The Two Types of Challenges
Growth is gained through challenge. Challenging yourself to do what you once couldn’t do is the only way to get better. Furthermore, there are two types of challenges:
- Challenges for your brain.
- Challenges for your brawn.
Or to put it another way, mental and physical challenges. So, you can push yourself to grow mentally by challenging your brain and you can challenge yourself physically by challenging your brawn. Athletes love to challenge their brawn, but they tend to neglect challenging their brain. However, it’s the challenges for the brain that make the biggest difference.
It’s Harder to Grow Physically When You Don’t Grow Mentally
In sports, history proves that athletes have far more physical limitations when they ignore the mental side of the game. There comes a point in competition when almost every athlete is just about equal physically. Yet, there are always a few exceptional ones.
When you only use a naked eye comparison, it appears that the exceptional athletes have found a physical edge. However, this could not be further from the truth. At the top levels of any sport, average athletes have elite physical skills. It is at this point when elite physical skills become the norm, not the exception.
This is why every elite athlete who edges the competition wins because of a mental edge not a physical edge. It could be a mental edge in training that allows them to develop more physical skills, a mental edge in strategy that allows them to outmaneuver their opponents, or a mental edge in coping with pressure that makes them clutch.
The bottom line is that in sports and in life, developing mental skills is what enables you to win with your physical skills. Therefore, you must be more diligent in finding ways to challenge and grow your mental skills than you are in challenging your physical skills.