All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.
— Helen Keller
Character and wisdom are sculpted over time. They come with loss, lessons, and triumphs. They come after doubts, second guesses, and exploring unknowns. If there were a definitive path to happiness and success, everyone would be on it. The seeds of your progress are planted in your past failures. Your best stories will come from overcoming your greatest struggles. Your praises will be birthed from your pains. So keep standing, keep learning, and keep living.
Over the past fifteen years Angel and I have dealt with several severe hardships, including the sudden death of a sibling, the loss of a best friend to illness, betrayal from a business partner, and an unexpected breadwinning employment layoff. These experiences were brutal. Each of them, unsurprisingly, knocked us down and kept us down for a while. But when our time of mourning was over after each tragedy, we pressed forward, stronger, and with a greater understanding and respect for life.
So my challenge to you today is this: Start looking at life’s harsh realities and toughest challenges as friends that are going to help you grow.
Here are some thoughts to consider…
1. The first step is never easy.
The beginnings to good things are always the hardest, but it’s these hard times that pave the path to greatness. Be strong and keep the faith. It will be worth it in the end. The greatest miracle of your success in life will not be that you finished, it will be that you found the strength and courage to begin.
And remember, it’s not that those who are strong never get weak in the knees, or that they never hold their breath before they embark, it’s that while their knees are shaking they force themselves to breathe and take the next tiniest step forward.
2. Good things rarely come quick and easy.
Life is not easy, but it’s worth it. If you expect it to be, you will perpetually disappoint yourself. Achieving anything worthwhile in life takes time and effort. You must align your efforts with your goals and then start every day ready to run farther than you did yesterday and fight harder than you ever have before.
Persistence is the single most common characteristic of high achievers. They simply refuse to give up. The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favor. Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration. No matter how hard it seems, the more you persist, the more likely your success. (Read The Last Lecture.)
3. You will always have less control than you desire.
The only thing you can absolutely control in life is how you react to things out of your control, and there’s a lot you can’t control. The better you adapt to this reality, the more powerful your highs will be, and the more quickly you’ll be able to bounce back from the lows. Put most simply: Living a happy, fulfilling life means being in a state of complete acceptance of all that is, right here, right now.
As your life unfolds, you will often realize that many of the times you thought you were being rejected from something good, you were in fact being redirected to something better. You don’t have to control everything to find peace and happiness. You just need to do your best, and then relax and have faith that things will work out. Let go and just let life happen the way it’s supposed to. Because sometimes the outcomes you can’t change end up changing you and helping you grow to your full potential.
4. You cannot avoid risk without avoiding life.
As Henry David Thoreau once said, “When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.”
Living is a risk. Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared sometimes, then you’re not doing it right. Don’t worry about mistakes and failures, worry about what you’re giving up when you don’t even try. Worry about the life you’re not living and the happiness you’re forgoing, as you merely exist in the safety of your comfort zone. Give yourself permission to be one of the people who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them and grew into your truest self.
5. Your biggest problems are often in your head.
The primary cause of unhappiness and defeat is never the current situation but your thoughts about it. Happiness and success really comes down to two elements: the way you think and the way you act based upon your thoughts.
Human beings become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do great things, right now, without the need for anything more. When you believe in yourself, you have realized the first secret of success. Often finding your way is not about going somewhere new; it’s about seeing familiar ground in new ways. Once you do, you will realize the only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them. (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the “Goals and Success” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)
6. Long-term happiness cannot be bought; it must be earned.
If you’d rather live surrounded by pristine objects of little significance than by the traces of happy, passionate memories, stay focused on acquiring tangible possessions. Otherwise, stop fixating on things you can touch and start caring about the things that touch you. Each of us has a unique fire in our heart for something that makes us feel alive. It’s your duty to find it and keep it lit.
Whatever you do, don’t completely sacrifice your life for your livelihood. Enjoy the gifts money can’t buy. Promise yourself that you will stay true to your loves, your values, and your purpose. Let your heart and mind work as one. Do what it takes so that one day, many moons from now, you can look back at your life, take one final breath, and crack an honest smile.
7. Not everyone will support you.
If you take every insult or rude slur of your fellow human beings personally, you will be offended for the rest of your life. One of the most freeing things we learn in life is that we don’t have to agree with everyone, everyone doesn’t have to agree with us, and that’s OK. As Bruce Lee once said, “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” Live by this quote. Don’t let the opinions of others make you forget it.
It takes a long time to learn how to NOT judge yourself through someone else’s eyes, but once you do the world is yours for the taking. We have all been placed on this earth to discover our own life, and we will never be happy or successful if we try to live someone else’s idea of it. So give up worrying too much about what others think of you. Regardless of what they say about you and your chosen path, remember that the only approval you need in the end is your own.
8. You are better off without some people you care about.
It’s during the toughest times of your life that you’ll get to see the true colors of the people who say they care about you. Notice who sticks around and who doesn’t, and be grateful to those who leave you, for they have given you the room to grow in the space they abandoned, and the awareness to appreciate the people who loved you when you didn’t feel lovable.
Bottom line: Be okay with giving the gift of your absence to those who do not appreciate and respect your presence.
9. You cannot have happiness without some sadness.
Chuck Palahniuk once said, “The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. Some sadness is necessary. Everything in life is two-sided. You can’t expect to feel pleasure without ever feeling pain, joy without ever feeling sorrow, confidence without ever feeling fearful, hope without ever feeling uncertain, etc. There is no such thing as a one-sided coin in life, with which you can buy a pain-free, trouble-free life.
Life is a series of highs and lows — an adventure that requires you to take chances and actions that have the possibility of both success (happiness) and failure (sadness). (Read Buddha’s Brain.)
10. What’s done is done, but life goes on.
If you are carrying strong emotions about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live productively in the present. With everything that has happened, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift of knowledge. Everything is either an opportunity to learn and grow or an obstacle that keeps you stuck. You get to choose.
Take a deep breath. It’s going to be OK… maybe not today, but eventually. There will be times when it seems like everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong. You might feel like you will be stuck in this rut forever, but you won’t. Sure the sun stops shining sometimes, and you may get a huge thunderstorm or two, but eventually the sun will come out to shine. Sometimes it’s just a matter of us staying as positive as possible in order to make it to see the sunshine break through the clouds again.
Your turn…
What would you add to this post? What’s one harsh reality you’ve had to face, or hardship you’ve had to deal with, that helped you grow?
Please leave us a comment below and share your thoughts.
Photo by: Trey Ratcliff
Elle says
What beautiful and comforting words! My life has been about dysfunctional family ties, painful scapegoating, learning this late in life to finally let them go because they were never mine and never truly wanted me in the first place. Now i can fly, I have an amazing husband who stuck by me and my love for rescuing animals has saved me more than you would ever know. I’ve redefined my life and my boundaries.
Sad that I’ve had to go to nasty lengths sometimes to shake up the muck to let it leave me, but to hold on and know that I forgive them and I forgive myself is powerful and in my faith I am free.
Thank you once again for what you do!
Mary Ann R says
God, I love you both for your insight on life.
This article came up in my email inbox today and man, it just so hits home. I lost my job a few months ago because my position was being eliminated. This after being there 10 years and being told on the morning of my 10th anniversary. The job ended, life moved on then a few weeks ago, my job, same title and all, shows up on Indeed. The feeling of anger and frustration started all over again. It’s been sticking with me and hard to shake, especially finding out a co-worker had a lot to do with it, all the while acting supportive.
This line among so many helped me so much today:
‘The greatest miracle of your success in life will not be that you finished, it will be that you found the strength and courage to begin.’ – thanks for that. I needed that today and most every day.
May life bless you as you continue this work. You touch so many peoples life with your words. I personally just wanted to express my appreciation.
Sylvia says
Two things from this post really hit home for me: What’s done is done, but life goes on AND You will always have less control than you desire. One thing I would add to the list is “this too shall pass.” Because as much as I understand that what’s done is done and life goes on, and as much as I understand that I have less control than I desire in life, when things happen that cause me pain, I’m still going to feel pain. What’s done is done is a logical incarnation. And so is understanding that I’ll always have less control than I desire. My logical mind gets this and reading this post and understanding it helps me logically stomach these harsh realities. But emotionally, I still feel the pain until the pain goes away. And eventually the pain does go away and I get over it. But it takes time. I’m not sure why it takes time, but it does.
Research has shown that when you experience a tragic event, there are chemicals in your brain that are released that cause you psychological distress.
I once read a study that claimed that people that suffer from anxiety or depression or a variety of psychological ailments do not clear their mind of these chemicals as quickly as “others” These chemicals just linger for longer. I’m not sure if that research is correct, but that’s certainly what it feels like for me: the event happens, I accept it logically, but those damn “fight or flight” chemicals in my brain seem to just stick around until they wear off — and I’m at the mercy of them until they do wear off.
The other thing that postpones getting over my pain is regurgitation. I tend to replay negative events in my head and relive the event over and over again. The first part of getting over something is to stop playing it in your mind. I find that I just play it over and over in my mind until it no longer causes me pain or I just learn to accept it. But it would be far easier to just take the lesson learned and move on instead of beating myself up over spilled milk.
Deb says
Thank you.
Challenges do create opportunities to grow. I’ve had more than can be listed here over the past three years. The positive attitude I have grown to cherish becomes more persistent over time and my gratitude list has changed from things to the blessings of being alive today.
Sometimes we must remove ourselves from people we love because our presence is their biggest trigger to deeper problems they are not ready to, or able to, face. Staying made the anger and violence escalate. Leaving removes at least one of the biggest excuses to ignore the deeper issues. I grew in the sense my own desires were replaced with love. Love enough to let go. Faith enough to move on without an assurance I would have a place to stay.
Letting go of the desire to see change in the world. Growing by changing myself.
The long term health challenges I have had have impacted my ability to support myself. This challenge has helped me grow more trusting of the universe and less dependent on the ‘things’ I once took for granted and no longer can afford to have in my life. The most important things are free.
xx
Geoff says
This is great stuff. Owning my own company is very challenging especially since we are self-financing (“bootstrapping”) and I can attest that persistence is the single most important factor in making things work.
One line I heard years ago from an elderly man that has always helped me keep on keeping on in spite of the obstacles is, “Remember, the worst they can do is kill ya but they can’t eat ya because cannibalism is against the law.”
It’s a strange way of saying that the worst thing that will happen is you will die trying and it’s allowed me to chuckle when faced with seeming impossible odds and helped me shrink the size of the obstacle in my mind. Hopefully it is helpful to some of you folks reading this too.
Sasirekha says
What can anyone add to this perfect 10 article? Every time, I feel a little overwhelmed, I open this site and always find comfort and peace. Thank you!
Beccy says
What a wonderful piece of writing. Number 8 is one that I have struggled with. After reading your point, I can see this is exactly where I am. And I am understanding the benefit of letting them go and realising the space they leave is one you can grow in as you are free from the sorry they caused you, or you allowed them to cause. Great blog!
Chandra Melton says
I loved this bc I’ve been holding on to the motorcycle accident I was involved in recently. I know I’m still healing from a brain injury but I’m just ready for it all to be in the past. And you said it perfect- thunderstorms will come but so will the sun. So I just need to focus on the fact that I survived and be thankful for my healing daily. Your words help a lot so thank you guys so much!
Steph says
The only thing I would add is: Love and attachment are two completely different things that feel almost the same!
Elias says
Thank you so much for the amazing and encouraging articles you guys are posting. Am looking forward to buying your books and will keep on reading your articles more often. It has really changed my life. May God bless you for the work you are doing.
Kathryn says
Great article. The one I would add is…
#11. You can care for some people and still not be able to be around them. There are some relationships that may be grounded in history or former experiences that eventually don’t fit with the way you’ve grown. You may still care for a person in your life but just know it isn’t good to spend too much time with him or her. And that’s ok.
Dan says
Great thoughts, well thought out. I would add one that my grandfather use to say: “Surround yourself with the people you want to become.”
Jeanette says
Each and every one of these is super accurate. Thank you so much for being the level headed voice I need.
AngelFromStrike says
My number 11. would be that your parents or siblings or family doesn’t necessarily needs to desperately give you that family feeling,
So if your family gives you disappointment after disappointment and they make you doubt about yourself look around you,
You’ll see that you are surrounded by a warm loving safe family, they’ll supports you, pick you up when you fell down and dry your tears with sunshine, so now… look again too those people
You’ll see that this true family is made of real friends, your significant other, second degree niece and a whole bunch of people who sincerely love you for you and who’ll give you the greatest feeling of all – Coming home in a safe, loving and warm family
Megha says
I love you guys…whenever I feel sad I look up to your posts and it really lifts my spirit! All my good wishes and blessings with you guys… Keep up the good work. You are doing wonders! A big thank you and hug! 🙂
S says
Wow.
Number 10 stings. It is 100% the truth, and very wise words to live by. I’ve read it about 10 times this morning but why is it so much easier said than done.
This is such an amazing website and i’m so glad to be able to have such a push from only words to make me realize I can do it.
Michael says
Such great thoughts here. Thank you so much.
My number 11 would be: Some dreams have to come true when you are young. If you just decided you wanted to be a ballet dancer, or a world class baseball player at 33, chances are….yeah.
My number 12, on the same note: If you are choosing between two dreams, go with one, and push for it forever! Happy is the man who has one, as opposed to the man who tried for both and got nothing.