The Struggle is Real

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It never fails that every few months I begin to ask questions like: am I on the right path, should I make a change, or am I living life to its fullest. It seems that my restless tension never goes away, and I feel that change is inevitable.

I question where this restlessness come from, and do others wrestle with the same tension to reinvent or change course. I often wonder if this tension stems from some kind of unhappiness or if it is a healthy desire to continue to flourish as a human.

I fear that always questioning whether I am making enough progress keeps me from enjoying the present. Thinking about this struggle deeply has helped me look for meaning in it and find some answers to why it exists.

If there is anyone else who wrestles with this almost obsessive quest for alignment and best course of action, maybe the following can help with the struggle.

Often, we get stuck in the gray area where it seems there is no clear solution or direction in life. The reality that we are free to make choices in life binds us simultaneously to the vastness of  choice and endless uncertainty. Because of this, it can be helpful to split our thinking into black and white logic driven decision making. This can help us choose one direction over the other. We can ask ourselves leading questions that have a clear dichotomy between two extremes.

Let’s look at a few sample questions we can ask ourselves:

“When looking at our future trajectory or lack thereof, would we choose inertia or change?” 

Or this one, “in the state that I am in, would I choose to stay the same or continue to push myself to become better?”   

I often remind myself: “the only way to coast is downhill” and “we are either green and growing, or ripe and rotting”.

These quotes tell a story that there is really no such thing as staying the same. In fact, physics and biology state that everything is either growing or being broken down or some combination of both.

Kevin Kelly, in his book The Inevitable, remarks “it’s taken me 60 years, but I had an epiphany recently: Everything without exception, requires additional energy and order to maintain itself. I know this in the abstract as the famous second law of thermodynamics, which states that everything is falling apart slowly”….even human beings (my note)!

Kevin goes on to explain that even something as static as computer code is gradually falling apart and that if it is not maintained will eventually become useless.

This should help us understand that there is tension between who are today and who we will be tomorrow. We get to choose what to do with that tension. It is neither good or bad, but we have to address it; otherwise it will address us.  

This also means that even staying the same requires some level of struggle and will produce a tension in our state of being. Have you heard the saying: a body in motion stays in motion? Have you noticed that it takes significant effort to get to a notable level of athleticism, but that it takes almost nothing to lose that level of athleticism? It really is unfair.

Let’s take for example a mile long run. For the average individual, it takes weeks and sometimes months to become comfortable with running a mile, but it is also true that if that same person decides to not run a mile for two weeks, the ability run a mile is quickly diminished. This is one example of the truth that everything is falling apart or diminishing over time.

These facts are not meant to cause anxiety about our future, but instead they can help us become comfortable with being uncomfortable. They can help us prepare reasonable expectations about what the future holds for us. For those of us – including myself who feel unsettled in and with life, these facts can help remind us that tension and the desire to become better is okay and that everyone is faced with choices in life to either grow, maintain or decline. This information can be sobering or liberating, for me it is the latter.

While attending a Live to Lead event organized by my friends Barry Blanton and Chad Patterson, I heard John Maxwell say “our Big Picture should keep getting bigger”. This reminds me that we cannot grow without change, and that if we want to get better, we must see the tension between who we are today and who we desire to become as a valuable opportunity to grow and become better for ourselves and others.  

In an interview with Steve McKinney, former NFL Center and now successful entrepreneur, he shared that there are a few things that he has pasted on his bathroom mirror that remind him to keep seeking improvement. One of them is, “I have no interest in being average” and the other, “Good is the Enemy of Great”.

Steve explains in the interview that his favorite NFL Coach, Howard Mudd, constantly reminded of a saying by Henry Ford – “whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right”. It is good to know that many people wrestle with the same tension that we face.

Here are couple healthy reminders:  

1) Tension is natural and is an indicator that we are at least thinking about becoming better humans.

2) We all have three choices with our current state: growth, maintain or decline.

3) We cannot grow without change, so getting comfortable with being uncomfortable will help us become better humans.   

This insight was written by Terry Weaver, co-founder of VEL INSTITUTE. If this this writing inspired you at all, check out this quick talk about how to use your unique gifts to impact the lives of others, Our Power to Change the Lives of Others.