Struggle

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. –Viktor Franklquotes

I nearly titled this section Vitality or Challenge or Strive for the connotations of intensity, growth, and great effort, but instead deliberately chose the word struggle.  Struggle often has negative implications of difficulty, conflict, and even violent effort.

But here, Struggle is the attempt to achieve something in the face of difficulty or resistance, which I think captures a broader wave of thinking in our modern culture. 

Yes I want challenge.  Challenge is a clear obstacle.

Yes I want vitality.  Vitality is easy energy and strength.

These are important qualities to cultivate, but these are too ordered for the point I’m trying to make.  

Struggle is the imperfect balance for the chaotic resistance you encounter everywhere. The name for the effort required to navigate the complexity of day to day involves both real and perceived difficulty.

What do I mean by struggle? There are many levels to this and we’re going to try to pick them apart. 

Struggle is born of parts pain, parts fear, parts suffering, parts discomfort, parts power disparities. Struggle can be found through casual ignorance or avoidance or throughout the course of life grieving the death of loved ones.  

Struggle can be taking the stage in front of a crowd to give that speech or the contemplation of our finite lives. 

Struggle can be the big cheap kicks from drugs, shopping, masturbation, TV, gossip, alcohol, and the consumption of all products containing fat, sugar, salt, or chocolate.  Struggle can be anxiety and depression. Struggle can be racism, sexism, or economic inequality.  Struggle is up to and including trauma. 

• “We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.” – Ralph Waldo Emersonquotes Struggle

• “The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” – Marcus Aurelius

All pretty negative right? And yet we all face many of these realities in the course of our lives.  We cannot escape them.

Struggle can also be any act that improves who you are today over who you were yesterday. Struggle can be something that beautifies the world around you.  It can be one more rep at the gym, going for a promotion at work, any hustle and grind culture.  It can be picking up litter on your street, lending a hand to a coworker or friend, or beautifying your living space.

So how should we view struggle? And why is it foundational to our life’s bedrock? 

I want you to see yourself as a resilient, flexible, and robust person first and foremost.  Struggle is a way to make sense of unavoidable suffering and transform it into growth.

In a controlled environment where trees are given everything they need (sun, water, nutrients), but are not provided the natural stresses of nature, the trees die before they fully mature.  In nature, trees are subject to winds and storms which provides constant feedback during the tree’s growth.  This creates what is called ‘stress wood’ which actually strengthens the tree, allowing it continue balanced growth without going too far in any direction that would ultimately hurt it.

I want you to see struggle as any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Struggle is an act towards our higher nature as mature responsible adults, lifting us to the heights of a fulfilling life.  Struggle leans into the idea that challenge, risk, and discomfort have a vitally important role in our transformation and evolution.

I think there is a reason all major religions have a core suffering element that is integral to its teaching. Christianity deified it, adherents wear the cross, a device of torture, as a symbol of their belief. Buddhism declares suffering its First Noble Truth. Judaisms major holidays are celebrations of endurance and freedom from past periods of suffering.  Hinduism identifies five klesha or causes of human pain and suffering and sometimes even attribute it to deeds done in a past life. Stoicism acknowledges suffering while rejecting its dominance. Modern philosophers such as Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote, “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.” 

We as humans find it difficult to function without a story around why we suffer.

I want you to see struggle as a signal to be heeded not an error to be corrected.  As a symptom and not a disease. Struggle is to be managed and moderated and processed. 

There are so many ways to approach this specific point. I think struggle can make evident errors in our ways and point to the necessity for change. When our activities don’t support our deepest values, we feel lost, adrift, and rudderless—sometimes even frantic.  When we feel anxious this can be our threat detection systems running an open loop.  Something as innacuous as an email can cause your brain to what if, what if, what if.  In any situation, what if I say the wrong thing, what if I can’t find my way, what if someone reacts badly.

[This is when downward - anxiety is a symptom

All growth requires loss. A loss of your old values, your old behaviors, your old loves, your old identity. Therefore, growth sometimes has a component of grief to it.

Religion deals with suffering: Christianity - god is with you [That might sound incredible, but to the Christian worldview, it is vital. Suffering is a product of the fall, a consequence of human sin against God (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:21). Suffering is in our lives because we are living in a broken world. Christians believe that God stands with them when they face suffering. He gives them strength to face whatever life throws at them. God has promised never to forsake those who love him, no matter what they are enduring. He always hears the prayers of people who cry out to him.], Buddhism suffering is caused by attachment, Islam Suffering is also a painful result of sin. In Islam, sin is associated with unbelief. Muslims surrender to God’s will, and find peace in that surrender, Hindus tend to regard our suffering as punishment for deeds done in a previous life. To the Hindu, a great deal of suffering is simply accumulated “karma” catching up with people, Animistic belief systems such as tribal religions hold that suffering results either from spirits toying with us or punishing us.  Science

I can hear some of your brains revolting.  You’re overworked, underpaid, with an asshole boss, you’re bone tired, dealing with a chronic health issue, insurance complications, no help from your kids or significant other, sabotaged by your parents, an expensive bill is coming due, and no change on the horizon.  Holy shit, I hear you.  Who am I to suggest struggle is a good thing?

I can hear other brains saying, there’s enough struggle in the world, given the choice I’d just chill out at some cabin in the woods or play video games all day. 

Another subset of brains stopped reading a while ago, this text is too incongruous with the current shape of their brain and they aren’t in the right place to incorporate it, they couldn’t struggle through.

I want to shift the way you think about it.  Nudge the way you view each those scenarios in the direction of vitality.  

What’s the ideal that I want to nudge you towards? The whole-hearted embrace of struggle, bear hugging each issue, subduing and harnessing it into service. Rising to meet each challenge, processing it into something useful, and seeing the results slowly start to pile up as a balm for the soul.  

Imagine cutting wood. Each log is a challenge in your life and you use your faculties to break them apart.  It’s hard, it’s blistering, you have to sharpen your axe, it may take much longer to finish than you expected.  But, you’ll see the split wood start to pile up and it will become the fuel that sustains you through winters both real and metaphorical. The expended effort coupled with self-satisfaction will make you sleep like a baby.

How do we get there? 

Remember that direction and mindset are key.  See the difficult thing, in the space between the thing and your initial reaction (or when you have a moment to reflect) name it as a challenge, approach it appropriately, try as many ways or times as it takes.

[example]

Remember that everything is a spectrum.  Some challenges will be easy to hug and harness and some are too big right now to even reach around. Perhaps you’ll need to focus on health or wealth before you can subdue a Discipline challenge. Not every request or demand needs to be heard at the same volume and not every task or item on the to-do list must be given the same amount of effort. It is ok not to do everything at the same speed, to prioritize, to triage when necessary.

[example]

Remember that it is also a spiral. Even as we move past a challenge, we should expect another version to return. This awareness gives us permission to grow without demanding perfection, and opens up the longer journey towards mastery. Our struggles simply mark another loop on the climb.  I don’t think growth is constantly required, there will be plateaus and some people are ok with their lot in life, but we will all face challenges and we must struggle through them for our own and everyone else’s benefit.

[example]

Remember that pain is unavoidable and inevitable in life.  You will experience loss, you will be rejected, you will have flaws and come up short in some ways you wish you weren’t.  Those pains are inevitable, but the suffering attached to them is optional.  Many people try to resist struggle, avoid some specific pain, or run from it altogether.  Accepting pain and even getting comfortable with some of it will save yourself the attached suffering.

Remember that willingly dipping into uncertainty and discomfort is exposure therapy and will break the loops you find yourself caught in.  Brushes with struggle provides fuel or activates a repair circuit.

Remember that if you’re comfortable you’re likely actively running away from your best self thanks to infinite distractions and cheap easy things that are designed to hook us.

Remember that you’re capable of inventing afflictions. Perhaps you want struggle. All your basic needs are met and on the way to work those damn teenagers are skateboarding in the road and almost hit your car and you flip out recognize it’s not about the teens or the car. Perhaps your struggle is seasonal affective disorder and you just need some vitamin D and some outside time.

Come up with the disease and we can sell the cure: Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These are as much marketing ploys as they are diseases. Doctors didn’t discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did. Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance.

Remember that anytime you start something new you’ll suck at it and feel lost and want to give up.  Sascha Chapin calls this the Moat of Low Status.  You’re on “safe” land that’s really just a stuck in the mud steady state.  In order to reach the higher status, the broader skillset, the healthier lifestyle you’ll have to swim across a moat.  As you’re swimming you’ll flounder and the water will get in your mouth and you’ll tell yourself convincingly that you’ll drown and should turn back or you’ll not struggle hard enough and the current will carry you gently back to where you started.  You’ll likely do this many times over the course of your life and that’s ok sometimes, you’ll be in familiar mud.  But that thing you really want is across the moat and you owe it to yourself to get there.

Remember that it should not be a struggle all the time

Open with conventional Trauma Plot and then balance it with ‘The Case Against the Trauma Plot’

[What defines the human psyche more than its susceptibility to trauma is its incredible flexibility in adapting to challenge.

Dig into the fortress technique idea of trauma, The Body Keeps the Score, and how ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) affect our mental health later in life.

[Resilience is the flip side of trauma, and Bonanno argues that it is directly related to another concept, flexibility. The degree of flexibility we can bring to how we heal that indicates the degree to which we will, and ultimately what really makes us resilient is being adaptive and creative in how we navigate our own healing process.

In fact, nearly everyone I know is actively running away from their calling.  They choose to consume and distract in infinite creative ways to keep from doing the things they know they should.  And why wouldn’t they, there’s infinite free content that’s specifically designed to hook us and easy cheap everything that can be delivered right to your door.

Struggle is any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from (and toward) our higher nature instead of our lower. Instead of applying knowledge, discipline, and hard work, we simply consume a product.

Struggle is accepting the suffering is endemic to the human condition. Millions suffer in a million ways and those who don’t actually suffer will craft their own suffering, no matter how asinine it may be.

Get comfortable with rejection and hurt instead of running from it. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Most people try to avoid pain, but when you avoid or resist pain, you cause suffering for yourself. Sometimes, life forces you to face things you’ve previously viewed as flaws and feel the hurt. You will get rejected. People will laugh about you. You’ll feel like an outcast. That’s life. Accept the pain and you’ll save yourself the suffering.

Feeling great positive reframing?

Failure

Vitality justifies itself

Further Reading:

• Steven Pressfield - The War of Art