Struggling with anything sounds like a horrible idea. We hate to think that we have to struggle. yet, we go through our struggles every day. From the struggle of getting out from underneath the warm blankets that Marcus Aurelius struggled with. To, what shirt do you wear? Some choices can be struggles, while other people just do. What is the difference? Why are some people able to just do something while others struggle to get out of the gate?
Your thoughts around struggling are something that is a fight in itself each time a choice comes up. Now if it is a choice we like its not a problem. If it is a choice we don't want to make that is where the struggle will creep up every single time. Why because of our thoughts.
Yet each time we have a struggle we become better. Our struggles are good for us.
Struggles are good?
Oh yeah when you struggle with something, you have a choice. You can learn and grow from it or you can resist it. Most of us start out resisting that struggle. Then after many years, we get tired of finding ways to avoid that responsibility and so we embrace it.
When you are not resisting a struggle and you embrace it you find that there are positive repercussions to your life. You see life in a different light.
A great example of this is looking at anybody who is “poor” they are normally happier. When I was younger and I had a young family we moved to a small town in central Texas. The first house we lived in was this tiny little 2-bedroom house. We spent a good part of a year and a half in that house. I worked and got a meager pay for the work. Yet we look back on that house and we all call it the Happy House. We had so much fun and laughed and enjoy life. Yet we struggled to make sure we ate well. We struggled to ensure the kids were taken care of. There was a lot of struggle going on. This is where the saying of Love grows best in a tiny home. We don't have much in the way of distractions we had each other and we were present.
Happier
Yes, struggling on a regular basis makes you happier. The valleys of life allow us to appreciate the mountain peaks, even more, sweeter than before. These struggles help keep us balanced. We all need more struggles in our life. Why is the world so unhappy? My guess is that it has it too easy. We don't have enough struggles in our world.
We can have more struggles and be happier in the long run if we allow for a harder life to become in and take up shop. This isn’t anything new. Even Teddy Roosevelt Suggested we take up a strenuous life.
More Fulfilled
When you delay satisfaction you find fulfillment to be readily at hand. The satisfaction that happens from going through a tough time working hard for a goal and finally getting to the end is so much sweeter than having someone do it for you.
As a whole, our kids need more of this. They need to see the satisfaction of not getting that iPhone unless they earned every single cent. This would help more kids see why hard work actually pays off. Why they can't afford to feel anxious, if they want something they will have to venture out of their house and go get it. You wouldn't have kids thinking that the other gender has it better because they would be too busy pursuing their own interests.
Yet because we have allowed our kids to do what they want our kids have had to find problems to solve. That is because if they don't have real struggles in their life they will manufacture those struggles.
More generous
Why don't people give more? That is also because there is less struggle going on. Look at homeless people. If someone gives them a whole pizza they will take one piece and share it out. Yet you have much of the lower middle class that is too busy with their own sense of Scarcity to see how they can help. They may give at times but it's not as freely as the poor and the self-made millionaires do. But classes of people have been through struggles and they give accordingly.
More positive
As mentioned earlier when you go through the dark valleys of life, you see the peaks with more gratitude. You in fact are more grateful when you work hard and you get the results of those labors. To struggle and make it is the biggest reward you have. That reward is gratitude for being successful in your endeavors.
Why do you want to make your life harder?
Why reread the previous section that is why. We all as a human race need more struggles in our life. Will there still be disease and injustice? Oh yeah, but those abuses are also struggles and they can be used to make your life stronger.
That abuse you play the victim over is also the option for you to rise above it and show others how they too can become better thanks to their own issues. We all have our own struggles and the key to finding happiness is not resisting that struggle. To avoid a struggle is to avoid your happiness and fulfillment.
My struggle
Here is a good example that has happened to me here recently. Back in November, I was able to do something I had wanted to do for quite some time. I was able to get out of the truck. It was an experiment to see if I was able to help a friend of mine with his business. In part, I would get paid for this and also learn some valuable lessons about business. If he would be able to pay me after 6 months he would keep me on. Did we grow enough to where he could keep me on?
No, I wasn't able to do so. We grew but it wasn't enough to where he could keep me on. I was able to grow his followings on Social media. I was able to grow his client base in his business Above All Home Care. I was also able to help him start a nonprofit that will eventually become a 501(c)(3) called ;Even One Less which helps spread awareness and helps comfort those who are affected by suicide.
Now I learned a lot from this experience. The biggest experience was that I now understand what it meant to have an owner's mindset. At first, I was taking this as an employee/boss dynamic. Each week My friend and I would sit down and talk sometimes for an hour other times it would be for several hours. He would explain what he was looking for and I would take them as being orders, and we took a while to get the communication down. Yet once we got there, We had other struggles that we faced. Each aspect was different. Yet by the end of this experiment, I came to understand what it meant to have an owner's mentality. I want a result instead of just accepting those results. To make calls on something and be working towards the results.
So this means that I have a new struggle now. I am about to go back into the truck. I can resist the emotions I have or I can accept that they are part of my thoughts about my circumstance. Those thoughts vary from, "I can't do this", to "It proved I am a failure". None of these thoughts are true they just show me what I am thinking. So I am changing my thoughts to be one of the intentional models. This shift allows me time to work on the aspects of my business I want to work on. I can be intentional with my time as a new obstacle arises.
Is this circumstance Idea'? No, but I don't have control over the circumstance. I only have power over my thoughts and my actions. So change the suffering I have and be grateful for the struggle, because when I do get this business to where I want it. It will be so sweet and I will be bringing you guys along for the ride.