Create Inspired Results: Honor Your Struggle

Struggle. It’s a fact of life, right? But you don’t have to struggle with difficult situations.

Let me explain.

You have a choice about how you respond to hard situations. Maybe they make you anxious, angry, or frustrated, for example. And so you struggle.

Or maybe you accept struggle. You realize it is a part of life, and you don’t have to make those situations that feel difficult worse by creating more struggle.

Honor the Struggle

My mentor, Brendon Burchard, likes to suggest that we “Honor the struggle.” Indeed, you can respond to tough situations by just acknowledging…and honoring…the struggle.

We all struggle sometimes. Maybe you struggle with technology, finances, relationships, health issues, or speaking your mind. Remember, that you can choose how to respond to those situations. You will opt out of struggle more easily if you see struggle as a right of passage or a way to get from where you are to where you want to be.

You Can Figure It Out

You can take the moments, hours, days, or even weeks of struggle and use them to move forward. For that to happen, though, you must acknowledge that you have the ability to figure out the situation. You can determine a way to get through the challenge and come out the other side.

As long as you think you can’t find a way to get out of struggle, you will stay stuck smack in the middle of it. On the other hand, an honor-the-struggle mindset gives you the ability to figure it out—to find a way to change the situation.

In Struggle…and Out of Struggle

Recently, I spent two or three hours trying to use a free computer program. I wanted it to work. I needed it to work, but I couldn’t get it to work.

Three hours into my struggle, I was searching YouTube videos on how to fix the problems I was encountering. I kept trying over, and over, and over again.

But I didn’t let it get to me. I just honored that struggle. It was simply part of figuring out how to use the program. And I knew I would figure it out. If I couldn’t, I’d find some other way.

Eventually, I turned off the computer. The next time I tried, a new solution—the one I wanted all along—presented itself. No more struggle.

Realize that you can find a way out of struggle. And honor it as part of what we do here on the physical plane. But know struggle provides a way for you to learn, expand, and grow. When you change your mindset, struggle won’t feel so much like…well…struggle.

A Five-Step Struggle Reducing Process

To honor and reduce your struggle, apply this simple five-step process:

1. Evaluate where in your life you’re struggling. Make a list of all the situations, relationships or conditions that feel hard.
2. Make a list of the ways in which you currently deal with the difficulty.
3. Review the thoughts and beliefs you have about stressful situations honestly.
4. Accept the situation, relationship, or condition as it is at this moment. Honor the struggle.
5. Brainstorm ways to approach the situation, relationship, or condition differently—including changing your thoughts or beliefs about it.

Life was Never Meant to be a Struggle

The late author and trainer Stuart Wilde, one of my greatest teachers, wrote a book called Life Was Never Meant to be a Struggle. I agree. I don’t think it was meant to be hard.

We make life a struggle. And we do that with our thoughts and beliefs.

If you think becoming an author will be hard, guess what? Achieving that goal will feel like a struggle.

If you think it is hard to earn a living, guess what? Doing so will feel like a struggle.

If you think getting in shape will be a struggle, it will be.

How much you struggle depends on how much struggle you create. When you choose to honor the struggle, you say to yourself, “This is difficult, but I can find a way to make it easier. I can find a solution. I know struggle is a fact of life, but I don’t have to struggle…I can figure this out, and things will get easier.”

That’s a radically different mindset than “This is a struggle. I hate to struggle. I always struggle. This is so hard. Struggle never gets any easier. I have no idea how to figure this out.”

Change Your Mindset, Change Your Experience

How you approach the challenges in your life makes all the difference between how much you life resembles or becomes a struggle.

Change your way of dealing with challenges and life stops being a struggle—even when something is, in fact, difficult. And when you do have to deal with something hard, you won’t struggle. You’ll move through it smoothly, confidently, peacefully, and joyously.

Do you think you can reduce your amount of struggle? Tell me how?

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