The Struggle is Real.
Life is hard. I get that compared to some most of us have it amazingly easy, but compared to some most of us have it pretty difficult. We tend to look at other people’s lives and see this one dimensional picture of either suffering or joy, when the truth is never that simple.
If you think someone doesn’t have problems, my guess is that you don’t know them well enough. No one gets out of struggle. It’s always there if you look for it.
So if it’s a universal truth, why do we take a sense of personal value from our struggles? I once read a book on running a small business (which I do) and was amazed when the author explained that finding it tough going didn’t mean you were failing, it meant that you were running a small business.
The actual act is going to be hard, the level of difficulty just tells you whether you have mastered it or not yet. But even at the level of mastery… IT IS STILL GOING TO BE HARD.
So there’s no need to have your struggles be some judgment on your value as a person.
Which was kind of news to me, because I always felt (and sometimes still feel) like my struggles were a sign that I was, once again, screwing something up, because I was a big fat failure.
So instead of trying to learn the lessons inherent in a situation, I instead took a massive sense of self worth on whether something was easier or harder.
I think this is why most of us don’t live at our potential, because we perceive failure as a judgment, rather than an unavoidable part of life.
It’s true that sometimes the struggle is a result of our own making. I’m kind of in the middle of one of those circumstances right now, and I hate it, knowing that I could be doing something else, somewhere else, if not for the many weaknesses and deficits that adorn my soul.
In one aspect, what comes so easy to others is for me a physically nauseating, emotionally taxing chore that fills me full of dread.
And my weakness creates so much struggle, that I become lost in the maelstrom of the madness of self judgment.
But when I learn to stop judging myself, the magic begins.
The struggle becomes an opportunity to learn, to grow, to change, and to overcome. When it’s not about me, then it’s about just getting it done, and moving onto the next challenge.
And believe me, there will always be a next challenge. I once heard it said that the only people who didn’t have problems were dead people, and it’s kind of true. No matter who you are, or where you are in life, you’ve probably got at least one struggle that you are facing.
So if you are struggling today, please know that it doesn’t make you a bad person, or less of a person, it actually makes you the one thing that we all are.
Human.
Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings