When it gets hard, that’s when it matters the most to insist on it.
It is known that Muhammad Ali was counting when doing abs: not when he started, but when he felt that he couldn’t do it anymore. When it got painful and hard, that’s when he was improving.
When doing a weight lifting exercise, the muscle only grows after “failure”. Failure is when micro-fissures appear on the muscle fibers. When you have done one repetition too many.
To stimulate muscle strengthening and growth, the muscle has to be mildly damaged, and from the scars of the effort, it grows.
It’s the same for us in general. If we want to improve and get good at any skill, we need to push through the difficulty and become comfortable with the challenge and pain.
Only when we feel that it’s arduous, we’re outside our knowledge base, our social circle, a situation we’ve encountered before, we can learn.
The only difference between the person growing and the person who is not, is the willingness to experience this pain, the mental strength that pushes us to go beyond what we think we can do.
How much do you want it? What are you willing to compromise or give up to get it?
