The Struggle IS Real!
“In time, I realized that the satisfaction of success doesn’t come from achieving your goals, but from struggling well.” –Ray Dalio
I read this in Dalio’s book, Principles, this morning and it has been rattling around in my brain all day. The idea of struggling well, being good at having a hard time is kind of mind blowing. If you’re like me, then you like to have things in order: your ducks in a row, your closet color coded, you spice drawer alphabetized (OK, the last one is one step too far, even for me). But, you get what I’m saying. For those of us charged with leading our families and raising our children, there are a lot of moving parts. Most of us like it when those parts stay in their places or work how we intended them. I would now ask you, how often this actually happens to you or anyone you know? Pretty much never? That’s what I thought.
You pay a plumber to fix the two broken faucets in your house and a child flushes a foreign object down the toilet the very next day—you’re back to square one and another visit from your plumber. You finally get your work inbox cleared out (or let’s be honest—under 1,000) and overnight you’re inundated with emails. Maybe there is a full moon and for one magical hour all of the laundry in your house is done (please write to me and describe this feeling in detail, because I fear I will never know this bliss), but, within minutes some human that lives with you decides it’s time to change clothes–again. So, you struggle all over. And, this adult gig is long, so this cycle will repeat.
Now these are all normal “life” things. There’s nothing extraordinary about broken toilets, full inboxes or piles of laundry. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we signed up for all of this—although, the brochure was not as truthful as it could’ve been. It’s not these little things that make struggle tough. It’s these little things combined with worrying about if your 12 year-old has too much screen time, figuring out how to re-learn algebra so you can help with homework without profanity or booze, or trying to figure out when in the next six weeks it might be possible for you and your significant other to leave the house alone and pretend to have no children for 1-2 hours. It’s not any one specific thing; it’s ALL the things.
Combine all of the things with the fact that YOU are actually a whole and functioning human being that will naturally want to seek challenges and fulfillment and the struggle is, in fact, real. As women, we are constantly reinventing ourselves. I don’t know if we could survive without it. Your role as a woman/partner/mother is changing all of the time, sometimes daily. And, with each of those changes, you struggle to figure out who you are. You struggle to figure out what’s important to you at this stage. You struggle to figure out what’s next. You struggle to stay in the moment and be present. It’s. A. Lot. Of. Struggle.
The great thing about reading this quote today was that it made me realize that this is just how it is. It’ a reality of life. It actually IS life. It’s like this for me, for you, for Ray, for our best friends. Everyone is struggling with something all of the time. And, from the struggle, the growth is born. You get to be someone different than you were five years ago. You no longer buy shoes a half size too small just because they’re on sale. You don’t have to stick around for things that don’t serve you. Struggle taught you all of that. Struggle also taught you how tough you are. Struggle showed your parts of yourself that you never knew existed, that are pretty awesome. Struggle showed you how much you were loved and were capable of loving. Struggle showed you how to show up for yourself.
So, let’s struggle well. Let’s throw out the idea that things will all run smoothly—it just doesn’t happen. Let’s remember that things that are hard are there to teach us something or make us stronger—even if we have no idea why. We are all struggling, so we may as well rock it! Let’s own it and accessorize it and give it fun pet names and laugh at it and cry at it. The struggle IS real, my friends, but so are you. And, my money is on you, every time.