"He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens!" ~ Friedrich Nietzsche from Thus Spoke Zarathustra
In other words, push yourself! That's when we grow.
Find your edge. And push it.
Let's embrace the challenges life throws at us.
Rumi says it beautifully: "This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away."
And William James shares this brilliant comment: "You have enormous untapped power you'll probably never tap, because most people never run far enough on their first wind to ever find they have a second."
All this reminds me of the "training effect." Let's take a quick look at that, shall we?
The same principle that applies to building muscles in the gym applies to building excellence in our lives: In order to grow, we must consistently push ourselves just a little bit past our current comfort zone. In exercise physiology parlance, this is called the Training Effect. The principles involved?
Overload: You must "overload" your body with more stress than it can currently handle. (Not too much as this may lead to injury, but enough so you're out of your current comfort zone.)
Overcompensation: Your body is smart. It doesn't like to get its butt kicked. So, what does it do? It overcompensates and repairs itself so that next time it's stronger–and capable of withstanding the level of stress you put on it previously.
The training effect explains how muscles grow, how your heart is trained to beat more efficiently, and how your lungs are trained to distribute oxygen more efficiently. It's also the same principle that dictates growth in other aspects of our lives: from our ability to give presentations at work to our ability to have challenging conversations with our significant other at home.
Go out and "train." Push yourself a little further today...
Find your second wind and... "Praised be what hardens!" :)
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