Personal Growth
3 Words That Could Make All The Difference
“Life is difficult”. I recall reading those first words from Scott Peck’s ‘The Road Less Travelled’ and breathing a sigh of sweet relief. Finally, someone who understood.
As simple as those words were, up until that point I could not adequately articulate what I had experienced and felt in life.
Upon reading those three sweet words, I was understood and understood all at once.
Life Is Meant To Be Difficult
Perhaps one of the biggest things any parent can do for their child is to help them to learn that life is meant to be difficult. How could it not be? We are creatures of free will with the ability to make choices from the moment we are born. Our lives are an accumulation of hundreds of choices made every single day. When you consider this it’s easy to see how life could be difficult.
With every choice we make, we have to live with knowing that it is ultimately we who are responsible for the quality of the outcomes and our lives as a result.
Talk about pressure.
Of course, there is a beautiful counter-balance to that because we also get to enjoy life when we’ve learned how to improve our choices by reflecting on previous decisions made, both good and bad.
Free of Burden
Despite the fact that life appears designed to be difficult, you can still sometimes be left feeling like if yours is filled with challenges, you’ve somehow fallen short. It can feel like we are constantly sold a picture of life that should be filled with nothing but happiness and success.
The way success is portrayed appears binary; you are either vastly successful and happy or things suck. The middle ground, where most of us reside at least some of the time, doesn’t get much air time.
It seems what would be more helpful to people, especially the young, is helping them to expect that there will be times when things don’t go their way but that doesn’t mean their experience isn’t valid.
