How Is The Struggle An Important Part of Any Chosen Path?
Because without the struggle we lack the impetus for growth and change.
One of the hardest aspects of working to improve our lives is stepping out of our existing comfort zones.
Why is it called a comfort zone? Because it’s comfortable.
Though that’s not wholly accurate. More than being comfortable, our comfort zone is about familiarity. It’s what we know, are used to, and consider deep down to be the norm. Such that it is.
This is why we often develop a comfort zone where we’re not truly comfortable. Familiar? Yes. Comfortable? No.
For example – the cubicle at the office you’ve nested within to develop a sense of belonging and hominess. Which is great and familiar – but the job itself? Not where you desire to spend so many hours of your life.
Because escaping our comfort zones is so challenging, we spent a lot of the time – when we’re doing self-work – struggling. This is due to the conflict that ensues when we actively work to step out of any given comfort zone.
So why bother? Because when we don’t act to leave a comfort zone we stagnate. When we stagnate, we cease to grow, evolve, and actively change. But because passive change happens and is unavoidable – it can and will catch us by surprise and create upset.
Struggling is part of growth and change. But how we view it will impact how it affects us.
The struggle is real
Despite my desire to shed weight and get into better shape overall – it’s a real struggle. Increasing my exercise while working on my diet to improve my physical health is not easy.
I have been in this same position nearly all my life. And I have ridden the yo-yo up and down regarding my weight, body shape, and overall fitness.
In my comfort zone, I love food. Eating until I’m full is my common practice – despite all the recommendations and things I’ve read telling me to not eat to full.
It’s a real struggle to leave behind this comfort zone – despite my desire to leave it. But I know that to protect my health and increase my longevity I need to work with – rather than against – this struggle.
I know this is not just a struggle I have. Lots of friends and family have dealt with the same. Our approaches have varied – but the struggle is familiar.
Growth and change of any kind involve struggle. But sometimes it’s slight while other times it feels like trying to dig a hole in a sand dune in the Sahara Desert on a windy day with a dull teaspoon. I imagine that’s a serious struggle. But that’s how it feels sometimes, doesn’t it?
Why bother? Because change is inevitable. It’s the one and only constant in the whole Universe. When we stagnate and allow ourselves to stay in our comfort zone – change will eventually force us out of it in some way or other.
When that happens – if we have resisted all struggles for growth and to control change – this sucks mightily. Because avoiding, ignoring, and resisting the inevitability of change disempowers us.
We have so much more power than we realize
There is a pervasive false narrative about power in our world. The avenues to power – as we’re shown them by media, stories, and the collective consciousness of our fear-based society – look to be limited.
Power appears to only belong to the obscenely wealthy, celebrities, successful (and sometimes unsuccessful) politicians, business moguls, and those who have worked obscenely hard with nothing but eyes on the prize.
Thus, we’re led to believe that if we don’t fall into one of these 5 categories, we have no power. Or that we’re not entitled to nor deserving of power.
This is utterly untrue.
Every single person has the power to be empowered. We all have choices available to us that will allow us to decide who, what, where, how, and why to be. No matter where we begin or come from, we’re empowered to choose our life experiences for ourselves.
But there is an important caveat to this. We can ONLY choose for ourselves. Which is the other issue with the false narrative about power in our society today. It implies that the powerful gain control over the masses in one form or another.
Let me be clear: Bullshit. Nobody has power or control over anyone else. There is nobody who can choose and decide for you what, how, where, and why your life should be. Even if you cede that to them – you’re still choosing.
The powerful as we perceive them are no better than we are. And we, in turn, are no better than anyone else. When we choose our own life path it is for only us. We cannot direct, choose, or control that of any other.
This is not selfish unless you do something cruel, unkind, hurtful, or harmful with intent and malice of forethought.
Choose the path and the struggle
There is nobody inside your head, heart, and soul but you.
Nobody else knows you to your core. There’s nobody else who understands your dreams, your desires, your wants, and your needs.
That’s a good thing. Because do you have the time to work with or on somebody else’s head, heart, or soul but your own? I know that I don’t.
So that means that we get to choose what paths to take and what struggles to endure along them.
When we decide to act to change our life experiences, we need to embrace that we have decided to take on the struggle that’s inevitably going to go along with them.
Without a struggle, we would not recognize the comfort zone we’re working on moving out of. This matters because choosing direction and life paths is choosing to leave comfort zones behind.
The struggle is different for each of us. But none of us are alone in it. No, we’re not in the same boat – but we’re on similar seas. When we are mindful of this and the choices we choose – rather than allowing life to just live us and pass us by – the struggle is just another part of it all.
Finally – we are all worthy and deserving of choosing and walking the paths of our lives. We don’t need to meet the false narratives of who can hold power to be empowered. That in and of itself is pretty damned empowering, frankly.
The struggle is real. And you are worthy and deserving of the choices that provide you the paths for your life experience.
In what ways do you experience the struggle with your chosen paths?
This is the five-hundred and fifty-fourth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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