Do you allow yourself to struggle? Or do you cringe at the thought and then avoid it at all costs; therefore avoiding your true feelings. For most people, struggling is not something they understand nor that they want to go through. So they ignore it and avoid it.
It’s when you reflect on your struggles and WHY you’re struggling where the growth comes. Honoring the struggle takes practice though. It takes allowing yourself to truly feel the emotions you’re going through and to let yourself think about why you’re feeling them.
Because of my experience and knowledge with High Performance coaching and mentoring, it comes naturally to remind myself to honor the hard times that come. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. It still takes work and generating a positive mindset, even when that is hard. And that work takes time and dedication.
Honoring the struggles I go through has taken years of practice but I am now able to coach others on the importance of using struggles for growth purposes.
In an episode of my podcast, Change by Choice, I talk about the process of honoring the struggle and that the tough times are necessary for us to find the joy after the struggle.
I touch upon the importance of absorbing the feelings of struggling rather than putting up a front. When you learn how you can honor the struggle and the defense mechanisms that make come from struggling, you can learn and truly grow from them.
Do you know what your defense mechanisms are? We all have different ones that our subconscious turns to in times of struggle. But the thing about defense mechanisms is that they can only work positively for us if we honor them and not let them overwhelm or hinder our relationships with others and ourselves.
One of the most important aspects of learning to honor the struggle is understanding that the struggles we face are exactly that, learning processes. We will struggle, it is a fact. The only way we can avoid struggling is by not working or living up to our potential. So WHEN we struggle, how are we going to learn from it and honor it?
For starters, it’s important for us to recognize what it is we’re struggling with. When we are able to recognize the exact thing we are struggling with, we are able to pinpoint what needs to be done in order to grow through the struggle.
Each struggle we run into is actually an opportunity for us to grow and improve our skill set. It’s within these struggles and the process of honoring them that we are able to become more positive, more apt, and more conscientious of working with others and even with understanding their own struggles.
So what learning lessons have you gotten about business or life that have lead you to experiential growth?