Assalamu Alaikum my dear friend

Yesterday I was listening to a conversation between neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and journalist Michael Easter, author of The Comfort Crisis. One sentence landed so hard I stopped what I was doing::

“We grow only by doing what is hard.”

I stood there thinking: SubhanAllah, that’s the very lesson our Rabb has been teaching us from the beginning—yet we keep trying to rewrite the syllabus. We beg for ease, but He gifts us hardship, because hardship is the classroom where souls graduate.

Later that evening I found myself telling my daughter a story she’s heard before but that I needed to hear again. I reminded her how Allah ﷻ tested Ibrahim عليه السلام—fire, abandonment in the desert, the knife poised over his beloved son—and how each test carved him into Khalilullah, the Friend of Allah. Only after enduring the impossible did Allah raise him as a model for every nation and weave his family’s trials into the rites of Ḥajj. Tests were not proof of Allah’s displeasure; they were proof of His love, invitations to rise.

I asked her, “When you learned to walk, did I carry you each time you wobbled?” She laughed. Of course not. We let our children fall because we love them, because the stumble is the price of strength. Are we surprised that the Most Loving lets us stumble so we can stand taller than we thought possible?

Modern life, though, sells a softer promise: climate‑controlled rooms, meals in minutes, endless entertainment with a swipe. Comfort everywhere—yet anxiety climbs, muscles weaken, hearts feel hollow. Ease was never meant to carry us; hardship was meant to carve us.

Neuroscientists even see this truth etched into our neural wiring. Whenever you lean into discomfort—whether it’s a cold shower, a grueling workout, or pushing through one more page of Qur’an—your anterior mid‑cingulate cortex (aMCC) lights up. 

Think of the aMCC as the brain’s “grit center.” It’s the switchboard that links effort, pain, and emotion, telling the body: “This is hard, but keep going.” Every time you refuse to quit, the aMCC lays down thicker connections, literally rewiring you for greater resilience. In other words, your brain isn’t just coping with hardship—it’s being upgraded by it.

I’ve seen this first‑hand with the people I’m blessed to coach. Week after week we lean into purposeful challenges—physical, mental, spiritual—and I watch their confidence bloom. I don’t hand out easy answers; I simply hold space, guide, and remind them that growth hides inside the hard things

So here is a gentle invitation—the first of three notes on embracing purposeful difficulty. Choose just one hard thing for the next seven days:

• End every shower with thirty seconds of cold water.
• Wake ten minutes earlier for two rakʿahs of Tahajjud.
• Walk the last kilometre instead of driving.

The first morning will feel impossible. By day seven you’ll whisper, I can do this, and a small corner of your aMCC— and your heart—will have grown.

Whatever fire you are standing in, remember the ore. Remember Ibrahim. Remember that every test is a tailor‑made ladder back to Allah. Lean in.

May Allah ﷻ grant us the courage to meet hardship with hope, and to emerge from every furnace shining brighter.

With love and gratitude,
Rushdhi

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