Oftentimes we think that we’ve been cheated or we’ve been robbed, because it’s hard, because we have to go through difficult things, and that somebody has wronged us because we don’t have a totally easy paved path in front of us. And I’m here to tell you that if that’s the way that you look at life, then you’re going to have a lot of very disappointing days. The trick is to realize that occasionally there’s going to be really easy times, but also to realize that with difficulty and adversity, there are rays of sunshine and wonderful stress free times. Then in the stressful times, we find tremendous growth. And in growth, we find happiness.
The reality is we are designed to grow. We are designed to progress we are designed to get better. And the way that we do that is through adversity and challenges and overcoming those we strengthen our physical as well as our spiritual and our mindset muscles. I want each of you just to internalize that lesson, the same lesson I taught my kids and I’m teaching myself as I share this with you is that if it if it were easy, it wouldn’t actually be good for us. We have to not only recognize that there are going to be adverse experiences coming to us, but we have to learn to embrace them, to actually be excited about difficulty. I don’t know if you’ll ever be excited about it, but you need to at least be excited about the results.
The hope is that, this is actually good for me. I’m going to be a stronger person, I’m going to have a story to tell, I’m going to be able to lift myself beyond this and gain strength and doing so and I’m going to be able to be a strength to other people. When we come out the other side, we recognize the fact that we have overcome and are the better for it.
The reality is when we start to go through difficulties and challenges our level of gratitude for even the simple good things in our life goes way up, we become less entitled, we become less angry at the success of other people, we become more grateful for the successes that we’ve had. We become happier, more productive people who are better able to serve those around them.