When my wife met me in college, I did not wear any shoes. Yup, I was a walking paradox – a wannabe conservative libertarian wearing no shoes and tie dye. The honest truth? I did not have enough money to buy shoes, and I lost the sole on one of my pairs. I was too proud to ask my parents to buy me a pair of shoes – so I just went bare foot. Of course, I had to invent some reason for not wearing shoes. So I played the part of a rebellious youth making a stand against “the man.”
During this period of time, I learned a little about human anatomy. You see when you go bare foot for an extended period of time – you are effectively causing damage to the bottom of your feet. Your body is genetically engineered to heal very rapidly and starts to build tissue around the wound. As you repeat this process of re-creating tissue, the body will continue to build additional tissue and you will form a callus. After a week of no shoes and you will be able to walk across sharp rocks and barely notice. After a month you will be able to withstand running across a hot pavement. In a year you could walk across a sheet of ice and not even notice the cold. You are genetically engineered to overcome adversity by building calluses.
So is your mind.
When you wake up in the morning and you need to do your 365 Commitment, and whatever other good habits you are trying to build you will find times when you do not want to. You will find times when stress and worry are overcoming you. You will find times when you are just plain discouraged. These are wounds to the mind and soul. This stress is causing you damage. Your mind is getting pummeled by disappointment, discouragement, and overwhelming stress. However – you are going to keep your commitments anyway. You are going to plow through it. Why? Because you are building extra tissue over that wound – you are building a mind callus.
As you build this callus, things that used to cause you a ton of stress – will feel like nothing. Right now they are overwhelming because you have no callus built up. You are like that first day when I wore no shoes – wincing across the pavement trying to look cool. Your raw, unprotected mind is going to go fresh into a new challenge and receive some damage, some immediate blows. If you cower and shrink back in pain and run away to your safe place, the wound will heal – however – the extra tissue will slowly fade and you will once again have an unprotected mind.
The only way to build a callus is repetitive effort. Everyday receiving new damage and taking it on, allowing yourself to build more scar tissue until that day comes when you have such a callus built that those small little thorns and thistles have nothing on you. So when you woke up this morning, and decided to take on the world again – despite the stress – despite the disappointment – despite the pain – despite the fatigue – despite the desire to just give up – you started to build that callus up. Now repeat. 365 times repeat, you will find a mentally tough, strong soul that can withstand most anything at the end of the experience.
Guy Reams (73)
365 Member
