Lori Harder: Turn Your Struggles Into Strengths at TEDxUCIrvine (Transcript)

Did you love to dance? Or did you love to draw? And try to sell your crappy drawings to your neighbors for a dollar? Like my sister and I did.

And yes, that is my drawing. And yes, I did draw Burger King’s; I don’t know why.

So what happened to that awesome kid? Where did they go? What events caused so much pain and resistance that you actually started to consciously abstain from being yourself?

So the unapologetic kid version of me wanted to be a performer. I would pretty much do anything for the spotlight. And I lived to make people laugh. So you can imagine my excitement, when at 11 years old, I got invited to a pool party with diving boards. This was my opportunity to show off some of my incredible. So I thought acrobatic skills.

So the day of the pool party arrives and I’m climbing the ladder. And as I’m climbing in my brand new swimsuit, the list is going through my head: Am I going to do the splits? Am I going to do a front flip? Or am I going to do good old reliable cannonball? You know, you did it.

So my audience has assembled below. It’s five friends. Included among them is the boy who in my daydreams plays my future husband. So I hear them cheering. This is exciting, right? I hear them cheering. And I tune in closer and I realize that they’re not cheering. They’re yelling, well, well, well, and just as I’m about to jump in, the boy that I have been crushing on so hard yells: “Don’t jump; there won’t be any water left in the pool.”

And so I’m standing on the diving board and I’m devastated. And any thought of doing a trick vanishes, I suddenly feel so foolish for thinking I was any good at doing any tricks, I felt ashamed of my body and I jumped into the water as quickly as I could to hide and to cry. And the second I got under the water I let out the biggest sob and I can still hear it in my ears to this day. And I remember the feeling of the bubbles rushing past my face as I was crying under the water, because these people were supposed to be my friends. And I sunk deeper and deeper and I never wanted to come up again.

So this was the first moment that I can remember allowing someone else’s opinion of me make me feel ashamed of who I was. And this was the first time that I can remember looking at the other girls’ long thin bodies and comparing them to mine, thinking I must need to look different to fit in.

But right before I came up from the water, I also remember thinking: just wait, I’m going to get so fit that they are never going to make fun of me again.

So this single shift in my perception, that single thought later turned into a formula that I started using in order to reach all of my goals. So I want to introduce this formula to you today. And that formula is resistance plus time under tension equals strength.

Resistance + Time under tension = Strength

So first, let me tell you that in the fitness world, resistance training means any force that you use, any external force or resistance that you use to exercise to build muscles or to build endurance or to build physical strength. And time under tension is the amount of time that your muscles stay under resistance. So both of these concepts are used in order to gain physical strength, gain muscles, gain endurance. But today I want to show you how these concepts literally run parallel to getting stronger internally.

So I like to explain it using these four points.

So number one: The heavier the resistance, the stronger the muscle you can build. So just like in life, the bigger the challenge, the bigger the opportunity, right?

Number two: You must keep that muscle under tension until failure or close to it. So what this does is it tears the muscle fibers down and it allows them to repair themselves and they come back stronger after failure. So just like in life, when we decide to come back from failure, what happens? We come back just a little bit stronger, right? Just a little bit wiser.

So number three: You have to be consistent, because if you don’t use it, you lose it. We all know that. So just like in life, every single day is offering us resistance. We probably had some this morning, right? Getting here maybe in traffic. So — and what does that provide? The opportunity to be a little more patient, to be a little more loving, right? To be a little more brave, maybe be a little more assertive and meet your neighbors tonight.

So number four: As you get stronger, you must take on more challenging forms of resistance. I know that’s a tough one. And just like in life, if we don’t keep seeking uncomfortable situations, we’re not going to grow, because the only place we grow is outside of our comfort zone, right?

OK, so by the time I was 13, I was already exercising this without really realizing it. So I was doing my older sister’s workout videos. I was buying fitness magazines and reading them cover to cover. And I was cutting out all the images of these strong fit women and I was plastering them all over my closet doors, dreaming that I too one day could have that strong fit body and all of the confidence and success that must go with it.

And what was happening when I was reading these magazines is that it was teaching me that even though everything that I had heard from my family about us having bad genetics and that I would struggle my whole life with my weight just like all of the other women, it was telling me differently in these articles. It was saying that there was, in fact, a different way of being, thinking, moving, eating, that we were not yet doing. And this made me start to think that I might have a say in this outcome.

So by 16, I sat glued to fitness competitions on television and the second I could drive I got a gym membership, so I could really start resistance training with weights.

So what resistance training was teaching me or weight training was that time, patience, and consistent increased resistance is what I needed to grow physically, to reach my goals.

So by my mid-20s, I had this newfound confidence in myself through fitness. So I decided that I wanted to be on those same covers of fitness magazines that inspired me. That sounds easy enough, right?

So I started visualizing myself on these covers and every time I’d workout I’d picture myself on the cover and I’d picture what the article would say on the inside. It would be about a small-town girl who overcame all the odds, who had no sports or athletic background, who was a total underdog and became a fitness inspiration.

And then I would picture that teased little girl, just like I was, later on buying that magazine as her reminder of who she really is and what is possible for her. So I did everything I could to get on these covers. I started doing fitness competitions. You guys did it like four a year, that’s a lot. I did fitness competitions. I did multiple photoshoots with photographers who worked for the magazine. I hired coaches. Also we could come together to go to that magazine and tell them why I needed to be the next fitness cover model.

So I watched as my fellow fitness competitors got whisked away, I watched year after year after year and for me it took years to finally get an answer that I just wasn’t a fit for them.

Hello, there’s that resistance, I could use it. So I decided to use it and I said, OK, what can I do? I want to become undeniable. How do I do that? OK, I’m going to set out on a career that they can’t ignore. So you guys, I got so laser focused. I mean, this was my life. So I won three Fitness competitions. Thank you. And I was brunette but still no cover. Still not a fit.

So I did what any rational person would do after I got home and I was staring at my vision board. So I had pasted a cover on my vision board and I don’t know if you guys do this but I’d cut a picture of my head out and I plastered it on the body of this cover as my motivation. So I’m staring at it and I have this realization that I may never ever, ever get one.

And so I did what anyone would do. And I threw myself on my bed and I started crying into my pillows: why??? for like a long time. Really way too long. And in the middle of my crying fit, it hit me so they can be therapeutic if you need to do them. It hit me: why am I waiting? Why am I waiting and why have I hinged all of my happiness on this cover? Why am I waiting for someone to tell me that I am good enough to do that thing that I wanted to do to inspire women? Why am I waiting to be told that I’m worthy or that I’m ready to start?

I thought: couldn’t I do those things now? So I had built a story and it was so clear to me, I built a story that I needed this cover for validation. I needed it to feel ready. I needed it to prove a point. I needed it to feel worthy. I needed someone to tell me that I was ready to start to begin.

So knowing that I may never get one and if that’s what my happiness was waiting on, I may never be happy, I decided to do that thing that I thought that cover was going to bring anyway, right? Inspiring women. So I got certified. I started training women. I opened a fitness studio. I created a beautiful tribe of women. I started an event where thousands of women come every single year to use stories just like this one to find their strength and use it as their message.

So by giving all of this value, I had come to realize my own inherent value. And I came from a place this time of knowing that with or without that cover, I was already doing what I loved. I was already fulfilled, I was already happy. I was already living in my purpose. So I decided what the heck, I’ll reach out again. I was already happy, right? Nothing to lose.

So from this place, it turns out that all of this resistance, from these raps of no’s turned out to be the perfect amount of resistance that would build that strong woman who would be persistent enough to land not just one cover but multiple covers through the span of years.

So with this formula, resistance plus time under tension, I felt like I had unlocked the keys to the universe, because I wasn’t just getting through obstacles, I was looking at them and seeing how I could use them to get stronger.

So here’s a great example. I go to a spin class, like three times a week. And if you guys have ever seen a stationary bike or been to a spin class, you guys know there’s that little resistance knob, right, on the bike. So what happens is the more you put on there determines the value: what you’re going to get out of the class.

So I go to this class called soulcycle, like three times a week. And the room is hot and it’s dark and the music is loud and it is crammed with sweaty people furiously riding shoulder to shoulder. And my friend calls it inspired hell.

So we’re not in this class for 45 minutes to waste it, right? We are in there to use it, to use that time under tension. We want to take that dial on the bike and we want to crank up the change. We want to pile on the opportunity, right?

So in comparison, the person riding next to me could literally put nothing on the wheel and they may never ever get anywhere, no pun intended, because there’s nothing on that wheel, because it’s up to us if we’re going to use that time, if we’re going to be patient, if we’re going to — if we’re going to put the resistance on the wheel, that is going to allow us and support us to make us stronger.

So the secret is understanding how to use our resistance training. So avoiding obstacles would be exactly like setting that goal to want that strong fit bod, right, we all did it January 1. We want that strong fit bod. We hire that personal trainer, you show up to the appointment. They hand you the weights and you get mad at them. I don’t want to do those weights. Ah, not doing those.

So that same personal trainer would never tell you to lay down and pile weights all over your body until they crush you, right? No, they would take those same crushing weights and they would teach you how to use them to get to your goals. They teach you how to use them to your advantage.

So we set these goals. We want these beautiful lives. We want these incredible relationships. We want these epic amazing careers. But when the resistance training shows up for you so that you can become that person who could handle what comes with all of these incredible things, and who could become this person, we put the weights down too soon. We miss the message that the pain is trying to tell us. We numb it out, we run away, we say it’s too much or it’s not fair. There will always, always, always be people criticizing, judging, right? Especially right when we set that goal like the day after, they’re going to come and tell you something. There will always be people yelling up at you while you’re on the diving board, that you’re not good enough, that you’re not worthy, or that it’s already been done before, right before you’re about to take that next big leap.

So just remember, the next time your resistance training shows up, it’s not happening to you, it is happening for you.

Thank you guys.

 

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