping to arrive in joy someday? And the answer is really deceptively simple, but it runs deep.

Because it's what you've been taught. And because it works until it doesn't. Because most of us grew up in systems that rewarded us not for being, but for performing. We learned to try to be the high achiever, the good kid, the dependable one, the impressive one, you know, the one who's always fine no matter what happens. Whatever your label was, that was that.

We built our identities around how well we could adapt, not how deeply we could be ourselves. And those identities worked. They would get you praise, belonging, safety, maybe even success. Makes me think the line by Voltaire, it is hard to free fools from the chains they revere, but this is the cost. We became successful by abandoning ourselves. We traded authenticity for approval.

We learned to be loved through effort. We got really good at pretending everything was okay, even when we were completely disconnected inside. And when that pattern is practiced long enough, it doesn't feel like a strategy anymore. It feels like who you are. I bring this up and most likely will bring up identities on every single episode because of the massive impact they have on all of us.

But so few ever take the time to step back and create awareness around them. And what does awareness do? Awareness creates a choice. Do we want to continue the pattern or not? So when someone comes along, it might be a teacher, a book, a podcast, and says, you don't have to earn your worth. You don't have to perform to belong. You can stop hustling and just be. You might want to believe them.

But your nervous system is shouting, that's not safe. If I stop striving, I'll lose everything. Because for years, maybe decades, your identity has been built on effort, grinding, external validation. So letting go of that, that feels like a death. And it makes me think of the line Carl Jung said, there is no coming to consciousness without pain. So often in life, the way up is the way down. Your next life is going to cost you this one.

When we try to let go of an identity, especially one that's worked, it's like trying to drop armor we've worn our entire lives. Even if it's heavy, even if it's suffocating, we still cling to it because it's familiar. I wrote about this in my book, When Life Begins to Whisper, and this is what I wrote. I said, You've become your own cage. Bars forged from fears you once called armor now rust and bleed in the veins of your dreams.

Each step is tethered to the weight of who you were, but that old skin no longer fits your bones. Look down. Your shadow clings like a desperate lover begging you to stay. So the reason we stay trapped in this pattern is not because we're broken or we've failed, but it's because we're scared because it's hard to let go. And that fear deserves to be honored, but we don't want to just try to bypass it or bulldoze through it like we were so often taught.

We want to learn how to witness those fears, taking a step back. Because when you do, when you don't try to apply force to force and you step back and observe, now you can work through it. That's why we discuss awareness again and again and again. Awareness is the starting point. There's this line by Krishnamurti. He says, freedom is not the opposite of bondage. It is the understanding of bondage.

You need to slow down enough to become aware of the patterns of the invisible armor, of the stories of the cages that you build and reinforce. It's what martial artist and philosopher Bruce Lee meant when he said, those who are unaware they are walking in the darkness will never seek the light. Are you aware of the patterns, of the fears, of the stories that are guiding you? Because when we stop letting fear run the show, something deeper becomes possible.

Imagine what would open up in your life if you started letting go of the patterns that you have to stress and grind and be in a constant state of tension and anxiety. Just imagine. What does it look like to be without those? To do this, tap into one of the greatest gifts all of us have, the imagination.

Use it right now. What would it feel like to show up to work tomorrow a little lighter, a little more playful, engaged, but having fun? You know, what would it be like to walk through the front door after that long day and your kids just freaking light up because how much joy you bring into that house? Think about the rituals that bring you fully alive with energy and zest and excitement. And what would it look like to incorporate these daily? That's the foundation you want to start moving from.

When you do that, when you replace the patterns because you became aware of them and you put in a new system, that's a beautiful space to be in. So here's where I'm going to leave you today. You can't grind your way into joy. You can't stress your way into peace. You can't abandon yourself now and expect to feel whole later.

Because your system, your body, your heart, your nervous system is always learning. And what you repeat becomes what you believe. What you embody becomes what you are. If you are going to practice stress, you teach your system to live in stress. If you practice postponing joy, you teach your system that joy isn't safe. This is the invitation and the shift.

What if you didn't wait? What if you brought your full self into this moment instead of the version you think will be enough someday? What if that feeling of aliveness and lightness and joy became the internal compass you worked from? That's the heart of this. This isn't about giving up your ambition. It's about not giving up yourself in the process.

Because the version of you that feels most alive, most real, most grounded is the one that's already here beneath the proving, beneath the pressure, beneath the performance. And maybe, just maybe, that version doesn't need to be earned. It just needs to be remembered. So start there. Until next time, stay rooted in what is, open to the magic of what could be. Bring your full presence with infinite possibility and let the rest flow.

If this episode resonated with you, if it stirred something, opened something up, or even challenged something, I'd love to hear about it. You can connect with me directly at whatgotyouthere.com. That's where you'll find everything I do, my writing, my books, more about my executive coaching work I do with the people who want to live and lead from a deeper place. And if this episode made you think of someone, a friend, a teammate, a partner, someone who's been in the grind and might need to hear this, send it to them.

Because sometimes all it takes is a single conversation to shift the direction we're heading in. Again, it's whatgotyouthere.com. You can reach out, learn more, or just say hi. I always love hearing from people walking this path. Thanks for listening, and until next time.