Specific Adaption to Imposed Demand: Part One
No, this article is not about working out, fitness or health. Well, it is about health in a couple of ways, but not physical health. First, what is specific adaption to imposed demand? The concept comes from the fitness world. I have to explain the concept with fitness before we can transfer it to things like right livelihood and emotional and financial health.
A great example is one in which you want to build muscular strength. Let’s say you want to build up your chest and have stronger arms and a little more strength in your shoulders. You would do things to stress your chest. In other words, if you wanted your chest to get stronger you would do chest exercises. Why don’t we use push ups as an example? If you hadn’t done pushups, one day you would get up and do ten push ups. Then you would rest and do ten more. The next day you would be sore and you would rest for a day because that’s how you build muscle.
The next time you did pushups you would do eleven and rest and do eleven more. And you would increase the number of pushups you did each time and go from two groups or sets of exercises to three. The pushup will come easier for you and you will notice a change in your body and your strength will increase.
You imposed a demand on your body and it has made a specific adaption to it. You did pushups and your chest and arms and shoulders got stronger and, probably, a little bigger.
Now let’s look at your life. You want something in your life. You are working eight to six at a decent job and you still want more. You have a creative itch you need to scratch. You love to read and have always thought it would be cool to write, but you don’t know how to go about it. In order to write you need, for want of a better phrase, ‘writing muscles.’ You need to get used to writing. You need to get comfortable writing. You need to get confident writing, the same way you did with pushups.
So one day you set your alarm fifteen minutes early, get your first cup of coffee in you and sit in front of your laptop and ask yourself “What do I write about?”
It doesn’t really matter. Write describing someone or something. Write about how you feel or what you think. Why doesn’t it matter what you are writing about? You are not writing to accomplish anything other than becoming a stronger writer. Remember the pushups? You weren’t exercising to do pushups. You were doing pushups to get stronger. Pushups weren’t your goal; they were the means to a goal. Just like your writing. Get up and write. Ten minutes the first day and then eleven the second and so on until you are writing a half hour to an hour a day. Get better. Get faster at getting your thoughts down. Get more creative in your descriptions. Develop precision in your observations. Tell a simple story about something that happened the day before.
Soon you will find that your brain has made a specific adaption to the imposed demand of writing. You are a stronger writer, with better skill and stamina. Now you are ready to do something with your writing because you built up your writing muscles.
Specific adaption to imposed demand.