The Greater the Challenge, the Greater the Reward

When it comes to health, we all want it to be easy. Just look at our daily lives. We want to eat the fastest foods. We want to do the shortest exercises. We want to put in less time and get more results. Time is one thing that always seems to be a barrier. We all want more of it and no one ever has enough.

Despite the challenges and the constant crunch, time is not my biggest concern. When it comes to the health of the people in our country, my biggest concern is effort. We are not putting in the effort that it takes to live healthy. When it comes down to it, we can live healthy. We can change the trend and start moving the other direction on the spectrum of health.

We can do anything we want to do. The knowledge and technology we have today gives us unlimited possibilities. Maybe the technology has actually hurt us. Maybe our quest for the fastest, shortest and most convenient has actually hurt our ability to progress personally. Sure, we can make more money and help companies reach more people in less time. We can even have conversations with people around the world at any time.

Technology has provided us with a lot. I’m glad we have the tools to do what we can do today. The problem is not the technology. The problem is our expectations and our effort. The more advanced we get, the less we have to do to see a reward. As things have gotten easier, our willingness to put forth any effort has decreased.

With so much instant gratification it is no wonder that we have gotten used to things being easy. We want things to be easy. We like it when things are easy. That has created one big problem. The problem I see with this is our disinterest in doing anything that’s not easy. We are so used to quick and easy that anything else is simply not worth it. If it is too difficult, we won’t do it.

This is clearly a problem for many reasons. When it comes to work, family, school or any other area of life, we all know that you have some difficult things to do. You have to suck it up and get through quite a few things in order to be successful in life. Don’t get me wrong, life has many wonderful things to offer and most of it should be happy and enjoyable. Most of life should be happy, but all of life should be rewarding.

Health, for me, is all about rewards. The reward that you get may be a combination of instant and delayed rewards, but there are many that come living a healthy lifestyle. The fact that we need to continue to highlight the rewards and sell health in order to make people do it is a crying shame, but I’m ok with it as long as people buy in and start to seek these rewards.

What are these rewards? Well health offers many positives that we can’t get from any other source. I’m not talking about avoiding heart attacks, preventing diabetes or avoiding death at age 50 because the body can’t make it any further. These are all good things to short for, but they are based in fear.

The fear of having a heart attack may be enough for some to take control of their health, but it is usually too late. They are only realizing that they need to make changes since they have had one or are told they are at high risk of having one very soon. This doesn’t equal a healthy lifestyle. This is just last-minute panic when a lifetime of ignoring health has finally caught up to you. This may keep you alive for a few more years, but it will not bring you the reward you are looking for.

The real rewards we get from health are not avoiding our worst fears. The rewards we get from health are more about what we want than what we don’t want. The results we really want are possible. They can be achieved if we are willing to put forth the effort.

What are these rewards I’m talking about? Well, there are many. Here is a short list of reasons we should all be focused on our health. These are the rewards we receive when we take control and give the effort necessary to live healthy:

Satisfaction
Confidence
Success
Personal Fulfillment
Control

These rewards are not easy to achieve. They take time, planning and commitment. Most importantly, they take effort. You have to go out and work for these rewards. You have to put yourself first and decide that you are worth the effort. If you don’t, you are simply taking what’s given. That may be easy for you to do, but it will not bring you what you want. Easy does not yield the rewards that truly satisfy us, it only gets us by.

Challenges are what bring us the real rewards in life. We were built to seek challenges. Just think about how good it feels to win a dare or to win something that no one expected you to win. It is natural to feel a reward when overcoming a challenge. Health is a big challenge, but that is what makes it so important. Just remember: The greater the challenge, the greater the reward.