Problems have a very important role in our life and the best way to understand that is to draw an analogy to weight training.



When you lift weights your aim is to push the muscles a little harder than they have been pushed before. What actually happens when you do this is that you start to breakdown the fibers in your muscles. The body, in its wisdom, then decides that the fibers aren't up to the job so it rebuilds them a bit stronger than they were. Which is why you should wait a couple of days before training that particular muscle again; in order to allow the rebuilding process to work.

The art of weight training is to put the muscles under enough stress to initiate this breakdown and repair cycle but not to put those muscles under so much stress that you damage them to the point where the body can't repair them in the couple of days before you train those particular muscles again.

If you master the art of putting your muscles under the right amount of pressure and of consolidating the gains you are making, then you can achieve massive strength increases over a 12 month period.

Life problems are to your spirit what weight training is to your muscles.

If you take on a life problem that is a little tougher than the problems that you have successfully handled before then working through that problem and solving it will strengthen your spirit just like weight training strengthens your muscles.

Once you have mastered a problem then it is time to challenge yourself again with a new, slightly tougher problem. If you keep up this ?weight training for the spirit? then you will become a better, stronger person who is capable of achieving things that a year or two before would have seemed totally impossible to you.

If you don't challenge your muscles then they don't get any stronger. If you just lift the same weight that you been lifting for years then you only maintain the same strength that you have had for years and you don't improve. If you avoid working the muscles altogether then they start to wither and get weaker and weaker.

If you don't challenge your spirit then it doesn't get any stronger. If you just feed it the same old problems that you've feed it for years then it stagnates and doesn't improve or strengthen. If you avoid problems altogether then your spirit withers and you become less and less able to achieve in life. If you were to keep up the problem avoidance strategy then you would eventually become so useless emotionally that you would be totally dependent on others.

People who want to strengthen their muscles don't sit around and wait for weight training to come to them. They enroll at a gym and they put aside an hour or two a few days each week so that they can go to the gym and train. If they want good results then when they get to the gym they work toward finding that balance between pushing the muscles hard enough for gains without overdoing it and hurting themselves.

People who want to become more in life, who want to open the door to all that life has to offer, don't sit around and wait for it all to turn up at the door. They go out into the world and set goals, and take on challenges and work their way through those challenges. Just like the weight trainer, they constantly look to challenge themselves a little more without going to the point where they become overwhelmed.

If you frequent a gym regularly you will see some new arrivals who turn up, massively over-train and then disappear never to be seen again. They probably woke up the next day so sore and sorry for themselves that they decided that weight training was a form of torture that they didn't need.

But the regular gym goers learn to strike the right balance. They continue to get stronger and they learn to love the challenge of training. The joy of training, for them, becomes as big a reward as the gains that they are making.

In life you find people who set a goal, leap in, take on too much and burn out. Just like those foolish beginner weight trainers, they disappear never to be seen in the success stakes again. They settle down to a life of mediocrity and never even guess that they hold inside themselves the seeds to greatness.

The people who succeed time and time again are the people who find the balance of challenging themselves regularly without going over the top and burning out. These people enjoy the challenge of taking on and conquering problems as much as they enjoy the rewards that come with winning. They build their spiritual muscles bit by bit until they are living the life that others only dream about.