Firefighters

Stress, pressure and fear are felt most intensely when they are new. 

And just like the brain only experiences happiness when that which stimulates happiness was absent before, the brain only experiences stress, fear and pressure when that which stimulates them has increased or shifted beyond what you are used to. 

Fear and stress are always a response to something that has increased or shifted beyond what you are used to.

But once you have been through that level of stress enough times, it stops feeling like stress at all.

It just becomes your new normal.

Think about a firefighter.

The one who has put out hundreds of fires walks into a burning building with a level of calm that seems almost impossible from the outside.

Not because the fire is less dangerous.

But because he has been there before. His mind and body have already processed that level of intensity and adapted to it.

The firefighter who started last week feels completely different.

More afraid. More stressed.

The pressure that is crushing you right now, the deadlines, the financial stress, the difficult conversations, will not feel the same in two years.

You will have grown into someone for whom that level of pressure is familiar.

Every time you go through something difficult and come out the other side, your threshold rises. 

What almost breaks you today will become your new normal tomorrow.