Facing a challenge is rarely a fun thing to do, but it’s also the place where you can grow the most. By seeing where your shortcomings are, it gives you a much better picture of where you need to put in the work.
For example, Michael Jordan failed to make the varsity basketball team during his sophomore year of high school, and “used this perceived slight as motivation to work his butt off to improve” (via Tim Ott).
We’ve seen the opposite with professional athletes many times as well, when they had an easy ride to the pros and couldn’t handle it because they had never been forced to work through hard times.
Becoming
In her book “Mindset” author Carol Dweck offers a quick thought to help push this forward.
Her first is that she simply says “becoming is better than being“. There is always room to improve in anything you do, so being happy on the journey (versus waiting until you “arrive”) will make you much happier in life.
Skillful frustrations
Really, though, a quote from the great Bruce Lee sums up this idea. Bruce said:
“People have to go through skillful frustrations, otherwise they have no incentive to develop their own means and ways of coping with the world.”
“Skillful frustrations” is a such a great way to put it. Working through those frustrations may be difficult at the time, but are often a great push to make you a better person.
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