Growth = Stress + Rest

Growth = Stress + Rest

One of the business people I follow recently expounded on this concept of growth = stress + rest. Leila Hormozi had this great quote:

“In athletic training, stress is the workout. Rest is when the body adapts and gets stronger. If you never apply stress, nothing changes. If you never rest, performance breaks.”

Mark expounds on this for this blog edition:

Conceptually, growth = stress + rest is sound, but how does one measure their own growth? Would you notice yourself growing? Are their times in your life when you are not growing? Are we okay with that? Especially if we don’t have control over it, and should we be okay with that if we do have control? These are things I ask myself on my walks. Perhaps it would be wise to consider the different domains in which we could grow, such as Physical, Cognitive, Emotional, and Social.

I imagine it would be challenging to grow in many directions at once; if you don’t, try working out while you read a book. When you want to see results you need to channel all of your life force into the task at hand, even if just for a moment. It is through this channeling that we allow our body and mind to dedicate all of its resources and unlock a true stream of consciousness, or flow state. If you can learn to appreciate the act of positive stress, where you sacrifice your time for a goal, whether mandatory or not, you will become aligned with your growth.

Understand that the satisfaction and the pain are temporary. You will always face adversity, you will always reap the rewards of your labor, and you will always uncover better ways to achieve your growth (practice is simply refinement of goals). To stay in only rest is to be lazy. To stay stressed is neurotic.

We must reflect on our actions and see if they brought the desired outcome, but we must also have to courage to jump back in there and try again. You have always been more capable than you thought. Can you get out of your own way? Can you see that failure and success are simply a matter of time? I wager the person who strives for incremental growth in those four domains above will see growth in their life of boundless proportions.