81. I Didn't Know How to Turn It Off

I grew up in a traditional Japanese Shotokan dojo, studied dance, and then poured myself into academics and career with a level of intensity I'd now call maniacal. 

This episode is about the pain tolerance that I built — how it became the engine behind everything from bodybuilding competition prep to climbing the corporate ladder, and the moment I realized it had also cost me something. 

I get into what it means to be so good at enduring that you forget you're allowed to stop, the difference between discipline and control, and why making peace with your greatest strength means seeing its shadow too. 

If you've ever been told you work too hard and took it as a compliment — this one's for you.

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Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only.  This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.

Transcript

The Endurance Trap Question

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body Podcast. I am your host, Tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate creative, storyteller, and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome to the show. I am your host, Tiana, and on this episode, we're going to dive into what really happens when you get really, really good at enduring and you don't know how to turn it off. I'm going to say that again. What happens when you get really good at enduring, like enduring something, and you don't know how to turn it off? So on this episode, we're going to dive into this question and really explore what happens when you build a pain tolerance for yourself or when you cultivate discipline, which most of the time is reflected in a positive light, and how too much of that can actually become a negative. And what do you do in that instance? How do you recognize the signs and get off the ride and maintain control of your life?

Growing Up Inside A Dojo

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Now, in order for us to really dive into this, I need to take you back in time and tell you about my upbringing and how it's not a mystery to me at this point, but how I time after time after time always chose to do difficult things. I would always set the bar very high for myself. I would always choose the most difficult thing first. And much to my detriment, I have always been laser beam focused on whatever task or objective or goal or vision that I have set out for myself, almost in a maniacal fashion. Now I grew up in a karate school, and I don't mean that I took lessons on Saturday mornings and my cute little gi and my belt that I learned how to tie. No, no. My father owned a traditional Japanese Shotokan dojo, and that was the foundation for my world and for my existence. And from the karate school, I then shifted into dance training. And then from dance, I buried myself in my academics. And from my academics, and then became the most ambitious person you would ever meet once I got into the real world. And then I discovered competing in bodybuilding. And so as you can see, there is this common thread, this ongoing energy, this vibration of everything always being really, really hard. Because I knew that if I could succeed at something really, really hard, I would be well prepared for things that were a little bit easier. So let's go back in time, right? So we're we're thinking about the karate school. And at this point, I want to say the karate school I remember the most vividly. I was probably in first or second grade, maybe second grade when my dad opened this karate school. And from second grade all the way through seventh grade, most of seventh grade, we, meaning my brother and myself, we would go to the karate school after school and we'd hang out there. We'd usually have a snack from the deli, maybe um something like a chocolate hostess cupcake or some type of treat and something to drink. And then we would eventually change into our ghee and get ready for the kids' classes. And I remember there was always a younger kid class and then a bigger kid class. And then usually after that, he would drive us home and then we we wound up moving closer to the karate school and we could just walk home. Um, but I I spent a lot of my life in this place. I remember the sound of the wooden floor. It had this sort of creak to it. And the way that we, I say we like I did it, the way that my dad had the floor constructed, it was almost like a floating floor. So it had a lot of give to it, which made it nice when you are doing kata or when you're fighting on the floor because you're barefoot. Uh, and when you were doing anything with any sort of jump or anything with impact, it did not hurt as much. Uh, it was a little bit nicer on the joints. But I remember the way this room would smell, especially when the adults would start warming up in there. And, you know, we wore these white ghis. Sometimes my dad would wear a black one. If he had a black belt visiting, they would probably wear a black ghee as well. And we had a lot of different customs and traditions. You took your shoes off before you walked in, you bowed at the door, you bowed to every black belt in the room, you acknowledged the other people in the space. You bowed again if you had to leave the room. When you were spoken to, there were certain phrases you would use. There was a tonality to it, there were certain Japanese words and phrases that we had to learn and that we could only speak in Japanese when we wanted to say them. Uh, and there was just a lot of tension and structure, and it's not like the discipline was taught to you, it was the default. You had to have discipline, you had to be strict, you needed to adhere to all of the rules, to the policy, to the vibe, to the culture. Now, let me just say that this was very confusing for me as a child because my dad, outside of the karate school, was very goofy and very funny, very playful, kind of immature. He had me very young. And we did not have a lot of structure and rules at home. But in the karate school, everything was different. So it was almost like we had this, these two extremes that we all existed in because he was still my dad, but in the karate school, I had to call him sensei. And I had to speak to him just like everyone else did. I did not get any special treatment. In fact, I probably got treated worse because I was his daughter and he would use me as an example. Um I've remember one time using me, he used me as a demo person, and he kind of like threw me into a sheetrock wall. Dramatic effects, uh, probably 10 out of 10. Uh, emotional impact on me, horrible. And I've remember everything the postures, the silence, the way we had to sit kneeling. We couldn't move, we couldn't flinch, we couldn't blink our eyes. If you had, you know, sweat dripping down your face, you just had to let it drip, you couldn't wipe your sweat off. If you, you know, got a bloody nose, you just let it bleed all over the place. I mean, it was crazy. And yes, this was in the early 80s, and I think there's a different level of awareness and safety now, but also it was to the extreme. Now, I want to be clear. I don't want to paint this picture of any sort of abuse because it is a karate school and that we're talking about, I mean, and those things prepared me for the real world. They gave me uh a level of mental toughness, they gave me a way to protect myself, it gave me courage in certain instances, even now as an adult, and I definitely feel like I have a little bit more of an edge when I'm out in public, when I'm in a crowded place, having awareness, knowing my surroundings, and all of that comes from my very real lived experiences as a kid. But

When Karate Ends And Dance Begins

SPEAKER_00 8:27

at some point, I got kind of tired of the karate. And with my dad going to jail when I was 12, the karate school obviously shut down, and I resumed it probably around the age of 14. So there was about a year and a half, maybe two-year gap. My uncle started teaching not too far from where I lived in the Bronx. And so I would go to that practice a couple days a week, and then we wound up moving away, and it just became too complicated. But it also became really awkward for me because now I'm a little bit older. So I'm closer to 15 and 16 years old. I'm more developed. There are not as many girls in the class, so I'm I was always fighting boys, and I was not intimidated by it, but it did start to become more and more difficult because I just did not want to continuously be fighting with the boys. So I had to make a decision, and I chose to put all of my energy and effort into dance. Now there was an overlap period, and I will tell you that I wound up spraining my ankle. It was my first like real injury because I was dancing in a dance camp all day, and then I would go to karate at night, and it was just way too much for me, and I was fatigued and exhausted, and I wound up rolling my right ankle, and it has never been the same since. And that was when I was 15. But pouring myself into dance was equally as difficult. You had to keep that discipline level, that commitment. It was a different art form, but it had the same type of demands on my body and on my mind, maybe even more, because there was stretching, flexibility, technique. There were so many different modalities of dance that I was studying. And at times, I remember my mom even asking me, like, did I really need to go to dance class as much as I did? I remember when I finally committed to dance only, we did an unlimited sort of membership at the dance school. And so for a full school year, my sophomore year, I was going to the dance school five days a week, Monday through Thursday, and on Saturdays. And when I tell you, I basically lived there, I loved it, I would pack different outfits, I would have snacks. It was my life. And if I could have, I would have continued dancing all through college and maybe even gone on to more auditions. I did audition when I graduated from college and moved back to the city, but it's hard to go on auditions and be available for open calls when you have a full-time job. So that didn't really work out for me. But going back to the same sort of pain tolerance, the discipline, the commitment to be such a young person and to have so much drive, I commend myself for that. And I also wonder if maybe I could have had a little bit more fun when I was younger. Although I don't have any regrets. It's an interesting thought to contemplate. And maybe that's something that you might relate to at some point. Maybe you were committed to a sport or an activity and you realized, like, hey, I'm not having fun doing this anymore. And I missed all of these other experiences that other kids had because I was a practice or I was running drills, or I was traveling for my my team, or I was performing.

School As The Ticket Out

SPEAKER_00 12:01

And then the major shift, the biggest one of all, was realizing that I wasn't going to be a famous dancer. So I needed to also commit to school. And school was for me, it was the gateway to everything. It was my ticket to a better life. It was my ticket to freedom. Now, make no mistake, I had a really great stepdad, and I was very fortunate. My mom and stepdad did the best that they could, even dealing with a, you know, very emotional teenage girl, really upset about her dad being in prison. I think that they did a great job and with me and you know, provided me with a nice life and gave me the ability to get a great education and then apply for scholarships and get into a great college. But at five years old, before any of these changes had happened in my life, I had already made up my mind that I needed to get good grades in school so I could get a scholarship to a good college, so I could get a great degree, graduate in four years, get a job, move out, and be my own boss. Totally firstborn daughter, and similar, uh in a similar fashion, a lot of Virgos tend to be like that. They have a lot of ambition and drive. So mix all of that together with the ability for me to stay committed to something, the ability for me to have the discipline that I had with karate, with dance, and now pour all of that energy and effort into school and my academics. You already know I was a straight A student. And so thinking about the years that I spent in high school and college, I do wish that I had more fun. I look back at those times and I'm like, man, I was so crazy about studying and making sure that I got good grades and putting so much pressure on myself that I did not allow myself to enjoy anything. I remember even the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I had the opportunity, which I took to take a chemistry class at the local community college. And it was basically the whole month of June and the whole month of July. And you it was chemistry one and two. And I did that because my track of engineering at the school I went to, they were going to have my, I guess, my grade do the two courses jammed into one. And it was like Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 8 to 9:30. And so I got ahead of that, took the course over the summer at the community college, which was four days a week for eight weeks, and that allowed me to get college credits. They were a little bit cheaper because it was community college, and I was able to sleep in Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays because I had already done the chemistry. So I think that was a good decision on my part. However, looking back, I missed a whole summer because I was in school and then I also worked at a local hair salon and I was like the shampoo girl and I used to clean and I freaking loved it. Side note, if I could go back in time, I would have so many different careers. I love hair, I love makeup, I love skincare, I love massage, I also love the food and beverage business. I know that those are all really tough industries to be in because it's all service-based. But I work in service now. I'm a personal trainer. And so, yeah, I have so many interests, so many things I probably could have done and did really well for myself. But, you know, all of that is in hindsight, right? We look back at our life and we think about should have, would have, could've, but you didn't. And I didn't enjoy my summer, and I didn't enjoy college because I was so busy studying.

Engineering Grind And Self Punishment

SPEAKER_00 16:02

And let me tell you, college was really hard for me. I had to study. I had to be nuts. I had to be a maniac because I was not getting good grades. I barely, barely, barely survived after four years getting a mechanical engineering degree. It is probably the most difficult thing I've ever done. And a close second to that is the next thing I wanted to talk about right now, which is bodybuilding. And bodybuilding is something that I I discovered towards the end of college, but I knew I was getting myself into some hot water. So I figured, you know what, I'll just work out, but I'm not going to commit to doing any bodybuilding specifically or any, you know, modeling endeavors until that is all said and done. So it was once I got into the real world, once I got out into the workforce and I started making a little bit of money, I got my own gym membership. I eventually got a car. And then I could buy my own groceries, make my own food, go to the gym. I wasn't dancing anymore. I obviously wasn't doing karate anymore either. And now I'm working and I found my new hobby. So it went from martial arts to dance to bodybuilding with a nice big long break in there. I did dance in college, but it was more of an extracurricular activity that I did twice a week. It wasn't something where I was spending four hours in the ballet studio. And I say this long-winded story about all of these really hard things that I chose to do because throughout all of these years, through all of these experiences, I I built my pain tolerance. I learned how to just keep suffering. I would punish myself if I didn't get good grades, or I would beat myself up if I didn't remember choreography to a dance routine that I needed to present to my group. Because my extracurricular activity in college, we used to perform every once in a while. And so I was really hard on myself no matter what I did. And there was a part of me that eventually realized, like, girl, the only person torturing you is yourself. So going back to the question that I asked at the beginning of this episode, where I said, what happens when you get really good at enduring something and you don't know how to turn it off? Well, your body is either going to shut down on you and force you to turn it off, or you're gonna be faced with a really hard choice and some difficult consequences, and you're gonna have to figure it out. So, how do you turn it off? And I think for many of us, there's really something powerful about like naming the thing that you did good or bad, maybe it's neutral, and then looking at it through a different lens, making peace with it, realizing that regardless of if you're happy or upset that you made certain choices in your past, everything you did brought you to this point right here, right now, and it was meant for you. So when you're thinking about life, don't ask for an easier life. Ask for the strength. When you want to achieve something, there's pleasure, joy, excitement, and a level of self-respect that you build in the pursuit of building the thing.

Speed Without Soul In The AI Era

SPEAKER_00 19:50

We have AI now, which we've had for a while, by the way, but it's really rampantly being used. And the truth is it's not a magic pill, it doesn't fix shit because there's no soul there. And you could use AI in many capacities. I mean, the possibilities are endless for you to ramp up or speed up your process to get somewhere, but if it doesn't have your flavor, if it doesn't have your soul, and if it doesn't have your thought process, your creativity, your spice, it's going to be very flat and neutral when you get to that finish line. And who cares if you got there faster? If you don't know how you got there, like if you're on a road trip and you suddenly blink and you're at the destination, you missed the whole point of the journey, the whole point of being on a road trip, and you don't know how you got there, so you don't know how to get back. Do you ever think of that? I think the younger version of me might be confused about this episode and be like, you know, why are you talking about this like it's a negative? We were always winning. We had what it took, we got the job done, we were always on the A team.

The A Team Story At Lehman

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Uh oh, and let me tell you, when I worked for Lehman Brothers, I used to complain about this all the time because my boss and I, we were always the A team. So just so you can get a picture of what I'm talking about here. So Lehman Brothers, I started working for them as a third-party manager in the spring of 2007. So they were my client. My employer was another company. So Lehman was the client. And among their portfolio of office locations in Manhattan and Jersey City, we had I had one, two, three, four different locations that fell under my jurisdiction. So I was the assistant at first. And then I became the property manager. And then I had someone above me. And we had the same portfolio. So he oversaw me and maybe two other property managers. So he had like six or seven or eight different properties. And it still wasn't all of them. But within the portfolio, my boss and I were always the first ones to go. We were always the guinea pigs. We were always the first locations where they would test run a new initiative. I'll never forget when they brought out these really ridiculous recycling bins. They wanted to roll out a recycling initiative, which of course it's admirable. However, in New York City, back in those times, this was almost 20 years ago, New York City did not separate at collection. They would recycle off site. At least that's what I was told. So if I have that incorrect, that's what was happening in the properties we were in. So we rolled out these recycling bins and signage. However, when the cleaning people would come through, they would just throw everything in the same bin. And I remember that my boss and I, we were the first properties, my four little sites, we were the first location where they were rolling out the signage, the containers. We wanted to know how the client enjoyed the experience, if they appreciated it, if they hated it, if it was a waste of their time, if they thought the signage was great, if it was on brand. And I just remember asking him, why do they always pick us first? This is so annoying. It's giving us so much extra work. Like we have other things we need to be taken care of. And I remember he looked at me and he said, We're the ATMT. We are the best. And that's why. And it is so admirable to be the ones to go first because we're testing it out. We're going to tell everybody the do's and don'ts so that when they roll out their initiative, they can refine the process. So they're learning from all of the bangs, bruises, and mistakes that we're making in our rollout. And I know that maybe that sounds great to some people, but I was like, fuck this. I'm nobody's guinea pig. I've got more than enough work to do. And oh, by the way, pick somebody else. But anyway, I digress because yeah, being able to endure, being able to do, being the one to always be willing to go first, there is something admirable there. Now, I want to tie all of this together because this podcast is meant for

Three Prompts To Turn It Off

SPEAKER_00 24:51

you. And I always like to give you some things to nibble on and process, maybe journal or think about as you're going on your walk or taking your dog out for a walk. I want you to think about a couple of things. First, look at where your greatest strength doubles as your blind spot. Okay. The thing that makes you exceptional in one part of your life might be the same exact thing that's costing you in another. I know people who are fabulous at work. They are the A-team. But maybe other parts of their life, they're suffering. They don't get to go for walks or go to the gym as much or spend time with their kids. You know, I know other people who are thriving at the gym, but they keep starting and stopping their entrepreneurial journey or, you know, the offers they want to put out into the world or how they make money. And so this doesn't mean you get rid of the thing that you're really good at. It just means you have to get honest about it and consider maybe looking at the thing that you're the most proud of and asking yourself, where has this held me back in other areas of my life? Now, the second thing I want you to do is notice when discipline becomes control. They look almost identical from the outside, but discipline serves a purpose. And control can serve a fear. So the next time you're grinding something and people are around you are telling you maybe you need to slow down or you need to take a pause or you need to rethink things. Ask yourself, am I doing this because it matters, or am I doing it because if I stop, I'll feel like a failure? And lastly, probably the most important takeaway of this episode is give yourself permission to enjoy something that doesn't produce. It doesn't produce a result, it doesn't produce anything. It doesn't always have to be in service of a goal or to make money. You could go to a concert, you could book a trip, you could say yes to something that you've always wanted to do, but you feel silly about it and go and do that thing. Your pain tolerance is not going to diminish and it'll be there when you get back. It's not going anywhere. But the invitation to go live life might not come around again. So really sit with yourself and ask yourself if saying no to everything is serving your soul and your heart.

Choosing Joy And Closing

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Now, I started this episode off in my dad's karate school. Shoes off, bowing, saying the right things. And I want to say at the end of this episode, that I wouldn't trade any of it. Not the years of karate, or dancing, burying myself in textbooks, competing in bodybuilding shows, or in my career. All of those things built me. All of those things have made me who I am today, right now, this very second. And the thing that I'm the most proud of is not the pain tolerance that I have. It's the fact that I learned I don't need to use it all the time. It's knowing the difference between I can endure this, but I don't have to. So if this episode hit home for you, send it to somebody that you know could benefit from listening to this episode. And if you want to get in touch with me, please check the show notes for all of the possibilities and ways to do that. I have a newsletter, I have an Instagram account, and I'll see you on the next one.