Well, hello and welcome to Blank Pages, the podcast, A podcast for people who appreciate the new beginnings of a clean slate, but strive for the courage, willingness, and curiosity available only on the blank pages of new possibilities.

It's the potential to move beyond and move forward where people are willing to make new decisions from a fresh perspective and are ready to write in a much better way.

And the world is waiting and nothing listens better than a blank piece of paper.

So, hello, hello, friends, and welcome to another episode.

I'm so glad that you're here to join me today.

Man, we're getting towards the end of a season here and end of the year, actually, and I'm loving it.

It's my favorite time of the year.

It's getting colder outside, even though we're in the southeast.

I just wish it would get a lot colder.

Like my friends up north where I'm from originally, man, they are getting the snow and they're getting all that good cold weather.

They're not just getting the cold, but they're getting the snow that goes along with it.

You know, if it's going to be cold, you might as well get some.

What?

Some snow, right?

So that's just at least how I feel.

So I know I have people that would say, you know what, Tim, keep that to yourself, because we do not want that cold weather, which I understand.

It's not for everyone.

It's not for everyone.

It's all right.

It's all right.

It's all right.

So, hey, guys, listen, I'm so glad that you're here with me today.

I do want to just tell you, if you can and you will, I would love for you to like and review the show, follow the show, share the show with other people.

If you're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify podcast, if you're on Amazon Music, if you're on Audible or Odyssey or substack, just search blank pages.

Bl, actually, but there'll be no A.

Take out the vowel, right?

Take out the A on both words.

Bl&k, p space, G, E, S.

You will find the podcast.

And I do that on purpose because it's very easy to find then.

And then also, if you want to follow me on social channels, the two that I'm using currently are LinkedIn at that simple.

Tim Pecoraro.

T I, M, P E, C O, R, A, R, O.

Or you can find me on the Instagram, and that is at Tim Pecoraro.

So the same way at T I, M, P E, C O, R, A R O.

So if you go to at Tim Pecoraro.

This is what I think.

And you'll see on LinkedIn too.

I've been posting a lot about just this community that I've launched called the Uphill Community.

If you're a person that is looking to to go and get involved in more than just a course or some sort of just group around just one idea.

If you're a person that takes serious your personal and professional growth, you want to become a part of a community or a membership group where people are working on their own stuff, they got their own things they're doing, but it's with a framework that's going to guide you and then as you work collaboratively with everyone else and you support one another, challenge one another, we have, there'll be weekly challenges within it.

We have themes that we start off each month with.

There are weekly calls where we do Q and A and then we also have weekly pain point which we call office hour times where people are able to log on to work through the stuff that they're working on.

So there'll be people that are gonna be launching a business, people that are maybe changing their business, people that are people that have retired, people coming out of retirement.

There are all different folks so far that are in this community.

And we are kicking off in January, January 1st, 2025, that will be day one of where we begin the learning.

So actually January 1st, 2nd or 3rd one, I can't remember what the official date is, but come January 1st there will be a message goes out to the community with the first things that will be happening with the event dates and schedule and so forth.

But don't wait, don't hesitate, don't just do a New Year's resolution, don't just start with oh, I'm going to join another group or I'm going to go and learn just a program and buy something on another LMS learning management system.

And you know, courses are great, but what if you could learn in community and what if it's with a framework that's you useful for every area of your life?

That is what's in the uphill community.

I promise you it is tried and true.

Now here's the cool thing.

It's less than $50 a month to be involved and if you pay annually, there's a hundred dollar discount if you pay an annual.

So I'm just letting you know now jump on in.

And this is all online with video.

Everything has replays built in it.

You can have everything on your phone.

It's got Its own app that's dedicated to it.

It's not cumbersome and clunky and junky.

You don't have to.

And then over into another group, into another thing.

Nope.

It's all within one location.

So if you want to join or you're considering joining or you're thinking about, I'm going to just at least check it out.

Just go check it out.

It's called the uphill community.

It's real simple to find.

Just type in your browser theuphill community.

That simple.

The T H E uphill U P H I L L community.

And you will be able to look there.

So I'm.

I'm going to jump into the topic because part of the community and something that we do today's topic is, it's about choosing your hard.

What you.

What is going to be hard?

Things are hard.

Life is hard.

Stuff is hard.

And you can choose the hard.

You're going to choose hard one way or the other, right?

So things are hard.

Life is hard, Things are difficult.

But what I want people to do is be able to say, look, I'm going to pick the things that are going to be difficult.

I'm going to pick what I want to be hard.

I'm going to pick the stuff that, you know, that, that I want to challenge me.

I want to choose that stuff.

I don't want to get myself into a situation to where, you know, I have things being, you know, selected for me because I refuse to challenge myself.

No, that's not a good idea.

You know, you want to get to the point where you know that the things that you put yourself in, that these are your choices as much as you can choose.

I would prefer to choose my own struggles, my own battles, my own difficult things.

So choosing your heart.

So, for instance, it's hard, right?

It's hard sometimes when you're trying to trim down, maybe adjust your body, you want to.

You want to be healthier, you want to be more physically fit, you want to build muscle.

You know, that's hard.

Hard.

But I tell you what else is hard, is when you go to the doctor and the doctor says, well, because of this and because of that, you have this issue now, which is going to mean that you're going to have to do something immediate in order to change your life or this will be the next consequence.

See, that's hard.

So you can choose the hard.

All right, so let me just jump right into choosing your heart.

Okay?

Life is hard.

Mark Twain said this.

Life is hard, but it's harder if you're weak, right?

That's a hard thing if you're weak.

Now, I don't know what that means to you, but it means a lot to me.

I don't want to be weak, meaning I won't challenge myself.

I won't that I won't grow myself.

I won't improve myself.

I won't work on myself.

So one of the things that we do in the community, the uphill community, is we love and we pride ourselves in doing the hard best, not the easy good.

And because we call it the uphill community, because if it's worth having, it's uphill.

And you can't go uphill with downhill habits.

So here's how I want to kind of get our mind around this conversation today.

We often avoid challenges, right?

And seeking.

We seek comfort.

But growth is going to lie beyond that comfort zone.

Growth is going to be what's beyond that.

So we're going to explore how to choose the right kind of hard, Right?

That's what I want you to do.

Choose the right kind of hard to set yourself up for life.

But in this case, since we're in the end of the year and you're listening to this podcast, so some of you, this is time stamped for December.

I hope this will be Evergreen.

But we're in December right now.

And you can choose your heart any time of your life.

You could choose it in January, February, March, April, May, June.

It's never too late to start.

But as this is coming out towards the end of the year, I want people, instead of trying to choose a New Year's resolution, I want you to start off by thinking about the hard that you're going to choose.

Choose your hard.

And that's why I'm launching this community at the beginning of the year, because I want people to go beyond a New Year's resolution.

I want to help people do more than that.

And the first thing we're going to do is zero in on what those goals are.

I call it the horizon.

We're going to pick the horizon.

So here's what I want to do.

I want to start off by getting you to understand this one simple thing, right?

Is that you get to choose.

No one can take the power of your choice away.

So you may not like your options, but you still get to choose.

So you ready?

Here we go.

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

So here's what I mean by that.

I'm going to set it up.

I'm going to give you a personal Example.

Something deeply personal for me.

And just to give you an example of what I've had to choose, because it's hard, right?

So I had.

There's an ending.

I had an ending with a very close friend of mine.

And then.

So here's the thing, you know, after a hard ending, you know, with a close friend, the thought that popped up to me was, you know, that was hard.

Like, man, I'm going through this hard thing, and because of that, it's hard to meet new people, right?

It's so hard.

So after a hard ending, what I thought was a close friend, it's hard to meet a new person or new friend that I would consider to be close enough to be that good of a friend, right?

That's hard.

It's hard thinking, man, how am I gonna do that?

But I'll tell you what else is also hard, is doing life alone.

That's hard.

Doing life where I'm weak and I can't get over this thing.

So I've got to choose a hard though that aligns with my goals.

Now, remember, I thought I was choosing hard that aligned with my goals, but then I found out that it wasn't.

So here's the deal.

You have to let that go.

I have to realize that.

That my.

I'm not aligned with that person.

So I thought I was aligned.

I thought we agreed, but you can't control what anyone else does, and that you have to let go of.

The question is, is what are you going to do with it?

You know?

So in that situation, what I learned in this, okay, so I had to look at it and go, what did I learn?

Because I had to figure out, how am I going to get over this hurdle?

So what I learned, you know, was this person, or what I.

What I thought I learned.

And, well, you know, I thought I knew one thing about them, but what I figured out was they used me.

They used me to help them succeed, to grow something for them that they could put their name on and be proud of.

They didn't have the confidence and security in themselves to do it on their own.

So what they did was they used me.

My talents, my gifts.

And there's a couple of other people like that that they used as well.

But here's the difference.

I'm a challenger.

I'm a person that pushes the envelope.

I will call you into question.

I will ask you questions.

They don't like that.

They want compliant stuff.

So when it came down to me calling them out on some integrity issues, some character issues, and some Other things that shut them down.

Now I started to notice it was weird.

And I kept trying to reconnect and try to connect, but they wouldn't have it.

They wouldn't do it to the point where.

And I kept pursuing, because for me, that's what a relationship does.

You pursue, you try to talk about it.

I was like, what's wrong?

What's going on?

How can we make this better?

They weren't having anything of it.

They weren't going to talk about it.

They continued to avoid, avoid, avoid until they had enough things that they could build up, some other things that they could use as excuses and.

But because those weren't going to work, once we had conversations, those excuses weren't going to work.

So instead they res.

They.

They resorted to coming up with a fantastic lie.

But it was like lying, but not lying.

And it was very painful.

It hurt, you know?

And so what I learned was I had every bit of intention and I had all of the focus to do the friendship and to be close and to do hard best and to work through tough things and.

But this person, it wasn't going to happen.

And here's what I learned.

It's because they were too small.

They were too small because they want easy good.

They're too small.

I've been too small in my life before.

I've been too small and done easy good.

What I figured out was this person doesn't want to do the other things.

They don't want to grow.

They don't want to play bigger than that.

They were too small and they were so insecure and they were so afraid.

They didn't want to be challenged.

And here's the other thing.

They felt threatened and overshadowed because a lot of the things that I was challenging them in, it was calling into question their leadership and calling into question what they were doing and how they were going about it.

That makes a person.

And then also because of the success that you get when you're doing things with other people, you start to succeed, they get jealous, and people may want to hold you down.

They don't want you to succeed.

And that hurt.

And it made me feel like, you know what I mean?

Yeah, some people can go, well, just get over it, move on, whatever.

No, I care about people.

And when you care about people, you don't just throw things away.

You work on trying to restore or redeem.

That should.

That is always my goal.

That's how I go at it.

And if you don't, that's fine.

But so why I'm telling you, all of this is because that was a hard thing to go through.

And so now it got me to the point where I'm like, I started looking at other friends going, is that really my friend?

Is that person really telling me the truth?

Are they lying to me?

So that started challenging that stuff, and I started going, wait a minute, I got to stop this.

And then I didn't want to trust, so I had to stop all of that.

Because you know what?

It's hard to go through that kind of thing.

It's hard to go through the steps that you have to make sure that you're in a good relationship, in the proper relationship.

Right?

That's hard.

But you know what?

It's also hard to just be alone.

And I don't want to do that.

So I choose the hard of doing the relationship.

I choose the hard of trying to ask the bigger questions as to, you know, what's going on.

Is this relationship healthy?

Is it not?

Where is it going, all of those things?

Or to even give other people a chance to do relationship with me, to do friendship, right?

And so of course, you learn a lot about yourself, too.

You learn those things.

So why am I bringing that up?

Because we're going to need to choose hard.

2025 is going to give you an opportunity.

2026, well, 2027, if you're alive, spring gives you an opportunity.

Fall, summer, you always have a new opportunity, a new job, right?

New things.

It could be a new skill.

There's always some sort of opportunity for you to be able to choose the hard.

So choose your hard.

You must first understand yourself.

And this is why I gave you what I learned and what I saw.

And I learned that I had to go back to identifying my strengths and my own weaknesses.

So as I'm looking at choosing my hard when it came to relationship, and we're going to go through, I'm going to give you a couple categories that are going to help you choose your heart.

So here are three things that you must first understand about yourself to choose your hard.

All right, number one is identify your strengths and weaknesses.

The second one is reflect on your past experiences.

Just reflect.

Don't ruminate.

Don't camp out in them.

Reflect on them.

And then the third is assess your current skills.

Assess your relational resources, emotional mental resources.

Just assess those things.

Look at what you currently are.

Like, what's your emotional intelligence like?

In other words, how do you manage yourself?

How do you process things?

Are you defensive?

Are you reactive?

Like, all these things?

Like, think about that, right?

So what I want you to do first is I want you to write down three strengths, right, that you have and three areas that you can improve.

Right?

That's what I want you to do.

Just as a, as an opportunity to look at being able to choose your hard.

I want you to understand your strengths and your weaknesses.

So you have to reflect.

And then after you reflect on them, you want to look at your current skills and what are the resources that you have.

And then I want you to go, all right, what are my strengths and what are the areas that I can work to improve?

All right.

So to enhance though the choosing your heart in different areas, you're going to have to ask yourself some questions.

And really, to enhance that, to really dig into it, you've got to get into some questions.

You've got to get into asking questions about certain areas of your life.

So there are five areas that we're going to look at really quick.

So the, that you know well for me, these are five important areas.

Now you may come up with your own.

That's great.

You can still choose your hard in anything that it is.

Here's choose your hard, right?

It's hard to figure out how to get into the day to do the maintenance on your car.

That's hard.

It's also hard when you don't do the maintenance on your car to have to get your car repaired.

So choose your hard, right.

That's an example, right?

But let's go a little deeper than that.

How about for personal growth?

This is hard.

Continuous learning and self improvement is hard.

That is hard.

But let me tell you what's harder, all right?

What's harder is when you're, you're, when you're stagnant and your life is full of regret because you would not learn.

All right?

So here's some questions I want you to consider around choosing your hard around personal growth.

Here's question 1.

What areas of your life do you feel you need the personal growth and development?

Ask yourself that.

Question number two.

How have I evolved and how have I grown as an individual in the past year?

Like, what are things that I've done?

How have I improved?

What are, what are things that I know I've gotten better at?

Is there anything that I can measure or mark, can I look at it?

Can I ask some people around me, hey, how have I done?

Who do you work with?

You have a coworker, hey, have I gotten better at this like, or whatever related area?

Just ask some people.

The third question I want to give you is what new skills or knowledge do I want to acquire?

Right, because remember, you want to invest into the continuous learning side, the self improvement, not the stagnation and regret.

That's what we're doing in the community.

We're going to help people define those things so they can work on them and then they're going to learn together and grow together and the community.

That's what we're doing.

So here's some direction for you around these questions.

You want to reflect on your comfort zone and identify areas where you need to challenge yourself.

So what's a comfort zone in your learning?

Reflect on areas to where you need to challenge yourself.

And then I want you to maybe consider some specific goals for your learning.

A new skill, something new or something to expand your knowledge.

Okay.

That's around personal growth.

The second one is relationships.

Okay, here's what's hard in relationships.

Vulnerability and open communication.

I mean that's for most, not everybody, but it's just vulnerability in certain things and open communication you will run into those issues.

Okay, but here's what's harder.

Loneliness and disconnection.

So in this, I want these are some questions to consider as you're finding the hard.

Right.

That how do my actions impact my relationships with others?

Okay, that's your first question.

Question to consider in this hard around relationships.

Vulnerability, open communication.

That's hard.

Harder is loneliness and disconnection.

So first one is how do my actions impact my relationships with others?

The second question is what makes me feel most connected to my partner, my close friends, co workers, whatever?

What makes me feel most connected?

That's the question.

And then the third is how can I improve my communication in my relationships?

All right, that's a.

Those are, those are good questions.

They're real simple.

How can I improve my communication and relationships?

So here's the direction I'd like to give to you.

So assess the quality.

Right now I want you to think back, take those questions, sit down and assess the quality of your current relationships.

What's the quality of them?

And then identify areas where you can be more vulnerable or improve your communication.

And then I want you to, to consider having open conversations with loved ones about your needs.

Right.

And their needs.

So you want to really do an honest assessment here.

What do my current relationships look like?

I want to identify areas I can be more vulnerable, improve my communication and having open conversations with loved ones.

People that I know love me, care about me, and I want to know about my needs.

I'm going to share my needs with them and they and then find out about theirs.

Okay, Real simple.

So the first one I gave you was personal growth.

Second one's relationships.

Here's one for around career or your work in the fulfillment of it.

This is a big one.

Work fulfillment is so important.

And that's one of the things in the community we work on.

We work on the whole person being one person that does all the things to be fulfilled in your total life, not just part of it.

Okay?

So here's.

This is what's hard.

Pursuing passion and purpose.

Man, that can be hard.

But you know what's harder is settling for unfulfilling work.

Just doing what you can just because you have opposable thumbs, you know, just going after the other thing because the other is hard, because you don't want to have rejection again.

You don't want to hear someone say no again.

I mean, man, I get it.

But choosing hard is so important when it comes to the getting your head right that your skills and all that stuff and your heart, your passion, your human and getting those aligned.

That's where you're going to feel the flow and the function and you're going to feel that rewarding fulfillment that is so important to your life.

So here's some questions around this.

The first one is, do I find my current work or what I'm doing fulfilling?

That's question one.

Yes or no, right?

Second one is, what work achievements am I most proud of?

What are the things that I do that I'm just really proud of that work?

And then three, this is a.

This is a simple one.

I'm sure you've heard this before, but it's a big one.

If money wasn't an issue, what would my career look like?

What would I do?

What would I step into if money weren't an issue?

Now, don't get into, I know I suck at basketball.

And I'd be my.

If money weren't an issue, my career would be an NBA player.

Because I like the game.

Let's get realistic, right?

So that's not what we're talking about, all right?

We're talking about real skills, real things.

So let me give you some direction.

I want you to evaluate your current job or work satisfaction.

And then I want you to identify aspects of your work that align with your passions and your values or what you value, what do you cherish?

And then I want you to consider ways to incorporate more meaningful tasks into your current role.

Or I want you to start exploring other paths and other avenues that better align with your purpose.

It's that simple.

You need to maybe consider stepping in another direction is basically what I'm saying.

So number four, your fourth one that I'm going to give you here, so is around personal wellbeing.

So here's what's hard.

Prioritizing your self care and your mental health, right?

That's hard.

Here's what's harder, neglecting yourself to the point of burnout, that's even harder.

So to me that's important.

And here are some questions that you need to consider.

The first question is how do I manage distractions and organize my mental space in my thinking?

That's a big one, like what do I do to get this sorted?

Second question is how do I prevent burnout at work?

How do I work on it?

How do I do what's in my control from burning out?

If you're self employed or you're building a business, you're an entrepreneur, you've got to work on putting more of that in your control.

Especially if you got family and you got other things that you do and other priorities.

You also need to maybe include some hobbies that's going to help you with burnout.

But if you're not in control of your schedule or your work, these are things that you may have to do.

You may have to have a conversation with a boss, you have to take a long walk down short hallway and talk about it.

And if that's ultimately where you can't get what you need out of your job, which make sure you know it's a mental health issue and just you just want to be at home.

But if you can't get what you want, you may have to look at something different, right?

These are real things.

So then the third question is what activities make me feel most alive and why?

Not just what makes me feel alive, but you want to know why.

You want to get down to the why of it.

So I want you to assess your current self care routines and identify areas where you may be neglecting your physical or your mental health.

And I want you to consider implementing like new habits, new practices, things that will promote overall well being for you, you, yourself and you, such as exercise, just take a walk, Just a walk.

Just you could do a community walk around community, go to a school and walk around their track at a high school, go to a city park, whatever, just walk, go to the mall, walk around a mall, walk around a big shopping plaza, just walk, exercise.

You can meditate or you can find a hobby, go to a craft store, Michaels or something, pick up a Hobby, paint, sketch, draw, fish, anything that you can do, Pick up something.

So when you address questions like this and you follow, you know, you know some of the direction that I'm trying to give to you, you can, you can help yourself in the decision making process of doing hard, doing the hard things and choosing harder so that you're not doing the, you choosing the hard so you don't end up with the harder and the harder being negative.

And this will lead you to greater personal growth and greater fulfillment in your life.

Right.

So in a review, I mean, how many did I give you?

So I think I gave you.

Yeah, Personal growth, that's one.

Relationships, that's two.

Career fulfillment, that's three.

So I gave you four.

Personal wellbeing, right?

So as you're doing that, so it wasn't five, there's four of those.

Okay.

I want you to really just get yourself together around that.

So now you want to make a strategy for choosing that hard.

Here's what you do.

Set some goals, right?

Set some personal growth goals that's going to help you choose your hard.

Set your wellbeing goals, some career fulfillment goals, some relationship goals that is going to help you in the process of choosing your hard.

And then I want you to embrace the second thing that you need to do.

This is a strategy.

Set some goals around.

It is embrace the discomfort as a sign of growth.

So here's a strategy.

It's to be prepared to embrace the discomfort anytime you do something like this.

When you go through something that's hard, it's going to generate and create discomfort.

Embrace it.

Because that discomfort is a sign that you're growing.

The other part of that you want to have when you're going to take this on is you want to seek support from others.

And then you also want to make sure you take time to celebrate right when you do something.

So let's just say you're doing some sort of.

Let's just say you joined the community you're in, or if it's not my community that you're going to be in, where you're growing together with people, but in 2025, you do something, you re enroll in school or you learn, you're going to get certified in something.

And so you get on there and you knock out some modules and you know, or you pass the test or whatever, or you, you went to the gathering where you had to do some sort of group project and celebrate that it's not the end of the thing, it's just the thing that you've Done.

That gets you going.

It's generating momentum.

Here's a quote for you.

Often the dis.

The difference between a successful person and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his or her ideas to take a calculated risk and to act.

That's.

That's by Maxwell Maltz, and he has a great book.

And the title slips my mind right now, but I love that quote.

I just.

I love it.

And when you do hard, I just.

As I'm wrapping this up, I want you to know that there's more reward than there is where you feel stuck or frustrated.

Remember, life is hard, but it's harder if you're weak.

And if you're not developing.

That was Mark Twain.

And if you're not developing a muscle, if you're not pushing yourself.

Here's another quote.

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

That's Neil, Donald Walls, you, you, Walsh.

You got to push yourself.

And so remember, we're not talking about just putting yourself in chaos or anything.

We're talking about choose your hard.

Because things are going to be hard.

They're going to be hard or harder, and you have the ability to make that choice.

So the reward of choosing your hard, the greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but it's in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.

That was Michelangelo.

Think about that.

Setting your aim too low in achieving that mark.

I want you to choose hard.

I want you to be on purpose.

Choose hard.

Because by choosing your hard, you set yourself up for the growth that you want, for fulfilling relationships in a sense of purpose.

You got to remember that discomfort or the discomfort of the growth that you're going to have, it's just going to be temporary.

But the rewards, oh, they're lasting.

I mean, they last.

I want you to embrace that call to choose the hard.

Choose the hard best over the easy.

Good.

Choose your hard so you don't end up in the harder.

And like myself, don't give up on a relationship for me.

You may have been burned.

I was burned by a friend.

Burned deeply by a friend.

But that's okay.

I'm not going to quit because I have a different vision.

I'm going to learn, I'm going to grow, I'm going to get better, and I'm going to choose the hard thing.

I'm going to choose the hard thing.

That means I'm going to step back into relationships again.

I'm going to continue to grow those relationships.

I'm going to continue to seek out understanding and clarity and building and growing.

I'm going to continue to be able to sit down and have hard conversations.

I'm going to continue to be one that say or ask for forgiveness or say that I'm sorry and also extend the same to others.

But most importantly, to grow with someone.

And if that's you, I hope that you'll take that step.

Choose your heart.

Choose your heart today.

I know you can do it.

So until next time.

We'll talk soon.