Believe in yourself, even when things seem hard or impossible to achieve

Tom Hanks says in one of my favorite movies a quote that has stayed with me for years. “If it were easy, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” That came to mind when I recently read an article by some neuroscientists that talks about what happens in the brain when we accomplish something truly difficult. When a person overcomes an immense obstacle, a physical mark, a literal line, forms in the brain. These lines offer greater pathways for connections and innovations in our brains. Amazingly, it is easier to form these marks younger in life, so the more challenges we face at an early age that we can overcome, the more dramatic an increase we make on our brains and the brains of our children. We need to be challenged. We need to try things that are hard. And when we climb those mountains, we have achieved something special. Determination and grit are learned skills, not something you are born with. Go find something hard that you’re not sure you can do…and do it! Sure, you might fail the first time. You might fail the first hundred. But that will make your eventual success that much more meaningful.