Sometimes I feel like I’m doing meditation wrong. My mind easily jumps around from what my odd dreams were last night to what I have planned later on in the day, and much, much more.
The days when things don’t seem to flow for us can be frustrating and disheartening. These are the times, however, when we are put to the test to see if we are willing and able to level up. You wouldn’t want a freshman wrestler on the varsity team if they couldn’t prove themselves on the junior-varsity level. The same is true for life: when you are confronted with a new challenge, the only way to overcome it is if you prove to yourself that you can. Tough days will come and there will be challenging mountains to climb, but on the other side of discomfort is growth, and a new and stronger you.
The Challenge With Quitting
The challenge then becomes not mastering the skill at hand but not quitting. Now, of course, when something is not aligned with your true essence, please do yourself a favor and close that door to make room for what serves you. But if you are choosing to quit solely because it’s hard or challenging, think again. Quitting is taking the easy way out and also the less rewarding one. Once you make the decision to end your efforts towards a goal, you eliminate your chance at reaping the benefits that goal can provide. There is much known — and even more unknown — wisdom, knowledge, and opportunities that bloom by traveling through experiences, especially the tough ones. You block yourself from anything and everything you could have learned and gained from the challenging situation by quitting. It’s like slicing the trunk of an apple tree during its growth period and preventing any fruit from blossoming.
Self-Efficacy
Persevering through challenges is also what builds resilience and increases your self-efficacy. The psychologist, Albert Bandura, proposed the concept of self-efficacy as “one’s own belief in how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations.” Someone with high self-efficacy believes in their ability to accomplish something — a crucial mindset to have to achieve those big dreams of yours. These concepts of resiliency and self-efficacy are also important for our self-esteem because it means we believe in ourselves and feel confident to make decisions, take action, and move forward in life. Our ability to tap into our potential is directly related to us believing in ourselves and not being turned off by challenges. And how do we become better at this? We continue swimming upstream, becoming stronger, and leveling up through the discomfort.
During bouts of discomfort, we end up with greater awareness of ourselves and our circumstances, and more tools to better handle similar challenges in the future. Whether it’s rigidity in a meditation practice or feeling like you are failing as a parent, know that every second you spend trying to overcome the challenge is a second spent developing your personal resilience. Also, know that challenges become less challenging as you allow yourself to experience them.
Even though my meditation practices are sometimes saturated with distraction, I now firmly believe the distracted ones are just as important as the fluid and light ones.
“Imperfect action beats perfect inaction every time.” — Harry S. Truman
As long as we are moving forward, we are becoming stronger, gaining awareness, and building resiliency, even if it doesn’t feel that way at the moment. So, get out of your own way, make friends with the discomfort, and allow yourself to level up like the powerful person you are.
