Don’t just overcome challenges. Get stoked about them.

I’m about to get metaphorical here, but bear with me. Life is an ocean. Sometimes it glistens calmly. Other days it trashes violently, pulling you under. There’s the good swimmers and there’s people barely staying afloat.

And this is the nature of it. No matter how carefully you curate your life, the waves will come. And even the best swimmers tire out eventually.

Don’t waste your time trying to avoid challenges. Learn how to surf instead.

Surfers don’t just get through waves. They train for them, love them and pray for them. And with the right tools, you can learn to love even the most savage challenges. Begin to flow with them rather than fight against them.

“Wiping out is an underappreciated skill.” — Laird Hamilton, American big-wave surfer.

Train your mind.

Cognitive flexibility is being able to assess a situation rationally and then change your perception of it with ease.

The Covid-19 pandemic has surfaced many people’s cognitive flexibility or lack thereof. Some are going stir-crazy, fixated on how much “normalcy,” they’ve lost. They take on a victim mentality.

While others, recognize the severity and tragedy of the pandemic, but choose to utilize this time for opportunity and positive adaptation. Accepting they can not control everything, they take on a vantage mentality.

Here’s what you can do to stretch out any stiffness in your mind.

1. Find new ways to do the same things. Jennifer Verodolin, Ph.D and human behavior scientist, explains that relying on our routines can become mental ruts. For example, your brain often goes into autopilot on your drive home.

Try taking a new route or learn a new recipe to cook. The changes don’t need to be drastic, but do incorporate small changes often.

2. Meet more unlike-minded people. We tend to bond with people who are more like us. Share similar views and have similar interests. But the more you expose yourself to different cultures and viewpoints the more flexible your mind becomes.

3.Get out of your comfort zone. Try a new sport, take a dance class. Travel somewhere foreign. Unfamiliar territory typically brings upon feelings of stress and anxiety. Think of it as a warm up for taking on the bigger stress.

Train your body.

Likely you’ve heard of the fight or flight response. It’s the physiological reaction that occurs when you perceive something to be life-threatening.

It was an extremely useful adaptation of our ancestors. When faced with physical or situational danger, a release of hormones would be triggered, preparing their bodies the ability to fight or run away.

Now it’s more common that we face mental and emotional stress as opposed to physical danger. And yet our bodies don’t know the difference. We get the same surge of hormones without the outlet of a physical run or fight.

But there’s a way to retrain your nervous system. And it’s all about breath-work.

Bryan Ellis, who has been teaching meditation, yoga, and breath-work for nearly ten years, has built a business around helping people chill the fuck out. Pardon my language, but Ellis, with his rough around the edges, Hollywood-bred demeanor, would probably approve.

Ellis claims that breath is the ultimate tool in being able to surf challenges. Our breath is the true indicator of what is real and what is present. Our minds can create a thousand different scenarios and our body will react to those thoughts.

But our breath is the true testament. His techniques include daily practice of taking full and deep breaths. A lot of the time we hold our breath or breathe in a very shallow manor.

Check-in with yourself constantly throughout the day. “Are you breathing? Or are you holding your breath?”

Ellis also recommends specific breathing patterns that retrain the nervous system. Holding your breath and softening into the discomfort is a great practice to train your body and mind for handling discomfort with ease.

If you want to elevate your breath-work visit https://www.theholywild.org/

Train your soul

Look, if you want to live a life where you go beyond what the world offers you at face value it’s gonna require some soul searching.

Part of being able to see past a difficult circumstance is having awareness of a bigger picture. Knowing that there are deeper core values beyond, material wealth, societal success, and personal attachments.

It’s okay to want those things and to work for them. But it’s not okay to be dependent on them. You have to be bigger than those things so that if a time ever comes where they are stripped away you’ll still be left standing.

Matt Kahn, a spiritual leader and author, with over 16 million Youtube viewers teaches people how to embrace whatever arises in life. He encourages people to perceive their lives as the journey of your soul.

That every challenge we meet is in fact our teacher. There to help us become more flexible. Sometimes extremely flexible. We can choose to love and appreciate those challenges as they are helping us along our way to a true destination.

To get through extremely difficult times we need a guiding light. Something that leads us through the darkest of times. No matter what your faith looks like, tune into it.

To learn how to perceive life through the soul watch this. This perspective offers a calmness and clarity for anyone struggling.

So bring on the waves.

You have every tool available to you to master challenges. You reclaim your power when you give into the ride of life and come shooting out the other end of the barrel with your heart pounding.

It’s invigorating actually. To realize your own resilience. To know that you aren’t a victim of circumstance. So lean into whatever life hands you. Welcome it in.

Are you breathing? Or are you holding your breath?