Vulnerability and Stress - The Ingredients for Growth

A lobster is a soft mushy animal that lives inside a rigid shell. That rigid shell does not expand, so how can the lobster grow?

Well, as the lobster grows that shell becomes very confining, and the lobster feels uncomfortable and under pressure. It goes under a rock formation, to protect itself from predatory fish, casts off the shell and produces a new one.

Eventually that shell becomes very uncomfortable as it grows, and so it goes back under the rocks... the lobster repeats this numerous times.

The stimulus for the lobster to be able to grow is that it feels uncomfortable.

Now if lobsters had doctors, they would never grow!

Because as soon as the lobster feels uncomfortable, goes to the doctor gets a valium, it feels fine and never casts off its shell.

So I think we have to realise that times of stress are signals for growth, and if we use adversity properly, we can grow through adversity.

We need some stress in order to be able to grow.

For the lobster to grow it must also make itself vulnerable.

When a lobster first emerges from the old shell, its new shell is soft and offers little protection. It can take several hours before it reaches its full size and for the shell to start hardening.

-- Psychiatrist (and Rabbi) Dr. Abraham Twerski

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