Sometimes, it’s good for you to struggle.
In person, I’m fairly notorious for calling people out when they’re making excuses.
“I can’t do the scary thing – I’m not ready yet! I’m not good enough!”
“I would practice to get better – I just don’t have time!”
“I would read that book – but I’m such a slow reader!”
Those are just a few mundane examples – I’m sure you get the idea.
I usually respond with –
“Well you can… it’s just not a priority for you.”
It really endears me to lots of people and makes me a bunch of friends.
(It doesn’t, at all. It does get people to throw it back in my face later – which is always fun.)
Regardless of if I’m right or not when I quip back to people like the jerk that I am, the real question is this:
If these things you make excuses about are so important, why aren’t they a priority to you?
I think the answer is often in the fact that we don’t want to struggle.
(There’s also fear of failure and fear of success – but those are topics for other times)
In Over Your Head
This year I’ve enrolled in a C++ certificate course thanks to your trust, faith, and generosity towards me (you all paid for it by buying my products, thank you dearly).
I’ve taken paid online C++ courses before, learned a lot, and thought I had a pretty good beginner’s grasp on the language and its uses. Really, I just wanted to enroll in the course as a resume builder and for a little more in-depth study.
Little did I know I was diving directly into the deep end.
Since the very first week it’s been a struggle for me, for various reasons. Most every week I’ve felt like I’m behind, didn’t understand something, had to have assignment language clarified, or something that just rattled my confidence.
Quite honestly one of the only things that made me feel better was watching a few others ask questions I could answer. I didn’t feel like the most behind person in class anymore. Well, that and a few 100%’s on homework have been nice.
And in piggybacking off Monday’s theme – push your boundaries – if I didn’t have a good support group of smarter people than me, I would’ve been concerned and probably ready to throw in the towel by now. So instead of quitting, I’ve been pushing forward.
Due to that push, I’ve hit the second theme of my 2019 – sometimes, it’s good to struggle.
Because, quite frankly, I’ve been incredibly overwhelmed.
With Great Struggle…
It’s not good not to rest.
It’s not good to “burn out” or over work yourself.
It’s not good to stress yourself to physical illness.
It’s not good to think or worry yourself into anxiety and stress.
It is good to test your boundaries, push yourself beyond your limits, and struggle to get to the finish line on occasion.
The apt analogy is that of weight lifting or strength training. Bear with me here – I know plenty of you are nerds like me with the exception that you haven’t become a gym nerd yet.
Yet. We’ll find a way for you to nerd out about sets, reps, macros, and your future six pack eventually – I promise.
Regardless – in strength training there’s a principal I’m sure you’re likely aware of called progressive overload. This means that little by little, over time, you progressively lift heavier weights and/or perform more sets and reps. If you’re doing it right, you stress your muscles close to their maximum capacity to do work.
When you’re done with the gym, you’re tired yet energized (yay endorphins!) and you rest. When you rest and sleep, your body regenerates and you get stronger.
If you quit this process and just sit on the couch, you get weaker.
This same principle applies to much of your life.
Quit doing mildly scary things? They turn into huge scary things in your mind.
Quit proving to yourself that you can succeed? You slowly lose that belief in yourself.
Quit when the going gets tough? You’ll lose the discipline to push through to the end.
Quit anything you should follow through on? You’ll come up with an excuse as to why it wasn’t your fault so it won’t hurt as much.
That last one hurts to read – right? Yeah.
Pick your head up, don’t look down at your feet and feel guilty about it – we’ve all done that and I’m no different than you.
Let it Suck
There are going to be plenty of you who read this who will want to reply back to me about how quitting something you’re doing – something hard – is sometimes the right thing to do.
You’re not wrong. There’s always a circumstance worth legitimately quitting – but that takes discernment within the particular circumstance and it isn’t what I’m talking about here.
In my example – I don’t have an option. If I quit the C++ course – nobody’s going to hire me as a software developer. I’m not sure if I want to work in-house anywhere yet, but I know I want that option. This is the only way to begin to make that possible short of going to get a 2nd degree.
That’s the kind of thing that I’m talking about.
Another example – I have a friend who would love to be a professional standup comedian. He’s hilarious, he regularly attracts a crowd, he’s got his “bits” memorized and would certainly kill on stage if he got used to it. But he has to get on that damn stage if he wants to do it – there’s no other option.
He hasn’t done it yet. He hasn’t even practiced in front of a mirror, on camera alone, or asked friends to come over to be a mock audience.
I get it – it’s hard. It sucks. It’s a struggle in every way. But like I’m struggling through my programming course, he has to struggle through the suck of the process to get anywhere.
Just like strength training, it doesn’t happen overnight.
It’s about sustained, committed work.
The Other Side of Struggle
Ryan Holiday is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors on the planet. You’ve heard me praise The Obstacle is the Way before, he has numerous other books (only one of which I’ve read) and a newsletter called Daily Stoic.
In said newsletter he recently dropped this bomb:
“Remember Seneca’s line about how a person who has never gone through adversity is to be pitied, because they have no idea what they are capable of?
What he was basically saying is that on the other side of difficulty is a gift – confidence.”
And that’s exactly what I’m shooting for by struggling through this programming course, right? It’s exactly what my aspiring comedian friend isn’t getting.
I want to be able to walk into an interview and know what I’m talking about. I want to be able to properly teach others. I want to know that what I create isn’t going to wreck somebody’s computer, but instead will help them make their art.
The price I have to pay is less monetary than it is mental and physical. Technically I didn’t even pay for this course – you did. All I’ve done is make things and write – spending time, energy, and creativity.
On the other side of that – with your help – I’ll get to where I want to be with software development, wherever that turns out to be. But, not without struggle, fear, commitment, or discipline.
And to me, the prize on the other side – confidence and ability – is completely worth all of that struggle.
Which, is consequently also why I’m a jerk to people in person when they say that they can’t do something.
I may come off obnoxious, snot-nosed, pretentious, snooty, or whatever other negative word you want to describe me as – but the reality of it is this –
I know you can, and I hope you do.
I just hope you’re willing to endure the struggle.
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