Life is a Struggle. Or is it an Adventure?

Life is…Completing this simple sentence has helped me create the life I want.

Life is a Struggle

Life is an Adventure

These are two beliefs I’ve held about life. Which is true?

Both have been true for me. As a younger man I finished the sentence this way: Life is a struggle. And it was. I didn’t have more negative events in my life than anyone else, but I focused on them, enjoying the positive events less than I could as I prepared for the next bad thing to come along. For it would surely come.

I was born to depression-era parents, in a family environment that was loving, but tended to be cynical, skeptical, and fatalistic. Looking back, seeing life as a struggle seems perfectly natural given what my parents went through and how the depression impacted their lives.

Negative Bias

There are those who expect bad things in their lives; they expect the worst hoping to avoid the disappointment of expecting good things and being wrong. This works as a negative, self-fulfilling prophecy, and generally results in diminishing the experience of everything positive that also comes along.

I wasn’t quite this negative, but close, real close.

The Epiphany?

There wasn’t one. I wish I could relate to you a single, dramatic event that was my epiphany; something dramatic, with a flash of insight and a life-changing “aha.” Sadly—from the standpoint of reader interest—it didn’t happen this way.

My wife happened to attend a course sponsored by her work group. The course was Investment in Excellence by Lou Tice’s Pacific Institute. It was a positive attitude, law of attraction (though never using the term), belief-changing course that she shared with me via the audio tapes they provided. We both took to the concepts, with long discussions and many small “oh’s and aha’s” as we assimilated the ideas and saw the life-changing power they provided.

I went on to attend Tice’s course on my own and progressed to become a certified facilitator, putting on dozens of courses myself. Ironically, even while facilitating classes I often described my view of life without realizing how my struggle-belief was affecting my life.

It must have occurred to me gradually for I cannot recall a specific moment of insight. Fortunately, the insight arrived and at some point I realized what was happening—that I was viewing my life events through a belief system that colored them “struggle.” Review, reflection, and a big dose of Neil Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God brought me to this: Life is an adventure.

The Adventure

Changing my belief system has had an amazing impact on my life. I still have negative events to contend with, even worse ones than those occurring under the “life is a struggle” mantle, but I process them differently now. Now I see life as a an inevitable stream of positive and negative events. Perhaps that’s the Designer’s intent, to enable us to appreciate both by experiencing both. As so often happens in life I soon had the opportunity to live a new adventure.

When the doctor called to deliver an “it’s cancer” message after she removed the small lump from my neck, my “life is” belief was seriously tested.

I won’t lie, it scared the S**T out of me. This wasn’t a Disney World adventure. This was a life-threatening, scared out of my pants, “I have what?” blow to the belly. Just writing about it, I can feel the cold chill of fear in my belly again.

To someone of my age a cancer diagnosis is like hearing a death sentence—over most of the years of my life, people didn’t recover from cancer, they died of it.

I’m pleased to report that, though the adventure continues, I’m still alive and well, with no cancer symptoms in my third year. Through surgery (two) and radiation (six weeks), my attitude about life was surprisingly positive. Sure, oncology has progressed with better treatments and more optimistic prognoses, but I believe my view of life helped me overcome this challenge as much as my doctor’s skill.

Looking back, I can see the adventure in this extremely challenging experience. It took time for me to process this unexpected information, and I went through all the SARA phases: Shock, Anger, Rationalization, and finally Acceptance. It is what it is. Either I’ll get over it or I won’t.

I’m holding firm to my view of life, the adventure. There have been and will be difficult challenges with periods of pain and heartache. But it’s life, with its rich set of experiences. I’d love to skip the nasty ones, who wouldn’t? But we don’t get to pick and choose our experiences, we only get to choose how we behave in relationship to them.

I now appreciate the positive events of my life for all they have to offer. As for the negative ones, I tolerate them, make the most of them, and do my best to avoid dwelling on them while I look for the positive opportunities within. A new habit of expressing my gratitude each and every day helps me see the full spectrum of my life’s experiences.

Life is a struggle. Life is an adventure. Which is true?

For me, my life is better, more fulfilling, more authentic, and richer being guided by the adventure belief. Is this just a spin on words, a pseudo-positive way to feel better about myself? No, not for me. Seeing life as an adventure is what feels right and true to me—my gut says yes.

Which is true for you, the struggle or the adventure? Which sentence is more energizing? Which feels right? For me, seeing life as an adventure keeps me on a positive, problem solving, life-appreciative path. The other path was negative, de-energizing, bewailing, and resistive to life’s experiences. I’m glad I abandoned that self-limiting core belief.

So this is my quote about life—my core belief about life:

Life is an adventure. What an adventure!

Bring it on! I’ll do my best to be my best, to live my purpose, to be true to who I am. And when it’s over, I hope to have few regrets.

What is your life belief?

What do you believe about life? Why does it matter? It matters because your life belief is a core belief from which you view, evaluate, and assess life’s events. Do any of these common beliefs about life ring true for you?

• Life is a roller coaster, ups and downs.
• Eat or be eaten, it’s a jungle out there.
• Life is just a bowl of cherries.
• Life is like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re gonna get.
• Life’s a bitch and then you die
• Life is a song — sing it.
• Go with the flow.
• Life is… (Add your belief of what life is using a comment)

Early versions of this personal essay appear at the author’s Purposeful Growth site and this Suite101 Collection.

If you enjoyed my first foray into Medium, I’d appreciate your feedback, notes, and your recommendation. I’ll be adding more insight stories to this collection, so please follow it to be notified when I publish.