Goal
This week, we’re going look at the best way to embrace difficulty and deal with the challenges you have.
Life Is Difficult
Life is challenging, and you need to know how to accept this reality.
“Don’t think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You’re here. It’s our time and our life, not theirs. Don’t struggle not to be happy. You are.” – Ayn Rand
Life is challenging. Throughout your life, you will face internal doubts and external corruption.
Internally, you will face personal demons, trauma, and fears. Externally, you will fight a corrupt and broken society.
Therefore, you may find yourself looking for easy solutions to your various challenges and struggles.
You shouldn’t. Comfort in the face of difficulty will not make you stronger, happier, or more capable. All the pursuit of comfort produces is misery and contempt.
You must understand there is no easy life. Life will always push back. Therefore, your goal should be to embrace and manage difficulty. The more adept you are in fighting internal and external challenges, the easier life becomes.
Three Ways To Embrace Difficulty
When you learn how to embrace difficulty, you can easily flourish.
How do you become more adept at solving and overcoming life’s problems? You learn how to embrace difficulty. How do you embrace difficulty?
- Focus on lessening the suffering of others – Do not obsess over your challenges. Focus on helping other people, and your problems will become easier to dominate.
- Revel in your present struggle – Have fun. Look at your pain as an exciting, new experience. The more you can celebrate the miseries of life, the more you can revel in your victories.
- Focus on who you’re becoming – Always look at the person you wish to be. Furthermore, reflect on who you are becoming as you fight through the struggles before you.
Remember, comfortable people experience despair and have no means of understanding their worth or value. The more comfortable you are, the more you are at the mercy of your vices and the vices of others. However, the more capable and stoic you become, the more life will struggle to tear you down.
Let’s look at the three ways you can learn to embrace difficulty.
1. Focus On Lessening The Suffering of Others
Helping others will ease your suffering.
“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.” – Booker T. Washington
Obsessing over your pains, doubts, and fears are the default. We are programmed to be self-absorbed. Weak individuals will complain about their anxieties and will never see the blessing in their current struggles.
Conversely, we are individualists. We should focus on alleviating our current pains. Pain is meant to be conquered, not admired. For example, if you are struggling through an addiction, focus on winning the battle. Do not play the victim or demand admiration.
Therefore, gratitude and generosity are perfect tools for helping you embrace difficulty. For example, you may complain as you try to defeat a junk food addiction. However, if you focus on feeding the homeless, your mindset will shift. You’ll want to alleviate their hunger and provide them with better food. This desire to help will bleed into your efforts. Remember, you’re still trying to defeat your addiction; but, your mind is too inspired and preoccupied to complain while doing so.
2. Revel In Your Present Struggles
Enjoy the process of self-improvement and mastery.
Are you going through the pain of self-improvement? Then own your pain. This is your pain, unique to you. It is the gift you are giving to your future self: I will suffer now so that I can be better tomorrow.
As stated before, you have to face external and internal difficulties. Externally, you should have a sense of humor when dealing with the irrationality of others. When I see weak individuals lie about their desires and virtues, I chuckle. Of course, this is what weak individuals do: they lie and pretend to be virtuous.
You must always take the craziness of collectivists seriously. However, fight against them with lightness in your heart and a smile on your face.
Internally, enjoy and own any pain you feel as you overcome demons and climb mountains. This is your pain, and you will carry it forward to your better self. If you learn to enjoy the pain involved in self-improvement, you’ll complain less and win more.
Have fun with the battles ahead, and you’ll thrive in all difficulties.
3. Focus On Who You’re Becoming
Always focus on who you want to be and where your current actions are leading you.
“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.” – Frederick Douglass
Who do you wish to be? We all have an ideal self in mind, and your life should be dedicated to becoming that person. Furthermore, if you focus on your vision, you’ll find embracing difficulty is much easier than you realized.
As you go through your hell, imagine what you’ll look like on the other side. Are you suffering at the gym? Imagine what your improved body will look like. Are you bored studying? Imagine how much money you’ll earn with a new skill. Are you focusing on obtaining virtue? Imagine how simpler your life will be with less personal faults.
Conversely, pay attention to the external world. The stronger you become, the more you can tolerate the annoyances of an insane and anti-individualistic culture.
Furthermore, focus on the ideal. The ideal self is virtuous, not petty. Imagine how great it will be to mock the cruelty of our culture while helping those who are genuinely in need.
Lastly, if you need to develop your willpower, then focus on creating struggles. For example, abstain from warm showers for a week or go a day without music. Such voluntary pain will strengthen your ability to deal with internal struggles and external annoyances.
Embrace Difficulty And You Will Overcome Your Challenges
Fight onward to the accomplishment of your goals.
Personal improvement, internal doubts, and external hostility are the difficulties of life. The more you try to improve yourself, the harder your life will become.
Therefore, you have to embrace difficulty. You need to own the pain you will experience and use it to fuel you to the next victory. If you run away from the pain involved in becoming your best self, then you will be comfortable. Comfortable people are weak, scared, and incapable.
You were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.
Embrace difficulty. Become an individual.
Actionables
- What is something you struggle with? Furthermore, what steps can you take to overcome this difficulty?
- What was one moment in your life when you overcame a problem? How did you feel?
- What are some things you can do to make your life easier? Where are your preventable problems coming from?
Please remember that it’s important to do the actionables. You’re not on this earth to simply read but to do. To become an individual, you must act more than you consume.
*Image credit to Unsplash.
