The Art of Challenging Yourself by Book Talk Today

AUGUST 2020 | ISSUE 1

Book Talk Today

The Art of Challenging Yourself.

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The Art of

EDITORS LETTER

Challenging

Yourself

With ease comes comfort, but no growth. This is the dichotomy of life. Our brains are programmed to choose the path of least resistance where our decisions are based on the ease of attaining a particular reward. This is why voluntarily choosing to challenge yourself is mentally and physically demanding. When we think about challenging ourselves we look at individuals who staggeringly achieve success whether in business or sports, often pushing their minds and bodies to the limit. It leaves us asking how we do the same? Those individuals had to start somewhere as well and often they were in the same situation as many of us are in now. How did they make that change to become the individuals they are today? An individual that comes to mind is David Goggins. How did he make the change from a 300 pound man to becoming one of the greatest athletes on the planet? When you look at him now you assume he came born as the individual we see today. Yet, this couldn’t be further from the truth. David attributes much of his transformation to what he calls ‘Daily Suffering’. The act of putting yourself in an uncomfortable mental and physical situation to expand your body’s pain tolerance. This is ‘The Art of Challenging Yourself.’

It is consistently looking for opportunities to challenge yourself, no matter how big or small. From a cold shower in the morning to, running a marathon or even scaling Mount Everest, the challenge of being uncomfortable leads to human growth. Ben Aldridge, author of ‘How To Be Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable’, is an example of someone who used challenges to overcome severe anxiety. Ben and I discussed how challenging ourselves is not about the achievement at the end of the experience (which is important), but about the overcoming of the mind and body during the challenge itself. Alleviating mental health conditions may be more about putting yourself in uncomfortable situations and getting through them, than the traditional forms of medication and therapy. This edition will explore ways in which challenging yourself gradually and consistently can dramatically alter your life. Words by AUN ABDI

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CON TRIBU TORS Adam M. Lowenstein • Ben Aldridge • Hussan Kubba • Riddhi Kishnadwala • Zuzanna Anna • Pourya Hosseini • Mustafa Wardak • Nabila Siddiq • Alejandro Banegas • Vivi Kala • Phoebe Worell • Zakeriya Mohamed • Monica Ashwini • Rehnuma Islam Arpita • Kristina Murati

CON TEN TS

How To Be Comfortable with the Uncomfortable

5 Things That I Stopped Doing a Long Time Ago Article by Kristina Murati

Interview with Author Ben Aldridge

14 The Self-Improvement Myth

Article by Zuzanna Anna

17 There’s a Tension Between Self-Improvement and Self-Indulgence. Don’t Fight This Tension — Feel It Article by Adam M. Lowenstein

41 The Psychological Immune System Article by Zakeriya Mohamed

46 Why do we Challenge Ourselves? Article by Rehnuma Islam Arpit

50 ‘Can’t Hurt Me’ by David Goggins

Book Review by Mustafa Wardak

23 Success Decoded: Elon Musk Article by Hussan Kubba

30 Challenging Myself - To Do Five Good Habits Each Day

Article by Pourya Hosseini

33 The Simplest or the Hardest!

Article by Riddhi Kishnadwala

36 The Difficulties of Getting Published Article by Phoebe Worell

51 ‘The Squiggly Career’ by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis Book Review by Vivi Kala

53 ‘The Stranger’ by Albert Camus (1942)

Book Review by Nabila Siddiq

54 Swing Time by Zadie Smith Book Review by Alejandro Banegas

55 Elon Musk - Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Book Review by Monica Ashwin

How To Be Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable Interview with Author BEN ALDRIDGE

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As humans we seek comfort consistently. Whether through the entertainment, news or food, comfort is the driving force behind most of our decisions in life. Biologically this seems logical. In the past, comfort was used as a defense mechanism to ensure that we are safe and out of danger. Yet, in our modern world much of these dangers are no longer a factor. This leaves us questioning the value of comfort in our lives? It doesn’t take much research to show that success in athletic, academic or business pursuits are directly related to your willingness to leave your comfort zone. Leaving your comfort one is the opportunity to become a better version of yourself, but can only be found under duress. In the book, ‘How to Be Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable: 43 Weird & Wonderful Ways to Build a Strong Resilient Mindset’ by Ben Aldridge, we see the value that voluntarily leaving your comfort zone has on your mental health. Ben explains in the book that his anxiety was such that he struggled to live properly. Anxiety is a serious mental condition, however there is no one cause or cure. It comes and goes depending on the stress an individual is under. Although there are consistent efforts to discuss the

impact of anxiety on society, it still remains a taboo topic. What is evident in Ben’s story is that curing anxiety doesn’t have to be a ‘one model fits all’ approach. Whereas the majority of the population use medication or therapy to deal with these symptoms, Ben found inspiration from Stoic philosophers such as Epictetus, Cato and Marcus Aurelius to help him. A common Stoic belief is that voluntary suffering is necessary for the preparation of your mind and body. Only through suffering can you truly find out who you are and what you are willing to endure. People often see philosophers as individuals of ‘theory’ rather than ‘action’, however Stoicism advocates for the latter. Only through action and opportunities to exercise voluntary suffering can you truly experience life itself. The 43 challenges that Ben completes in his book range in difficulty. From taking a cold shower or bath, to dressing in embarrassing attire and even learning a new language. Ben sees challenges as a creative exercise aimed to be fun rather than something we need to avoid. We got an opportunity to sit down with Ben to discuss his book and how he used Stoic principles to help cure his anxiety.

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Did you practise Stoicism and Buddhism early in your life or did this come as you challenged yourself more?

Both philosophies helped me deal with the challenges of anxiety which was the main cause for writing the book. I started studying extensively and then I would test out these ideas with challenges. There was a higher purpose to doing all these difficult things. All these challenges are there to test out all of the philosophical and psychological concepts that I’ve been studying and it just gives it a real practical application because you can read about all of these things in books, but actually until we put it into practice in a very real setting it doesn’t have the same weight or value. Actually when you notice that something works then it has a tremendous amount of power, you can rely on it in the future. The findings have resonated with

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me and getting out and testing them in these weird and wonderful ways can be a lot of fun. We respond to information in different ways; some people may latch onto Stoicism but then there might be something else they find particularly helpful. Maybe there is faith in their life that they want to study and use it to deal with challenges. Maybe there is something more scientific or psychological. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, as long as the tool is there and you know it works then I think that’s very valuable for all of us.

Do you feel like there is a flaw in the idea of philosophy itself?

I think it’s important to get out there and test it through action. It’s great to read about it but unless you work it into your life then it’s just going to be something that you forget because it doesn’t have that day to day

application. I think that the purpose of studying this is to live a better life. To be prepared for what happens in life is unknown and uncontrollable, challenges are inevitable, we are all going to face them. We face adversity in different ways so I think it’s so important to have a system in place to deal with whatever that looks like. This looks different for every single one of us and that’s the beauty of this philosophy and ideas that have lasted for thousands of years. They can help us now, even a little bit of help, it’s better than nothing. I believe in the application and having fun with it, it doesn’t have to be boring.

How did you find the people closest to you respond to the challenges that you were taking on?

I think it’s quite funny because now it’s very different. It’s now “Ben is going ice swimming” or “Ben is climbing Everest on his stairs”. It doesn’t get much reaction these days because I think it’s something that has happened for quite a long time now. My girlfriend was super supportive, as this was off the back of terrible anxiety and my way of trying to learn how to manage it. How to deal with that and understand myself better so she was really supportive. It has always come from a place of support with lots of encouragement to do things. It has never been met with resistance, in fact loads of people join me on challenges. That’s so lovely running marathons with my friends and climbing with friends while learning about ourselves through the process.

With the anxiety, did you find that the conventional way perhaps of dealing with it weren’t giving you the results or the solutions that you were looking for?

What happened was I was going to the doctor and I had all these things that I didn’t know what they were. I went to the doctor and he diagnosed it instantly as anxiety. I didn’t think it could be so powerful BOOK TALK TODAY MAGAZINE

panic attacks. I knew that there was value in it for me so I just ran with it. This is where this project came from, stepping out of our comfort zone and deliberately pushing ourselves, it’s counterintuitive but it works. It worked for me.

Q and create all these physical sensations in my body. I was very young, it was a real surprise for me but I’ve always been someone that when I want to learn about something I would go in hard and study and try to understand the situation. All of this came about from extensive reading and I almost didn’t get to go down the sort of “normal” or conventional way of dealing with it. So I didn’t have therapy, I didn’t use medication but what I did was read extensively, like obsessively, about what anxiety was and how to deal with it. These ideas started to change the way I viewed anxiety. Certain things began to resonate with me. Stoicism actually changed my life and the idea of practicing adversity and voluntary discomfort. The Stoics would hug statues naked in winter so that they could practice being cold and they would roll around on the hot sand. When I could see that stepping outside of my comfort zone actually worked, I stopped having 10

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Do you think it’s a lot more about finding what it means to you and how you define it more than what someone else tells you what it is?

I think with all of this, this is from my own experience because I’m not a doctor and I wouldn’t be able to say this is definitely going to work for everyone. On a personal level, I think it’s always important to consult with a medical professional and get that advice. But what I found that helped me was using these ideas and figuring out myself what’s going on in my mind. Learning tools and tricks to deal with that in a fun practical way, that’s where I found that I learn more about myself in this short period of time. I learned who I am, how I deal with fear and frustration and all these different emotions that come up when we face difficulties. This has resonated with me and it depends on who we are and what we use as a system. Mental health is being talked about more and more, sharing our experiences with dealing with mental health, the accessibility and the many ways to deal with it. This just happens to be my way of dealing with it and

it worked for me. I’m hoping for people who also experience anxiety, this will be something that they can have a lot of fun with because it’s the fun element. Mental health is a very serious topic, actually there’s a lot to be said for just playing around with how we respond to things. We don’t have to be anxious to deal with fear, worry, stress and frustration, everyone has this going on so I think stepping out of our comfort zones can do a lot for us in whatever mental space we are in. Be it we are very anxious or in a very dark place or whether we are at the top of our game there’s still so much we can learn.

Do you feel discipline is the foundation to creating a system in your life to actually do these challenges consistently and see the growth an individual is looking for?

I think discipline is essential for everything that we do in our lives. Everyone will have a different relationship with discipline but something epic like learning another language or something that requires a regular commitment that is discipline. You can replace learning a language with any other skill. It’s that regularity of it because you are going to face resistance and you are going to wake up and feel like you don’t want to do that today or you feel you don’t have time, its learning to manage all of that. Ultimately, this cultivates our discipline and

that regular commitment can benefit us. Seeing ourselves progress can boost our confidence when you push through these barriers. I never thought I would be able to properly learn a language. I’m not fluent at all in Japanese, but I can have a casual or formal conversation in Japanese. I was in Japan before Christmas 2019, I didn’t use English the whole time I was there so it was just entirely in Japanese which just changed the experience and it validated all of those hours I had put into learning it. It’s that reward, that different experience. It’s that committing to a skill, learning a lot of lessons, as well a lot of the philosophical concepts that I have talked about could be directly applied to learning a language. It’s working with frustration and having an optimistic growth mindset. You will be meeting failure on a regular basis, when you fail it’s important to work on our relationship with that. We don’t have to give up just because we fail at something or just because we had a bad day, we can use that as a stepping stone. It will help us to progress so I think there’s a lot to be said for discipline. My problem as well is I have got so many things I want to do. It’s choosing which ones to stick to and which ones I just do for the experience. The challenges in my book have been one offs or others have been ongoing. I look for different BOOK TALK TODAY MAGAZINE

“STOICISM ACTUALLY CHANGED MY LIFE AND THE IDEA OF PRACTICING ADVERSITY AND VOLUNTARY DISCOMFORT.”

It needs to be a balance between the both. It’s important to focus on process over results for whatever it is, especially if you are talking about long term goals. With writing it’s the process over the results. Obviously my desire was to get my book to be published and out in the world but when you are writing it, in the heart of it and enjoying the process, each step is going to be very different. You can set goals and targets but often life is going to throw a curveball at you and it’s not going to be so structured. It’s all about being focused on that process and breaking down into smaller steps and working towards each one and then knowing that actually there are going to be disruptions but as long as you are focussed on that process, keep going and chipping away.

Q @dothingsthatchallengeyou challenges that I can do as a one off event as it’s important to have a mix. Committing to goals like going to the gym regularly, that’s an ongoing goal. Also punctuate life with a weird oneoff bizarre experience or things that you can just do and complete. 12

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Do you think trajectory is more important than goals? Or, is it a balance between the both?

For someone who has had such varied experiences and anyone who has read the book or will read the book will see your experiences - which one do you think provides you with the most learning experience?

There’s been a lot of that in many different ways. It’s a compound effect actually, it’s that you do these things and every time you break through it’s a small win, they all add up. The biggest change has been on the

back of climbing and my experience from learning to climb in different settings so my mountaineering experiences, my climbing at the gym and climbing outdoors. It’s the mixture between physical and mental. There the element of fear that you have to deal with especially in some of the slightly scarier settings. I have been the most scared in my life when I was experiencing horrific anxiety and panic attacks. The most fear I have ever felt has been climbing in different settings where the severity of what you are doing is quite intense and you are overwhelmed by that and it doesn’t have to be particularly technical. It’s just that you are exposed and you are doing something that’s difficult for you individually. There’s been growth off the back of that especially dealing with heights and falling. All these different things are packed with lessons.

to it for how straight forward it should be so that’s something that I want to explore more. There are a lot of things on the list. The Stoics were really inspirational

Were there people around you that inspired you to take challenges or seek adventures?

because they pushed themselves and challenged themselves. I love the idea of pragmatism. The pragmatic side of Stoicism is why I really resonate with it because it’s so practical. That was the key influence in this whole project. I have an image of Cato, deliberately wearing something embarrassing so that his peers would laugh at him so he could practise feeling shame not let that be an issue. They were really inspiring.

What’s your number one on your anti-bucket list right now?

Right now, I haven’t done it yet but it’s giving blood. For most people it would be nothing but for me, it makes me just think about it. I know it’s going to be a great one so I’m actually looking forward to doing that because it’s something I can write about and practice these things. It might seem small in the scheme of things, however for me, I do feel the disproportionate amount of resistance

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