All our lives we’ve been taught to work hard, face our fears and fight for what we want. We’ve been told that nothing good comes easily.
Frederick Douglass said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.†Napoleon Hill said, “Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle”. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Every step. . .requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle”.
In a recent piece, even Leo Babauta at Zen Habits advocates that we “move towards what we resist”.
“Find the thing in your business or personal life that you know would be powerful for you, but that you’re resisting doing. Move toward that,” he said.
I’m confused. I thought Zen was about letting go of struggle and resistance.
I’m also confused about the notion that we should ignore what our gut is telling us. It’s there for a reason, isn’t it?
Short term, we can “feel the fear and do it anyway”. We can make the call, review the document, or work on the project for an hour, even when we really don’t want to.
But long term and big picture–your career, life decisions, relationships–shouldn’t we listen to that little voice in our head? It might be telling us we’re headed in the wrong direction.
How about a compromise?
Instead of ignoring our gut and pushing forward in the face of fear, or listening to our gut and doing nothing we fear, how about looking for a way around what we fear, a way to get where we want to go and “enjoy the journey”.
I vote for that.
Because the idea that our entire existence here is meant to be hardship and struggle doesn’t work for me.
And if we can find a way to make things easy, or at least easier, why wouldn’t we?
