Choose Your Struggles

If you’re not willing to endure the pain and struggle to achieve a goal, maybe it’s time to reconsider whether that goal is worth pursuing.

What I watched: “The Most Important Question of Your Life” by Mark Manson for After Skool.

What do you really want out of life? For what goals are you willing to exert the effort to accomplish? Are your dreams and goals more influenced by outside forces than by your own true internal desires?

These are some of the questions Mark Manson poses in this video.

A while back when it was first published, I read Mark Manson’s book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life. It was one of my favorite books at the time and I still recommend it often. The video is a snippet of content from the book as read by Mark Manson and illustrated by After Skool.

Lately, I’m hesitant to recommend books in the self-help or personal development categories, but this one remains a standout because it cuts through the bullshit of the far too common droning sameness of many self-help books. Manson tells it to you straight, at least as he sees it.

The book from which this video originated had a significant impact on me because it was a message I needed to hear at the time. I was so caught up in constant striving, goal setting, and productivity hacks that I never stopped to seriously consider whether all those things I was striving for were actually things I wanted. Or, to be more accurate, were they things I wanted for which I was ready to do what is necessary to get them? Turns out the answer was often no.

Manson asks us to consider this important question when examining what we say we want out of life and what commensurate effort and pain we’re willing to endure to attain it.

A more important question, the question that perhaps you've never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

Sigh. This was so tough for me to read when I first read it and it’s just as tough to listen to now. I’ve always wanted a lot out of life. I guess that’s normal. But I was also acculturated to believe that I could have everything I wanted in life if I just worked hard enough.

Working hard isn’t necessarily enough. Luck factors into much of what happens to us. Where we’re born and how we were raised factors into life outcomes. Our health and physical abilities can determine whether it’s likely we’ll reach certain goals. Who we know matters. So much besides hard work and tenacity go into reaching a goal.

Not that I’m discounting hard work and tenacity. Regardless of other factors, hard work and sticking to something long term tends to still be the most significant factor in whether we reach a goal or not. But if we’re going to work hard, we should align our goals and desires with the reality of what it is we’re actually willing to do.

Prior to joining the ranks of reformed goal list makers, I used to write down all kinds of things I wanted. I wanted to be a millionaire, write dozens of books, have a buffed and chiseled body, write and perform my own songs, appear in movies and television series, and a host of other commonly held fantasy goals that many of us hold in this achievement and stature culture in which we live.

I had to get honest with myself and reconsider most of those goals later in life as reality rather than the fantasy stared me directly in the face.

Making millions of dollars isn’t as easy as the get rich quick evangelists claim. Turns out writing dozens of books requires hours upon hours of doing nothing each day but writing. Despite the outward appearance of ease in becoming a music star, it takes dedication to learn, practice, create, and perform as a musician. I studied and worked hard as a dancer, actor, and singer during my early years in professional theater, but I rarely saw others who were far more talented and hardworking than me reach the height of the entertainment business fame about which they dreamed.

If you could take a look at some of my goal lists from my 20s, 30s, and even as recently as my 50s, you would have read through it, turned to me, and said “Really? You really think you’re going to do all of this?” My ambitions were so lofty that they approached comical except I was supremely serious about them at the time.

Each of us should decide what pain, what struggle, we’re willing to deal with in order to attain something. With rare exception, ask anyone who’s achieved something great and they’ll recount a story of countless hours of work and toil that belies what appears to the outside world to be easily gotten riches, fame, or skill.

Life is chockful of lots of negatives that we need to plough through and manage well if we’re to make meaningful progress.

Happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative.

You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life. At the core of all human behavior our needs are more or less similar. Positive experience is easy to handle. It's the negative experience that we all by definition struggle with. Therefore, what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain.

Recently I considered returning to a gym. In my fantasy mind, even at 69 years of age, I wanted the lean and muscular body many in my social network have. But I got real with myself. I didn’t really enjoy the gym anymore (I did in my youth). The $100+ I was going to spend each month on a gym membership was likely going to be flushed down the toilet once I got over the newness of being back at a gym. So, I created a simple, at-home workout regimen that I can and do stick to that won’t necessarily make me a muscled hunk but it’s an amount of effort exertion I’m willing to trade for being in a bit better shape.

After leaving corporate life I had thoughts of launching a startup and managing a new business. I created multiple versions of business plans. I read gobs of books on launching startups and business management. Over lunches and dinners, I talked to others about my ideas. Will I do this? Truthfully, I don’t think so. I’ve reached a point in my life when I want to learn and create without a reliance on a business’s profitability.

I could list more goals I had that I’ve now reconsidered, but it would be a long list. What finally got through my sometimes very thick skull is this.

What determines your success isn't what do you want to enjoy? The question is, what pain do you want to sustain? The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with the negative experiences is to get good at life.

Forget the motivational speakers. Stop listening to anyone who tells you that you can have it all. Mute anyone in your life who constantly prods you to want and strive for things you really don’t want. No productivity hack ever created will help you consistently achieve optimal output. Don’t succumb to the allure of the hyper successful, famous, or wealthy who spew forth perfectly curated images and messaging on their social media that covers up what’s likely a quite different reality.

Most of us have heard of cost/benefit analysis. While this is usually applied to business, it applies to our lives. If you want the benefits of something, you have to pay the costs. If the costs are too high, perhaps it’s not a benefit you should focus on.

Want a ripped, buffed body? You’re going to have to spend countless hours of hard work in a gym. Want a big expensive home or fancy car? You’re going to have to deal with long work hours making the money to get those things. Sure, we’ve all seen overnight success stories, but they’re newsworthy for a reason – they’re incredibly rare.

This is the part of the video that describes the self-questioning I underwent years ago when my goals and dreams weren’t aligning perfectly with actual life.

If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens, and you never come any closer to it, than maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image, a false promise. Maybe what you want isn't what you want. You just enjoy the wanting. Maybe you don't actually want it at all.

The bottom line is that a meaningful life isn’t pain or struggle free. Pleasure is an easy emotion. Pain and struggle are not. But we’ll easily confront pain and struggle if we’re aiming for something we truly want. If we aren’t ready to deal with the pain and struggle, maybe it’s time to abandon that unrealistic goal and look elsewhere. I have, and I’m happier for it.

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