How Are You Strong?

Today I want to examine the concept of strength.

At what point do you believe that you are strong?

Does being strong both apply to the mind and the body?

How do we measure it?

While a professional motivational speaker or a bodybuilder appears obviously strong, can we somehow be strong even though maybe we will never be those two things?

Those that we view as being strong, do we permit them to also have weaknesses? What would happen if we saw that?

Just how tangible does strength need to be?

These are some pretty deep questions. Certainly if this sparks a huge debate in the comments section, that could be pretty enlightening to see the differing perceptions on what strength is. I truly believe that everyone has very different answers to this cocktail of questions.

I guess I'll start!

I think to get this figured out, it's a process. To believe you have the capability to become stronger, you have to believe you have a strong starting point, even if you only have strong motivation. Witout at least that, you'll begin to believe you can't go forward and improve.

From there, having a strong way to measure yourself keeps you going forward and then a strong ability to look at yourself and believe that you're actually seeing the improvement.

I once told someone with a strong background in psychology that the only thing that was motivating to me was accomplishment. It made her stop and think, and I didn't get a repsonse. It made me wonder why she wasn't agreeing and it took a long time to see that I was partially wrong.

I didn't need the affirmation of accomplishment to have any kind of inner and outer strength. I just needed to figure out how to prove it to myself.

For example, when I'm working out, if I keep track of sets, reps, how maintaining good form becomes easier over time, I don't need anyone to tell me that I'm doing a good job- the evidence is right there on the sheet.

But physical strength is easy to measure with 2 minutes of planning.

Inner mental strength needs some patience and a lot of consistency. It's hard to record things on paper except through journaling. Yet over time, it's interesting to see how things change. What you write about over time changes as you work more and more on your thoughts.

And if you are actually seeing that, you know your thoughts are changing too. You know you're different. You know a deep conversation that someone would have with you compared to the same conversation two years ago would be totally different. Maybe they wouldn't know you anymore.

You can look at how you handle a stressful situation now compared to how you would handle the same situation before, and you know it would be different.

It's crazy how things change. But it does take time.

The last point I wanted to make was accepting that strength isn't an achievement, but a journey.

Your strength is meant to develop in the way it's supposed to for you.

If you want to be a bodybuilder, then go be a bodybuilder, but the journey is still going to be different because your physiology is different than the one in the picture.

If you want to be a professional motivational speaker, guaranteed the path is going to be different because that person you're admiring has already cornered the market where you found them. You're going to need your own based on your own experiences and expertise.

There's obviously no way that you can copy the experience to have the same goal achieved.

So same questions:

How are you strong?

At what point will you believe that you are stronger?

Does being strong both apply to the mind and the body?

How will you measure it?