I came to a realization recently that I have been in love with the concept of struggle for…oh, my whole life, pretty much. I was looking back at the last decade and it seemed like it was characterized by struggle after struggle after struggle. I dug deeper, looking for any indication that at some point throughout the decade I’d had at least one period of calm and peace. Nope.
It made me ask WHY. Is the world just a terrible place rife with difficulty? Sure, maybe that’s part of it. Does adversity reveal your character? Definitely. Was it that everyone else gets it easy, and I just have to struggle? Sure, that victimy answer was great for a little while. But when I started to really consider my choice in all of this, I wondered if I wasn’t just choosing struggle. Yup, choosing struggle – on purpose.
The idea came to me slowly, kind of like when you’re driving in really bad early Monday morning traffic and the light changes color and it takes everyone thirty to forty seconds to realize that yes, the light is GREEN and it’s time to GO (you can imagine what kind of driver I am). I mean this seriously, because as the idea came, I wanted it to come faster so I could get to the conclusion. Sometimes I look at myself and I can’t help but laugh.
I realized that while things can be hard, that does not mean that everything MUST be a struggle. Don’t get me wrong. I love adversity. I think adversity is one of the elements of life that makes us who we are and shows us our own true colors. I appreciate the power of struggle in my life. But I think that appreciation has caused me to be in love with struggle, obsessed with it, and seek it out even when things really do not need to be a struggle. They can be relaxed. I can be relaxed.
What does this have to do with business? Well, I see the same thing happen in the business world. We get going with things and it’s difficult and customers are complaining and mistakes are being made all over the place and we wonder why the whole thing hasn’t just gone up in flames. We find ourselves agreeing to things that we know are going to be painful for very little return. We feel like we are the absolute worst person to be responsible for whatever our role in the enterprise is. BUT WE HAVE TO KEEP GOING. IT’S LIFE OR DEATH. Eventually, it quiets down – but we are so used to the difficulty and the struggle that we start stirring the pot in unnecessary ways just so we can feel good about what we’re doing.
Yes, I said that. Struggle makes us feel good about what we’re doing. It feels valuable. It feels like we’ve overcome something, attained a victory, and should be ready to level up. But if all you’re good at doing is managing chaos, you really don’t have time to live your life.
Does this sound familiar at all? Have you seen this in your life or your workplace? Are you afraid that if you don’t struggle, you are going to lose your game? There is value in the difficult times and value in the quiet times, and how we perform in the quiet times – do we get sloppy? Do we get lazy? Do we get bored and cause unnecessary pain? – tells us how strong we actually are. How we perform in struggle doesn’t actually tell us anything.
This brings me to the image for this post – do you really want to punch today in the face? What does approaching the day that way do for you? Maybe it makes you feel strong. Maybe it makes you feel like you can do this for one more day. But at the end of the day, how are are you going to feel after punching it in the face? Will you feel satisfied for having knocked it unconscious? Will you be at rest? Will you be happy with what you accomplished? Or will you just be exhausted from the effort, fall into bed, and have to use the same epithet to get you up again in the morning, to punch it all over again?
Activity: Set the timer for 3 minutes. Consider the word struggle. Write down all the words, thoughts, or images that come to mind with this word. Consider your results. Does this depict how you would like to be engaging with your life? What can you do to put down struggle? Where can you choose calm instead, even if things are difficult?