Embracing Difficulty

Hmmm…. embracing difficulty. There was a point in my life where I thought this would have been a complete joke. I would’ve looked at you like you were absolutely crazy telling me to “embrace difficulty”. What is that? What does that even look like?

I’ve learned that moments of pain and hardship provide us with opportunities for growth and change. They teach us the important skills and a new perspective on life. We need them because they offer us great opportunities to expand beyond our comfort zone and to thrive. However, there is no such thing as a perfect life. And in life we’ll experience high’s and low’s. On some days things will go as planned and some days, we may be blindsided and not know what the hell hit us. Things like this happens and it’s all apart of our journey.

There’s no way that I can pretend to come up with some kind of formula to ease the pain either. At any rate, I haven’t discovered yet a consistently effective and healthy remedy for hard times in my own life. But what I’ve found is that we can change our perception of and reaction to them.

We don’t need to see trials and struggles as something evil; but we can choose to use them as a spark for personal maturity and character development. This season you’re in may very well still be pretty painful; but I can guarantee that a perspective change helps to move us from fighting the process, which only makes things worse, and toward accepting the journey, which leads to maturity.

Today let’s choose to open up and embrace difficulty in the service of doing something we care about. Accept the difficulties of life. They are only seasonal, created not to last. Don’t give up! Make the necessary adjustments. Learn what you can for the future. This is all part of the uncomplicated lifestyle. 🧠🌱