The Spiritual Muscle: Why Life Gets Hard

Sport science has discovered something that goes against common sense. A muscle doesn't grow during exercise. In fact, it weakens and tears. When you lift a heavy weight, tiny tears form in the muscle fibers, and only afterwards, during rest, does the body rebuild them, making them stronger to withstand the next challenge. Without resistance, without difficulty, the muscle stays the same. Difficulty [music] is not the enemy of strength. It's its source. And let's admit it, we're a generation that runs away from any difficulty. We want everything to be easy, comfortable, painless, [music] and every challenge feels like a punishment, like a sign that something is wrong with us. But if we never allow ourselves to make an effort, we remain weak. Without a [music] tear, there is no growth. The sages said it in three words. Agra, according to the size of the difficulty, so is the size of the reward. They understood [music] that the effort itself is what builds us. The challenge doesn't come to bring us down. [music] It comes just like weights in the gym to build within us a spiritual muscle that wasn't there before. [music] Science has proven that resistance is what builds muscle. The sages knew that difficulty is what builds a person. The Holy One, blessed be He, did not send us challenges to break us. He sent them to make us stronger. Let's not run away from resistance. Let's understand that this is exactly where strength is built.