Hardship
Hardship - are we getting too soft for our own good?
Fact: Resilience is (pretty much) always quoted as the most important aspect of individual success.
Without resilience/grit/determination you'll fall, probably early into the journey of inevitable hurdles, en route to your overnight success. Resilience is built from your experience and that experience tends to be difficult things to overcome, or not overcome. In other words, hardship. Resilience is not built from observation, podcasts, or courses. These things are great, but they won’t make you stronger.
I thought I’d share some recent experience: I need a small medical procedure (I'm fine, thanks!) which required some prep. The prep is 3/10 unpleasant - it's a little icky, involves a 5am rise time, and no food for 30 hours.
The procedure is to see if I have a life-threatening illness; to prevent me from dying. The price is not that bad - especially to make sure a personal high-risk area is all good. The return is asymmetric to the preparation unpleasantness. Yet, I discovered that 40% of people DON'T have the procedure due to the preparation being a bit nasty. They'd rather stay comfortable than discover they have a preventable condition, which if not found, is highly likely to kill them.
So I’ll share an opinion: We're so accustomed to comfort, we'd rather experience death than discomfort.
Perhaps too long a bow, but I'm throwing it out there!
Cheers,
Josh
"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
– Nelson Mandela
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts."
– Winston Churchill
How to develop more resilience
I feel compelled to share my experience in the form of suggestions: You just know that I’m looking for a way to insert some cold shower goodness in here…..! In just 2 minutes per day, you can fix your immune system AND build inner strength.
Other techniques that I’ve found helpful: prolonged fasting, long meditations, a gnarly workout/run etc. Learning something new and tricky, and leaning into those hard conversations with your loved ones/staff/partners - probably the same people…. :-)
