The Importance of Struggle in Our Lives – Miyagi Mornings Episode-115

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I am picking up today where we left on on Monday when we talked about how young and broke is a bad excuse, for well just about anything. One little addition to that one, if you are indeed young and broke, get with the plan or you are going to become something far worse, old and broke.

Anyway on Monday I said something to the effect that struggle is the fire that forges us like steal so we are strong enough to handle success when it comes out way. I have to say right out of the gate that at 49 I am now extremely grateful for the struggles of my youth. I am grateful I packed boxes in a 115 degree warehouse for 5.50 an hour. I am grateful for scrubbing the floors in a turkey slaughter house when I was 16. I am grateful for the 6 months I lived in a tent with 7 other men in Honduras in one of the poorest places on the planet.

I am also grateful that as I did achieve success in my life it was like a staircase and each stair took me a bit higher over time. Looking back at the 19 year old kid that jumped out of airplanes and stood in the back of 100MPH plus pick up trucks passing whiskey bottles to equally stupid 19 year olds, I must say THANK GOD I didn’t get successful over night.

I don’t know what would of happened to me if I had but here are my top guesses…

1. I would have killed myself, directly though danger or indirectly with booze and drugs
2. I would have ended up in prison or at least in and out of jail
3. Had I not killed myself I would have ended up crippled in some life altering injury
4. I would have pissed it all away and ended up far more broke then when I started out

I have watched every single of of these things happen to people that went too far to fast and additionally many people who were sheltered from struggling by well meaning parents. And the worst of the worst I have seen have been those who achieved success through a windfall like say an inheritance. Today we discuss why struggling is part of growth and why we should embrace and conquer it vs. hoping someone or something will take it away from us.