Our brain directs us to convenience. It wants the quick delivery, the immediate reward, the instant fix. There is proof that focusing on the good creates more good. Positive thinking largely improves your mood and makes life significantly more enjoyable. But we also need challenges and adversity.

If we are kept in a constant state of comfort and convenience, our brain will compensate by creating a problem to overcome. Suddenly, we are worried about flying, crossing the street, an irregular heartbeat, foreigners and a falling sky. Anxiety. Sometimes panic. The cultural obsession with chasing happiness, shielding oneself from anything triggering, and the idea that life is primarily “good” and any challenge we face is a mistake of fate actually weakens us mentally. Shielding the mind from any adversity makes us more vulnerable to anxiety, panic and chaos.

Adversity makes you creative. It activates a part of you that is often latent. It makes things interesting. Part of the human narrative is wanting something to overcome. It’s the essence of the human experiment. Choosing to exit your comfort zone and endure pain for that which you believe is worth enduring for.

Humans need tension, resistance, adversity, and pain to break and transform. Embracing the grit of it all was what you were made for. Embrace discomfort.