They say that struggle makes you stronger—those motivational gurus, social media memes, and four-hour work week millionaire entrepreneurs. What they don’t tell you, though, is that before it makes you stronger, it will make you miserable. Possibly even very miserable.
And they should tell you. Because struggle is an integral part of life’s adventure.
To hope—maybe even expect—that struggle will make you stronger without first putting you through the wringer is to set yourself up for disappointment. More often than not, misery is simply the price of growth.
Sure, you may avoid paying that price. You may experience growth ‘for free’. But, more than likely, you won’t. So, accept it. Embrace it. If you don’t, you will find yourself fighting it. Denying it. And that just makes you even more miserable.
When you accept struggle, feeling miserable becomes just a season in that particular phase of your adventure. A season that you know will pass, but that first must be endured. I can tell you first-hand the strength that working through struggle brings. But I also know how miserable it can make you.
According to modern convention and social media, where life is airbrush-perfect, I probably shouldn’t say that. After all, as a coach who strives to empower people to live the life they were made for, feeling miserable shouldn’t be a feature in my life. I should be all about the stronger parts, and nothing about the miserable parts of struggle, right?
Well, no. The message that the gurus and entrepreneurs peddle may be that the life you were made for—the life where you are the ‘best version of you’—is perfect and pain-free. But it isn’t.
The reality is that the life you were made for is imperfect. It is painful. It is full of struggle. The ‘best version’ of you is someone who has experienced that imperfection and pain—someone who has walked through the fires, felt the heat of the flames—and emerged the other side. Scarred. Charred. And stronger.
For months, I have been in the fire. I have been feeling the heat of the flames. Enduring the pain of the burns they inflict. Walking the tightrope between hope and despair. Fighting for air to keep my dreams alive. In my darkest moments I have asked myself “What is the point of me?”, and been unable to find an answer.
Struggle will do that to you—take you to breaking point, and sometimes beyond.
I could deny this struggle I find myself in. Hide from it. Fight against it. But I know that I must not. Because to deny the struggle, to hide from it, or to fight it, is not to find a path through the fire, but to stand still in it. Maybe even to fall deeper into it.
When you accept rather than deny the struggle, face it rather than hide from it, and embrace it rather than fight it, you begin to remember past fires from which you emerged scarred, but stronger. And when you do that, in amongst all the turmoil and doubt, you can find peace.
Ultimately, whether struggle makes you stronger or crushes you is a choice.
You can choose to accept it as part of the adventure into the life you were made for—a refiner’s fire chipping away all that keeps the real you from view—and thus ensure that today’s struggle is merely temporary. Or, you can choose to deny it, and ensure its flames will never be fully extinguished.
The question is not if struggles will make you stronger. Those motivational gurus are right—they will. But only if you accept that they will, most likely, also make you miserable first. Possibly even very miserable.
