Science is perplexing. Sometimes it seems like every scientific advancement spawns the opposite reaction than it was intended to. Medicine designed to create a healthier public leads to higher obesity rates than ever before. Dietary studies spread highly influential misinformation which creates mass disease and suffering. Technology designed to make life easier spawns sloth-like stagnation which paradoxically creates the opposite effect.

Like a creatively packaged Twinkie, the hostility of the modern world is cleverly concealed. Shrouded so completely that many people fail to realize its existence altogether. Not hostility in the form of demonic dinosaurs, shingle shredding winds, and Ice age cold, but a subtler yet equally dangerous form of hostility…. Ease.

Excuse my juvenile analogy, but a scene in the Pixar film Wall-E brilliantly illustrates our modern predicament. In the movie, humans have been reduced to blobs on wheels. Automatically carted around on lazy boy recliners that travel on laser-blue strips of light, fed high sugar shakes, and constantly glued to their holographic television sets.

To the people trapped in this artificial reality, nothing is amiss. The hostility of their world, like ours, is clouded behind shallow yet appealing distractions. But while their spirits remain tolerable, at least somewhat entertained… Their bodies and minds rapidly deteriorate.

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Frank Forencich, author of the book Change Your Body Change the World and leader of Exuberant Animal puts it this way. “ The modern environment is hostile precisely because it’s too comfortable. It’s hostile because it no longer challenges our bodies to sweat, strain and struggle.”

This is the paradoxical truth so many people fail to grasp. Health actually doesn’t lie in ease, comfort and affluence but in struggle, hardship and physical and mental challenge. Bodies like minds flourish when they are used, pushed to adapt, challenged to perform… If you don’t use it you lose it.

To help you on your “survive” in our modern jungles, here are 6 ways to create mental and physical challenge in your life. And consequently, optimum health, happiness and performance.

6 Ways to Challenge Your Body and Mind

1. Sleep Outside

Take one day to throw away the comforts of modern life and embrace an rugged stay in the woods. Put yourself in direct contact with the elements- no hot showers, no clean sheets, no gourmet meals. Simply you and the wild…together at last.

2. Challenge Your Body to Adapt

People living a primal existence, in nature, had to be ready for anything. Each day probably brought a multitude of new and unexpected challenges. Weather patterns tested their ability to survive, long hunts tested their physical reserve…

Today this physical and mental oscillation is all but gone. Fitness routines, if they exist at all, are boring, repetitive, and predictable, each day consisting of the same systematic and highly regimented workouts. Without new challenges, the body reaches a physical plateau. We maintain functionality, but no longer grow and adapt.

Challenge your body with new and varied exercises. Force it to adapt, to grow, to thrive.

3. Challenge Your Mind to Adapt

In the same way that our bodies require constant movement, training and physicality in order to remain strong and functional, our minds also need this same kind of discipline.

Minds left unattended are like unkept gardens. Thoughts, like weeds, sprout from the pure soil of our minds creating disorder and depression, sapping the sunlight of our consciousness.

Avoid mental leniency. Train your mind. Focus, quiet, concentrate.

4. Try Something New

The trap of routine and predictability is an easy one to fall into. Almost everyone does.

While this path may appear less treacherous and more secure, it creates soul-deadening boredom and stagnation in the lives of countless people.

Eradicate boredom with new experience, with challenges that force you to adapt and grow. Travel, learn, explore, experience. Do something you’ve always wanted to do, something that gets you excited like a kid on christmas morning

5. Learn a New Skill

The world is full of new knowledge to be learned and new skills to be acquired. Challenge your body and mind by mastering something you’ve always wanted to learn. Maybe you’ve always dreamed of learning the guitar or becoming a kung-fu master. Whatever your passion, dive in head first, unrestrained, with a huge smile on your face.

6. Limit Unnecessary Comforts

Though undoubtedly appealing, many comforts that are now commonplace in our lives only create more stagnation, more distraction, and more physical and mental degeneration. Limit the time you spend on your cell phone, in front of the television and on the computer. Or, if you’re feeling more extreme, get rid of them all together.

Final Thoughts

What makes our predicament so perplexing is that while we are naturally drawn to ease, affluence and security, these “comforts” have backfired on the very people who engineered them in the first place. We’ve reached a tipping point where modern life no longer equates body friendly conditions but rather disease and physical apathy.

Without challenge, struggle and sweat tissue slowly begins to break down. Without focus, concentration and discipline, the mind begins to wither.

The next time you see a lazy boy recliner, or the flicker of the T.V, don’t be deceived. Although our world appears less harmless than it did 500 years ago, is it really?

I’m not sure. I believe true health lies in a middle ground. In a combination of the hardship of the past and the ease of today. In sweat, struggle, and challenge but also in the occasional enjoyment of modern comforts.

But what do you think? i’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below!