‘One Day, One Lifetime’
One of the best things you can learn is to smile through adversity, to be comfortable being uncomfortable, to embrace the suck! Why would you want to run toward frustration, confusion, and pain when most people run away from this? Simple: your growth and potential lies on the path of most resistance.
‘The Obstacle Is The Way’
I’ve learned how I do the little things is how I do the big things. Small actions carry over to a lifetime; they are one and the same. One day, one lifetime. When you will look back on your life, you will see your biggest breakthroughs and lessons came from the biggest seasons of pain. I am inspired to study the lives of great people like Nelson Mandela and Viktor Frankl to keep me strong in facing challenges, realizing that if we view our challenges as teachers, we can become more and serve deeply.
‘Nothing Is Given, Everything Is Earned’
Sometimes I ask my students, what are the magic words? No, not please or thank you, but EARN IT. To claw and fight for something, with grit and perseverance. The expression when learning something new is always ‘Crawl, Walk, Run’. No one goes right to the running! Nothing is given, everything is earned. Even the things we find easy now, like riding a bike, we found difficult and may have even seemed impossible at the time. I can remember learning to drive a stick shift automobile and thinking, how the heck do people do this? It seemed like I would never enjoy a drive with the radio on taking in the scenery, but to have a frustrating future of stalled engines on steep hills. Now I drive without thinking about it, almost watching my body execute the action as I watch! I had to earn it.
I can remember doing a difficult pose during a hot yoga class I attended, which was a miserable uncomfortable pose to be held for 5 minutes straight. The teacher said ‘if you can smile through this pose, creating an eye in the storm, you will take this into your life’. The Navy SEALS call it getting cold wet and sandy, regularly being sent into the freezing surf, never getting completely dried and warm. The goal is mental toughness through adversity, which IS coming your way in the different seasons of life, and is guarantied when learning anything new. True growth is true challenge!
‘I Wish I Left A Bigger Footprint In The Sand…’
That is a sentence I heard from a senior, as I spent time talking with him about his life. A sentence you will often sadly hear from people close to the end of their lives is ‘I wish….’, and fill in the rest. REGRET is my biggest fear. Part of the ‘embrace the suck’ mindset is grasping the urgency of the moment, the power of the NOW. Bruce Lee said ‘do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one’. Pain IS coming your way, but it is our choice if it is the pain of discipline, or the pain of regret. I will always choose the first, because the second is the destructor of dreams.
So get cold wet and sandy, smile through the adversity, hug the frustration and confusion, and EMBRACE THE SUCK!
