Challenge Yourself

The mind is similar to the body in that it grows stronger only through constantly encountering resistance.

Weightlifting is essentially an activity that attempts to provide resistance to the self, and in doing so increase one's physical strength. In fact, muscle grows as a result of 'microtrauma,' or tiny tears within its fibers; the body addresses these tiny damages by repairing the muscle a little bit more than its original state to prevent future injuries.

The mind undergoes similar processes when it encounters resistance. Pushing against a mental challenge, the mind automatically tries to work at it, grasping at it; especially challenging mental challenges forces the mind to either give up or simply exert more effort than it did before. It is in this second response that growth occurs.

The resistance that mental problems present to the mind allows it to become stronger. Like physical microtrauma, mental microtrauma forces the mind to over compensate for its past shortcomings, to learn new solutions to new problems, to slowly forget what worked before in the past in lieu of what works in the present.

These mental challenges are also far more common than one assumes, but are also commonly avoided, for their very characteristic requires some metaphorical 'lifting' - whether it's a daily crossword puzzle, a challenging book, a complicated videogame, perhaps a conversation with a difficult person, or the daily events that require heavy thinking but is usually put off for later, these challenges present themselves quite often.

Constant challenge is the keyword here; the mind grows accustomed easily to the easy, grows accustomed to the accommodating. If one desires a stronger mind, then one must take on more and more resistance. Like a weightlifter who constantly increases the weights he lifts, so must the mental weightlifter increase the challenges he takes on.

Constant exercise and the overcoming of resistance is what separates a physically strong person from others who are not; so it is with the mentally strong. Challenge becomes not a word to be avoided and shied upon, but instead becomes something to be sought and overcome.

Viewed in this way, one begins to take challenges not only because they must, but also because they want to. When one views mental challenges not as a negative but as a positive that allows one to constantly grow stronger and stronger, one begins to see life differently.

No longer will life present walls but will instead present hurdles one can jump. Life will still appear heavy from time to time; however, confident in the mind's current strength and its ability to adapt, it will no longer inspire worry but only an excitement for whatever may come.

Semantics, word play, call it what you want - it is the tiny shifts in perspective that makes all the difference.