Fall in Love with the Struggle

Roadway with Underpass by Vincent van Gogh https://guggenheim.org/artwork/1483

From Instagram, my emphasis

"It's hard" - that's the point.

"It's uncomfortable" - that's the point.

"I'm tired" - that's the point.

"It hurts" - that's the point.

"I'm scared" - that's the point.

We weren't built for easy. We were made to do hard shit, not avoid it. In a world obsessed with comfort, we forget the value of struggle. Push harder. Step out of your comfort zone. That's how you grow and evolve.

Fatigue is the price of progress. Pain is a part of the process. Fear is a natural response to the unknown. It means you're about to do something great. Life is not meant to be a series of easy, comfortable moments.

It's a gift filled with challenges that shape you into the best version of yourself. Fall in love with the struggle.

That's the point.

Same church, different pew from The Comfort Crisis.  That book is about physical discomfort, (but the quote that I have in that post is even about watching cable news which confirms your way of seeing the world.) But I'm beginning to see it in relation to Thubten's Chodron's thinking about feeling and confronting fear.

Here's a related post I did a year ago called "Seek out Discomfort" which pulls together a number of different writers on similar topic.  There I have this from Chodron: 

Bodhichitta training offers no promise of happy endings. Rather, this "I" who wants to find security - who wants something to hold on to -- can finally learn to grow up. The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day?