Did you know that you have to tear a muscle in order to grow it?

Yes, your muscles only become stronger and grow when you challenge them with weights or intensity that they previously have not experienced.

Your muscle fibers literally get torn. If you keep tearing them without any time to heal, you injure them. But if you let them heal, they grow.

I find there to be amazing correlation between physical growth and mental growth.

We often derive analogies from our physical world, and understand complex concepts through them.

Mental growth for example is a process that you cannot see. It is therefore more difficult to understand.

But drawing on the muscle analogy has been a quite successful approach for me to explain to people around me why they should look at their struggles positively. If you’re struggling, it might mean that you’re growing.

Here’s how muscles grow:

• your muscles get torn / challenged
• a period of rest / healing must take place
• nutrition consumption and absorption

If you miss one of these, your muscles will most likely not grow. Challenging muscles alone is not enough. Challenging them and resting without nutrients to support the recovery process won’t get you much growth. Only by doing a bit of those 3 things do you grow.

Here’s how minds grow:

• you’re mentally torn / challenged
• a period of rest / healing must take place
• information consumption and absorption

Similarly, you need all 3 in order to grow.

Rest / healing is often a period of either doing nothing (rest/meditation) or doing ‘mindless tasks’ (i.e. don’t need thinking like walking, washing dishes, etc…)

Information consumption and absorption is often done through journaling, conversation, or even meditation/thinking in the rest/healing step.

If you miss one of these, then unfortunately, your suffering may go to waste.

Think about this next time you’re in a rut, mentally challenged, or stressed.