Recently I came across a story about the University of Arizona Biosphere 2. This research facility’s mission is to explore and teach about Earth and its living systems. It was originally built to be a closed ecological system intended to test viability for living in outer space and now has evolved to a variety of research opportunities. One of the most intriguing and famous experiments within this facility was how they grew trees. In this controlled environment, researchers found trees grew very fast up but eventually collapsed before maturity. Naturally, the question became – why?
As researchers studied this phenomenon, they found the absence of wind during the life of the tree had a huge impact. The trees didn’t form what they call stress wood, which helps a tree grow with a more solid structure along with position itself more effectively to absorb the sun. With wind eliminated through this controlled environment, the trees were never tested and stressed into growing stronger. And while they shot up quickly, having not gone through stress, they weren’t built for longevity.
With May being Mental Health Awareness month, the term stress frequently comes up. Actually, let’s face it, stress comes up no matter what part of the year it is. We’ve encountered enough of life’s moments of stress to understand it’s our reality. We can dodge, duck, or dip (any Dodgeball movie fans out there?) stress all we want but guess what, it will pop right back up in another way. It’s important to face our reality and instead of fighting it, embrace the fact that at times we will find ourselves in a state of stress.
One of the most important ways to fight through and thrive during stressful times is to understand the why – why am I facing these moments of stress? The trees without wind in the biosphere gives a great analogy for the why. If we’re to find long term and sustainable success, we must be tested. If we are tested, we build resilience, perseverance, and many other skillsets needed to create a strong structure mentally.
If we try to put ourselves in a controlled environment and make every effort to avoid the uncomfortable, we miss the opportunities to build the strength we need for sustainability. Yes, it may feel good short term to rise quickly because you’re doing everything to avoid stressful and challenging situations, but time always finds a way to catch up with this approach. We can’t live in this protected world forever and when challenging and stressful times hit, the feeling of unpreparedness can easily take over.
When challenging moments are searched for and embraced, our own structure is strengthened. Not strengthened because we will be successful with all these challenges but strengthened because of the struggles we will face and all we learn to keep progressing forward. The windy moments in life knock us off course and may stop us dead in our tracks, but these are the moments we learn the most from ourselves on how we fight back. The wind allows us to explore different ways to keep moving forward, no matter how small the step forward may be.
Take your step: for the next step challenge yourself to reflect more on “why” stressful moments have happened to you recently. Why do you think you’re being tested? Why would these challenging moments be a part of your journey? When we acknowledge stressful and challenging moments are a necessity for our sustainable success we can connect more to the why of the challenge we’re staring at.