We often hear about the importance of physical exercise and the benefits it has for both our physical and mental health. Move your body. Get your heart rate up. Break a sweat. All of that matters.
But I think there’s something deeper happening when the exercise you choose also gives you a healthy place to struggle.
For me, that place is Jiu-Jitsu.
I walk onto the mats carrying whatever the world handed me… stress, frustration, anxiety, old memories, restless energy. And for the next hour, I get to fight in a controlled environment. I struggle. I breathe. I sweat. I get uncomfortable. I get humbled. I solve problems under pressure. And when it’s over, I leave differently than I arrived.
There’s something incredibly healthy about choosing where you fight your battles.
At some of the lowest points in my life, I had no healthy place for those battles to go. Looking back, I can see how I sometimes subconsciously created them in my daily life instead.
What I’ve learned is that life is going to give us things we have to wrestle with. Anger needs somewhere to go. Stress needs somewhere to go. Fear, frustration, grief, anxiety… they need somewhere to go. The things we don’t work through somewhere have a way of following us everywhere.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’ve found so much health on the mats. It isn’t only exercise. It’s a controlled environment where I can experience pressure without being consumed by it… struggle without destroying anything… fight without creating an enemy.
The opponents seem to change, but the truth is that I just keep meeting myself over and over again.
I’d rather wrestle with my demons on the mats than let them strangle my life.
Doing this doesn’t change what life throws at us… it changes the person who deals with what life throws.
Find a healthy place to struggle. Find somewhere to sweat. Find somewhere you can safely fight what’s fighting you… and leave it there.
Steve Maraboli
