Not Everything Hard is Bad

I love podcasts almost as much as I love audiobooks. As I travel to work each weekday, I find myself cycling between either an audiobook or a podcast, and today was no different.

One of my favorite podcasts is The School of Greatness with Lewis Howes. Today, I began listening to his guest, Myron Golden, share about finding meaning in hardships. Friends, if you have the opportunity to listen, I would.

Something Golden said resonated with me in a way that only wisdom can. “Not everything hard is bad for you.” Boom! That hit me in the gut with a wrecking ball force. See, I lived a good portion of my life in a victim’s mindset. I believed that things happened to me and not for me, and until my late thirties, I found myself surviving life and not thriving in it.

Every rejection, setback, and difficulty became evidence for why life was a revolving door of suck. I felt stuck and depressed, and regardless of how often I told myself to think positive thoughts, nothing changed. So what did change? How did I go from a victim to a victor? I had to get real.

When we’re sick, we have symptoms, but most of the medicines out there do not cure our illnesses. Instead, they shorten the severity of the symptoms. Our bodies have to heal from the virus still. In order for me to overcome the negativity of my mindset, I couldn’t look only at the symptoms. I had to reach the root of the problem and seek healing. This meant years of retracking my thoughts and emotions, finding the pathways back to where these negative ideologies began, and reshaping the way I thought. Essentially, I had to become a mind ninja.

So, today, when Golden talked about hardships and how people have two responses to them, this is either happening to me or for me, a puzzle piece fit into place in my brain. Everyone experiences hardships. Some of us more than others. Difficulties will always be a part of our lives. Rejection isn’t going anywhere, illnesses and diseases will come, the ones we love will leave in some capacity, or some other tragedy will befall us.

I choose not to view these difficulties as weights tethering me down, but instead as lessons driving me forward. Life is indeed short. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. So, let’s live in the beauty of the present and treat everything that comes our way as a gift: the good, the bad, and the in between. It’s all about our perspective, friends.