Grit Is a Health Tool: Daniel Gospodarek on Resilience, Recovery & Healthspan

When it comes to extending your healthspan, most people focus on the physical pillars—exercise, nutrition, sleep. But there’s one mental trait that quietly drives it all: grit.

In this episode, Aaron Shaw is joined by Licensed Clinical Social Worker Daniel Gospodarek, founder of Revitalize Mental Health. Daniel shares his extraordinary story of surviving a traumatic brain injury at age 17 and how that experience shaped his work with men, first responders, and veterans today.

Together, they explore how grit helps us face adversity, why reflection builds resilience, and how endurance—not intensity—is the key to lasting transformation.

🎙️ You’ll Learn:

• How to redefine grit beyond “toughness”
• The role of adversity in personal growth
• Why consistency and small wins matter most
• How trauma-informed therapy fosters long-term healing
• One mindset shift you can make today to build your own grit

🛠️ Bonus: Daniel shares a powerful take-home insight you can apply right now to strengthen your mental and emotional durability.

Links & Resources:

Learn more from Daniel Gospodarek on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and his website https://www.revitalizementalhealth.com

https://www.instagram.com/revitalize_mentalhealth/ 

https://www.facebook.com/people/Revitalize-Mental-Health/100069066712379/ 

More from Aaron – https://www.HealthspanPillars.com

See Coach Aaron behind the scenes in this daily YouTube VLOG on his own health and fitness journey. Subscribe, engage, and extend your healthspan. 

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Transcript

Well when it comes to living longer and living better, most of us focus on diet, sleep, exercise, but there's another trait that sometimes doesn't get quite enough attention and that is grit. It's not just mental toughness, but it's really the ability to overcome challenges for long periods of time, keep on pushing through, even when things get hard. And life is always hard, there's always a roadblock. And really I think that grit may actually be

almost like a secret weapon in our toolbox for an extended lifespan and health span. And today we're gonna dig into grit. I've got a special guest to help me do that. Daniel Gospodarek is with us. So I'm gonna give him a formal introduction, but first I wanna welcome you, the listeners, to HealthSpan Digest. This podcast is really focused on extending our health span. Health span is the length of time within our lifespan that we are healthy, active,

vibrant and we've really focused on the pillars of HealthSpan. This is exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional well-being and preventative care. My name is Aaron Shaw and I've been coaching HealthSpan and I've been occupational therapist and strength coach going on 30 years now, which is always a little bit breathtaking to say that but yes, been three decades that I've been doing this and grit is something that's been a

point of interest for me for a long time because I've been I've been called gritty before and when I first heard that I didn't know if that was good or bad and I don't really know what that meant and then as I've learned more about it I wanted to cultivate that

Daniel Gospodarek (01:34)

enough

Aaron Shaw (01:39)

Today we're honored to have Daniel with us. He is a licensed clinical social worker and founder of Revitalize Mental Health. This is based in Kenosha, Wisconsin. And he's gonna draw from his personal journey recovering from a traumatic brain injury. This really has helped him dedicate his career

to helping men, first responders, and military personnel navigate the complexities of trauma and mental health. He's got a really integrative approach, combining various modalities and therapeutic techniques, which we'll hear a little bit about today. And these techniques help foster healing and resilience. And what's interesting with, when I first started to learn a little bit about Daniel was that his story really has, I think, grit kind of woven.

woven into it to be where he is today. So that's why welcome Daniel for the podcast. Daniel, thank you for taking the time this morning to chat a little bit about.

Daniel Gospodarek (02:34)

Yeah. Thank you for having me on the show, Aaron. I'm excited to talk about this topic that again, I think sometimes it's not talked about enough or sometimes if it's talked about, it's just kind of seen as or talked about as just kind of being like stubborn or, know, and like there might be some stubborn qualities to it, but there are, ⁓ there's many different approaches to grit and what it can look like and how it can be used.

It's not just like bull heading through something.

Aaron Shaw (03:06)

interesting from somebody who's possibly accused of being bullheaded from time to time. Well tell us a little bit about your story if you don't mind sharing a little bit of your personal story. how did you end up doing what you're doing now?

Daniel Gospodarek (03:19)

Yeah. So July, 2009, I was a passenger in a one car rollover and we rolled, I think it was four times. ⁓ after, after the vehicle lost control, I blacked out. So I don't remember anything until I woke up three days later in the, in the ICU room. So, ⁓ but from that point, I had to have a craniotomy because of a brain bleed on my left temporal lobe. ⁓ cause of the brain bleed, there was a stroke.

Um, in my left prefrontal cortex or my left prefrontal lobe as well. And then fractured skull collapsed lung. Um, and then some, you know, more, less severe just cuts and stuff like that. Um, just from the accident itself, but you don't, so I didn't know anything like that had happened, right? I'm just start coming, kind of coming to and making sense of it all. And then did.

It kind of like overview of everything, right? So 10 days ICU, seven days inpatient rehab, did some OT in there too. So shout out to the OTs, cause what they do is, is crucial in supporting people on that recovery process. ⁓ And then did three months of outpatient physical therapy as well as 17 months of speech therapy after that. So, you know, was, it's a, again, it's kind of that long game.

Even though being 17 when the accident happened, I wanted to be at that end game within a week because it was not fun, right?

Aaron Shaw (04:51)

Yeah,

probably even more so as a 17 year old where maybe you don't have quite enough wisdom and life experience to realize some of the big things happen over a long period of time.

Daniel Gospodarek (04:59)

Right.

Right, right. And you also don't want to take the wisdom when people that are older than you giving it to you because you're like, you know, kind of like middle finger, like I want this now. Right. I remember the, was one of, one of the doctors in the ICU room said like, Hey, you probably, you know, I had my senior year was coming up because this was July. So, you know, end of August.

They're like, you probably won't graduate with your graduating or with the cohort that you started high school with. And I don't know where it came from. I don't know if it was maybe that bullheadedness at that time, but I was like, no, I will. And I ended up doing it. But coming as a 17 year old, right? Like adversity can be extremely humbling too. know, 17 year old, pretty high functioning in terms of the independence and things like that, especially with mobility.

You know, not needing help for a lot of things. then my first steps after the accident were holding onto a wheelchair. And then I had three nurses around me with a gate belt on, you know, and for people who don't know, like the gate belt is just something you put around your waist. the healthcare professionals can hold onto it. So in case you start to go down, they can either hold you or let you down easy. um, you know, it was like, wow, like, you know, going from this level of life to like literally relearn.

not relearning how to walk, using some of the muscles that had atrophied over 10 days of being in an ICU bed. ⁓ It's quite astonishing what happens to the body.

Aaron Shaw (06:37)

amazing. Do you feel today like if you met your back where you're supposed to be here do you feel like things have changed or how long did that process take before you felt like okay I'm I've caught up

Daniel Gospodarek (06:50)

Yeah, it was probably like, uh, it varied for different, different symptoms, I guess you could say, right? Like I still like, don't want to get hit in the head because I'm at a higher propensity of concussions, right? So I don't want that to happen ever. Right. So that won't, that will never touch up. Right. Um, but the fatigue that often accompanies TBIs was quite significant for me to the point where.

Aaron Shaw (07:08)

That's good advice for everybody.

Daniel Gospodarek (07:19)

I would go take a shower and I would have to take a nap afterwards while I was on the inpatient rehab floor. And then I was sleeping after I got discharged, after I was discharged, six to 14, 16 hours a day. And that was like, that was, that was a good rip. Like for me, like I would sleep, you know, 12, 13 hours at night, go to school for the first like two and a half hours of the day, come back, take a two, three hour nap, wake up. And then by that time, like my circadian rhythm was already ready to go back to bed in the evening, you know.

⁓ So that probably took a good two and a half years to really kick down to like where like, okay, I can actually stay out late or, you know, do something like that with friends on campus. ⁓ And then sometimes the fogginess that probably was more of like nine to 12 months in terms of like brain fog starting to, starting to subside.

Aaron Shaw (08:15)

This is

a long, long process. mean, one obviously not of your choosing. And I think that ⁓ I'll throw in a quote here from Angela Duckworth, who's ⁓ anybody's listening hasn't heard of her out. She's got a really great Ted talk and a book about grit, but passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. That's nice. And also she says that living life like a marathon, not a sprint, which is hard.

Daniel Gospodarek (08:18)

yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Shaw (08:43)

for a 17 year old. And I would say even for those of us that are in middle age, think that we, it's our bodies change it feel, know, there are things that happens as we age, but sometimes in our mind, I'm still a 17 year old in my brain. And so there's still like this impatient, impatience with like, want the thing now. I don't want to take, you know, what it's going to take months or weeks or, you know, years to achieve a certain goal. That is.

Daniel Gospodarek (09:07)

Years, ⁓

Aaron Shaw (09:12)

In a sense, from my perspective of like that is grit, you have to a certain amount of grit to keep on pushing through with that.

Daniel Gospodarek (09:24)

Yeah. Yeah. And I think like, it's interesting, right? Like we don't choose adversity often. It usually chooses us or happens, you know, from uncertainty. And sometimes even when you, depending on your age, depending on your life experiences, right? Like we may not even know that we have it until after we go through something and then we reflect on something. And I, and I think like that is.

Something that was very crucial for my development of the grit was I didn't drown out in, you know, social media or the noise or anything. Right. I was, I was just sitting like, this, this is my jam. I'll sit and sit in the weight room. Right. It gets, yeah, there might be music on, but it was just me. Right.

Aaron Shaw (10:16)

It's kind of reflective.

Daniel Gospodarek (10:17)

Yeah. And like you, find that and that's something I often, I often talk about like with, with clients is the difference between like isolation and solitude and going back and forth where like isolation is maybe more of like, distancing yourself and solitude definitely has distancing, but it has more of a purpose, right? Solitude has like, maybe there's an end goal of like some sort of reflection or meditation or mindfulness. And, you know, those are two very different things, even though, even though

You know, if you saw somebody just, you know, sitting by himself on a park bench, like you wouldn't know whether it was isolation or solitude unless you knew them. Right. But sometimes we need to, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like what's the, what's the purpose or how is it functioning right for that person? And I, and I think like one of the ways to really

Aaron Shaw (10:56)

Right? It's like, what's going on in the inside brain?

Daniel Gospodarek (11:12)

almost like, like, what was it like a dead poet society, I think, right? Like, like with the bone marrow of life, right? Like we need to be in that quiet so that we can reflect and look and be like, wow, like that took a lot of energy to go through with whatever it was, right? It could be like a illness, cancer, or

Maybe somebody lost their house in a tornado or something like that. Those are massive things that most people probably won't have to endure. But we can also take the life lessons that come with them because one of the things that happens in life is that adversity will most likely come back in different forms at some point.

Aaron Shaw (11:58)

Yeah, and it seems like this is a great sort of segue into the idea of reflecting on things that we have been through. Because I would agree that sometimes it's hard in the moment to appreciate kind of how resilient we are in what we're like. When there's discomfort, and I think that a lot of my clients and friends and myself and family and so on, it's easy to say...

it's been a really tough day or this thing happened, I had a loss, I had a challenge and it's so frustrating and I feel overwhelmed. And in that moment, it's hard to say, and I'm gritty and I'm resilient, because you're kind of in the moment of the stress. I'd be curious how you utilize this with your clients, but the capacity to take pause and reflect and look back and say, and yet you're here today and we could probably list off a dozen challenges that are

the thousands of challenges that you've had in your life. You've had work challenges, you've had really terrible days, you've had super stressful situations, you've had natural disaster, like all of these things have happened and yet here you are.

Daniel Gospodarek (13:00)

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. And it's something I'm very, I'm very mindful of in the therapeutic setting to not like

preempt them to say it because it means a lot more if it just comes internally from yourself, right? Versus like if somebody were to implant it, like, you have a lot of I don't want to patronize. don't want to talk down or have a paternalistic view, right? Like, what does it mean for you that you went through that, right? Or I wonder how somebody else, like an outsider, would view what you went through.

Right. To get them to like think in terms of what, what meaning does this have for myself, my family, those that, those that care about me, those I care about. Right.

Aaron Shaw (14:01)

So tell

me a little bit about your clients. What are some unique challenges that the clients that you see face? What's unique to them?

Daniel Gospodarek (14:15)

So for my clients, I primarily work with men. I do work with some women, you know, focus on working with men. And I think it's the unique challenges are being a man or identifying as a male in this world.

in existing inside these societal dynamics and then also creating how each person, each individual will create their own kind of defense strategies to manage stress, to manage emotion, to manage trauma or trauma symptoms, right? Whatever it might be, know, manage grief or loss, right? And in therapy, it's never really like the same.

same person, right? It's everybody's unique. Everybody's defense mechanisms are subtly, subtly different. So figuring out how do we decouple some of those defense mechanisms. And some of them might be like control tendencies. Some of them might be escape tendencies. Some of them might be avoidant tendencies, right? Otherwise we just have like general suppression or repression. ⁓ and then, being in the present moment and then decoupling from some of those defense strategies.

so they can feel whatever's on the other end of.

to know that, to help the body get to a space where it feels safe, where it feels calm, right? Where it's regulated, the nervous system is regulated so that they're in this ventral state of the nervous system and their body is like, I can maybe glance at that pain or notice some of that internal discomfort that I know I always had, but I've never been able to acknowledge it.

Aaron Shaw (16:05)

interesting. So do you feel there's or how do you identify when the moment comes when a client has the tools that they need?

Daniel Gospodarek (16:16)

that's a great question. I just, we just track the body. Right. So, so we will start with like moving the body into more resource, more like stability, more calm. And then the body knows what it needs. Right. Like if you cut your finger and you're cutting carrots and it's just like a Nick, the, the, don't consciously need to tell your body to heal. It knows what it needs to do. It's all these thoughts around like.

Maybe I could have been a better, you know, firing buddy in that my buddy wouldn't have died. Or, you know, if I would have arrived on scene three minutes earlier, that child wouldn't have, wouldn't have passed away. Right. So like all these different pieces are even like the regret around not being able to make children's events or, you know, maybe missing time. just making, you know, making stuff up. Right. But it's those little pieces that get in there and they kind of like infect that cut.

or infect that other body's processing of that situation that then create like more of these trauma symptoms or stress or overwhelm or guilt, shame. And then that's what we work on decoupling from. And then we recouple like, wow, maybe I am actually a pretty good dad, but I also need to provide for my family and I can't be everything right now. Right.

Aaron Shaw (17:40)

So when somebody's in a...

terminology be in a moment of crisis I assume when people first come to see you at the probably in some sort of heightened sense to make that phone call make that appointment take initiative to come in when somebody's at that point how is there a length of time that a typical client you could help them navigate from being in this state of having an obstacle can't get through work through something until you feel like this is probably going to take

Daniel Gospodarek (17:56)

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Shaw (18:15)

to help you build some tools so you can be not bulletproof, but have the tools to deal with the next thing that.

Daniel Gospodarek (18:17)

Jesus.

So I'll say yes and no, because that's how therapy works, right? ⁓

think sometimes people just coming to their first one or two sessions can just feel a little bit of hope, right? And, relief. And that's what we want to take. And we want to expand that relief inside the body inside so that they can connect with it. So that relief can spread, you know, maybe they feel it in their chest. Maybe we can spread it to their shoulders so their shoulders can drop. Right. I will say that like,

Usually the childhood dynamics of trauma and neglect, abuse typically take a little bit longer of a time to stabilize because those are very ingrained neural networks and that's impacting brain development and everything like that age of onset. ⁓ but usually in one to two sessions, we can start, you know, slowing that body's response down so that it's not idling at, you know,

5,000 RPMs right about to hit the red line, but more so idling at four, three. And now we can start. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's what we want to do with the nervous system and therapy is bring back that flexibility. We don't want it to be just locked in because then you're going to be locked in when you're trying to spend time with your kids or trying to do like a work project that needs some level of creativity.

Aaron Shaw (19:38)

a little bit of bandwidth.

Daniel Gospodarek (19:57)

And it's be hard to access those resources when you're just like in that fight, fight or freeze response. Right. So we want to bring back that flexibility so that if you need to go into fight or flight, you can. But also when you're with your children, you can be in that ventral state of connected.

Aaron Shaw (20:17)

Yeah. Do you have a success story? You think of somebody that, again, I want to kind of frame this a little bit, that seen as there's so many directions we could go here. know, a social worker in an OT talking, it's like, yeah, whatever. But I think to stay respectful to this general concept of grit, which I think is interesting, is going into all the stuff that we do for sure. But is there a story where you can aside from your own, which is clear?

Daniel Gospodarek (20:23)

Really.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

Thank

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Aaron Shaw (20:49)

of some client that you either help develop their grit or help them reflect and real help them maybe sometimes recognize, ⁓ I am actually, I forgot that I'm tough or that I do have this risk against me. Is there somebody you could explain, talk that through?

Daniel Gospodarek (21:01)

Yeah.

Yeah. And, I have to obviously keep it general for, for HIPPA and stuff like that. But I think we, we often forget about the, maybe the more nuanced things that can create grit. So I do EMDR therapy as well as somatic experiencing therapy. So EMDR is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. And there've, there've been a few people where we've worked on one memory for three months weekly.

to reprocess and it's maybe not like, I mean, just that three month gap, Is that kind of fosters grit of working through a traumatic memory and showing up and putting in the effort and the work, right? And then it's also like getting to this other side of like, I wasn't really showing how to be X, Y, Z in that memory, but now I am.

and I can ask that person for forgiveness, right? So does it, doesn't always translate to grit, right? But it might translate to like, I actually have the self-confidence and the self-esteem that I never thought I had, right? So that grit is just interwoven in different terminology, right?

Aaron Shaw (22:30)

Yeah, feel like, yeah, grit is, it means, I think that we, it's easy to have like a general sense of what that means. Like, oh yeah, you know, you're tough and you kind of, you're bullheaded as we talked about at beginning, or you can kind of push through some things without saying the word grit. But I think that it's worth pointing out and I can think of like with my coaching clients and people who I talk to are like maybe prospective coaching clients helping.

Daniel Gospodarek (22:49)

Yeah.

Aaron Shaw (22:59)

people identify that for, like in your example you just said, like to work on something for three months and maybe still feel like, you know, I still gotta work through it, I still gotta work through it, still have some, you know, this is uncomfortable when I still work through it. I could see how there's two perspectives of that, as one is an individual could still feel like, yeah, but I'm not successful, I'm not through it yet, and I'm not doing it. And yet if it keeps showing up and trying, like that is the grit.

Daniel Gospodarek (23:27)

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Shaw (23:28)

is the showing

up more so than the fixing something, is probably not the right word to use, but I think about that with clients that I work with, and again, I'm not dealing with directly the emotional trauma, but certainly habits and decision-making and consequences thereof and consequences of aging and injury and so on, to really reward and help people find

Daniel Gospodarek (23:51)

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Shaw (23:57)

an internal reward for the process. First is like, don't wait to celebrate until you, the scale says a certain thing or you have a certain weight or you run a certain distance. Like that's the outcome. You celebrate, you wake up today, I got this tough thing, the weather's not good, I don't feel super motivated, but I kind of push through and do it anyhow. To me, like that's what I want to celebrate. That's what I want to say.

Daniel Gospodarek (24:00)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Shaw (24:27)

you're going to be okay because of not so much, you know, a year from now, but it's like today you're doing this tough thing and there's friction to it and yet you push through. And I think it's hard. Maybe this is human nature to go back to our 17 year old selves where it's, I want it immediate. I want it now. Don't tell me I can't do it. It's, it's sometimes harder to get people to say to, or to, that I say this for myself as well, even though I can preach about it all day long, it's harder to say, okay.

Daniel Gospodarek (24:36)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Shaw (24:58)

I'm not there yet, wherever there is, but I'm gonna push through this. It's uncomfortable.

Daniel Gospodarek (25:03)

Yeah.

Yeah, just kind of keep working with your head down, right? It is very hard because you constantly, and I even catch myself too, wanting to look up and be like, are we there? Is it good? And I think some of it is human nature. And some of it is remembering that this is the long game.

Aaron Shaw (25:09)

That's hard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Daniel Gospodarek (25:33)

And like I listened to a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk. and he, I mean, he's not talking to me. He's talking to millions of listeners, but he helps me so much. ⁓ okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's who that's, that was the Aaron he mentioned. ⁓ but like he, he just helps me kind of keep like the reality of maybe working on this for two years. Like that's a blip in time.

Aaron Shaw (25:46)

It's not gonna be actually, so. ⁓

Daniel Gospodarek (26:03)

you know, putting it into like more realistic expectations. Cause I think like the media, social media, specifically the news, even TV, like they make everything seem so instantaneous. And.

Aaron Shaw (26:21)

on fire immediately right now. Hurry up, do this thing.

Daniel Gospodarek (26:26)

Right, or even people like building wealth, right? Or traveling the world like, yeah, I did this Instagram thing in six months. You know, it's like, yeah, that's what it looks like, but that might not be reality.

Aaron Shaw (26:40)

Exactly, that's tough. I think that having the... to use some of Gary Vaynerchuk's ⁓ language in addition to having that grit, there's also being humble. And I think that that is humble. Being humble, it's hard to be flashy and humble. It's not a really good swiping material. like, there's somebody being humble. It's way easier to be like, I'm super tough and I get up at 3 a.m. and I eat dirt.

Daniel Gospodarek (26:55)

Yes.

Good night.

Aaron Shaw (27:10)

do a thousand push-ups and do all this super intense stuff like that looks maybe would fall in the bucket like oh they're gritty they're tough they're bullheaded they're pushing through at all costs and yet there's also and to go back to your story of somebody you know working for three months to go through one you know one memory one process like that's you got to be this humble and like it is endurance that's

Daniel Gospodarek (27:12)

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Shaw (27:36)

Nobody really likes maybe because I want the quick thing immediately and You know Gary Vaynerchuk and others and we can all speak to you certainly as life goes on Look back to say I'm here because of a very long drawn-out Almost always not glamorous process

Daniel Gospodarek (27:40)

Yeah.

Right? Right? Yeah. And I think, I think another word that doesn't get a lot of attention is that E word, that endurance word. Right? It takes, not only does it take a lot to break the human spirit, but the human spirit is a lot stronger than what we think it is. And if you just routinely show up and show up and show up, and you can even look at like more testaments of the human spirit when you look at people who've endured, you know,

generations of racism, right? ⁓ Or even like Holocaust survivors or other people in different parts of the world during civil wars, and yet they can still hold true to their values as a community, as a family, as a person, right? And you're just like, wow, like

that person can hold for 50 years or 30 years or four years like I can hold for for a minute.

Aaron Shaw (28:57)

Yeah, for a couple of weeks. yeah,

certainly the obvious key word or part of the word endurance is endure, right? So enduring tough, challenging things that are, again, this is where I try to like figure out a way to help encourage both my listeners to this podcast, but clients and friends and colleagues is a little bit goes a long way. So it's more about the consistency of doing a little tiny thing.

Daniel Gospodarek (29:24)

Thank you.

Aaron Shaw (29:27)

You know, it's like great wall of China, one brick at a time sort of concept. And eventually you get there and in any one minute or one day or even one month or longer, it may not really be worth taking a deep dive in that moment because nothing really much is happening. You got to really kind of zoom out and say like, oh wow, but days, weeks, months, years of doing a little something, got to move mountains with that. You know, it's one shovel at a time.

Daniel Gospodarek (29:27)

That's it.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right.

Right. Right. Then you can look back and you can say, wow, like, you know, I've paddled all that distance or.

Aaron Shaw (30:01)

Yeah.

Yeah. So when you have a client, ⁓ they, you feel like it's kind of stuck and if you're trying to, this is like a tricky question on how to, and if you crack this code or, you know, solve the riddle, please let me know. We'll post this everywhere. But if somebody is looking to develop grittiness to develop, you know, maybe there's somebody who's

Daniel Gospodarek (30:21)

Yeah, you know.

Aaron Shaw (30:31)

you know, dip their toe in the water of trying something and whether it's a taking care of their mental health, whether it's exercise or whether it's diet and it's like, I do something and then as soon as it gets a little bit tough, I kind of just throw in the towel and say, forget it. You know, I think like, there, do you have any guidance or suggestions to help, you know, nurture a sense of whatever this grit is?

Daniel Gospodarek (30:54)

Yeah,

definitely. mean, to sum it up in the most simplistic terms, I would probably say find something that challenges you and that's in line with the passion of yours. And if you can overcome it, right? so that, so that would be the end of the statement, right? Like, like find something that challenges you that's in line with your passion and your values. And that would be like that, that's your definition, right? And then it would be like,

And then once you accomplish it and keep going and sooner or later, you're going to hit a point where it gets a little bit harder or you plateaued a certain weight or a cert like losing a certain weight or gaining a certain weight or with like a lifting max or something like that, right? Or whatever it might be. And then it's like, okay, what do you do next? And overcoming those pieces helped to develop some of some of.

that ability just to keep going even when things don't seem like they're moving in the right direction.

Aaron Shaw (32:00)

Yeah, that's good. I agree. I think that there's a... To go back to Atomic Habits as a book I reference, often like these small, small changes are... are maybe by definition, they're challenging to do because we have to be thoughtful and try to eat better or try to exercise or try to do whatever it may be. And by achieving a small thing, intentionally...

and overcoming maybe that resistance or it's like us, you know, it's not easy to do a 30 second plank, but I did it anyhow. Okay, like that's to me, like you're, that's one grain of grit, you know, or whatever that is. And to say like, how do we feed that little thing? And again, be humble enough to realize you're not, doesn't mean you're going to like, you know, hike Everest or something like that. Cause you can do a 30 second plank, but it's a start. It gives you, it gives you a base for that.

Daniel Gospodarek (32:35)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Aaron Shaw (32:59)

sort of define wins

I think is the in my experiences like helping people find these small wins in addition to as we said like reflecting on you've already overcome a lot of challenges in life so even though you may say I'm weak I always quit at stuff and even I had somebody just for a specific case that comes to my mind I had somebody who is trying to trying to lose weight but on a diet

Daniel Gospodarek (33:11)

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Shaw (33:27)

often I had on a different, mean through decades of trying stuff and like, ⁓ can't, you know, I'm terrible at this. And in my mind, I was like, wow, talk about perseverance. Like you have tried and failed multiple times. Yet here you are like looking for the next thing. like, that is an endurance that, that is real. Like you keep coming, you keep showing up. It's like almost doing like this three month process. You talked about with your clients, like, you know, on week two, are you done yet? No, but you're going to come back and do it again. Are you going to come back like.

Daniel Gospodarek (33:40)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's not just the easy wins too. It's the small wins that are hard. And I think that's also too, one of the reasons I love like, ⁓ I think athletics for young people, young children are so important, right? ⁓

Not just the competitiveness, like yes, we need to be competitive, but like as you age too, there's almost a level of like inter interdependence that we need to have with other people. It's not always competition and domination, but the adverse, the ability to overcome stress, adversity, problem solving. think there's a lot of skills that are developed during that time.

Yeah. So like we talk about like grit, right? Like, so some of them, sometimes like people will be in here and they've been like, yeah, I've been like white knuckling this for the last five, eight years or 20 years. And, know, I lived with it my entire life and I'm only 25 or 30, but like this happened when I was five. And one of the things I point out is like now it might, that might actually be like a defense mechanism that we'll need to work through.

But sooner or later, that's gonna become a tailwind for you. And you will be able to use that in whatever else shows up in your life.

Aaron Shaw (35:13)

Yeah, interesting. So it's almost like as you overcome, like for a period of time, it's a weight, maybe you feel like it's holding you back, but once you kind of push through that, it actually becomes almost like a superpower.

Daniel Gospodarek (35:17)

Mm-hmm.

Sure,

I mean, even if the person that you were explaining, like, you know, say they've been working at weight loss for eight years, right? And they're like, yeah, I wasted all this time, all this money, all this investment, right? Then it finally worked. And then they're like, at this point, they're like, I wouldn't have also met Aaron if I didn't do all that stuff, right?

Aaron Shaw (35:42)

Right?

Yeah. There's a, there's a, there's a, a sense of where we need more awareness or trying to cultivate some awareness of these, of this process. And, and I'm self shamelessly, I'm a journaling kind of guy. Cause if I don't write it down, I kind of forget it. And I also, ⁓ and I would advocate and you can correct me if this isn't what you agree with. But I think I'm a big fan of like everybody journaling is mostly because it's

Life goes by so fast and especially now I feel like there's so much information coming in that I can look back on times in my life where it's not just like jotting down the thoughts of the day and hear the highs, hear the lows, I'm stuck, whatever it is, but to look back on that, to look back on times where I've, even fairly recent times, that I have not.

clear recollection of, but in the moment, in that day, it was a white hot problem. man, this is, I can't believe this is happening or whatever. And then when I look back like, I guess I overcame that. you realize, maybe I am grittier or tougher or have more resilience and durability than I gave myself credit for. So sometimes having some way to look back on that.

Daniel Gospodarek (36:50)

Mm-hmm

Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Shaw (37:04)

not just to do the journaling in the moment, which I think has value, but also to say, let me take pause and just kind of thumb through the last month or something like that to realize like, hmm, this guy, whoever wrote this must be pretty tough to keep on pushing through, even though in the moment it's like, man, looks like this guy's life's falling apart, to realize.

Daniel Gospodarek (37:15)

Okay.

And then you look and you see the author is Aaron Shaw. ⁓

Aaron Shaw (37:24)

Like, oh, that was me.

Who is whining about that? That sounds terrible. Oh, that was two weeks ago. Like, I don't even remember what it was, but reflecting his support, I think. So what's next for revitalized mental health?

Daniel Gospodarek (37:29)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, I think continuing to grow and just clinical skill development. So ⁓ I'm almost completed with somatic experiencing therapy training and then kind of want to get into more of the ⁓ slick supporting other people or new students that are in somatic experiencing therapy. So like doing individual sessions or case consultation and stuff like that, like working towards being able to provide those things. You know, and continuing just to... ⁓

you know, provide effective treatment, efficient treatment too. mean, I don't take insurance, which is nice because then we don't have to play that, you know, dance with the insurance company, but like people invest in it, right? And like, I want them to, have gains. want them to experience life in a way that maybe they haven't experienced before, or that they know it's possible and to get back to that vitality of it. So.

Just continuing to do that. Maybe go small group practice in the future, maybe not.

Aaron Shaw (38:43)

a little bit of unknown. Well, Daniel, what I ask, ⁓ what I do every episode is, listeners, one thing that they could do today to extend their health span. So this would be, obviously we're going to kind of frame this a little bit around grit. And so can be anything.

Daniel Gospodarek (38:44)

Yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Aaron Shaw (39:03)

to put the spotlight on you, but if somebody's listening and today like, what can I do realistically today, it's typical day, they're walking their dog with a podcast and like, this is interesting. What do think?

Daniel Gospodarek (39:13)

Sure.

So I would say that we will, everyone will be hit with a level of adversity at some point in their lives. And sometimes more than once at one time or within a short range of time. And it's how we use that adversity to either, we can say that it will define us or we can use it to help us define our own lives. Right? But it's your perspective on it.

Aaron Shaw (39:42)

So somebody could actually choose to control their perspective on.

Daniel Gospodarek (39:47)

Yeah. mean, I mean, it may be in the midst of adversity. It will be very difficult to see that just like grit, right. But as you get a week out or a month out, right. And you're like, yeah, like I could use that to almost like elevator propel you, right.

Aaron Shaw (40:05)

It's kind of like looking back on a exercise session or something like that. get the benefit, the strength gains kind of later on as you work through that. That's great. Well, you can check out Daniel's work, Revitalize Mental Health, at revitalizementalhealth.com. And I will put all of Daniel's contact information in the show notes. If you have any questions for me or Daniel, by all means post them on, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can post a comment there.

Daniel Gospodarek (40:08)

That's all.

Aaron Shaw (40:33)

and on all the podcast platforms as the option to reach out as well. So, Daniel, really appreciate the time.

Daniel Gospodarek (40:39)

Yeah, you too,

Aaron, and also being in the healthcare sector.

Aaron Shaw (40:44)

Yeah,

like I said, once I look at your credentials and hear what you're doing, and even to go back a long time ago now, but when I first got out of OT school, ⁓ the first several years I worked in a dual diagnosis, ⁓ outpatient, was inpatient and outpatient, so was like mental health and addiction and learned a lot, coping skills, communication skills, all these fundamental things. ⁓

even though my career veered very much towards the orthopedic side of things, think it blends perfectly well. Even with a broken bone, we're still human beings with very much emotions and our history comes with us.

Daniel Gospodarek (41:28)

Yes, most definitely. But have a good weekend. Thank you again for having me and hope to hear from you in the future. See you.

Aaron Shaw (41:32)

Right?

All right, thanks, Daniel. Take care.