Thought-tober: How tough are we?

Humans are resilient and pretty darn tough. Almost to a fault, in fact. As a species we have survived through uncountable challenges and hardships to rise to the top of the world and food chain. Because of this history and the subsequent relative ease of most of our lives it seems we’ve lost some perspective on toughness. Now, many of us believe, mostly since we are human and life’s been pretty “easy”, that we are much tougher than we actually are. We seem to think that what we go through on a daily basis shouldn’t even have an impact on us. We are surprised when we get tired, sick, hurt, gain weight or feel depressed. We think that we should be able to thrive and feel great all the time. We have what I call the Invincibility Complex.

Let’s think about this for a moment. Looking at the average human, particularly the average American…

We don’t sleep enough. We eat terribly. We don’t keep our bodies active, strong and flexible. We sit down all the time. We trap ourselves indoors. We surround ourselves with stress. We don’t have fun. We worry about everything. We are obsessed with technology. We swallow drugs, pills, alcohol and medicine daily. We have disconnected from touch, eye contact, good manners and personal connection. We eat, breathe and absorb toxins and are surrounded by electricity. We don’t ever slow down and just relax.

So why is it that we are surprised when things don’t go well for us all the time?

Are we Superhuman? Or are we just human?

I wonder why so many of us underestimate the challenges of daily life. We are tough but we are not invincible. Let’s keep that very important concept in mind the next time we expect to seamlessly handle this so called easy life of ours. Life’s tough, let’s give some respect to the challenges we have created for ourselves, particularly if we don’t have all our ducks in a row.

We might want to be like or feel we “should” be as invincible as Superman but we can’t forget how much kryptonite is all around us these days.

Thanks for reading, have a great day!