Why You Must Do the Difficult Thing
Choose challenge over comfort
It’s not always easy to get out of bed and get ready for work or school. It’s not always easy being in work or school. To leave the comforts that we’re used to and trade them for challenging interactions, late-night shifts, long commutes, and dull jobs.
But it’s all necessary for one reason: they help us grow. Without a job that you hate, how else would you propel yourself into finding one that you enjoy? If you weren’t desperate to leave your city and move someplace new, how would the motivation for a better life arise? If you didn't have to deal with difficult people, how would you learn to cultivate patience?
Something that has become increasingly apparent to me lately is that the “bad” is just as necessary as the good. The lows help us appreciate the highs. What's more, the lows make the highs. Think about it- bliss is only valuable because despair makes it so. If bliss was all there was, then it would simply be a neutral state, and nothing to strive for. In fact, it wouldn’t even be bliss; how can something exist without an opposite to give it meaning? It's exactly the same as life and death. Life is precious because we know that our time here is limited and that death was eventually arrive. This is where is starts to get really philosophical, and text really isn’t the best medium to express it. Still, I encourage you to reflect on this law of opposites.
The difficult times are part of what makes us human. To go through struggle, to endure adversity, that’s what counts. Viktor Frankl puts it aptly in his magnum opus Man’s Search for Meaning:
“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
And this wisdom from The Daily Stoic:
“We challenge ourselves not to improve our immune system. Not to increase our metabolism. Not to reduce anxiety. Those things might be nice ancillary benefits but they are not the point. The purpose is to become the kind of person that can do it.”
“The person who does something scary every day is less fearful than someone who can’t. The person who does something difficult every day is tougher than someone who doesn’t.”
So have those difficult conversations. Do the tasks that you’d rather not. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations (within reason and safety, of course). Every challenge is an opportunity to mature, to improve, to be virtuous. Use it to your advantage until the obstacle ceases to be one, then part of of the path, then finally the path itself.
Adversity should be sought after, not shunned. If you know how to approach it- as if you were facing a challenging (but not completely insurmountable) opponent in the ring- then everything suddenly becomes a trial, not a sentence.
Thanks for reading,
Alan
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