Did it hurt....when you fell from heaven? Okay cheesy pick up line aside, did it hurt? You are probably wondering what I'm talking about, but hear me out. Did it hurt, when you did that thing that you knew would hurt like hell? Did it hurt when you

Think about it for a minute.... oh look pretty pictures.

Now that you thought about it, I'm going to hit you with another question,

Think about that for another minute.....

Growing up I avoided ball games, especially big ball games - basketball, football (soccer), volleyball. For some strange reason, I was afraid of being hit by them. I believed that it would hurt like hell and should be avoided at all cost.

Then one day, that all changed. I was walking around NYC and came across a football (soccer) game in the depths of Chinatown. I decided to sit on a bench on the outskirts of the field to watch. About thirty minutes in I was hit in the face by the ball.

Bam! Out of nowhere, the ball connected with my face and I laughed. Yes, I laughed, I gave the guys back their ball, brushing off their apologies and watched the game for a little while longer before continuing on my walk.

I should have been feeling so many emotions:

But all I felt was happiness and giddiness. It was like finding something that was buried or getting the results of an experiment. I had a great discovery, getting hit by a big ball doesn't hurt as much as I thought or believed. I should have felt some measure of sadness seeing that I didn't allow myself the experience of playing ball games, but at that point it didn't matter.

We all have an idea of how much something is going to hurt and somehow that idea has been given growth hormones that it appears larger than it really is. The thing is it really doesn't hurt that much in comparison to what we think. In fact, it more times than not feels like a pin prick instead of a knife wound.

Plus we don't give ourselves enough credit, we can take the blows as they come and we have to. Those same adversities give us our strength, they make us stronger. We should not be hiding from them, we should be taking them on head on. At the end of our lives we should be way stronger than when we were mere babes.

Still nervous about meeting your challenges? Start small, think of it as a staircase. Take each challenge and conquer it and move on. Before you know it, you will be at the top and when you look back you will be amazed at how far you have come.

How small is a small challenge? Lets put it this way, I've only started eating bananas recently after two decades. One small step for others is a huge step for me.