We go to the gym, not to build, but to breakdown muscle. It’s later at home when we eat, sleep, and rest that we re-make ourselves as bigger, stronger, and more resistant.

This continuous process of, breaking ourselves down in order to rebuild, strikes me as analogous to how personal growth occurs through self-development.

Whether it be the healing process of moving past pain and trauma or revisiting self-identify in the multitude of spaces we occupy — we deconstruct in order to reconstruct — maybe it’s breaking down preconceived notions and unpacking long held biases, perhaps it’s deconstructing social constructs that have held us too squarely in a box not made to fit all that we can potentially be — we take our former selves and we reform ourselves.

We can experience growth from trauma and hardships — we can become more, become bigger, become more resilient than any challenge or challenger. We can grow more connected to our environment, more interconnected with others, and more intraconnected within ourselves when we break down barriers and direct growth stimuli towards cultivating a more self-actualized existence.

Our truths and our realities are not static and fixed, we can adapt to thrive not merely survive. We can breakdown and let go of what is no longer useful and make space for what it — we contract for a time in order to live more expansively— we unwind and unravel because we are both thread and needle, capable of sewing the self back together into a far more rich and masterful tapestry.

In our mental gym we can always workout in order to work it out.