People love progress as if it were built into our DNA.  Our minds automatically think progress equals good, and struggle equals bad. When I ask people to imagine an ideal life, I often get some variation on these few things:

• Nice house on the beach

• Luxury car

• High paying job with low stress

• Kids

All these things are great, but what people don’t include in their ideal life is the struggle.  We want nice things, but we don’t want to work hard or experience any stress to obtain them. Because of this, what people are identifying in their ideal life are actually just fantasy.

No amount of self-help books, medication, yoga, therapy, etc, will lead you to a life free of struggle. It is the human condition. To be alive, and experience the world, also means that you will have to struggle. But, the struggle doesn’t necessarily have to be viewed as a bad thing.

A struggle is what you make it. Personally, I have had days when it felt like a struggle to get out of bed, but it isn’t a worthy struggle. It is just me being dramatic. When I took the label of “struggle” off of it, I was about to say, “It’s just a bed and though I’d rather stay in it, I’m just going to get up. It’s not a struggle, it’s simple.”

What I love about the Fredrick Douglass quote is the connection between struggle (which we do not enjoy) and progress (which we do enjoy).  For Fredrick Douglass, his struggle was the difference between life and death, the difference between bondage and freedom. Confronting false struggles (the difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, too much foam in your latte, or taxes) needs to be relabeled, as the normal things that we must work through as humans. The real struggle is deserving of the label and requires us to rise up to its challenge and face it head-on. If you don’t know what your struggle is, ask yourself, “What is hindering me from progress?” Once answered, then you know if you start to work on tackling that thing, you are in for some struggle.

Often times it is helpful to have a partner in working through your struggles. At Pivot we are here to partner with you. To schedule an initial appointment, visit Pivot-Counseling.com/contact.