Tag: overcoming

• Choose Difficulty Over Comfort

  If comfort is our standard for behavior, we cannot grow.

  

  The essence of evolution is adaptation as a means of overcoming difficulty.

  If we spend all of our time and energy avoiding difficulty, we are simultaneously denying ourselves the opportunity to grow and to change.

  By choosing comfort over challenges, we are also choosing stagnation and entropy over evolution.

  In a way, this can be likened to stealing from ourselves.

  When comfort is the standard upon which we make our decisions, we miss out on new experiences, opportunities, and perspectives.

  We never get to see what is on the other side of the challenge, obstacle, or hardship.

  Instead of being avoided at all costs, difficulty should be seen as a generous teacher, received like a precious gift, and embraced as we would a loving friend.

  Without facing the resistance ahead of us, learning how to meet it and overcome it, we will never know what we are truly capable of accomplishing and who we are capable of becoming.

  A life of comfort is a life denied of living itself.

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  Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.

  Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

  All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.

  Follow Robert Van Valkenburgh and Holistic Budo on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.

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  August 26, 2020

  becoming, challenges, change, comfort, difficulty, evolution, growth, obstacles, overcoming, transcendence

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• Transcend Difficulty By Practicing Discomfort

  If you do something difficult every day, when unexpected difficulties arise, you will have had lots of practice at dealing with them.

  

  None of us wishes to live in difficult times. If anything, we tend to do everything in our power to shore ourselves up against and to avoid difficulty, seeking comfort and convenience in whatever forms we can. The funny thing about life, though, is that what we want and what we have control over is a relatively small fraction of what we will actually experience from day to day and year to year.

  Obviously, we cannot prepare for every contingency of difficulty we may face in our lives, and those of us who try to tend to miss much about life that truly makes it worth living: the joy, the spontaneity, and the pleasant surprises. We can, however, prepare to be uncomfortable. We can do things that are intentionally difficult, that push us past our perceived or self-defined limitations, and that we are not good at, that we will fail at over and over on our way toward improvement, and that will force us to grow, not so that we can avoid the inevitable challenges that arise, but so that we are more robust and ready for them when they do.

  By choosing difficulty in the good times, by facing it day to day in whatever form it happens to take for us, whether through strenuous exercise, martial art training, strict dieting, or even facing our fears through public speaking, sitting quietly alone, or venturing out in business or investing, we become used to discomfort, what it feels like to live with it, and what it feels like to overcome it. Intentionally facing and overcoming difficulty prepares us, not necessarily for the specific challenges we will face when uncertainty is upon us, but for the mindset we will need in order to transcend the obstacles in our path. Preparation gives us confidence and practice is the means by which we become prepared even for unforeseen difficulties.

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  Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.

  Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

  All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh (artist unknown, unless otherwise noted).

  If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.

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  March 24, 2020

  challenges, comfort, difficulty, discomfort, obstacles, overcoming, practice, preparation, transcending, unexpected

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• Leading Through Impossibility

  A leaders job is to provide the vision, tools, and encouragement necessary to make the impossible possible. When faced with a goal or a task that seems impossible, it is a leader’s job to see past all of the obstacles, all of the reasons it cannot be done, and to provide the vision necessary for others to see optimistically into the future. A leader shares his or her vision of success with others so that they, too, believe that success is possible. A leader gives hope where there was none before. A leader does not use a lack of time, resources, or preparation as an excuse to fail because a leader sets his or her team up for success in spite of limitations, restrictions, or setbacks. A leader does not say that his or her team is not ready for a mission. A leader ensures that they are. It is exactly the moments of impossibility, of hopelessness, and of inevitable defeat that define a leader, for it it is in these moments that leadership manifests.

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  Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.

  Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

  Artwork by Ana, except where otherwise noted

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  November 23, 2019

  impossible, leader, leadership, obstacles, overcoming, transcending, vision

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