Be a Sponge: In the Middle of Your Struggle

Yikes! This is crazy. Agreed? Covid-19 has impacted everyone’s life, most importantly yours. What’s your next move? Go deeper.

Think of your life as an 80’s style video game. What if you wanted to take your career, your finances or your relationships to the next level? There is always some obstacle between where you are and that “next level.” 

Consider this, when you have the feeling, I’ve had enough and I’m not going to live at this level anymore, are you willing to suck it up and make some deeper changes? Maybe you sign up for a class or go to a self-improvement seminar so that when we come out the other side we are on a new trajectory or better yet, firmly living life at that next level. You can take a deep breath and feel that sense of accomplishment. You can also look back and see the struggle was well worth it. The struggle was essential to your growth. I say, “If you take away my struggle, you take away my growth.” 

In our 80’s video game analogy, this scenario is choosing to “face the wolf” instead of continuing life on the same level. What’s cool is you made the, “I’m all in” choice and you were the master of your own destiny. You chose to change and did what it took to make it happen. Nice!

Right now things are different. Right now we have been forced into a change. We are now facing three wolves and there is no option to stay at the same level. We don’t like this. We did not like the struggle when we wanted to make a change, but it was our choice. Because we did not choose this change, we for sure don’t like the struggle. We didn’t sign up for this, correct? Life does that on occasion, but usually not the whole world at once. I love the line from one of my favorite motivational books, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! where it says, “You won’t like that place.” He is talking about the waiting place, but I’m talking about the struggle place. You won’t like that place, but the choices you make in the midst of your struggle will determine what level you end up on, on the other side of this. There won’t be any “Same level”, but there are higher and lower levels.  

This is horrible. Watching the news we can see so much struggle and we can also see much inspiration out there as well. When Mark Brown and I interviewed Mark Sanborn, CSP, CPAE he said something profound. He said, “We must respond to the new found pain.” There are so many stories out there about people and businesses that are using this change to make an even deeper impact on the world with what they have.

Here is my truth. I’m fortunate that we were already set up to do virtual training so we quickly responded and made some major shifts in how we do business. The truth is that even though we are better positioned than some experts, I still find moments where I feel greatly depressed. I have moments where I feel like giving up. How about you? I hope you don’t, but if you do, you are not alone.

I have had to reach out to friends and when they reach back, they lift me up. Thank God. Now, I’m not sure specifically where this comes from, it could be years of listening to motivational tapes or reading the book of Proverbs, but I know I have made some great decisions in the middle of my struggle. You?

If you followed me on Facebook, a few months ago I decided to purge my closets and office. I found bags of non-relevant paperwork I could shred and found the shredding therapeutic. I stopped counting at 21 bags that were purged. It felt good. I made space and gave us less clutter too.

I also looked at this current situation and realized I needed better systems in my business. Whenever we get to the new normal, I want to operate our business better and more efficiently. I had been meaning to change my accounting software for years. Every year for the past ten years, however, I ended up taking the simple way out and operating at the same level. I chose to not go deeper and wasted a great deal of time and effort every single year! Not sure if I was stupid or lazy, but I do know it is my responsibility. This craziness took away my excuses, thank God! What have you been meaning to do?

I’m also choosing now to move to an entire new marketing system and shopping cart set up. Why? Because my team is not a fan, (I’m being polite), of what they are using. What we are using now, does not work well for our business model. How can I expect more out of my team, in less time, if I’m not giving them the tools to do just that? How can we possibly scale our business on these current systems? We can’t. It would break us if business suddenly took off. 

Right now we are in the midst of making these changes. We are right in the middle of the struggle. It sucks! It is challenging in ways I did not foresee. That’s what it feels like when you are in the middle of it. Have you ever added someone to your team to help you free up some more of your time? You soon realize, for a while, it is going to take much more time to train them and get them up to speed. The exact opposite of what you wanted for a while. It’s a struggle. It’s not fun, but somehow required for you to evolve.

I’m also realizing that, in some ways, it is not as bad as I thought. I over-dramatized some of the struggle in my head. That’s one of the reasons I put it off so long. I should have dove deeper sooner. Only when we go deeper into our struggle, can we be positioned to skip a level and be much better off. Deeper leads to higher.

Change can be a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Think about that. Commit to going deeper now. Commit to making some strategic changes that will enable you to operate at a better level on the other side of this. That’s why they call it a breakthrough. They don’t call it a step through or a walk-through. It’s a breakthrough! It requires effort, force and struggle.

I’m still in the middle of the struggle right now. I still have days I want to quit. I still get frustrated. I’m still down sometimes. It’s what we do in the middle that matters. 

“And will you succeed? Yes! You will indeed! (98 and ? percent guaranteed) Kid, you’ll move mountains!” –Dr. Seuss

 What do you take from this?