I want to preface this book with an explanation of why you should face your challenges. Facing your hardships head-on can be a daunting and challenging task. When the world seems to be crashing down around you, it can sometimes be simpler to ignore adversity, hoping it will go away. Why not just run away from your problems? In general, our intuition tells us to head away from danger, not towards it. That being said, how can willingly accepting something that’s hard to do be good for you? I want to provide an explanation aside from the obvious. This is, of course, the fact that your problems will eventually catch up with you. Let’s imagine for a second, a situation in which this isn’t the case. In this dreamland, due to some external forces, all your troubles just somehow disappear. Perhaps you were born into the lap of luxury and can take care of your problems with copious amounts of money. Would it be okay to avoid your problems then? Short answer, no.
People experience innate feelings of shame when they don’t live up to their expectations. In other words, when you back down from your challenges or don’t give it your all in the face of catastrophe, you recognize this and feel disappointed, expecting less from yourself. There are many ways people cope with this. Lowering the bar for themselves, focusing on other people’s shortcomings, shifting blame, and this is besides worse methods like drugs and alcohol, which can make problems “disappear” temporarily. My intention is not to berate the people who do any of these things. I can only assume that constantly resorting to these actions is no way to live. Why not overcome this feeling of shame or guilt, in a way that is much more productive and will solve your problems? That way is, of course, facing your challenges.
Building Yourself
To delve deeper into the benefits of confronting your adversity, in the spirit of the book’s title, we must address how this will create “The Best You.” You can only grow through challenge, and only by voluntarily accepting it. What exactly does this mean? It’s not the same as having difficult situations cast upon you, separate from your own free will. Let’s take school, for example. A relatable example, but also one that seems to contradict what was just mentioned. As a child, the choice to go to school is not made of one’s own volition (or else I sure as heck would have stayed home). That being said, you can still choose to get the most out of school. When you decide to actively engage in school, you can genuinely learn from it. You can develop better habits, expand your ways of thinking and learn to better articulate yourself. Even learning to socialize can be considered a form of bettering yourself. School is not perfect. However, considering that you’ll dedicate a quarter of your life to learning, why not get the most out of it?
This is where voluntarily undergoing the challenge comes into play. To improve yourself in any of the matters mentioned above, you have to pay attention, do your work, study appropriately, etc. You have to willingly accept your situation and make the most of it, whether it’s enjoyable or not. Muhammad Ali famously said “I hated every minute of training, but I said, don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” Apply this to everything you do. Remember that no one worth anything pushed themselves only in the last moments of their success. When we witness people like Jeff Bezos, his status as the richest man in the world is what is immediately noticeable. We see the perfection that is the tip of the iceberg, but we don’t see the larger dirtier area that is holding it up. It is those imperfections that matter, as they come from countless years of attempts to accept and overcome challenges. Through technology, the strides to fame have become much quicker and at times easier, but regardless, it still takes many steps to get there. Everything you achieve, every time you push yourself to grow as a person, it’s another notch under the belt, another step closer to achieving your end goal. Ask yourself, what is it you want, what’s stopping you from getting it, and then do what is necessary to conquer those obstacles. Perhaps you want to be a motivational speaker: read, take classes on speaking, practice and discover what the pros are doing. What about entrepreneur, lawyer, doctor, you name it. In every case, there will be hurdles you have to face, but every time you beat them, you will be better for it.
The Alternative Sucks
Perhaps you’re not convinced yet that you should face your challenges. The other question you have to ask yourself is “What other choice do I have?” I ask this in a literal sense. You can delay, procrastinate or get someone else to do the work for you, but I ask “Why?” Why would you voluntarily choose to do nothing? By placing yourself in the victim seat, there is a resignation that you are incapable of influencing your surroundings. Perhaps something is comforting about living life this way. By degrading oneself to a mere spectator of life, the burden of responsibility is subsequently absolved, along with many of life’s pressures. Given this, why not just be an observer coasting through life? Simply put, facing adversity is what makes life worth living. To be of substance, you need to push back when the world shoves you. Existing the other way, you may as well be invisible and untouchable. No amount of product and money can replace the resultant feeling of emptiness. In fact, the way to replace that emptiness is to arrive at a place where you know you’re worth something, and most of the time that feeling comes from achieving great feats and gaining confidence in yourself.
For a second, let’s go back to the fact that your problems won’t go away on their own. It’s undeniable that no matter what you do, there will be a time when hardship strikes. Given a choice, why not be the one who was strong enough to pull themselves out of misery, rather than the one who was beaten by it? It’s quite apparent that the only way to do this is to face your challenges. It is easy to feel as though you’re being overwhelmed at times, but it’s necessary to fight back and never give up.
The other issue has to do with what comes if you don’t challenge yourself—that being, you don’t improve as a human being. For example, I would enjoy playing video games 24/7 as I’m sure many boys my age would, but chances are I wouldn’t improve very much at anything other than video games. Perhaps it’s possible to do this and still feel proud of oneself, but I doubt it. It’s more likely that you would feel ashamed. This is because there is no joy in having everything given to you freely. There’s nothing to be proud of, nothing to bring you growth; it just makes you spoiled. Don’t fall into the trap of running from your problems; face them and conquer them with pride. You will undoubtedly find more satisfaction in knowing that you are a reliable person, rather than knowing that you rely on everyone else around you.
Things Become Easier
The final reason to face your challenges is that over time things become easier. A perfect example of this is any sport. Chances are the first time you tried to throw a ball it was quite difficult for you. You may not have even been able to aim the ball, let alone use the right amount of power. However, over time you repeated the action so much that it became instinctual. Anyone who’s played a sport for a while surely recognizes the difference between when they started that sport and where they are now. It’s almost certain that the basic action involved in playing that sport has become extremely easy, e.g. throwing, kicking, punching, etc. This is how everything becomes with repeated exposure to it.
Math is another example that can be exemplified easily (I’ve used so many examples that even the examples have become easy to use). Think back on when you first had to learn the concepts of multiplication. As you most probably remember, you were given a multiplication table and were tasked with remembering everything up to 12 times 12. This may have taken you a while to accomplish, or you may not have done it, but chances are there were a few combinations that you remembered off the top of your head from using them so much in math class and you worked hard to learn the rest. And now, despite you being a world-class mathematician, there’s no way things started that easily. That’s because the repeated exposure to challenges made them easier to deal with.
On a similar note, not only do your successes prepare you for the same challenges again, but they also prepare you for separate problems you may face. For example, through playing one sport, you become more athletic, which will make you better at other sports. Improving your logical reasoning will help you to complete different puzzles and riddles. The most interesting effects I’ve found came from having a near-death experience. This may not completely align with the other challenges people face, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.
Studies have shown that after people have a near-death experience, they lose the fear of death, and realize a new sense of meaning with increased self-esteem. It amazes me that such hardship—rather than traumatizing people—tends to strengthen them. They also tend to change their demeanour and reportedly become more open and loving. That’s not to say that...