We all know problems are necessary for growth. We’re aware that without struggle, we won’t achieve our life goals. Yet we all try to avoid problems like the plaque. Your problems are your gift. Problems build character and teach us lessons. Don’t let your failures get to your heart, or your successes get to your head. Life is always happening for us, not to us.
Like most people, I don’t enjoy struggling. It’s an uncomfortable feeling where you’re pushing yourself hard to find a resolution. Trying to find a solution while dealing with resistance and frustration is always difficult. I’m not writing this post to give you tips on learning to love the feeling of struggling. You’ll probably never enjoy it. I’m writing this to share methods that I use to see the value in my struggles. I do my best to always pat myself on the back when I overcome a hurdle. People often find it easier to praise their family, best friend, co-workers etc. than themselves. Celebrate your successes no matter how small they are. You work hard and you accomplish many things daily that only YOU can recognize yourself for.
Growing up my older brother loved to say what I never did. For instance, if he never saw me wash a dish, he’d say “You never wash dishes” and his justification was always because he claimed to have “never” seen me pick up a sponge. Now, of course that was an absurd rational of his. Especially because he worked, went to school, and was barely home when I was doing household chores, but I digress… My point in sharing this story is that you cannot rely on people to praise you for things they never see. To them if they don’t see it, it hasn’t happened. Perception is reality. You’re with yourself every second of every day. You always know when you’ve accomplished something. Bask in your glory from time to time. Our attitude is what will make or break how we recover from setbacks. Like Cardi B said, “Knock me down nine times, but I get up ten.”
We are living in a generation that strives to be perfect. People barely post about their struggles. A study conducted by the Psychological Bulletin, found that millennials have higher expectations for themselves and attach more importance to being perfect than previous generations. In the study, they define perfectionism as a combination of excessive personal standards and overly critical self-evaluations. Our generation tends to highly dislike struggling because it tends to cause us to view ourselves in a negative light. Problems make us less “perfect,” so we avoid them. Often it seems easier to not try our best, than to do our best and fail. We place so much pressure on ourselves to strive for unrealistic social ideals.
Many times, when I’m talking with friends they focus too much on their issues. They could be doing exceptional at work, eating healthy, working out, just thriving in so many ways; but then there’s that one situation in their life where they are struggling. This guy they like stopped responding and they are so livid about it, that that’s all they can talk about. While I’m fully supportive of their venting session, I also make sure to emphasize the good in their lives. Rarely is everything going exactly right in anyone’s life. You have to sacrifice one part of your life, to do well in another. You can’t give 100% to multiple things at the same time. Find balance in your life. Embrace both your struggles and your achievements. There are people less qualified than you, doing things you want to do, simply because they decided to believe in themselves more than they feared failure. Faith is the leading cause to all success. Every champion has faith. Believe the odds are beatable, even when they seem impossible.
The next time you’re having a rough week, try these methods to reframe how you’re dealing with your struggles:
- Remind yourself that you are brilliant and accomplished (If you don’t have one, create a self -love mantra).
- In the notes section of your phone, write about a time when you struggled and then succeeded in the end (this can double as personal motivation and an answer to that common interview question lol).
- Ask yourself “Who is dumber, the person who pretends they know everything, or the person who doesn’t, and asks questions?
- Create a vision board of what you’re striving for in life. This will remind you of why your struggle will be worth it.
- Find at least one thing you learned from your struggle. There’s always a purpose in every struggle you endure.
xo,
Sade