My Co-host at our podcast, It's the Climb, is Jonas Cain. In one episode he talked about for almost 30 years, his personal best time in solving the Rubik's Cube was 29 years! He was never able to solve it, until he finally did.
Jonas had always run away from the challenge of solving the Rubik's Cube. Until one day, he didn't like where he was with it and decided to find a way to tackle the challenge. Now, with continue practice, his Personal Record (or in runner's parlance "PR") is much faster: 25 seconds.
The cube is a metaphor for taking on many obstacles in Jonas's life -- what we do when things are challenging or difficult. Now he doesn't run away from discomfort; he embraces getting comfortable being uncomfortable. It's a lesson that we need to face our challenges head on. Now, as Jonas can do -- more easily achieve what we thought was the unsolvable. Now, having overcome that "trivial" task, he asks himself what else can he take on.
Challenges are often difficult to solve. We can't make sense of them. However, if we stop avoiding the hard things and rather practice hard things, we're more likely to have improved our mental and physical resilience. Many other guests on our show talk about this in other ways. Mountain climbers trained for years before tackling the big, tough mountains. It took Jonas 29 years to be able to solve the cube in 30 seconds.
Practice hard things -- exercise, uncomfortable situations -- will prepare us for the times in our life when things get really, really hard.