How to build insane mental toughness in 75 days
I want you to think for a moment what your life would look like if you had doubled, or even tripled the level of discipline, confidence, self-belief, and self-worth that was available to you each day...
Would you SHOW UP in your business or career differently?
Would you show up in your RELATIONSHIPS differently?
Would you ENJOY life more?
Would you be able to CREATE that dream life for yourself?
Would you get MORE done?
This is an idea that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and working on in my own life, for quite a while now. So, in September 2020, Matty & I decided to take action and do something drastic to change our mental toughness and discipline, as I knew the results would influence EVERY area of my life for the better.
And so we jumped head first into a challenge called 75 Hard by Andy Frisella. It took us through to the end of November … & we’re just about to start the next phase TOMORROW.
Today I want to share more about my experience with you, because I learnt SO many incredible lessons over the last 75 days, and explain why we’ve decided to do the next phase.
Head to the bottom of this blog for the two podcast episodes I recommend to listen to if you’re thinking of trying The LIVE HARD program out.
One is if you’ve never done the 75 hard before.
The other is only for those who have successfully completed the 75 hard, and are ready for the next test to push the boundaries.
This is something people need to get reprogrammed and recentered, something great to start as we enter a new year too! I believe a program like this is an essential part of our goal setting - look at it as a lifetime program that you’ll do every year (and all the phases).
My question to you is: Are your goals and dreams important to you? Is your life important to you?
My life and goals are worth it to me. This is a recalibration tool. Its a way to wake up in my opinion.
PS. Best thing about this program, is its FREE.
DISCLAIMER: When I first heard of this challenge I thought it was completely absurd and ridiculous. I thought the people doing it were extreme, I said I would never do it & I was seriously triggered by the sound and thought of it. I first heard of it in Feb 2020… It took me until September to come around understand the deeper meaning of this program (and why I was so challenged by it).
How I ended up doing it - my chiropractor and all his patients decided to do it together and initially I said “NOPE NO WAY”. I went home and Matt and I spoke about how gnarly it was of them. Then at my next adjustment appointment, I was told to just listen to the first podcast… haha…
I laugh because once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. Once you know what you know, its hard to not want to at least try… I would be very surprised to meet someone who doesn’t have a slight interest in giving it a go after the podcast episode. So, I listened to it and was majorly triggered again by my internal dialogue…
ME: “Ok, i’ll do it”
ALSO ME: “Nup no way” - * 5 minutes later *
ME AGAIN: “Stop being a little bitch Chani, why won’t I just do it”
ME: “It sounds hard & way too extreme I have enough on my plate”
ME: “Thats exactly why I need to do it, ok lets do it”
ME: “I’ve decided I’m just not going to do it” - * To Matt the next day *
ME: “OMG you’ll never win with that attitude” - *2 days later *
ME: “F%&! it - I’m doing it” - *4 days later *
I couldn't believe my inner talk. I never talk to myself like this. I’m Chani frekin Thompson I get shit done and win at everything I put my mind to… what was happening to me?
I have SO much control over my inner mean girl… I couldn’t believe this was happening.
So to shut her up, I did it just to piss her off (that’s the fiery & competitive Aries in me).
Yep… 😆
What is 75 Hard?
75 Hard is a mental toughness challenge that involves completing 5 basic tasks each day for 75 days. The idea is that you need to complete each of the 5 tasks exactly as described (NO you can’t change them in anyway, you cannot alter them to suit your life, you cannot do it for less amount of time, you cannot decide to the bend the rules. The rules are the rules. ), and if you miss any one of the tasks you must start again from day 1.
It’s all about building strong discipline and a serious level of trust with yourself.
This isn’t a body transformation program, it is purely a mental toughness challenge to push yourself out of your comfort zone and beat the voice inside your head that’s stopping you from reaching your greatest potential.
The goal is to build discipline and mental toughness by keeping the promises you make to yourself each day, to follow basic instructions which LOTS of people seriously struggle to do & prove to yourself your life is important to you.
The 5 tasks to complete are:
Follow a diet of your choice - every day - no cheat meals, no off days.
Drink a gallon of water each day (3.8L) - other liquids don’t count, water is water.
Workout twice a day for 45 mins each - they must be two separate workouts at different times of the day and one must be outdoors, rain, hail or shine. And no you cannot do 2 x 45 minutes together or shave time off your second workout just because your first one was longer.
Read 10 pages of a non-fiction book each day - kindles do not count, audio books also do not count.
Take a progress picture every day - and yes if you forget to take a photo, you start from the beginning.
These tasks aren’t exactly complex or difficult on their own, in fact they’re all “easy”… But completing all of them, every single day, without missing a single day or changing them at all, is what can get challenging!
What is the next phase?
The next phase apart of the Live Hard program is called Phase 1 (there is also a Phase 2 and a Phase 3… which I plan on doing later this year also).
The tasks to complete for Phase 1 are:
All of the 5 tasks from The 75 hard program
A 5 minute cold shower daily
3 Power Tasks that you must complete each day
10 minutes of visualisation
Why am I doing it? Why the hell not…
I have HUGE goals for 2021. Bigger than my goals I set for 2020. You’re not just born with the traits, characteristics and qualities you need to be successful. You don’t automatically have grit, confidence, persistence to keep going when you fail & the ability to PUSH through hard things.
Mental toughness is a skill not a trait.
And to acquire that skill… you must go through hard things to build that muscle.
The reason why successful people are successful is because they have what it takes to push through when shit gets hard, and the only reason they have that ability is because they’ve conquered hard things before.
So you bet I’ll be doing all 3 phases this year.
My experience with 75 Hard:
I initially did the 75 Hard program because I wanted to on purpose, stretch myself & put myself in uncomfortable situations and prove to myself I have the mental toughness to do whatever it is I want. I didn’t do it for weightloss although I finished up with amazing results physically (see below). I also want both my mind & body to be in peak state for both my business & as I prepare my body to start a family one day soon.
I heard a podcast recently that said women who are not pregnant or nursing, are in “trimester zero” meaning your body is in prep mode to birth a baby. When I heard that I thought… holy shit… I need to be in peak state for when my time comes!! We want to start a family in the next couple of years so now is the time to start looking after my body more than ever - that makes total sense to me.
I also had some incredibly large business goals I wanted to achieve by the end of 2020, and you guys always hear me talk about how to create the life you want, you need to show up as your next level self, and so I saw this as a way I would evolve into the future Chani Thompson I knew I was destined to be.
Honestly, its the hardest and best thing I've ever done in my life.
Every body who wants to be somebody, needs this in their life. If you want to be a better mother / father , wife / husband, business owner, millionaire, billionaire, industry expert, community leader or just a better version of you mentally / physically / spiritually … if you want to improve in ANYTHING or in ANY AREA of your life. You need this. Everybody needs this program & they need it in their life at least once per year minimum.
People just need this.
Its crazy how many conversations I had with people who were inspired to do this program once they saw me doing it, but had their own “T&C’s” or rules or alterations to their version of it. If you listen to the podcast, you’ll hear Andy explain how this is the first thing people will do.
“I’ll wait until _____ date because I have ____ event”
“I can’t drink 1 Gallon, that’s not healthy for my body size, so I’m changing it to____”
“I work so much more than most, I’m time poor, so I’ll do a 90 minute workout instead all at once”
“I’ll sit in a sauna and sweat just as much as a workout so that’s one of my workouts”
“75 days is excessive, I’m doing a 30 day version instead”
“I’m dyslexic so I am doing audible instead”
👎👎👎👎👎👎👎
Sorry to break it to you… you haven’t completed the program if you don’t follow the basic and simple rules. I personally think this is why so many people can’t achieve their goals & why they continue to successfully fail at most things in their life. Most people can’t for the life of them just follow simple, basic, easy to follow instructions.
The reason you’re altering the program or making an excuse about it, is the exact reason why you need this.
You’ve never tried hard enough to do life differently… to teach yourself another way, to push yourself outside of your comfort zone or to keep a simple promise to yourself.
The first thing your brain will want to do is alter the rules or justify the reason why you’re doing it your own way. Just don’t. Just follow the program.
How I did it:
Diet wise, I removed dairy, took my Juice Plus capsules (fruit, veggies, berries, omegas) and whole food complete shake daily PLUS followed a 16:8 intermittent fasting routine. I still haven’t drunk any alcohol since September last year … something just clicked for me inside me and I realised I was being peer pressured to drink alcohol in situations when I really didn’t want to. So now I don’t (I only will when and if I really feel like it, but I don’t know when that will be)!
The water was MY HARD. Holy moly. I just didn’t drink enough water believe it or not, if you could fault me anywhere in my wellness it was my water intake. I would be so tunnel vision on my work I would forget to drink, and my body just didn’t ask for water strangely enough, and so a normal day for me was 1 cup of water all day. CRAZY, I know. I hated this part so frekin much, most nights (I’m going to say 80% of the time) I was skulling 2L of water just before bed. This was the hardest part for me.
I love the health benefits drinking so much water gave me though:My skin no longer is dry AF. I spend hundreds on beautiful essential natural body oils to hydrate my skin… I literally don’t need them anymore for my dry skin, I just use it to smell good now
I excreted soooo many toxins from my body, I saw improvements in my gut health, my skin cleared up and I know its why I lost so much body fat too (did you know your fat excretes your body via your urinary system?!?)
Without TMI, my natural oils in my body kicked in which was something I sooo wasn’t expecting, including my natural hair oils. My hair isn’t as dry!
My workouts consisted of power walks, F45 and The HSE gym workouts from our exercise guide. It only rained once which was kind of a bummer I was looking forward to a rain workout, it only sprinkled that one time and I had to walk outside. Some days I was so busy though, that Matt and I found ourselves walking at 11pm at night for 45 minutes (I like to be in bed by 9pm so this was horrific for me!!!). Some walks your body is just so tired and you could be deeply asleep but that’s what it takes sometimes, its not fun, but if your life is full like mine, that’s just what it takes.
Books: I read “ “High Performance Habits” by Brendon Bruchard, “Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself” by Joe Dispenza & started “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle
Progress shots, I used the 75 hard app. I think it was $3. WORTH IT. It stores all your info in there and lets you tick everything off daily as you go plus you can set up reminders so you don’t go to sleep without forgetting to complete one of the tasks (a friend of mine forgot to take her photo one night which was seriously brutal, she had to start at day 1 a few weeks in)
The hardest part:
100000% hands down the water intake for me. Like I mentioned before this is something I've struggled with forever. I have tried so many things in the past to try and drink more water. I’ve bought water bottles that are $200 that remind me to drink, alarms, reminders, rules like “must drink 2L before 2PM"… None of which worked.
So yes, I was skulling 2L of water most nights at 11pm, 12am sometimes even 1am before I could go to sleep. You’d think by day 75 I would have nailed the water intake… haha… I didn’t. I still drank all night and pee’d all night meaning broken sleep and a very grumpy Chani.
What my body DOES now though which is amazing, is it asks me for water. I’m actually thirsty everyday! Im easily drinking about 2L per day naturally now which is a huge up level for me and my little 1 cup of water per day. I didn’t realise how dehydrated I was and how much my body was suffering from not drinking enough water.
What I gained:
My relationship with Matty is so much stronger, and our marriage has jumped leaps and bounds because of this program. We didn’t need to “work” on anything, but those late night walks meant catching up most nights after a hectic day and actually connecting phone free, not to mention hilarious banter and belly laughs (which is so healthy after a long day AND after dinner too for digestion incase you didn’t know), deep and meaningfuls about topics we had never in our 7 years together spoken about. We learnt a lot about each other plus, our encouragement to one another when it got hard some days was such a huge part of this challenge being completed, I don’t know if I could have finished it without Matt. It was beautiful. Highly recommend doing this with your partner if possible.
So many health benefits from drinking enough water finally, internally and externally. I get headaches now if I don’t drink water which is crazy to think my body wasn’t in tune prior like that.
I learnt and read so much, more than I ever have before! I listened to so many podcasts on my morning walks when I was solo too. The ripple effect of this that it had on my team from my trainings is invaluable.
My workflow improved and I now crush my work schedule like a boss (you end up being a super time wizard after this for sure).
I’ve now realised how much dairy effects me, gut wise and brain wise. I’ve cut it out for good!
SO MUCH CLARITY from no alcohol. Some of my best business decisions and ideas came out of this challenge. I understood things more clearly, I problem solved like I never have before and I seriously thought up of one the BEST frekin campaigns that I’m excited to announce later this month, that I know will make huge impact in SO MANY LIVES. I’ve been asking the universe for years to send me a message around how I could create more impact by giving… and holy moly, I now have it in my hot little hands. I know the clarity my brain has had is the reason why it finally came to me.
We decided to get a high level performance coach on one of out late night walk talks and that in itself has insanely grown our business in just 3 short months.
More appreciation for my body and treating it with the respect it deserves.
Most importantly, trust. I trust myself. I know I can and will achieve all of my goals that I set because of this. I have next level mental toughness meaning I know I can get through hard times.
I highly recommend for you to at least listen to this first podcast episode to see if it could be something for you.
The second episode is for those of you who have completed 75 HARD and you’re ready to complete PHASE 1.
Let me know your take aways, questions, results if you’ve done it or anything else you’d love to add in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.
I hope this has served you,
Chani x