An ideal life
Everyone wants to live a happy, carefree, painless life. Everyone wants to have amazing relationships and find true love and have money. It’s easy for everyone to want this but the problem with this is that it’s so vague and ambiguous.
The struggle: The benefit has to outweigh the cost
Rather than asking yourself what you want, the question to pose is, ‘What are you willing to struggle for?’ How much hardship are you willing to experience to get what you want?
When I think of close friends of mine that are financially independent, I think of people that suffer through 60+ hour work weeks. They eat lunch at their desk and they often leave work well into the evening and they are out like a light from utter exhaustion when their head hits their pillow. They are a slave to their jobs. They never cook and eat out for every meal. Their weekends are a mix of catching up on sleep and partying hard and then Monday rolls round and the cycle starts again.
Was this the lifestyle they envisioned for themselves? Perhaps not. They may not be working their dream jobs either but the financial reward is so significant that it outweighs any suffering that comes with it.
Endure a struggle you enjoy
Everyone seems to want to make copious amounts of money with little effort. The truth is, it takes blood, sweat and tears to be successful and become financially free (and a bit of positive thinking, of course). I have a friend that dropped out of school at 16 years old and jumped at the opportunity to take over his family’s business in engineering trucks when they were going to sell it. This friend became a millionaire. He started small and grew big.
Not everyone is willing to suffer through hardship to get what they want and happiness requires a struggle. Finding ways where you can enjoy the struggle is the key here.
People who want to be slim and beautiful are required to endure the physical stress of working out unless they prefer to carefully calculate the calories they ingest.
Successful entrepreneurs that love taking risks are wired to love the pain of uncertainty, repeated failures and working crazy hours.
I love the idea of becoming more flexible and practicing yoga regularly but the truth is, my muscles are stiff and I don’t enjoy the pain that comes with reaching to touch my toes.
I am, however, totally willing to live out of my backpack for months and struggle to communicate with locals in a foreign language and lose myself in each new place I visit. That’s my ideal of a struggle and that’s a struggle that brings me happiness.
Be honest with yourself about what you want
I’ve always pictured myself living in a huge mansion with a beautiful garden and a cabin the mountains to escape to but here I am, sharing an average apartment with a roommate.
How come sometimes something you want so badly never becomes your reality? That’s because you don’t want it bad enough. Be honest with yourself about what you want.
