Resilience is built in the discomfort zone

Do hard things, repeatedly

The cool thing about boxing—compared to other sports and even other combat sports—is that there's only one way out of a boxing match. Assuming you or your opponent aren't disqualified, you have to take a lot of damage.

It's the most significant scoring criteria in a fight. If the match doesn't end in a knockout—you took so much damage that you were unable to continue—then the winner of the fight is typically the one who caused the most damage to his opponent.

And—even if you win, you're going to get to get touched up pretty badly. It's a serious sport with serious outcomes.

Remember: The difference between boxing and other sports is that nobody plays boxing.

Whether I won or lost, I had to spend a few days recovering from the damage I sustained in the competitive bout against a trained 200lb+ man and the training leading up to the fight. Truthfully, the fight was the fun part, injuries notwithstanding. The training for the fight was miserable, and it made me wonder if I was some deranged masochist for continuously putting my body through the ringer.

So, how did I keep going? Through all of the training and fights, I continuously built up my resilience. I kept exposing myself to the stress and hardships of the training, so I became more resilient to the stress and hardship of training.

This principle is simple, but it has a profound impact. If you do hard things repeatedly, you'll become a harder person. The best part about resilience is that it's not limited to the domain in which you developed it. The resilience I built up in the ring translated into every area of my life where I was forced to overcome challenges.

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What is resilience, anyway?

Before I go any further, it might help to define "resilience." When you look this up on Google, you get two versions that pop up at the top of the screen:

1. The ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties.

2. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape.

Both definitions converge on the same idea. Resilience is the ability to persist in the face of difficulty. And there are no shortcuts or easy ways to develop resilience. You have to do hard things at the most challenging level possible for your ability level.

"Hard" is subjective, and you build up your resilience only by persisting in your personal arena of difficulty. An easy way to understand this is through something like strength training. If you can already throw up 405lbs, 315 is nothing for you. Although that weight is difficult for less than 5% of men, it's not challenging for you, so you won't get much from it. You won't be able to lift heavier weights. You'll only get stronger by pushing at the top of your capabilities, lifting something closer to 375lbs, for example.

This idea reminds me of a quote from the great boxing champion Muhammed Ali:

"I don't know how many sit-ups I did. I only started counting when they hurt."

So, the real secret here is that you have to find the upper limits of your capabilities and work there. The challenge is that the upper limits are the most stressful, painful, and unpleasant. Anyone who runs knows exactly what I'm talking about.

There comes a point in running where, no matter how conditioned you are, it sucks. However, you don't experience that level of discomfort right before you die. You don't even experience it at the point before your body shuts down.

Experienced athletes know that the pain and discomfort are just a feeling, and the only way to be able to run further is to continue through that pain—repeatedly and continuously, as long as they hope to improve and reap the benefits of running.

It's easy to understand this concept in the context of physical improvement, but the idea holds elsewhere. The pick-up artists and dating coaches say a lot of wild stuff, but one thing they have nailed is that the only way you can get over your fear of talking to women is to talk to a bunch of women while trying to get better each time. Yes, you'll feel awkward and socially uncomfortable, but you'll eventually reach a point where striking up a conversation is natural.

Academically, this concept applies as well. When I returned to school in my 30s, I knew that math was my weakest subject. It's part of the reason I failed high school. So, to strengthen my weakest point, I started doing loads of problems that were always right at the cusp of my ability. By doing this, I not only improved my mind but I increased my resilience. Specifically, I pushed through an uncomfortable but challenging point in my ability and increased my willingness to go through awkwardness.

You're probably wondering how this translates into other areas of your life. The idea is that you learn to believe in your ability to tolerate pain, discomfort, and challenge. Once you push yourself through the pain in one area, you gain the confidence to do the same thing in another area.

Even if the area in which you developed your resilience is in a completely different domain than the one you're attempting now, you carry the confidence of your ability to endure into the next area.

It is only possible to get better at boxing by hurting at the upper limits of your ability.

During the training, I'm exhausted. But the only way to prepare for a fight's demands is to train during that exhaustion. If I can't do it there, in a safe environment where I'd be ok taking a breather, I won't be able to maintain my focus and concentration during a fight. Once I've prepared for one fight, I know I can go through anything else. I know this not only because I survived but because I got better due to pushing myself.

So the key for you is to find your level of challenge—the point where it's miserable but tolerable—and do most of your work there. And when that becomes too easy, increase your level of difficulty. You have to constantly push yourself. Everyone knows that, but now you know why.

The rest is up to you.