Embrace the Struggle

Maybe it's supposed to be hard

If we think back to our parent’s and grandparents’ generation we often realize that we have it far easier than they did. Over the last century, our living situations, career paths, and the many sources of enjoyment we can fill our time with have made our lives a lot easier.

There are pros and cons to this increase in easiness. One of the biggest cons is that it has made us reluctant to do hard things. We often turn away from difficult things and quickly fold in the face of discomfort. Even if we try to do hard things, our perceived pain is much greater making it harder for us to follow through or stick with whatever the hard thing is.

Nowhere else is this more apparent than with our health.

Let’s face it. We live in a society where it is MUCH easier to become unhealthy and pretty damn challenging to become and stay healthy. Sedentary jobs, easy access to delicious unhealthy foods, and technology that has the power to rob of us of our mental health all put us on the fast track towards being unhealthy. And it’s so easy to fall into this track.

Setting your alarm for 5 am to make time for the gym, throwing the junk food that is plaguing your kitchen cabinets away, and setting up boundaries with technology to maximize its effectiveness and reduce its harmfulness are all things that are much harder to do. They take a lot of effort and create a lot of discomfort.

But maybe that’s part of it. Maybe it’s not supposed to be easy. Maybe it’s supposed to be hard. Maybe the difficultness of making healthy decisions and completing healthy actions helps you adapt to doing hard things which makes it easier for you to follow through or stick with a hard decision. Maybe this is what it takes for your health journey to last a lifetime rather than a couple of months.

Adopting this mindset around healthy decisions is a great way to mobilize yourself to take action and keep pushing forward when you want to stop. Embrace the difficultness. Experience the adaptations that occur as you make one difficult health decision after another. Enjoy watching yourself become the mom that goes to yoga at 5am because that’s the only time she can go. Or the nightshift worker who despite an impossible schedule decides to make healthy eating a non-negotiable and as a result remains in good health. Or the manager who stops scrolling Twitter first thing in the morning and is now in a much better mood and more pleasant to be around.

It’s supposed to be difficult. You are meant to struggle. Struggling can feel good too. Like a runner’s high, making difficult health decisions can lead to feelings of euphoria and the ultimate sense of accomplishment. Take pride in doing what’s difficult and know that you are making a better version of yourself that future you and the world will enjoy and benefit from.

Thanks for reading,

Chris Irvin

P.S. I’d love to hear about your most difficult health decisions or actions and what your experience with them has been. Please share in the comments!