Don’t Wish Away the Hard Parts of Your Life

You’re here for the Challenge. The hard parts are your life.

Imagine you signed up for your life. Imagine you decided you wanted to be born. Let’s not get too mystical, think of it like summer camp. You decided you wanted to go to camp. You look at the list of activities…pottery, archery, campfires 101…aha! white water rafting. Why go to camp and do what you can do at home?

You want excitement, you want to learn something new, but most of all, you want a challenge. In fact, you don’t just want a challenge, you need it, you crave it with your whole being.

The big day comes…you go to camp…and suddenly you’re scared. You watch your parents drive away and you’re homesick. You feel alone, even in a big group of other campers, and you’re having second thoughts.

You quickly realize you have no choice. You’re stranded at camp. You decide to talk to the other campers and before long your nerves have calmed.

The next day you wake up and head to the river. It’s roiling white water with just enough jagged rocks peppered throughout to make it extra dangerous. No one white water rafts on a pond, right?

This is what you signed up for. It’s scary and difficult, but you desire learning and experiencing and it’s never enough.

We Need Challenge

Have you noticed the people who have everything you desire still have struggle? When you experience a lack of something in your life, it’s hard to imagine how all your troubles won’t go away if you just had it.

If you had it all (whatever that means) you would be met with new challenges. That’s why you’re here. You can’t wish them away, you can’t money them away, you can’t hide from them. You need them. You want them.

But for the sake of argument, pretend your problems are all gone. Materially, you want for absolutely nothing. You don’t need to work for a paycheck. Your time is your own. You can sleep until noon. You have no obligations. The amount of time it takes for you to get bored might be different than me, but you’ll get there.

Now what?

This is where it can go wrong for many of us. If you’re bored, you’re not challenged. You’re avoiding one of the reasons for you exist. If you aren’t learning and growing, you aren’t living.

Some people create personal drama to feel challenged, to fill the void. I’m sure you’ve met someone like this. Conflict is just swirling around them and they can’t see their way out (even though you can). This is how driven we are to experience (and overcome) struggle.

I don’t have to tell you what it feels like to overcome a challenge. You’ve done it. It’s incredible. Succeeding against the odds is what makes life exciting.

Don’t wish away the hard parts of your life, they are your life.