Challenges, difficulties, and troubles are part of the deal.
We do not get to control how they come at us, when, or in what quantity.
Their timing is never convenient.
When it is our time to struggle, it is simply our time.
We do get to control how we respond to our struggles, however.
We get to choose how we will behave once their inevitability manifests as actuality.
When faced with adversity, we must decide who we want to be because of it or in spite of it.
We must decide how we want it to affect us.
We can either allow it to overcome us, to defeat us, and to change us for the worse, or we can rise to meet the challenge, adapt to our new circumstances, and become better people because of it.
Every obstacle is an opportunity for improvement if we allow it to be.
We risk being overwhelmed by life’s challenges whether we try too hard or not hard enough, but only one of these options can lead us beyond our difficulties to success.
Life will not always be easy.
We will struggle.
At times, we will be overwhelmed by decisions, challenges, and setbacks.
This is true whether we are trying to get ahead or not.
Effort, trying our hardest, doing our best, does not guarantee us success.
It certainly does not guarantee that things will be easy, that we will not be overwhelmed, or that we will not fail.
The only thing that effort promises us is that we can be successful, not that we will.
Lack of effort, on the other hand, does not offer us any promises of success either.
Lack of effort does, however, guarantee that we will not be successful.
The choice we must make, therefore, is whether we want to take a chance on the possibility of success or if we want to guarantee our failure.
Through effort, at least we have a chance.
At least we have hope.
Life will still be difficult.
We will still struggle and get overwhelmed at times.
As long as we do not give up, as long as we continue to push forward, we give ourselves the opportunity to make our suffering temporary.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Bodyand Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
When things that once challenged us no longer do, we can either choose comfort in routine or growth in new challenges.
There is nothing wrong with comfort in itself.
We all crave it in some way.
After all, growth and progress are not sustainable without some time for rest, recovery, and reflection in our lives.
The problem arises when comfort becomes our standard and we begin avoiding that which makes us uncomfortable, that which is difficult, and that which challenges us to improve.
Comfortability causes us to close our minds to new ideas, experiences, and opportunities because what we are doing seems to be working, or at least it works at keeping us comfortable.
We soon forget the excitement and satisfaction that comes from facing and overcoming resistance, frustration, and failure.
We forget what it feels like to experience the extremes of our joy and our pain, and we settle for the mundanity of that which is merely good enough.
Long periods of comfort in our lives should be seen as a warning sign that we are not pushing ourselves hard enough, that we are not reaching far enough, and that we have ceased striving for growth, improvement, and experience.
There is no reason to put our health, safety, or relationships in jeopardy simply for a new challenge, but, at the same time, we must recognize that most experiences worth having are not easily had.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Bodyand Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Doing the easy thing now does not make the difficult thing go away.
The best time to address difficulty is as it presents itself.
Waiting will not make it go away.
Time does not make that which is difficult easier to deal with.
Ignoring a difficult problem, task, or truth in favor of comfort, convenience, or complacency merely delays the difficulty.
Often, difficulty delayed becomes harder, not easier, to face and overcome.
As time elapses, difficulty left unaddressed and unresolved grows, or at least our fear of it does.
The harder we try to hide from the reality of that which we have to face, the more overwhelming our fear and trepidation become.
Even if the difficult thing itself does not change, our perception of its gravity does and that makes it more difficult to face.
Sometimes we try to overcompensate in other areas of our lives in an attempt to make up for that which we are avoiding.
We want to believe that enough little wins, enough easy choices, and enough progress in other directions, all layered on top of each other, will cancel out the difficult thing we are avoiding, but rarely is this true.
The sooner we accept, embrace, and take responsibility for the fact that this burden is ours alone to bear, this challenge is ours alone to face, and this obstacle is ours alone to overcome, the sooner our lives will actually become less difficult.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Bodyand Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Meditations on God 