“Difficulties Strengthen The Mind As Labor Does The Body”

This quote is from Seneca the Younger. Clearly, Seneca is referring to difficulties as they effect one’s mental state in his quote. As many difficulties have physical, not strictly mental, nature to them. What does this mean? First, let’s look at how labor strengthens the body.

Labor is something that puts strain on your body. It is something that is often unpleasant. But your body gains strength and resilience through labor. Put another way, having to do or go through something that you don’t want to can have a positive effect on you in the long run.

In the same way, difficulties strengthen the mind. Difficulties are not pleasant. You don’t want to have them. But difficulties force you to exercise your mind, just like labor forces you to exercise your body. Difficulties force you to strengthen your mindset. And you later can use that strengthened mindset for your benefit.

And having a strong mind is even more beneficial than a strong body. If you have a strong mind that you have control over, you are a King. One can also view getting through difficulties as working out the mind just as you do all parts of yourself.

You cannot always rest your body and mind. If you do, you will atrophy. When you go for a long run, you might feel like you are stretching yourself past your limits. The same can be true when lifting weights. This also holds true in going through difficulties. We need to push ourselves to continue to improve. If we don’t we stay static or atrophy.

It’s easy to have this viewpoint once you are past your difficult spell. While you are in it, it is quite unpleasant, and can be annoying to hear the platitudes of “you’ll be better off for it when it is over.” Why should it be put in a way where you should almost welcome the struggle?

To be honest, you don’t have to look at it that way. You have the right to not see a difficulty you face as “actually a good thing.” It is more that, if necessary, you can find the positives from a situation, focus on them, and use that as a reference point to get you through it. Having this mindset will allow us to find the silver lining in hardship. And doing that can help us get through that hardship.

When we talk about how challenges made us stronger, we shouldn’t construe it as we are happy that those challenges happened. Yes, we do need some level of challenges. But we rarely would ask for the specific challenges we get. We can look at it as “even though this unpleasant thing is happening to me, there is something positive I can take from this when it is over.”

Difficulties strengthen the mind as labor does the body. While this statement could be insensitive depending on the situation, at some level it is true. We need to push ourselves. We need to push ourselves through unpleasant and challenging situations. It is the only way we can grow.