I wrote the other day in Why I love the heat, even when it’s 95F (35C) on the way to 102F (39C) about how the heat, while uncomfortable, gave me reason to grow, learn, and connect. Among other things, it connected me to the countless people around the world and back in time who live and lived in such conditions. I can learn from our grandparents and people in other cultures.

More love for challenge

This morning I woke up for the first time in three days after not waking up sweating. Had I not experienced the heat, last night would have felt hot. Instead it felt comfortable. Not relatively comfortable. Comfortable.

Complex durable systems like our bodies and minds develop resilience from being stressed. Without challenge we become brittle and fragile. That’s not my opinion. It’s how systems work. I’m not saying we should create discomfort for no reason and I want to decrease pollution contributing to environmental problems.

We have plenty of things to complain about, but heat well within the range humans have lived in while thriving without air conditioning is not one of them. If you feel like lecturing me about old people, poverty, other places with greater heat, and so on, spare me your misunderstanding. They are the people I’m helping in my overall mission. Using air conditioning and colonizing geographies that are unlivable without it cause this problem.

I’m not privileged by finding meaning in difficult situations. I’m following and extending the legacies of people like Victor Frankl and Edith Eger, since I just read her book, and long loved his.

I’m also living what I wrote about over ten years ago in my post Explore and expand your boundaries and those of people you lead.

I’ll copy the images from that post here to whet your appetite to read it. It begins:

Exploring and expanding your boundaries and horizons creates freedom and comfort in your life. Doing so can be challenging—“getting out of your comfort zone,” as many put it—but creates results and emotional reward. The more experience you have in it, the more you can lead others to do the same, creating freedom and comfort in their lives. I’ll illustrate the process with some simple diagrams. I find visualizing would-be complex things simplifies them and makes them easier to do.

First, consider a diagram of the things you do, as illustrated below. As I’ve illustrated it, the light-colored center is where things are easier—that is, the center of your comfort zone, bounded by the dashed line. I colored it darker farther from the center, indicating that activities out there get harder. At the outside border is a thick black line, illustrating that people don’t cross their hard boundaries.

The person doing the activities bounded in this region could be yourself or someone you lead.

• ← Can you love your neighbor as yourself in challenging times?
• I love when a team hits on all cylinders: when everyone acts with their specialty and we collectively achieve more →