Struggle Makes You Stronger

Struggle Makes You Stronger

Beyond that personal satisfaction and sense of achievement, there’s plenty reasons to purposely choose to “struggle”:

1. Struggle gives you the power of indifference. When you’ve walked or taken the bus to work every day for 10 years like I did, you eventually become indifferent to the downsides of being outside. Walking through a little rain or snow becomes “no big deal”. You build up a tolerance to little discomforts in life.

2. Struggle can make you physically stronger. I used to work on the 21st floor of a tall building. Rather than taking the elevator, one day I just decided to always take the stairs. It was hell the first few weeks, but it sure beat paying for a gym membership, and my legs got in pretty good shape from doing it!

3. Struggle can make you smarter too. Think back to the last time you read a really difficult book. Maybe it was a personal finance book with a ton of new terms and ideas. It probably wasn’t easy to read, but you got through it, and are now a little smarter, wiser and more knowledgeable person as a result. Studying instead of slacking-off and watching Netflix can be a form of struggle.

4. Struggle can even give you a whole new set of skills. I remember the first time I tried to repair a clothes dryer by myself. I popped-off the cover to the dryer and it was this incredible mess of wires that made absolutely no sense. I soldiered-on, and slowly and meticulously went through each and every wire until I debugged the problem. It wasn’t easy, but I gained a incredibly useful skill in dryer repair.

wires

Inside my dryer looked something like this — a complete rat’s nest of wires.

See what I mean? Struggle leads to a smarter, stronger, more skilled version of yourself that’s a little more indifferent to discomfort. What does that sound like?

A powerful superhuman, that’s what it sounds like to me! Simply put, instead of taking the easy path of convenience, we gain an incredible power over our lives when we choose to struggle a little.

That’s a powerful idea I want to share with my kids.

Final Thoughts

Since this is the internet, I’m sure someone is going to write-in and tell me that I’m completely wrong about struggle, and that parents should be making a child’s life as easy as possible.

Yeah, OK. We might to have to agree to disagree on that point. I think too much comfort and convenience make us a weaker and lazier version of ourselves.

We need a little struggle in life to become that stronger-smarter-faster-more skilled version of ourselves (kids included). This is what I mean when I tell my son “Struggle makes you stronger.”

Unlike other parents, I actually don’t want to use all my money to make my son’s life as easy as possible. A little struggle is a good thing!

He might not understand it right now, but someday when he’s old enough I hope he’s able to read this post and see the value in it.

So struggle on buddy. I’ll be walking there right with you.